Communications of the ACM
The blog archive provides access to past blog postings from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
April 2010
From Putting People First
Sitra, the Finnish Innovation Fund and development partners, SRV and VVO today announce a
From Putting People First
The Middle of Moore
Mike Kuniavsky has posted a pre-print draft of the first chapter of his new book Smart Things: Ubiquitous Computing User Experience Design (see also this earlier post). The final book, he says, will be different and this is…
From Putting People First
Natural user interfaces are not natural
In his bimonthly column in the ACM CHI magazine, Interactions, Donald Norman argues that most gestures are neither natural nor easy to learn or remember. “Gestures lack critical clues deemed essential for successful human-computer…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Observational Models Fed to my Phone
There are some things that terrestrial observers can learn from astrophysics. Even if you are mostly interested in commercial applications. Its an example of how to observe data and use it for models. Most recently NASA hasa…
From My Biased Coin
Sexual Harassment Policies (Yale v. Harvard)
My brother, in what I assume is a blatant attempt to be mentioned in this blog (Hi Steve!!!), sent me a link to the following article about a new rule (or, as the article describes it, "A Sad Day") at Yale, banning professors…
From Schneier on Security
Detecting Being Watched
This seems like science fiction to me:
The camera uses the same "red eye" effect of from camera flashes to project it hundreds of meters, allowing it to identify binoculars, sniper scopes, cameras and even human eyeballs that…From The Eponymous Pickle
Stain Brain App Updated
I see that Procter & Gamble's Stain Brain IPhone application has been updated. Recall I described here how this is an application that has evolved over a dozen years in a number of formats. It was actively delivered to consumers…
From Wild WebMink
? Copying Is Not Theft; Saying It IS Is Spin
A guide to spotting spin, with a charming little jingle.
From The Eponymous Pickle
1913 Tax Form
Have seen this many times, but it is worth repeating, often. Mark Perry posts the US 1913 tax form, and comments: ' ... There were only four pages total including all forms and instructions, view it here. In contrast, just the…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Collapse of Complex Business Models
I agree they should be as simple as possible, but are often patched up affairs to match the expectations of those that believe in them. Clay Shirky does make some good points along the way. Have now seen several fail miserably…
From Schneier on Security
"Protecting Europe Against Large-Scale Cyber-Attacks"
Report from the House of Lords in the UK (pdf version).
From Computational Complexity
What Does It Meant to be Published?
I don't remember what prompted it but about a month ago I tweeted
Your paper might appear on Arxiv or ECCC, be widely read and even well cited. But don't think that it is in any way "published".Suresh respondedQuestion is, isn't…
From Wild WebMink
? Time Running Out
The Digital Economy Bill second reading is tomorrow in the UK. Take action now.
From My Biased Coin
NSF Review Issues
My understanding is that the turnaround time on NSF decisions should be approximately 6 months. (See, for instance, their own diagram of the review process.) So I admit to getting a bit edgy after month 7 has come and gone…
From BLOG@CACM
Errors in Database Systems, Eventual Consistency, and the CAP Theorem
Recently, there has been considerable renewed interest in the CAP theorem for database management system (DBMS) applications that span multiple processing sites. In brief, this theorem states that there are three interesting …
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Interesting Links 5 April 2010
Words matter. One set of words that come up in discussion are
From The Eponymous Pickle
Predictive Analytics as a Game Changer
In Forbes, a short article about how a number of companies are using predictive analytics to change the game. I again do not consider this to be very new, we did it for many years, but new software and massive amounts of readily…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Bayesian Information Retrieval
In the Noisy Channel: Information Retrieval using a Bayesian Model of Learning and Generalization. Well written, good piece with many instructional background links. Have long been interested in the methods of Bayesian reasoning…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Grand Unified Theory of AI
In MIT News, quite intriguing, though I don't quite understand how it can be applied immediately to real problems I am acquainted with. ' .. A new approach unites two prevailing but often opposed strains in the history of artificial…
From The Noisy Channel
Guest Post: Information Retrieval Using a Bayesian Model of Learning and Generalization
Dinesh Vadhia, CEO and founder of “item search” company Xyggy, has been an active member of the Noisy Community for at least a year, and it is with pleasure that I publish this guest post by him, University of Cambridge / CMU…
From BLOG@CACM
Electronic Voting Systems
What are the implications of electronic voting? Which countries are using this system? What are the advantages of using such systems? And what are the problems with normal voting systems?
From The Eponymous Pickle
Best of TDWI: Business Intelligence
Best of a number of good articles on Business Intelligence from TDWI. I have mentioned a few of these before, here they all in one piece. The download does require registration.
From The Eponymous Pickle
Videotaping the Shipment
In StorefrontBackTalk: Discussion of an Amazon patent that videotapes a shipment box as it is filled and sealed. Then attaching a link to that video clip to the shipment. Aiming to reduce unwarranted product returns. See the…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Simulated Car Racing
From the University of Wurzburg, simulated car demolition derby using artificial intelligence controllers. Still a believer that there is value in using gaming interactions to better understand what intelligence really is and…
From Wild WebMink
No-Link-Saturday
Just a cartoon.
From The Eponymous Pickle
Twitter Predicting Movie Box Office
Good overview of social media prediction opportunities, based on the HP social computing lab paper: Predicting the Future with Social Media. Of course a Twitter stream could be manipulated.
From My Biased Coin
Energy Sustainability
I spent an entertaining hour this afternoon listening to David MacKay of Cambridge (UK) give a talk about the Future of Energy here at Harvard. I've mentioned David in this blog before. He did a lot of early work on low density…
From Schneier on Security
Friday Squid Blogging: Squid Confit
Looks tasty.
From The Eponymous Pickle
Watching You Read
In the NYT: Theory of Mind and brain scanning, applied to fiction. Literary scholars turn to science.-
From The Eponymous Pickle
Magnets and Minds
From a friend. I agree this is scary. it is inevitable that as we know more about the functionality of the brain this kind of manipulation will have to be closely watched. ' ... A new study by neuroscientist Liane Young and colleagues…