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 BLOG@CACM
CHI 2010: User Interfaces Learn a Thing or Two
The 2010 conference in Human Factors in Computing Systems has seen a noticeable uptick in projects on and engagement with machine learning.
From The Noisy Channel
Google Follow Finder
I know there’s lots of interesting stuff coming out at the Chirp Twitter developer conference this week, and I’m still catching up on it all. But I am happy to point folks to a Google Labs application that was announced this…
From The Noisy Channel
Deadline to Register for HCIR Challenge
If you are interested in participating in the HCIR Challenge, please let me know as soon as possible–and in any case by April 30th. The New York Times and the LDC are graciously providing access to The New York Times Annotated…
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
Qinghai Quake and Robots
What is it with disasters? They
From The Eponymous Pickle
Buzz Adds Sharing Button
New ways to publish buzz. Have now been using Buzz since its launch. Have been pushing these blog posts and Tweets to it. Works fine among my Google mail correspondents, some of them see my communications show up and they read…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Library of Congress to Archive Tweets
The US Library of Congress has announced that it will archive all public tweets. See more in it's blog. To be mine-able, for ever and ever, all your mundane thoughts. I had been starting to think that Twitter's attraction was…
From Schneier on Security
Matt Blaze Comments on his 15-Year-Old "Afterword"
Fifteen years ago, Matt Blaze wrote an Afterword to my book Applied Cryptography. Here are his current thoughts on that piece of writing.
From Computational Complexity
Tom L DVD and Birthday and You Tube and...
April 9 was Tom Lehrer's 82nd birthday! To celebrate I give you breaking news that a Tom L DVD was released April 13, 2010. It seems to have some videos of him performing and some other things. It also has The Derivative Song…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Augmenting City Visits
From the CACM: Augmented Reality Brings Movie Magic to City Visits: " ... Using a combination of personalized location-based services and augmented reality, in which multimedia content is superimposed and merged with real-time…
From Putting People First
Psychologist Kahneman on experience and memory
Using examples from vacations to colonoscopies, Nobel laureate and founder of behavioral economics Daniel Kahneman reveals in a February 2010 lecture at TED how our “experiencing selves” and our “remembering selves” perceive…
From Schneier on Security
Externalities and Identity Theft
Chris Hoofnagle has a new paper: "Internalizing Identity Theft." Basically, he shows that one of the problems is that lenders extend credit even when credit applications are sketchy.
From an article on the work:
Using a 2003…From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
K-12 Computing Teachers Workshop
The Computer Science Teachers Association sent out an announcement about an upcoming workshop hosted in Partnership with the Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology (ABI) at the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Technology…
From Wild WebMink
? Seven Patent Reforms While We Wait For Nirvana
We'll not eliminate software patents overnight, but some reforms might be possible.
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
More re DARPA
John Markoff had an extremely interesting profile of DARPA Director Regina Dugan in today’s NY Times.
From The Eponymous Pickle
Interactive Data Graphics in Media
Elissa Pellizzon Fink of Tableau writes about this good example of showing embedded complex graphics: "We have a new product that is more of an online media product. It lets the operator of a big website insert interactive data…
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
On the design of design
Following a blog post by John D. Cook, I started reading Fred Brooks‘ latest book. Brooks is famous, among other things, for his earlier book, the Mythical Man-Month. The book is really a collection of essays, organized like…
From Schneier on Security
Terrorist Attacks and Comparable Risks, Part 2
John Adams argues that our irrationality about comparative risks depends on the type of risk:
With "pure" voluntary risks, the risk itself, with its associated challenge and rush of adrenaline, is the reward. Most climbers on…From The Eponymous Pickle
McDonalds Social Media Chief
How can it not be serious of McDonald's has just added its first social media chief?-
From My Biased Coin
What's the Co-Author Line?
Continuing the past discussion on authorship issues, I've been considering the questions: at what point has a person involved in the project done so little work that they should not be included as an author? For today's post…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Epic Systems Trend Compass
I was just sent a promo piece by Epic Systems on their visualization system called Trend Compass. With a brief examination, it creates bubble charts and includes a time slider on the X Axis that allows you to control a simple…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Office vs Google Docs
Have been an Office user since the beginning and just in the last year have started to use some of Google Docs. Some new features, like easier sharing have made me dive deeper yet. There is still a functionality difference, but…
From Computational Complexity
Choosing a Graduate School
Besides being tax day, Thursday is the deadline to decide where to attend graduate school. How should you choose? I've blogged on this topic before but a few recent new wrinkles to talk about.Typically Ph.D. programs in computer…
From The Female Perspective of Computer Science
Celebration a Success!
Last week Carleton's Women in Science and Engineering hosted the very first Carleton Celebration of Women in Science and Engineering, and it was a great success!I organized this event after being inspired by the Grace Hopper.…
From Schneier on Security
Terrorist Attacks and Comparable Risks, Part 1
Nice analysis by John Mueller and Mark G. Stewart:
There is a general agreement about risk, then, in the established regulatory practices of several developed countries: risks are deemed unacceptable if the annual fatality risk…From BLOG@CACM
CHI 2010 Opening Plenary: Thinking About Messy Futures
"Messy Futures: Culture, Technology and Research" was the title of Genevieve Bell’s opening plenary speech at CHI 2010, and it gave attendees a plethora of facts and ideas to consider—or reconsider.
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Visual Studio 2010 Now Available
Well it is official
From Wild WebMink
? Digital Liberty Missing From UK Election
Take action to put digital liberty issues on the British election agenda. #ge10
From The Eponymous Pickle
Twitris at Knoesis
Demonstrated at the Kno.e.sis Center at Wright State University today: Twitris, a semantic technology based social signal analysis system, where you can Twitter through space, theme and time. Video overview here. Some clever…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Simulating Evacuation
In ACM News: simulating the evacuation of 70,000 avatars from an e-stadium. We did a number of projects that deal with the simulation of shoppers in a store, so these projects are always of interest. I would like to see how much…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Will Gen Y Lead us into Recovery?
Report Sees Recovery Led by Gen Y: ' ... Members of Generation Y, not baby boomers, have money to spend and will end the recession with their purchases, says a report from PricewaterhouseCoopers and Retail Forward. Companies…