Communications of the ACM
The blog archive provides access to past blog postings from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
June 2009
From Putting People First
The social life of health information
The Pew Internet & American Life Project has published a report that shows how Americans’ pursuit of health takes place within a widening network of both online and offline sources. Americans’ pursuit of health takes place within…
From Putting People First
The rules for balancing technology and relationships
Emma Cook asks in The Times of London if our increasing desire to stay in the loop is distracting us from the people who should matter the most in our lives. “According to research carried out last year by Professor Nada Kakabadse…
From The Noisy Channel
Hunch Has Launched
For anyone who has been waiting to try Hunch (which really is a “decision engine“) but didn’t manage to snarf an invite, today is your lucky day: Hunch has launched. They’ve added some new features too–for example, they offer…
From Wild WebMink
links for 2009-06-15
From U.S. Public Policy Committee of the ACM
Hill Tech Happenings, Week of June 15
June 16
Hearing:
The Research and Science Education and the Technology and Innovation Subcommittees of the House Science and Technology Committee will hold a joint hearing on agency responses to the recent cybersecurity review…From Putting People First
From business to buttons
Interaction designers, business strategists and usability experts gathered last week in Malmö, Sweden for the third edition of the “From Business to Buttons” conference. Videos (alternate link) of the presentations are now online…
From Putting People First
Identity crisis in the West and innovation in the developing world
Nokia’s Ideas Project published two feature stories today: Digital We: A (Multiple) Identity Crisis We create new digital identities almost without limit – at the same time new technologies urge us to blur them. Is it a new digital…
From Putting People First
Nokia to offer Life Tools for rural mobile users
Nokia plans to roll out its Life Tools group of services to more emerging markets following a successful pilot program in India, a company executive said Monday. “Nokia plans to roll out its Life Tools group of services to more…
From Putting People First
Smartphone rises fast from gadget to necessity
The increasing popularity of BlackBerrys, iPhones and their kin owes as much to sociology as technology. Steve Lohr reports in The New York Times. “The smartphone surge, it seems, is a case of a trading-up trend in technology…
From Putting People First
Anthropologist Stefana Broadbent speaker at TEDGlobal
Stefana Broadbent, the acclaimed tech anthropologist, will be an invited speaker at the upcoming TEDGlobal conference (21-24 July, Oxford, UK). Stefana is currently a visiting research fellow in the Department of Anthropology…
From Putting People First
US Government providing cellphones for the poor
A US federal program providing subsidized phone service now offers cellphones, showing how much society values them, reports The New York Times. “The users are not the only ones receiving government assistance. Telecommunications…
From Putting People First
Products are worthless
A somewhat controversial post by Helge Tennø, strategic director and digital planner at digital agency Screenplay in Oslo, Norway. “Products are just stuff, and represent nothing of value on their own. It is first when they are…
From The Noisy Channel
Don
Now this is the sort of publicity that even $100M can’t buy: the New York Post is reporting that, in response to Microsoft’s recent Bing launch, “FEAR GRIPS GOOGLE” (all caps in the original): Sergey Brin is so rattled by the…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Name Trends in Wolfram Alpha
One unexpected thing you can do with the WolframAlpha computational search engine is to determine naming trends. Fascinating, yes, but also a bit of minutiae as well. Still it is a very nice example of the form of results you…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Taking Another Look at Flu Model Accuracy
A while back I mentioned the inaccuracy of recent very sophisticated flu models and my general theories about how these models can go wrong. Continue to think about the problem. Now long-time correspondent and game designer …
From The Eponymous Pickle
Michalski talk on Bing
Jerry Michalski ... Microsoft recently re-set its search service, rebranding it as Bing and calling it a "decision engine." It does do a few things better, such as search for purchaseable goods. Want to compare Bing and Google…
From Putting People First
Italians say goodbye to property
From The Eponymous Pickle
Kindle in Business
I have followed readers for a number of years now. tested the Sony. Never been completely impressed. A convenience at the beach perhaps, if you can read through the glare and don't get sand in it. Yet in a recent meeting someone…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Tagging and Sharing Images
Image Spark:- Discover, tag, share, converge images that inspire your and your work. This is a good description of what I have always wanted to do with images. Inside a community. Will this package deliver this?
From Wild WebMink
links for 2009-06-13
Delighted to see VirtualBox showing up as a retail item. Yes, those of us who know can go get the free download, but having it on the shelves in stores…
From Putting People First
In South Korea, all of life is mobile
Somehow I missed out on this 24 May New York Times article about South Korea being the test case for the mobile future, thanks to its high-speed wireless networks and top technology companies. “It has been a while since the mobile…
From Putting People First
Bill Thompson, BBC tech art critic at the Venice Biennale
Bill Thompson, back from the Venice Biennale, reflects on digital art and its relationship with technology. “While there was a lot of interesting art, I saw little that attempted to explore our use of or reliance on technology…
From Putting People First
What will mobile phones look like 10 years from now?
When Fast Company asked some people in the industry what mobile phones will look like 10 years from now, the first couple of answers seem to reinforce my gut feeling that the difference between main mobile devices and mobile…
From Putting People First
Reflections on ethnography in the new issue of Stanford
The latest issue of Ambidextrous, Stanford University’s journal of design, has just been published. The issue is entirely online. Two of my favourite articles: Mind the gap: ethnographers navigate the space between users and…
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
Some shameful facts about myself
In 2003, I predicted that it would take decades before videoconferencing became cheap enough for home users. I do not know my own telephone number or postal code, though I have lived for many years in the same house (and we own…
From The Noisy Channel
Guest Post at the Federated Search Blog
I wrote a guest post at Sol Lederman’s Federated Search blog entitled “The Problem with Federated Search“. Here’s an excerpt: The case for federated search is straightforward: no single organization has all of the answers, and…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Design Books
Influential books on design in Karl Vrdenburgs' blog. Good, mind stretching examples.
From The Eponymous Pickle
Not Tried Twitter?
For those of you that have not yet tried Twitter, and there are many that still answer with a scowl of seriousness when asked if they participate. I suggest using the new Twitter search engine Topsy to look for your favoriteMen…
From Putting People First
The participatory web
Web 2.0 solutions offer people in rural areas a platform for networking and knowledge exchange. This brochure, published by GTZ, provides a systematic overview of Web 2.0 experiences made to date in Africa, Asia and Latin America…
From Putting People First
Open innovation inside Nokia
With faith that smart ideas will prevail, Nokia urges workers to say what’s on their minds