Communications of the ACM
The blog archive provides access to past blog postings from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
May 2013
From The Eponymous Pickle
Tibo and Teradata and Real Time Event streams
TIBCO and Teradata Enable CIOs to Extract Actionable Insights From Real-Time Event Streams to Deliver the Two-Second AdvantageEvent Processing within the Teradata(R) Unified Data Architecture(TM) enables analytics for any user…
From The Eponymous Pickle
P&G Business Sphere Wins Edison Silver Award
Quite a considerable accomplishment, built on work started years ago with innovation in Executive Information Systems. Much more in this blog about Business Sphere:" ... From a highly competitive pool of applicants, Procter…
From Schneier on Security
Friday Squid Blogging: Squid Escape Artist
It's amazing how small a hole he can fit through.
As usual, you can also use this squid post to talk about the security stories in the news that I haven't covered.
From U.S. Public Policy Committee of the ACM
5th Annual State of the Mobile Net Conference on May 9, 2013
The Congressional Internet Caucus Advisory Committee brings you the 5th Annual State of the Mobile Net Conference on Thursday, May 9, 2013. Key members of Congress and their staff, Administration officials, tech executives, and…
From U.S. Public Policy Committee of the ACM
U.S. Election Assistance Commission Roundtable on Voting Accessibility on May 9, 2013
The U.S. Election Assistance Commission will hold a roundtable on “Transforming Election Administration, Voting System Accessibility, and the Certification Process” on Thursday, May 9 from noon to 5:30 pm EDT to explore current…
From U.S. Public Policy Committee of the ACM
HHS: Technology Accessibility and Inclusion Conference on May 7, 2013
The Department of Health & Human Services (HHS) will hold its first “a11y@HHS: Technology Accessibility and Inclusion Conference,” on Tuesday, May 7, 2013 at the FDA White Oak Campus. The conference is open to the public. A live…
From Schneier on Security
Another WWII Message Decoded
It's a really interesting code and story. (The first link has the most detailed information about the code and the cryptanalysis.)
From The Eponymous Pickle
SAS Visual Analytics
In SASCom: SAS visual analytics methods, seen through the problem of retailing. Video of their method. Would like to see more of this in the retail space.
From The Eponymous Pickle
Physical by Smartphone
Thinking of a smartphone as a sensor driven device. How might they ultimately be used as a means to give remote physicals? Still some issues, but the possibilities are evolving.
From Wild WebMink
Stockholm Syndrome Stopping Seeing How Linux Has Won?
Amazingly, the debate about when we will see the “year of the Linux desktop” is still active. Maybe it’s software Stockholm Syndrome making us all love our captor, but the focus on desktop applications, coupled with the idealistic…
From Schneier on Security
The Public/Private Surveillance Partnership
Our government collects a lot of information about us. Tax records, legal records, license records, records of government services received-- it's all in databases that are increasingly linked and correlated. Still, there's…
From U.S. Public Policy Committee of the ACM
USPTO Patent Public Advisory Committee Meeting – May 16, 2013
The USPTO Patent Public Advisory Committee will hold its quarterly meeting on Thursday, May 16, 2013 from 9:30 am to 3:30 pm at the USPTO campus in Alexandria, Virginia. The meeting is open to the public. The meeting will also…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Anti Churn Analytics
A not uncommon application for analytics. Decreasing customer churn. This loyalty problem is an expensive issue in many periodic sales industries. A case study.
From Wild WebMink
What does the Special 301 really reveal?
Reblogged from Meshed Insights & Knowledge: This week the United States Trade Representative (USTR) released the annual Special 301 Report. For those of you who are not aware of this report, it assesses the standard to which…
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
New Activities of the Federal Big Data Initiative
In recent weeks, several new activities of the Federal Big Data Initiative have been launched with the goal of addressing the challenges and opportunities of Big Data. The initial launch last year featured more than $200 million…
From Gödel's Lost Letter and P=NP
A Trillion Dollar Math Trick
How linear algebra can make databases go really fast Mike Stonebraker is one of the world’s leading expert on database technology. He started in academe at Berkeley, is now again in academe at MIT, and has launched a raft of…
From Schneier on Security
Risks of Networked Systems
Interesting research:
Helbing's publication illustrates how cascade effects and complex dynamics amplify the vulnerability of networked systems. For example, just a few long-distance connections can largely decrease our ability…From The Eponymous Pickle
Second Screens
An examination of the second screen phenomenon. Mashable looks how it is evolving. And a number of interesting players.
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
CCC Sponsors Computational Sustainability Award at CHI 2013
The Computing Community Consortium (CCC) sponsored a sustainability award at CHI 2013, ACM’s premiere conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. The conference was held in Paris, France April 27-May 2, at the Palais de…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Turning Shoppers into Heat Maps
A piece in Bloomberg about tracking shoppers in retail. A subject we did much with in retail laboratory environments, and much has been written about here. More readily available data visualization capabilities will make this…
From Computational Complexity
Map Coloring Revisited
Following the coloring theme from Bill's last post, a few years ago I asked you readers for natural examples of maps that were and were not three colorable. Chris Bogart gave a nice non-trivial example of a three-colorable country…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Camera Inspired by Insect Eyes
In Science Mag. A new camera that was inspired by an alternative model for sight, using multiple individual lenses to focus on objects. The claim is that the result will be far more accurate and sensitive to motion. Future…
From Schneier on Security
More on FinSpy/FinFisher
FinFisher (also called FinSpy) is a commercially sold spyware package that is used by governments world-wide, including the U.S. There's a new report that has a bunch of new information:
Our new findings include: We have identified…From The Eponymous Pickle
Cultural Analytics
Lev Manovich on Cultural Analytics. " ... Cultural Analytics: computational analysis and visualization of massive cultural visual datasets in the humanities. The lab's past and present collaborators include Library of Congress…
From Putting People First
Design for Public Good, a new report for the European Commission
The UK Design Council and three other members of the SEE Platform (Sharing Experience Europe) – the Danish Design Centre, Design Wales and Aalto University, Finland – on Tuesday published a new report, Design for Public Good,…
From Putting People First
Designing for the multi-user: missed by Apple, Google and others
The iPad is a multi-user device according to industry reports, writes Frank Spillers. But you wouldn’t know it from picking up even the latest generation iPad, especially if you are a physician or business user handling sensitive…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Very Thin RFID Tags
In GigaOM: For use in applications like embedding tags into advertising in magazines. Or integrating with product packaging. Or other on shelf applications.
From The Eponymous Pickle
In Store Eye Tracking
An example of a store display tracking eye movement. " ... Scientists at Lancaster University have created advertising screens which track your eye movement as you shop, offering adverts relevant to what you're looking at and…
From The Eponymous Pickle
A Discussion About Online Education
Good discussion of On line Education (MOOC):On April 25, 2013, UPenn President Amy Gutmann appeared on the Charlie Rose show to discuss online education with fellow panelists, Anant Agarwal, CEO of edX; Joel Klein, former New…
From Schneier on Security
Google Pays $31,000 for Three Chrome Vulnerabilities
Google is paying bug bounties. This is important; there's a market in vulnerabilities that provides incentives for their being kept secret and exploitable; for Google to buy and patch them makes us all more secure.
The U.S.…