Communications of the ACM
The blog archive provides access to past blog postings from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
May 2009
From The Eponymous Pickle
Discovery Systems that Check Facts
Good piece from IEEE Computer that looks at the concept of discovery systems. This type of AI system constructs hypotheses from raw data presented and then continues to update its conclusions from new information provided.…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Pringles Lose Appeal
An appeals court has argued against them, Pringles owe VAT tax. Via Richard James. ' ... Procter & Gamble will be forced to pay tens of millions of pounds in VAT after losing a legal battle with the taxman over its Pringles…
From Putting People First
Science alone will not save us
Changing behaviour will be as vital as new technologies in tackling climate change. So where is the funding for linguists, anthropologists and sociologists? Tariq Tahir reports in The Guardian. “Multidisciplinary work helps engineers…
From Putting People First
Portfolios of the Poor: Financial diaries of the bottom billion
Portfolios of the Poor: How the World’s Poor Live on $2 a Day by Daryl Collins, Jonathan Morduch, Stuart Rutherford, Orlanda Ruthven Princeton University Press Hardcover, May 2009 Abstract About forty percent of the world’s people…
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
Promoted to full professor
At least in North America, professors are usually first hired at the rank of assistant professor. Your salary is poor and you have little job security. Once you get tenure, you become associate professor.
From CERIAS Blog
Solving the Wrong Problems
In lieu of a new posting here, let me direct you to the June 2009 issue of Communications of the ACM, pages 22-24. That is an essay I wrote that echoes some of the themes of things I have posted here.
I would be interested in…From Wild WebMink
links for 2009-05-20
More local geek activity. Given the employment profile in the area I've been amazed this sort of thing hasn't shown up before - very welcome. Southampton is rapidly…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Laws of Simplicity
Been reading some of John Maeda's work, we met him briefly at the MIT Media lab a few years ago. He is now the president of the Rhode Island School of Design. He is about design and technology. See his recent TED talk, which…
From BLOG@CACM
Robotics in South America
Webopedia defines robotics as: The field of computer science and engineering concerned with creating robots, devices that can move and react to sensory input. Robotics is one branch of artificial intelligence.
From Putting People First
Humin - because innovation is a human business
Experientia is proud to announce the official launch of Humin, a programme developed for Flemish SMEs and start?ups that creates competitive advantage through people-centred innovation. In May-June last year Experientia (in collaboration…
From Putting People First
Museums and libraries in a digital age
The Futures of Learning blog, which is associated with a MacArthur Foundation project, just announced a new blog series that reports on the literature review conducted as part of the project, Inspiring the Technological Imagination…
From The Noisy Channel
SIGIR
At long last, SIGIR 2009 has posted the program for the Industry Track! It will take place on Wednesday, July 22, 2009 during the regular conference program (in parallel with the technical tracks). There is no additional registration…
From The Noisy Channel
Approach and Identify
Back on my 30th birthday, my wife gave me a copy of Logan’s Run, with a card ensuring me that I’d found sanctuary. The joke is probably lost on those who haven’t seen this wonderful sci-fi B-movie, as is the title of this post…
From The Noisy Channel
Approach and Identify
Back on my 30th birthday, my wife gave me a copy of Logan’s Run, with a card ensuring me that I’d found sanctuary. The joke is probably lost on those who haven’t seen this wonderful sci-fi B-movie, as is the title of this post…
From Wild WebMink
Fighting Fund for the Big WOBber
You'll remember my recent posting about the fine work journalist Brenno de Winter has been doing in his spare time, bringing a little healing daylight into local government in The Netherlands. Brenno has been trying to get details…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Inside the Mind of the Shopper Published
Herb Sorensen book is now out Inside the Mind of the Shopper: The Science of Retailing, from Wharton School Publishing. It details some of his work exploring how the shopper behaves in their environment. Based on extensivePeter…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Berners-Lee on Linked Data
This ReadWrite Web post points to a good TED talk by Tim Berners-Lee and give you an overview of the topic of Linked Data. With the suggestion that this is the next evolution of the Web. The idea is to link together the many…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Microsoft's Retail Experience Center
A look at Microsoft's retail experience center.
From The Noisy Channel
Where Have All The Google Killers Gone?
Harry McCracken at Technologizer just posted “A Brief History of Google
From The Noisy Channel
Where Have All The Google Killers Gone?
Harry McCracken at Technologizer just posted “A Brief History of Google
From The Noisy Channel
Great Press, But Where Are The Customers?
One of the things I love about being in the enterprise search /
From The Noisy Channel
Great Press, But Where Are The Customers?
One of the things I love about being in the enterprise search /
From Putting People First
How the Mobile Phone Became an
The Sydney Morning Herald reports on a study of more than 1000 workers which shows that the mobile phone does not make people any more rushed or pressured for time. An analysis of more than 20,000 calls and texts logged by participants…
From Putting People First
Mobile Literacy
Our friends at Adaptive Path have posted some information on a design and research project that aimed to understand how mobile technology can work more effectively in emerging markets. The company went to rural India to investigate…
From Putting People First
New media practices in China, Korea, India, Brazil, Japan and Ghana
The blog series on New Media Practices in International Contexts, which I announced in January, is now complete. It covers the unique characteristics of digital media user behaviours in very different socio-cultural contexts…
From CSDiary
CMU Commencement 2009 Caught on GigaPan
This past weekend was incredibly busy, not only with the launch of the CIFellows Project, but also with a full slate of CMU commencement activities. Jeffrey Baker did a nice job taking a GigaPan photo of the event. I made some…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Bookmarks in the Recession
Time interview of Martin Lindstrom, who's Buyology book I have mentioned here a number of times. How Shoppers Make Decisions in a Recession, interesting thought, I do clearly remember the 1977 recession, will see how it plays…
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
Reinventing university education? Practical ideas
Yesterday, John stressed that education is about helping people discover their passion. I have many brilliant students, but few passionate students.
From The Noisy Channel
Copying TREC is the Wrong Track for the Enterprise
Otis just wrote a post in which he cited the Open Relevance Project, an embryonic effort by the Lucene project to build a free, public information retrieval evaluation framework analogous to the TREC conference. Not surprisingly…
From The Noisy Channel
Copying TREC is the Wrong Track for the Enterprise
Otis just wrote a post in which he cited the Open Relevance Project, an embryonic effort by the Lucene project to build a free, public information retrieval evaluation framework analogous to the TREC conference. Not surprisingly…