Communications of the ACM
The blog archive provides access to past blog postings from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
April 2012
From Putting People First
From print to iPad: designing a reading experience
UX consultant Harry Brignull spoke at UX London 2012 about the design of The Week magazine
From Putting People First
Watching every click you make
Henry Alford, contributing editor at Vanity Fair, wonders when in the digital age, did privacy become a choice rather than a given. “When Facebook bought Instagram, the social photo app for iPhone and Android devices, on April…
From Putting People First
Trust and the future of mobile money
Even within the technology community, 33% agreed with the below statement: “People will not trust the use of near-field communications devices and there will not be major conversion of money to an all-digital, all-the-time format…
From Putting People First
Internet must be a web not for the consumer, but for the citizen
In an editorial, The Guardian argues for an open web: “To protect the web’s founding principle is a matter of what Tim Berners-Lee would call citizen vigilance, of restraining by openness itself the continual pressure for a closed…
From Putting People First
How to create products hand in hand with your customer
In his book “Wicked problems: Problems worth solving“, author John Kolko (founder and director of Austin Center for Design) argues that involving end users in the entire design process ensures a humane design solution. He now…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Microsoft Mood Analysis
In GeekWire: Microsoft research proposes a search that uses mood, interests and education from Facebook activity. Non conscious and inferred information is always interesting.
From The Eponymous Pickle
Classic Nintendo Games are Hard
NP-Hard to be exact. A specific form of problem that has many examples, the traveling salesman problem is known to be NP-Hard, that cannot be solved by a cadre of computers that can do things that computers still cannot do…
From Putting People First
How user research informed IKEA
IKEA’s new Uppleva Smart TV-furniture unit was extensively shown at the Milan Design Week (which ends today), and on Core77 I will write more today about the interface design (link to come), but here some more about the user…
From Putting People First
Behaviour change as value proposition
Chris Risdon, senior experience designer at Adaptive Path, looks at the explosion of smart products, which passively collect data about you and your specific behavior, and tell you a story which is designed to directly influence…
From Putting People First
Intersection of the physical and digital worlds
Austin Brown, UX designer at EffectiveUI, and his colleague Lindsay Moore wondered if there was a way to design better, by combinubg the best aspects of interaction design and product design, as well as a little service design…
From My Biased Coin
Things Worth Reading
A blog post describing the disturbing official version of the facts in the UC-Davis pepper spray incident. This should be a link to the actual report. A post by an undergraduate discussing the importance of math/algorithms…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Synthetic Environments
Simulations are synthetic environment. It has been a long time since I too a look at Purdue's Simulex Inc. which creates macroeconomic and agent oriented environments and infrastructures for the military and Fortune 500 companies…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Oracle and BI Simplicity
Oracle and big cloud analytics. " ... Oracle
From Computer Science Teachers Association
Getting Rid of the T Word
Two years ago I wrote the following blog post.
"Training" should be a four-letter word
"We need to train more teachers." "Teachers need more training in order to be successful at teaching computer science." "More teacher…From The Eponymous Pickle
Nanotech Revolution
Was pointed to this series of articles by Gwyneth K Shaw on nanotechnology news and tech. Largely non technical and readable. That led me to a series of articles and information in the Guardian: Nanotechnology World, with similar…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Digitization of Manufacturing
In the Economist: Is this the third industrial revolution? They do a good job of providing an overview of technologies that are prompting this, but not necessarily the issues that will slow up its progress. A blurring of the…
From The Female Perspective of Computer Science
Perplexing Problems in Educational Games
When it comes to presenting math problems in an engaging way, Dan Meyer knows his stuff. From putting pseudocontext in its place to telling a math story with his 3 Acts curriculum, he knows what hooks kids and what turns them…
From My Biased Coin
Living with New Interfaces
After weeks of asking Google mail to revert to the old look, I find I no longer have that option. Similarly, I'm being forced to write this post using the new blogger interface. I suppose I'll be open-minded and try them, since…
From Schneier on Security
Friday Squid Blogging: Extracting Squid Ink
How to extract squid ink.
As usual, you can also use this squid post to talk about the security stories in the news that I haven't covered.
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Computer Science Across the Curriculum
Yesterday I had the pleasure of meeting with Seung Yu, the principal of the new Academy for Software Engineering, a new software/computer science focused school opening in New York City this fall. We had a great discussion about…
From Schneier on Security
<i>Liars & Outliers</i> Update
Liars & Outliers has been available for about two months, and is selling well both in hardcover and e-book formats. More importantly, I'm very pleased with the book's reception. The reviews I've gotten have been great, and …
From The Eponymous Pickle
Kimberly-Clark on Mobile and Social
An interview with Kimberly Clark on the future of mobile and social: " ... Jeff Jarrett, vice president for global digital marketing at Kimberly-Clark, said the company has "seen a nice return on investment from our digital…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Segmentation plus Merchandising
Merchandising has been around for a long time. We did lots of experimentation trying to understand the specific behavior of consumers in laboratory, virtual and actual stores. In each case with carefully interviewed real shoppers…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Face Matching in Forensics
Image analysis continues to be a strong interest. Similarity and tagging of images continues to move ahead, but is not yet completely solved. Face matching is an area that has progressed because of needs in security and social…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Fighting for the Fifth Screen
It is a challenge. With tablets and phones, and now watches and even goggle-glasses, added to all the screens popping up everywhere, there is real motion to get every last bit of attention and information serving deliveryThis…
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
Computer scientists need to learn about significant digits
I probably spend too much time reviewing research papers. It makes me cranky. Nevertheless, one thing that has become absolutely clear to me is that computer scientists do not know about significant digits. When you write that…
From Wild WebMink
Microsoft Does Open Source
I updated and expanded my speculation about why Microsoft started “Microsoft Open Technologies, Inc.” – sadly without any help from them as all their many evangelists and PR people were too shy to talk to me. Read the results…
From Wild WebMink
? All About RAND
What does “RAND” really mean for open source? It’s the key issue in the current UK government standards consultation (which I really ask you to complete). I’ve tried to explain why RAND and open source don’t mix in my article…
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
CISE Researchers Discuss
The following is a special contribution to this blog from
From Schneier on Security
TSA Behavioral Detection Statistics
Interesting data from the U.S. Government Accounting Office:
But congressional auditors have questions about other efficiencies as well, like having 3,000 "behavior detection" officers assigned to question passengers. The officers…