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
Public design projects by Participle
The site of Participle, a UK social design consultancy, contains some good materials on the design of the next generation of public services. Only the Lonely: Public Service Reform, the Individual and the State Article to be…
From Putting People First
Mobile gesture design at Nokia - developing a new dialect of interaction
The field of mobile gestures is a fascinating one that Nokia is keenly exploring and researching, with explorative designers Younghee Jung and Dan Macleod on the frontline. Last week the people of Nokia Conversations had the…
From Putting People First
PICNIC
The upcoming PICNIC ‘09 conference (Amsterdam, 23-25 September) just announced is key themes: Exploding Media: Exploding Story This is the story of the extraordinary transformation of Media from all the creative and technological…
From Putting People First
Reinventing the home appliance
A Windows-enabled and Web-connected coffee maker like the prototype in this photo could check online for the proper grinding size of the beans you
From Putting People First
Tim Berners-Lee: I no longer understand the web
World Wide Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee wants to put the web under the microscope to investigate how it changes our behaviour. Paul Marks asked in The New Scientist him what he hopes to achieve. “Web science is already happening…
From U.S. Public Policy Committee of the ACM
ACM Washington Update, Vol. 13.5 (June 4, 2009)
CONTENTS
[1] Newsletter Highlights [2] ACM Co-sponsors Hill Briefing on Computer Science Education [3] USACM Elevated to Council Status in ACM [4] Congress Moves to Strenthen Computer Science Education [5] Obama Administration…From The Eponymous Pickle
A Look at Google Squared
I mentioned this Google lab thing a while back. Google Squared. It is up now. You choose a name of a group of things and Google creates a table which contains the items it found in a search and attributes for each of the members…
From BLOG@CACM
The Siren Song of Startups
If you go to a startup, make sure you go for the right reasons.
From The Eponymous Pickle
Procter Buys Retailer
In an unusual move P&G has bought the 'Art of Shaving', a high end mall retailer with 36 stores that sells Gillette products. A rare move into the retail space for P&G, apparently to further understand the male grooming space…
From BLOG@CACM
The Impact of APCS on Undergraduate CS Enrollment
The critics and detractors of the Advanced Placement exam in Computer Science (APCS) are many. But the flaws of APCS most likely have no effect on undergraduate CS enrollment. Fixing APCS, however, could have a big impact.
From The Noisy Channel
Google Squared: A Great First Step
Regular readers know that I am not a Google fan boy, and that much of my commentary on Google focuses on their neglect of exploratory search. Nonetheless, when I saw the initial Youtubeware describing Google Squared a few weeks…
From Wild WebMink
TweetSwoop: Illuminata's Take on JavaOne
I ran into analyst Jonathan Eunice this afternoon. Jonathan's long experience following Sun and Java makes him a great person to ask for an insightful and impartial view of the news so I asked him about JavaFX, Java EE 6, JDK…
From U.S. Public Policy Committee of the ACM
EAC Announces Proposed Revisions to 2005 Voluntary Voting System Guidelines
On Monday the Election Assistance Commission (EAC) released a draft of the Voluntary Voting System Guidelines (VVSG) Version 1.1 for public comment. This version of the VVSG is an update of the current version of the VVSG, approved…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Notes from the World Innovation Forum
Speakers notes from the recent World Innovation Forum, including those of my colleague Donna J. Sturgess: Building Brands through Emotion and Senses. A favorite topic of mine. Reading the rest now. Requires minimal registration…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Investing in Science-Based Innovation
From HBS Working Knowledge http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/6056.html ' ... In economic downtimes, businesses are apt to cut R&D projects that don't promise a speedy return on investment. But take a cue from smart science-based…
From The Eponymous Pickle
New Book on Tagging
I was involved in an automatic tagging project a while back and reviewed Tagging: People-powered Metadata for the Social Web by Gene Smith. Now Understanding Folksonomy: Catalyzing Users to Enrich Information is a new book on…
From The Noisy Channel
Google Search Appliance Woos, But Does It Wow?
Yesterday, Google announced the latest version of its search appliance, GSA 6.0, to great fanfare. As usual, their emphasis was on scale: they’re pushing a distributed architecture that lets them “push it to a new realm: billions”…
From Wild WebMink
TweetSwoop: Java ME Fragmentation Initiative?
I'm at JavaOne in San Francisco and this is a TweetSwoop, where I swoop on people who know the answers to the questions I've seen on Twitter. This TweetSwoop asks Sun Director Simon Nicholson about the Java ME fragmentationJava…
From Wild WebMink
TweetSwoop: US Only Java Store?
I'm trying something new today. Having finally given in to the desire to buy a personal video recorder (the Flip Ultra HD), I decided to use it to swoop on people who know the answers to the questions I've seen on Twitter.
Myvictim…From The Noisy Channel
Faceted Search Book: Now Available Online!
I’m delighted to report that my faceted search book is now available for online purchase at the Morgan & Claypool site! The printed version should be going out shortly (you can pre-order at Barnes & Noble or Amazon); the publisher…
From U.S. Public Policy Committee of the ACM
USACM Elevated to Council Status in ACM
The ACM Executive Council recently elevated its U.S. Public Policy Committee - USACM - to council status. This change reflects ACM's increasing attention to public policy issues. The elevation to council status will streamline…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Happy Birthday UPC
The UPC code, one of the most recognized global symbols, is 35 years old this month. ' ... the first live use of a UPC took place in a Marsh Supermarkets store in Troy, Ohio, on June 26, 1974, when a cashier scanned a package…
From BLOG@CACM
In February, President Obama pegged Melissa Hathaway of the National Security Council to do a 60-day review of the nation’s cybersecurity policy. Midway through the 60 days, her office called me at the National Science Foundation…
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
The roots of plagiarism are deep
William Meehan
From The Eponymous Pickle
Site Tactics from Eyetracking Studies
A good summary of site design tactics based on eyetracking studies. Some surprising to me.
From Putting People First
Thinking about an Ushahidi-for-mBanking platform
After Patrick Meier, a doctoral research fellow at Harvard University, a PhD candidate at The Fletcher School, and an active contributor at Ushahidi, participated in a high-level mobile banking (mBanking) conference in Nairobi…
From The Eponymous Pickle
LPA Rules and Term Sheet Generator
I have written about Logic Programming Associates (LPA) in UK several times here. They do Prolog-based rule systems, in other words, expert systems. Worked on related systems for the enterprise for a number of years. Below…
From Computer Science Teachers Association
Exploring Robotics Options
At Georgia Tech, our students must take a senior design class before they can graduate and I often have them work together in groups to create something for me to use in my outreach to K-12 students. For example, I had a team…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Kroger Links Loyalty to Minutes
In a very simple program, Kroger is starting to test the idea of getting free wireless minutes for purchases on their loyalty cards.
From The Eponymous Pickle
Study of the Use of Emoticons
Emoticons, those little confabulated piece of punctuation have been around for some time. Some people use little image-icons, though they have been around since ASCII text days. Are the effective? I use them mostly in non-professional…