Communications of the ACM
The blog archive provides access to past blog postings from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
May 2012
From Putting People First
Is the 1,9,90 rule outdated?
The BBC have just released some interesting research around participation online, writes Neil Perkin on FutureLab. The findings (the result of a “large-scale, long-term investigation into how the UK online population participates…
From Computational Complexity
Wall Street Complexity
There is much blame to go around for JPMorgan Chase's two billion dollar loss last week but part of that blame came back to us. In a New York Times web piece, How Moore
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
DARPA to Unveil Initiative on Natural Language Analysis
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has announced plans to issue a new Broad Agency Announcement (BAA) titled
From Schneier on Security
The Trouble with Airport Profiling
Why do otherwise rational people think it's a good idea to profile people at airports? Recently, neuroscientist and best-selling author Sam Harris related a story of an elderly couple being given the twice-over by the TSA, pointed…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Training Your Customers How to Behave
New author interview from HBR: How Starbucks Trains Customers to Behave: " ... Anne Morriss, managing director of the Concire Leadership Institute, explains how the coffee giant increased efficiency and satisfaction by treating…
From Wild WebMink
Wildlife Service Area
Reblogged from The Global Mink: The tranquil isolation of
From The Eponymous Pickle
McKinsey on Big Data
An excellent long pdf by the McKinsey Global Institute on the present status and future of Big Data. In the process of reading, but a very well done document for reference. Thanks again to Chris Herbert for the link.
From The Eponymous Pickle
Big Data Solutions
At the enterprise we were an early and big implementor of SAP solutions. I am in the midst of gathering representative examples of big data analytics. Correspondent Chris Herbert sends me an article about some of their solutions…
From The Eponymous Pickle
On Who and Whom
In the Language Log: On Who and Whom. I had read somewhere else that the distinction between these two are disappearing, based on written word analyses. Here he reprints an article in the New Yorker that has James Thurber…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Name Wizard is Back
I was reminded of Mark Wattenberg's Name Voyager. Has not been around for a while. Perhaps due to some licensing issue? The site also contains other interesting visualizations. We examined it for some internal visualization…
From The Female Perspective of Computer Science
Lauren Ipsum Goes to Seven Lucky Girls
Remember that computer science storybook I mentioned recently? It turns out that the authors of Lauren Ipsum have a Get One, Give One program. I had written to one of the authors, Carlos Bueno, to tell him how much I loved the…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Using Social Media
McKinsey chimes in on how to use and demystify social media. Well done.
From Putting People First
New design practices for touch-free interactions
Brian Pag
From Putting People First
Do you really want your bank following you around all day?
A conversation with senior Wells Fargo execs reveals a bank trying to use the Internet, social media and mobile technology to worm its way deeper and deeper into their customers’ lives. “Brian Pearce, senior VP in charge of Wells…
From Schneier on Security
Friday Squid Blogging: New Book on Squid
Kraken: The Curious, Exciting, and Slightly Disturbing Science of Squid. And a review.
As usual, you can also use this squid post to talk about the security stories in the news that I haven't covered.
From The Eponymous Pickle
Multiple Location Augmented Reality
Augmented reality to provide 3D remote interaction: "Microsoft is developing an augmented reality system that allows users in different locations to work together on a tabletop and share and handle objects. Demonstrated at a…
From The Eponymous Pickle
On Big Data
Paul Hofmann, formerly of SAP, now with Saffron Technologies has a presentation on Big Data. Good short overview with examples that is worth reviewing.
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Learning Should Be Fun
Years ago I was sitting the the front of church and via a fluke of acoustics I heard a little girl in the back of the church tell someone
From Putting People First
People-powered health co-production catalogue
The people at Nesta, the UK innovation charity, think that co-production is potentially transformative and its power comes from re-framing the problem and re-establishing relationships to enable more holistic and people-centred…
From Putting People First
User experience and neuroscience
Harvard neuroscience researchers have just confirmed what many of us have suspected all along: social networks like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest are
From The Eponymous Pickle
High Performance Computing Clusters
Was just introduced to HPCC Systems. As an open source solution to a 'Big Data' problem to support a large scale enterprise simulation. Well worth a look for those interested in the topic. More to follow.
From Putting People First
Neurologist: Mobile technology is literally changing the way we think
Leading neurologist Susan Greenfield tells Nokia Conversations that we need a new framework to make sense of our
From The Eponymous Pickle
Patterns in Everyday Numbers
Cool numbers. A site to investigate the patterns in everyday numbers.The kind of site that would be good to show to children to get them interested in the patterns in numbers and lead them to a love of math.
From The Eponymous Pickle
Camera Phone Tech
A recent project has me looking at the value and limitations of camera phone technology. So it was good to see this instructive article on the subject in ComputerWorld. An introduction.
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
BuildSys 2012 Calling for Papers: Sensors, Buildings, Energy
The organizers of
From Schneier on Security
Smart Phone Privacy App
MobileScope looks like a great tool for monitoring and controlling what information third parties get from your smart phone apps:
We built MobileScope as a proof-of-concept tool that automates much of what we were doing manually…From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Presidential Awards for Excellence in Science, Mathematics and Engineering Mentoring
Received this from the CSTA Mailing list yesterday and thought it worth sharing. Do you know someone who is doing an outstanding job of mentoring or a mentoring program that is doing a great job with bringing underrepresented…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Faster Pharma
Novartis speaks of continuous manufacturing in pharmaceuticals. " .... the CEO of pharmaceutical giant Novartis, Joseph Jimenez, suggested big changes are in store for the way his company makes drugs. A new, experimental method…
From Computer Science Teachers Association
Video Games
Video games are just plain fun! Your students know it, you know it, but so do administrators and colleagues who sometimes think that if you are teaching something that much fun, it can
From Computational Complexity
So THATS why the 17x17 challenge was so hard. Or maybe not.
On November 30, 2009 I posted the famous 17x17 challenge: (Paraphrase) Find a 4-coloring of the 17x17 grid that has no monochromatic rectangles. For $289.00. It was solved in 2012 by Bernd Steinbach and Christian Posthoff (I…