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 The Eponymous Pickle
Diamond Cartel
Mark J Perry on the ultimate market manipulation, the diamond cartel. Perception, however manipulated, is reality.
From The Eponymous Pickle
Metadata Lifecycle Management Considerations
An interesting diagrammatic look at the lifecycle of metadata. Everything has a lifecycle, but the question is always: To what degree do we have to pay close attention to it? The diagram is quite complex. Its easy to say always…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Gamification as a Mainstream Approach
Short piece in CIO Insight: Makes the case that gamification is in common internal and external use. And quotes:" ... Accenture points out that gamification isn't only for Millennials and techies; it's now in the mainstream.I…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Magic of Shelf Level Eye Contact
In Supermarket News: Shelf level eye contact can make a big difference. It was one of the first things we attempted to accurately quantify when designing shelf arrangement. And this is easier to study now than ever before.…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Building Loyal Customers
Knowledge@Wharton: In an information age. " .... While the digital age has changed the rules of marketing, a panel of experts at the recent Wharton Marketing Conference suggests that the most effective outreach, even for international…
From The Eponymous Pickle
KDNuggets for Analytics
Long before Big Data there was KDNuggets. Well worth the follow. Which is a " ... Data Mining Community Top Resource for Analytics, Data Mining, and Data Science Software, Companies, Data, Jobs, Education, News, and moreRun…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Emergence of Embed-able Tech
CNN Tech on the emergence of embed-able technology. With some good current examples. Probably not as adaptable as wearable, but more convenient. So when do we become cyborgs?
From The Eponymous Pickle
Smart Home Hub with Sensors
In GigaOM: Continuing to look for intelligent hubs, with sensors that are adaptive to multiple conditions. Here the ALYT: " ... If the current generation of connected home hubs aren’t enough for you, then check out the…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Neurogaming
What can we learn from neurogaming? The ultimate user interface. Wearability taken to its limit. Trends, companies and people to be following.
From The Eponymous Pickle
Business Intelligence to Address Data Discovery
In CWorld: Divining Data.Just a few months ago I would not have directly connected Business Intelligence (BI) with what is usually called Data Discovery. The later is usually connected to methods that find patterns in data using…
From Putting People First
Maybe the Voice of the Customer isn’t
Criticizing Voice of the Customer (VOC) programs is like speaking out against motherhood and apple pie, writes marketing consultant Ron Shevlin. Yet, he says, there are (at least) two problems with the “voice of the customer”…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Technical iBeacon Basics
I found it interesting to see this relatively short O'Reilly piece on the basics of the iBeacon Apple location proximity sensor for retail. Not very technical, but enough to understand the basics.
From Schneier on Security
Friday Squid Blogging: Bronze Giant Squid Sculpture
A little too big for my house....
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
Probabilities and the C++ standard
The new C++ standard introduced hash functions and hash tables in the language (as “unordered maps”). As every good programmer should know, hash tables only work well if collisions between keys are rare. That is, if you have…
From Schneier on Security
More on Heartbleed
This is an update to my earlier post. Cloudflare is reporting that its very difficult, if not practically impossible, to steal SSL private keys with this attack. Here's the good news: after extensive testing on our software stack…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Prediction for Wearables Market
In CWorld: And much more detail at the link. " .... Wearable computers "took a huge step forward" in the last year and shipments of smartwatches and related devices will grow by 78% a year until 2018, IDC said Thursday.The…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Price of Being First in New Technology
In Cisco Blog: Very good piece. There is always a price, and perhaps the largest is the assumption that you will assume that you will always retain that position, exclusive or otherwise. Especially in today's rapidly changing…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Security Cameras Creating Big Data
In the 90s in Europe we worked with a large retailer for a test of this idea. Re purposing security cameras to understand in store customer movement. Will the addition of better analytics make this valuable? In GigaOM.
From U.S. Public Policy Committee of the ACM
Nominations for the Presidential Awards for Excellence in Mathematics and Science Teaching
April 15 is the deadline for nominations of K-6 teachers, including computer science teachers, for the Presidential Awards for Excellence in Mathematics and Science Teaching (PAEMST), administered by the National Science Foundation…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Kroger Store of the Future
In RIS News: " ... One of the largest retailers, Kroger, has introduced its new Retail Site Intelligence (RSI) enterprise IT architecture. The architecture helps drive the store of the future by using ZigBee wireless mesh networks…
From Schneier on Security
Police Disabling Their own Voice Recorders
This is not a surprise: The Los Angeles Police Commission is investigating how half of the recording antennas in the Southeast Division went missing, seemingly as a way to evade new self-monitoring procedures that the Los Angeles…
From Computer Science Teachers Association
CS Team Testifies on California Bill 1764
Yesterday the California Assembly Committee on Education unanimously passed Bill 1764. This bill would encourage districts to expand computer science courses in high schools and its passage at the critical committee level is …
From Gödel's Lost Letter and P=NP
Multiple-Credit Tests
Can chess statistics help design multiple-choice exams? UT Dallas source Bruce Pandolfini is one of very few living people who have been played by an Oscar-winning actor. He was the real-life chess teacher of junior chess player…
From Gödel's Lost Letter and P=NP
Multiple-Credit Tests
Can chess statistics help design multiple-choice exams? UT Dallas source Bruce Pandolfini is one of very few living people who have been played by an Oscar-winning actor. He was the real-life chess teacher of junior chess player…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Optimizing Customer Loyalty Using Bayesian Networks
In the Latest Bayesia Newsletter. For optimization of Loyalty. An approach I had not seen in this area before. " ... This tutorial illustrates an innovative market research workflow for deriving marketing and product planning…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Wolfram Language for Knowledge Programming
Wolfram Language, just examining:" .... Introducing knowledge-based programming...Designed for the new generation of programmers, the Wolfram Language has a vast depth of built-in algorithms and knowledge, all automatically accessible…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Wolfram and Wearable Data Science
An interview with Stephen Wolfram of Mathematica on reinventing data science for wearables. Not an area I had heard them talk about before.
From The Eponymous Pickle
Practical Virtual Reality for Work
We explored many opportunities in this space. But not with success. See the tag link on Virtual Reality at the bottom of this post for some examples about that extended experience. Here in Fast Codesign. Suggestion that VR…
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
Using Computer Science to Develop Personalized Cancer Treatments
The use of computer science is making significant contributions on improving the treatment of cancer. A recent New York Times article, highlighted how oncologists are using computer science to increase the scalability of personalized…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Methods for Dealing with Product Counterfeiting
An important challenge for the CPG enterprise. Nothing very new here, but some thoughts about how to address these challenges. Emphasizing food and beverage issues, but broadly applicable:" ... Counterfeiting of branded goods…