Communications of the ACM
The blog archive provides access to past blog postings from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
May 2011
From The Eponymous Pickle
Getting Something from Nothing but from Someone
A post about my colleague Norm Levy, who I worked with in some particularly innovative projects at the big soap company (Procter & Gamble). Norm was a pioneer in the advertising world, and has a particularly interesting artistic…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Foursquare Testing NFC
In an interesting development, the game-checking environment has started to test the popular close-range RFID standard NFC. It will be curious to see what this will mean with regard to their direction. Recently FS seems to…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Use and Impact of Neuromarketing
Ron Wright of Sands Research sends along a note on Oxford doing a study on the use and impact of neuromarketing. " ... Researchers at the University of Oxford are putting neuromarketing under the spotlight in a study of how…
From Geeking with Greg
Quick links
Some of what has caught my attention recently:Apple captured "a remarkable 50% value share of estimated Q1/11 handset industry operating profits among the top 8 OEMs with only 4.9% global handset unit market share." ([1]). The…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Marketing on Facebook
Facebook publishes a Guide to Marketing with Facebook. A set of best practices. Fourteen pdf pages that are worth reading. Includes a good set of resources.
From The Eponymous Pickle
Customer Lifetime Value
In SASCom Voices. A talk on a definition of lifetime customer value. " ... Are we oversimplifying customer segmentation and treatment strategies? SAS Marketing Director Jonathan Hornby thinks so. He also believes customer lifetime…
From Wild WebMink
? One To Follow
@ForgeRock ForgeRock has a Twitter account! Follow us to hear all about ForgeRock's news, views and happenings. about 1 hour ago via webReplyRetweetFavorite
From The Female Perspective of Computer Science
2011 Mini-Course: Games Students Made
This year's edition of my mini-course (Computer Science and Games: Just for Girls!) wound down at the end of last week. I made sure to get a copy of the girls' games and post them on my website, partially so they could share…
From Schneier on Security
Vulnerabilities in Online Payment Systems
This hack was conducted as a research project. It's unlikely it's being done in the wild:
In one attack, Wang and colleagues used a plug-in for the Firefox web browser to examine data being sent and received by the online retailer…From Computer Science Teachers Association
Equity Part II: The Multiple Dimensions of Implementing Equity
In a previous blog entry, I argued that we should address equity in computer science from a civil rights perspective, considering the importance of computing to all social and academic endeavors in the 21st century. I argued…
From Apophenia
How Teens Understand Privacy
In the fall, Alice Marwick and I went into the field to understand teens’ privacy attitudes and practices. We’ve blogged some of our thinking since then but we’re currently working on turning our thinking into a full-length…
From U.S. Public Policy Committee of the ACM
Hill Tech Happenings, Week of May 9
May 12
Hearing:
The Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee will hold a hearing on the economic impacts of cyber attacks (previously scheduled for late March). 10 a.m., 253 Russell Building
From The Eponymous Pickle
Vendors Mature in Predictive Modeling
Business Intelligence vendors are maturing, a report.
From Schneier on Security
Status Report: <i>The Dishonest Minority</i>
Three months ago, I announced that I was writing a book on why security exists in human societies. This is basically the book's thesis statement:
All complex systems contain parasites. In any system of cooperative behavior…From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Interesting Links Post 9 May 2011
I had a great week last week. Long but great. I finished up with two conferences where for once I was not presenting. On the other hand the next time I go to either of them I just might present. Friday was the Going Local with…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Jobs at Wal-Mart
Harder to get a job at Wal-Mart than be admitted to an Ivy League school.
From The Eponymous Pickle
Facebook Killing the HS Reunion
Is Facebook killing the school reunion? In Tech Review. Would like to see fuller stats, but my own observation is that they connect many more people that might be likely to reunite in person.
From The Eponymous Pickle
Smarty QR Tags
A good example of local QR tag usage:" ... Three local entrepreneurs are taking QR code capabilities to the next level, allowing businesses to compile valuable information about how their customers are using the barcode-like…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Amazons Lending Library
Librarians react to Amazon's lending library. " ... The stakes are incredibly high for public libraries right now. Federal, state, and local budgets are tight. Libraries are closing or cutting back on services. Alongside these…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Riding the Wave of E-Books
Though I was an early examiner of e-Book readers for possible training applications I an still not an every day user of the idea. Some interactions with colleagues lately have re-alerted me to how e-Books can be useful not only…
From Putting People First
Natural user interfaces are all about alignment
August de los Reyes, design director of Artefact Group (formerly of Microsoft Surface), was one of the speakers at MIX11, a Microsoft organised gathering of developers, designers, UX experts and business professionals “creating…
From Putting People First
Redesigning banking with behavioral economics in mind
Neil Savage reports in the MIT Technology Review how, by studying customers and rethinking the user interface, designers find ways to make online banking more enjoyable. “To design the experience, [the BankSimple designers] looked…
From Putting People First
Augmented Reality and transitioning out of the legacy internet
Tish Shute of Ugotrade interviews Bruce Sterling ahead of the Augmented Reality Event, where Bruce is a keynote speaker. As Bruce Sterling points out, Augmented Reality is
From The Noisy Channel
Announcing HCIR 2011!
As regular readers know, I’ve been co-organizing annual workshops on
From Putting People First
Serious play: the business of social currency
Social currency is shared information that encourages further social encounters. It’s not a new concept, but the social web increases its prevalence. In the web-based collaboration software platform called Rypple, a simple act…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Digital Legacy
What does it mean to be online forever? A digital legacy.
From The Eponymous Pickle
Hearst Analytics Challenge
Brought to my attention:This year
From Putting People First
Forever online: Your digital legacy
Your photos, status updates and tweets will fascinate future historians. Will these online remains last forever? In this special report, newscientist.com editor Sumit Paul-Choudhury reports on life, loss, memory and forgetting…
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
There’s a great article in today’s
From Wild WebMink
links for 2011-05-07
Skype bug gives attackers access to Mac OS X machines Serious, exploitable bug in the Mac version of Skype. Best not to run Skype until they have it fixed. Actually, best not to run it after that anyway, but that's another matter…