Communications of the ACM
The blog archive provides access to past blog postings from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
May 2014
From The Eponymous Pickle
P&G Supply Chain Transformation
Some fairly natural changes. Decrease your transportation lanes. From CGT: " ... P&G Reinforces Supply Chain Transformation ... This innovative approach is expected to increase efficiencies in P&G's supply chain, putting…
From Putting People First
Taschen publishes infographics by Experientia collaborator
The infographics “What Are InfoVis And DataVis About?”, designed by Experientia collaborator Eloisa Paola Fontana, was selected and published in the book “Information Graphics“, by Sandra Rendgen and Julius Wiedemann, published…
From Putting People First
Video of Experientia talk at Moleskine’s “Notes for the Future” event
There are endless choices when it comes to recording and sharing our ideas. Reliable analog tools are converging with innovations in technology to produce new ways of working. So what’s the future of note-taking? In celebration…
From Putting People First
World Economic Forum reports on personal data focus on trust, privacy and framework
The World Economic Forum has released three new reports on strengthening trust, transparency and privacy in personal data usage. Rethinking Personal Data: A New Lens for Strengthening Trust, prepared in collaboration with A.T…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Only One Silicon Valley?
In the NYT: Andreessen on the uniqueness of 'silicon valley', and the future of technologies. I spent much time there, and there was a uniqueness about it I did not see elsewhere. Innovation occurred at all times and in all…
From Schneier on Security
Government Policy on Cell Phone Interception Technology
New paper: "Your Secret Stingray's No Secret Anymore: The Vanishing Government Monopoly Over Cell Phone Surveillance and its Impact on National Security and Consumer Privacy," by Christopher Soghoian and Stephanie K. Pell: Abstract…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Zigbee Alliance
It has been a while, but early in our efforts in promoting an internet of things we looked at the Zigbee Alliance. In particular for future home systems. Have had cause to go back there and examine it again. Worth following…
From My Biased Coin
What's Important in Algorithms
I saw this interesting article up on 20 questions with Don Knuth, worth reading just for the fun of it. But the following question on work in algorithm design and analysis particularly interested me, and I nodded especiallyThus…
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Is the Tech Community Working Fine Without Women?
Mark Guzdial linked to a post about Technology’s Man Problem yesterday and highlighted one piece of it. It really got me thinking.
a commenter calling himself White_N_Nerdy wrote on Reddit, “I’m honestly trying to understand…From Putting People First
Food safety and older people: the Kitchen Life ethnographic study
Foodborne illness is a major public health problem in the UK. Recent increases in cases of listeriosis in older people have focused attention on consumer food-related practices. Previous studies highlight poor relationships between…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Data Driven Decisions for Managers
In the HBR: Data Driven Decisions for managers that don't like math. Not uncommon. Useful overview in reading list form. " .... Not everyone needs to become a quant. But it is worth brushing up on the basics of quantitative…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Mining Dark Data
http://h30458.www3.hp.com/us/us/discover-performance/info-management-leaders/2014/jun/tapping-the-profit-potential-of-dark-data.html?jumpid=em_inflexion_US_apr14_sw_2222060_ezine_us_1392303_0&DIMID=EMID_1238727144&DICID=null&OID…
From Schneier on Security
Preplay Attack on Chip and PIN
Interesting research paper on a bank card chip-and-PIN vulnerability. From the blog post: Our new paper shows that it is possible to create clone chip cards which normal bank procedures will not be able to distinguish from the…
From The Eponymous Pickle
CPG Expands Mobile and Location Branding
With some interesting numbers from SmartBlog ...CPG focuses digital spending on branding, mobile, geotracking As digital proliferates every facet of the retail industry and consumers’ lives, digital ad spending has grown into…
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
Supporting Scientific Discovery through Norms and Practices for Software and Data Citation and Attribution
The following announcement is a special contribution from the National Science Foundation. Dear Colleague: How scientific research is conducted across all science disciplines is changing. One important direction of change is …
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
Why I still play video games
Video games are getting flashier, faster, shinier. It has gotten to the point that many of these games make me nauseous—literally. I honestly do not care very much for many of these new games… the same way I do not particularly…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Value and Caution for Data Storytelling
I like the idea, having been introduced to the power of storytelling some time ago. What I do worry about is when the story overwhelms reality. Let's still make it possible to interact with the story and data so it can convince…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Brain Computer at Sandia Labs
A favorite topic, with a number of labs attempting to address brain inspired neural models. Here one I had not seen as yet at Sandia Labs. " ... Researchers working on a computer that mimics the human brain ... Future computer…
From Schneier on Security
Advances in Solving the Discrete Log Problem
At Eurocrypt this year, researchers presented a paper that completely breaks the discrete log problem in any field with a small characteristic. It's nice work, and builds on a bunch of advances in this direction over the last…
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Coding as Game Play
I’ve been thinking a lot about the idea of how we teach computer science or perhaps just programming to younger students. Some of it brought on my the online debate at the New York Times recently. Some of it by the comments Mark…
From The Eponymous Pickle
MOOCs not Meeting Expectations
In CACM:" ... The rollout of MOOCs, or massive open online courses, three years ago by some of the leading universities in the United States triggered predictions that bricks-and-mortar campuses would soon be obsolete and that…
From The Eponymous Pickle
New Developments in Eye Tracking Glasses
In Engadget. New advances. in particular a way to get a denser data stream for certain kinds of marketing insight." ... Researchers and marketers often want to know what catches your eye, whether it's players on the basketball…
From Writing
Don't learn to code. Learn to think.
It seems like everyone is trying to learn to code: Code.org has celebrities like Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, and Chris Bosh telling you anyone can code; CoderDojo's are springing up all over the country; the UK has made it part…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Future of Computers with Conversational Skills
On Building a Smarter Planet: Future of Computers with Conversational SkillsIn A Smarter Planet, By Mike Rhodin" ... An essential part of the third era of computing—cognitive computing—will be our ability to interact with smart…
From Schneier on Security
Pervasive Monitoring as Network Attack
New IETF RFC: "RFC 7258: Pervasive Monitoring Is an Attack" that designers must mitigate. Slashdot thread....
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
Decoding over 4 billion integers per second in C
Programmers routinely work with lists of integers. We recently showed how to compress such lists of integers close to their entropy, while being able to decompress billions of integers per second. To ensure anyone could do it…
From U.S. Public Policy Committee of the ACM
Hill Tech Happenings, Week of May 19
May 21 Hearing: The Counterterroism and Intelligence Subcommittee and the Cybersecurity, Infrastructure Protection and Security Technologies Subcommittee of the House Homeland Security Committee will hold a hearing on cyber threats…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Programmatic Ad Buying Needs to be Revisited
Prompted by an AdAge article. 'Have begun .. ', the article says? We were early pioneers of programmatic advertising. Starting in the 1970s, using optimization analytics. " ... The term covers a wide range of technologiesThe…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Three Watson Startups Announced
How well a new advanced technology service is working can be measured by how startups are effectively using its capabilities. See the full report. " ... More early-stage companies are signing up for IBM’s fancy Watson supercomputing…
From Putting People First
People use phablets differently than smartphones and tablets
A new study from Opera Mediaworks found that people use these larger-screen devices — which combine a smartphone’s instant access to information with the tablet’s richer viewing experience — in ways that are distinct from how…