Communications of the ACM
The blog archive provides access to past blog postings from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
April 2014
From Computational Complexity
Libraries Without Books
Georgia Tech in its library renovation will move the vast majority of its books into a combined Emory/Tech Library Service Center off-campus. Very few people use the stacks anymore, particularly at this institute dominated by…
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
NIH Announces Additional Funding Opportunities under BD2K
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has announced three additional funding opportunities focused on training under the Big Data to Knowledge (BD2K) Initiative. The BD2K Initiative is a new major trans-NIH initiative that…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Open Power Foundation Announcements
Attended a set of presentations and announcements on the Open Power Foundation yesterday. Sponsored by IBM and included a number of other corporate participants. Of particular interest, how open Linux and hardware can provide…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Why Innovation Fails
In Innovation Excellence: Unfortunately it does. Fairly frequently too. The number kicked around for band innovation true success is often 10%. So we have lots of experience with the failure part. This article does a good…
From The Eponymous Pickle
The Organization: Scarcest Resource
Via Bain and Company, from the HBR: Meetings, thinking time, useful connections, human resources. In general we make poor use of them and many new things are asking for their attention. Can technology help rather than make…
From Schneier on Security
Is Google Too Big to Trust?
Interesting essay about how Google's lack of transparency is hurting their trust: The reality is that Google's business is and has always been about mining as much data as possible to be able to present information to users.…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Marketing Vocabulary
Fascinating piece on ClickZ: Truth and vocabulary and the meaning for understanding the consumer. A lot of truth is embedded here about measurement and the resulting value. Statistics anyone? " .... Advertising and marketing…
From The Eponymous Pickle
WalMart to Go Concept
Wal-Mart's To Go concept. Opens a new kind of consumer behavior to them. And new data. Consider the implications, and the analytics.
From The Eponymous Pickle
Using Google Maps for History
We had thought of using time serial maps for history, now I see that Google maps plans to do something similar. Can we ultimately do this generally for the earth to catch subtle trends we had not thought of before. How also…
From Putting People First
My digital shadow
The surveillance program PRISM by the US secret service NSA has reminded us that all of our activities online may be monitored without giving us the chance to understand whether we really are targeted or what the purpose of this…
From Putting People First
The Qualified Self and Affective Sensing
The people at frog design have been exploring sensing technologies and their impact on the human experience. Two interesting articles are the result: The Qualified Self: Going Beyond Quantification Just as stories yield data,…
From Putting People First
Smart cities need smart citizens
The idea of the SMARTiP project is to take the experience developed by a wide range of existing user-driven, open innovation initiatives in Europe, particularly those developed through Living Labs, and to apply this experience…
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
Do you realize that you are using random hashing?
Hashing is a common concept in programming. It is the process of mapping any object to an integer. It is used in fast search algorithms (like Rabin-Karp) and in hash maps. Almost all non-trivial software depends on hashing. Hashing…
From Putting People First
Johan Blomkvist’s doctoral thesis on prototyping in service design
Representing Future Situations of Service Prototyping in Service Design by Johan Blomkvist Linköping Studies in Arts and Science Doctoral Dissertation Human-Centred Systems Division Department of Computer and Information Systems…
From Putting People First
User experience is the new differentiator. How will that affect the internet?
The world of business is changing, as are the locations of the people who are driving that business. How companies reach new users and how they treat them once they do will be the defining business issue of the future. Those…
From Putting People First
Ethnography, magpies, shiny things, and parallel worlds
Three posts by Simon Roberts (?) explore the rise, fall and possible futures of ethnography in commercial settings. Ethnography, magpies and shiny things The first piece explores how ethnography fell victim of the enduring quest…
From Putting People First
How Facebook uses UX research to personalize the way we see each other
Facebook recently made profiles more “contextual” on their iOS app, writes John Paul Titlow in Fast Company. That means that like Google searches or other personalized experiences, Facebook profiles will now appear differently…
From Schneier on Security
Conversnitch
Surveillance is getting cheaper and easier: Two artists have revealed Conversnitch, a device they built for less than $100 that resembles a lightbulb or lamp and surreptitiously listens in on nearby conversations and posts snippets…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Big Data Marketing
Late on this, but useful thoughts: " .. This holiday season will likely bring another rise in cost-per-click prices. However, marketers shouldn't forget their post-click onsite experience, since they've invested hoards of time…
From Schneier on Security
The Security of Various Programming Languages
Interesting research on the security of code written in different programming languages. We don't know whether the security is a result of inherent properties of the language, or the relative skill of the typical programmers…
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Upcoming Bootstrap Workshops
From the CSTA announcement list.
Bootstrap is a curricular module for students ages 12-16, which teaches algebraic and geometric concepts through computer programming. In this workshop you’ll learn how videogame programming…
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
National Science Foundation Research Traineeship Program has a Focus on Data Science
The National Science Foundation (NSF) has revamped the Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship (IGERT) Program. It is now called the National Science Foundation Research Traineeship (NRT) Program. Like IGERT…
From Schneier on Security
Dan Geer on Heartbleed and Software Monocultures
Good essay: To repeat, Heartbleed is a common mode failure. We would not know about it were it not open source (Good). That it is open source has been shown to be no talisman against error (Sad). Because errors are statistical…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Customer Experience in Retail
In Retailwire: Who owns the customer experience in retail? " ... Should the emerging CXO role — chief customer experiencer — own the customer experience in retail? If so, I think they'll have to dethrone the CMO. ... "
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Windows Phone 8.1 Project my Screen app now available
last week I installed the new Windows Phone 8.1 for Developers on my Nokia phone. There were some pretty cool features there with Cortana (the Siri for Windows Phone if you will) getting a lot of attention. And I’ve had somedownload…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Augmented Pixels Example for Theater Engagement
Daria Gaioshko of the Odessa, Ukraine company Augmented Pixels, sends along this new example of a promotional App for user engagement at a cinema. I am now testing for alternative applications." ... Augmented Pixels releases…
From Computational Complexity
Changing the ORDER you teach things in might help A LOT
I am teaching the undergrad jr/sr course Elementary Theory of Computation which is Reg Langs, Context free Langs, Computability theory, P and NP. Over the last few years I've changed some of the content (I dumped CFLs-- don't…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Detecting Criminal Activity with Phone Data
Interesting example in Technology Review. We used related approaches to detect patterns of innovative communications. " ... Law enforcement agencies are turning to social network theory to better understand the behaviors and…
From U.S. Public Policy Committee of the ACM
NSF Requests Recommendations for Scientific and Technical Advisory Committees
The National Science Foundation (NSF) requests recommendations for membership on its scientific and technical federal advisory committees. Self-recommendations are accepted. Committee members serve varying term lengths. NSF has…
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
High Performance Computing System Acquisition: Continuing the Building of a More Inclusive Computing Environment for Science and Engineering
The National Science Foundation has issued a new program solicitation for High Performance Computing System Acquisition: Continuing the Building of a More Inclusive Computing Environment for Science and Engineering. “The intent…