Communications of the ACM
The blog archive provides access to past blog postings from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
April 2011
From BLOG@CACM
Stats: We're Doing It Wrong
A summary of the mistakes researchers make when analysing likert type data and what the correct methods should be.
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Interesting Links 4 April 2011
I always worry about posting things on April 1st. So I didn
From Wild WebMink
? Balancing Transparency and Privacy
One of the keys to a successful open source community is appropriate transparency. A community with strong values around transparency will also be likely to respect its participants privacy. Such a community will also be unlikely…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Practical Robots for Nuclear Accidents
iRobot, maker of the home task Roomba robot, gets considerable buzz in a Washington Post article. Their military/police/emergency robots seem to have value for nuclear emergencies. Meanwhile the Japanese have been working and…
From Wild WebMink
? Disintermediated
@jackschofieldJack Schofield Sign in window of soon-to-close Borders store in Chicago. Someone's a little bitter http://t.co/rwmHPOD (pic) via @swansonian @bookofsand about 9 hours ago via webReplyRetweetFavorite
From The Eponymous Pickle
30th Anniversary of the Portable Computer
In Engadget: A reminder that this has been going on for some while. It also reminds me that not shortly after this date I was starting to lift these 'portables' into the overhead bins of aircraft.
From Putting People First
Customer
Dr. Ralph-Christian Ohr, a Swiss product manager, reflects thoughtfully on the recent strong discussion on user-led innovation. “There has been quite a lot of discussion recently about a post by Jens Martin Skibsted and Rasmus…
From Putting People First
Ethnographic research inspired Xerox
Simplifying the workplace so customers can allocate more time and resources to their core business is fundamental to the innovation incubating today in Xerox
From The Eponymous Pickle
Major Brands Customer Data Breached
A number of major brands, including Kroger, had their data breached. The article describes the extent of the break, but also the implications regarding the types of customer data involved. More care and scrutiny needs to taken…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Measures of Data
A Focus Infographic on measures of data that is worth a look.
From The Eponymous Pickle
Broken Links in the Supply Chain
Have been involved in a major supply chain analysis lately. It was an area I worked in early in my career. This Economist article discusses the effect of the Japanese disaster on how production capabilities and inventory safety…
From BLOG@CACM
New York Celebration of Women in Computing
A preview of the upcoming New York Celebration of Women in Computing, which is designed to bring the experience of the Grace Hopper Celebration to students in a smaller, less costly, and local setting.
From The Eponymous Pickle
Google and Recipes
In Roughtype: As a foodie much interested in how we interact with information about food and recipes online I found this quite interesting. How recipes are searched for and found in Google. Apparently this was recently changed…
From My Biased Coin
More on Academic Communications
UW Madison has responded to the Open Records Request regarding Professor Cronon (which I mentioned here). Here's a link to the Chancellor's message as well as the response from the UW-Madison legal counsel. Given the challenging…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Letting Your Friends Tailor Your Search
In Technology Review: About Google's +1, searching and social networks. Letting your friends help prioritize search results. Like the old idea of letting friends help you choose your clothes. Not sure how successful that…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Statistical Significance
The Number Guy blogs about statistical significance. A frequently asked question: Is it significant? And it turns out often a troublesome concept. Don't let the professionals fool you, but it is not as easy as what was taught…
From The Eponymous Pickle
50 Years of the Marketing Science Institute
The Marketing Science Institute has created a web site that celebrates its 50th anniversary. Some interesting links and features.
From Schneier on Security
Friday Squid Blogging: Shower Squid
Neat.
From The Eponymous Pickle
Fuzzy Hashing Finds Spam and More
Finding spam using fuzzy hashing and other uses. " ... 'Fuzzy hashing' was invented to flag spam emails, but has found application in everything from malware detection to genome sequence alignment .... "
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
There’s an
From Computer Science Teachers Association
Candidate: Dr. Veronica McGowan
Editor's Note: Candidates for the upcoming CSTA election have been invited to post brief blog statements so that members can have a chance to get to know them a bit better.
Hello CSTA Members, I am running for the Collegiate…From Wild WebMink
? Wikipedia
For April Fool’s Day, Wikipedia editors have collected such a wonderful set of links and articles that it seems a shame to let it perish in the daily update. So here, for posterity, is the Did You Know section from the home page…
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
You can assess trends by the status of the participants
I conjecture that, everything else being equal, the level of your education is inversely correlated with innovation. At first, a new idea appears interesting, but it carries no prestige. And there are few financial incentives…
From Wild WebMink
links for 2011-04-01
Creepy app warns of an end to privacy The biggest threat to your privacy is not the disclosure of any one piece of data. It's triangulation across all the data you're disclosing. This piece of software is more performance art…
From Computational Complexity
The Complexity of the Soul
A CS vision professor once told me "Of course we know there is an efficient algorithm for that humans can do it." Are we just nothing more than Turing machines running simple algorithms using machine learning techniques that…
From The Eponymous Pickle
SimpleGeo Location Database
For geolocation developers:" .... SimpleGeo's hosted spatial database service Storage was released from private beta. This is the flagship product from the company we named as most promising company of 2011. Storage is a hosted…
From Schneier on Security
34 SCADA Vulnerabilities Published
It's hard to tell how serious this is.
Computer security experts who examined the code say the vulnerabilities are not highly dangerous on their own, because they would mostly just allow an attacker to crash a system or siphon…From Putting People First
Free Experientia backgrounder on EU
Major emphasis on user-centred design, open innovation and social innovation in new EU innovation strategy On 6 October 2010, the European Commission adopted the “Innovation Union“, a strategic approach to innovation, which is…
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
IOM-NAE Health Data Collegiate Challenge
Earlier this year, the NAE and IOM, along with Health 2.0, announced a challenge for college students throughout the U.S., to create new apps or tools that use large quantities of newly available health data: Using social networking…
From Wild WebMink
Next Post
@jzbJoe Brockmeier Microsoft is going to the EU about Google being anticompetitive. That's like Jack the Ripper going to the cops for getting mugged. about 18 hours ago via webReplyRetweetFavorite