Communications of the ACM
The blog archive provides access to past blog postings from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
April 2013
From Putting People First
Rx: Human nature
Why doesn’t a woman who continues to have unwanted pregnancies avail herself of the free contraception at a nearby clinic? What keeps people from using free chlorine tablets to purify their drinking water? Behavioral economics…
From Putting People First
To Dwell Is To Garden: An empathic approach to employee experience design
Liana Dragoman writes on UX magazine about the role of experience design in employee empowerment. “It has become increasingly important for customer-focused organizations to turn their lens on employee engagement or how employees…
From Putting People First
Book: Interviewing Users (by Steve Portigal)
Interviewing Users: How to Uncover Compelling Insights by Steve Portigal Rosenfeld Media To be published: early May 2013 Interviewing is a foundational user research tool that people assume they already possess. Everyone can…
From Schneier on Security
Google Glass Enables New Forms of Cheating
It's mentioned here:
Mr. Doerr said he had been wearing the glasses and uses them especially for taking pictures and looking up words while playing Scattergories with his family, though it is questionable whether that follows…From The Eponymous Pickle
JC Penney and Pricing
Economist MJ Perry on the complexity and psychology of pricing. Referencing an NYT article: " ... how the “everyday low pricing” model at J.C. Penney’s seems to have backfired. One explanation is that many consumers don’t necessarily…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Storytelling and Design
Good GigaOhm piece on sortytelling driving product design. Been in a number of design projects that have allowed us to start from simple panel, day in the life of design structures to creative results. An excellent place to…
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
White House Kicking off a Series of Big Data Workshops
The White House will be hosting a Big Data Workshop on May 3, 2013. The workshop is sponsored by the Office of Science and Technology Policy and the NITRD Big Data Senior Steering Group. As we enter the second year of the National…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Diagramming Sentences and the Power of Morphology
The Language log Blog brings up diagramming sentences. Very familiar and mostly disliked activity in early education in the US. I remember being much intrigued by the application of this method to determine the structure, or…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Ray Kurzweil's Life
In the WSJ: The intersection of the life of inventor Ray Kurzweil and health technology. Good to see. He is extrapolating some information about how life expectancy is increasing every year. A dangerous thing to believe…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Agile Organizations
Some good, very general thoughts on agile organizations and management. You are always dealing with changing context, so you have to be ready for it. But can you predict the nature of that change?
From The Eponymous Pickle
Brain Tracking the VW Commercial
Sands Research provides a video of brain activation from their recent Superbowl ad study. Here the one from award winning ad: The Force by Volkswagen. Agency: Deutsch, Los Angeles. This short video is a good example of what…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Neuromarketing and Buying
Sands Research points me to a largely non technical article on their work in UK's Daily Telegraph. 'Neuromarketing': can science predict what we'll buy?Advertisers have long used science to peer into consumers' brains; today…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Techniques in Sentiment Analysis
In CACM: Excellent overview piece on the subject. The abstract itself has interest: " ... Sentiment analysis (or opinion mining) is defined as the task of finding the opinions of authors about specific entities. The decision…
From CERIAS Blog
Keynote: Christopher Painter, Coordinator for Cyber Issues, U.S. Department of State (Summary)
Thursday, April 4th, 2013 Summary by Kelley Misata
As Christopher Painter, Coordinator for Cyber Issues within the US Department of State, began his keynote address to the CERIAS Symposium audience he humorously admitted, "Today…From Wild WebMink
On Joining OIN
I signed up Meshed Insights as an OIN licensee, and was amazed when I told people how few people knew it existed. That was the origin of this week’s InfoWorld column. I realise OIN doesn’t fix everything (how can it when what’s…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Paper vs Screens
Sciam writes about the differences between reading on screens vs paper, provides some interesting resources, suggesting that " ... When it comes to intensively reading long pieces of plain text, paper and ink may still have the…
From U.S. Public Policy Committee of the ACM
Software Developers – Apply to Join the White House “Hackathon” on June 1
The White House is accepting applications from software developers and hands-on technology experts to participate in a day of national service at the White House on June 1 in support of enhancing the “We the People” petition…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Mayo Clinic Center for Innovation
A connection pointed me to the Mayo Clinic Center for Innovation lab. A very broad mix of capability areas. Reminding me of similar work at Procter & Gamble since 2000: " ... see how the Center for Innovation was established…
From Schneier on Security
Friday Squid Blogging: Illegal Squid Fishing
While we we're on the subject of squid fishing in Argentina, the country is dealing with foreign boats illegally fishing for squid inside its territorial waters.
So yet again, squid and security collide.
As usual, you can also…From CERIAS Blog
Tech Talk #3: Stephen Elliot (Summary)
Thursday, April 4th, 2013 Associate Professor Stephen Elliott, Industrial Technology, Purdue University Director, Biometric Standards, Performance and Assurance Laboratory Summary by Kelley Misata
Title: Advances in Biometric…From The Eponymous Pickle
Bar Code Ticker
A Wired Article reminded me of the nonprofit organization GS1, which I worked with for years. Among many other things they establish bar code standards. The work started in Troy Ohio in 1974 when cashier Sharon Buchanan rang…
From CERIAS Blog
Featured Commentary: The Honorable Mark Weatherford, DHS Deputy Under Secretary for Cybersecurity
Thursday April 4, 2013 Summary by Marquita A. Moreland
During the introduction, Professor Spafford discussed Mark Weatherford's experience prior to becoming Deputy Under Secretary for cybersecurity at DHS. He mentioned that …From CERIAS Blog
Panel 3: Security Education and Training (Panel Summary)
Thursday, April 4th, 2013 Panel Members:
From Computer Science Teachers Association
Writing Apps to Empower Girls and Help the World
There has been a lot of discussion lately about the dearth of computer scientists in the workforce, and the corollary, the need to teach computer science to help fill that shortage. At the same time, a lot of people argue that…
From CERIAS Blog
Panel 2: NSTIC, Trusted Identities and the Internet (Panel Summary)
Wednesday, April 3rd, 2013 Panel Members:
From Computational Complexity
You should apply for STOC and/or CCC travel money (students)
Once again there is some money from ACM and from NSF for students to goto STOC, and I am the one to send the applications to. The link for info on how to apply is on the STOC webpage, but I give it here as well. Note thathere…
From CERIAS Blog
Panel 1: Security Analytics, Analysis, and Measurement (Panel Summary)
Wednesday, April 3rd, 2013 Panel Members:
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
Informatics Education Report in Europe – they get it!
A joint report of Informatics Europe and the ACM Europe Working Group on Informatics Education was recently released. The report highlights what is currently being done well and what needs to be changed. Namely, the European…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Big Data Applications Survey
Interesting survey of applications. " ... While most companies intend to invest in big data technologies, a lack of human resources and know-how keeps them from gaining deeper insights. Thirty-eight percent of the respondents…
From The Female Perspective of Computer Science
When is Augmented Reality the Right Choice?
Last fall, we published a paper about augmented reality, cognitive theories, and learning. I previously wrote about the design advantages of AR; these give insight into when AR is really the best choice for an interface. The…