Communications of the ACM
The blog archive provides access to past blog postings from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
June 2011
From Geeking with Greg
Quick links
Some of what has caught my attention recently:Oldest example I could find of the "PC is dead" in the press, a New York Times article from 1992. If people keep making this prediction for a few more decades, eventually it might…
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
NSF Calling for
The National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Division on Research on Learning (DRL) has announced its intent to fund up to 24
From Computational Complexity
An Update on Impagliazzo's Worlds
Russell Impagliazzo gave a talk at Complexity about his five worlds. We didn't know whether Heuristica and Algorithmica were different, i.e., whether if NP is easy on average then its also easy in the worst case. Russell gave…
From The Eponymous Pickle
3M Visual Impact Scanner
Good article on 3M's work in visual impact scanning. We had talked to them years ago about their research to understand its possible use in store and marketing interactions. Note the potential competition between this and…
From Wild WebMink
links for 2011-06-09
Investors Speaking Up About Patents Harming Innovation | Techdirt One of the things I keep hearing some advisors saying is that VCs won't invest in your startup (or at least are much less likely to) if you don't have any patents…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Quantitative Scent Test
The launch of a method to better understand reaction to brand scent. A former area of research and retail innovation application of mine. Measurement always helps us understand appropriate application of new technologies. …
From Putting People First
David Report: Closed Wallets, Closed Minds
We are increasingly suffering from consumption fatigue, but brands and designers have yet to acknowledge the fact, reckons David Carlson in Closed Wallets, Closed Minds, the latest issue of the David Report. Brands must either…
From Putting People First
Pamphlet: The Internet of People for a Post-Oil World
The Internet of People for a Post-Oil World Christian Nold and Rob van Kranenburg Paperback, 67 pages The Architectural League of New York In Situated Technologies Pamphlets 8, Christian Nold and Rob van Kranenburg articulate…
From Apophenia
Our contemporary ideas about privacy are often shaped by legal discourse that emphasizes the notion of “individual harm.” Furthermore, when we think about privacy in online contexts, the American neoliberal frame and the techno…
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Computer Related Finalists in the Innovative Education Forum 2011
Yesterday Microsoft announced the second round of finalists for the Innovative Education Forum. Over in the Teacher Tech blog they listed brief summaries of all of this round
From The Eponymous Pickle
Facebook Facial Recognition
In GigaOm. FaceBook facial recognition. Technology and reactions to that most personal of possessions, your face. Is it a privacy concern? And are the privacy settings too obscure for the average user?
From The Eponymous Pickle
Dispelling Myths about Industry Clusters
Mark Montgomery of Kyield writes: " .... I was interviewed this week about the New Mexico Analytics Cluster project with an article to be published within the next week, so I wanted to post relevant material to the blog. If …
From The Noisy Channel
Christos Faloutsos: Mining Billion-Node Graphs
As promised, here is a video of CMU professor Christos Faloutsos‘s recent tech talk at LinkedIn on “Mining Billion-Node Graphs“. Enjoy! And check out our next week’s open tech talk by Sreenivas Gollapudi of Microsoft Research…
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
Calling her colleagues the “best-in-class scientists and engineers [who] come to serve their country,” DARPA Director Regina Dugan described in a recent interview at the D9 Conference how her agency is driving technological innovations…
From Schneier on Security
25% of U.S. Criminal Hackers are Police Informants
I have no idea if this is true:
In some cases, popular illegal forums used by cyber criminals as marketplaces for stolen identities and credit card numbers have been run by hacker turncoats acting as FBI moles. In others, undercover…From My Biased Coin
ITCS
I was asked to post the call for papers for the (renamed) Innovations in Theoretical Computer Science conference. (I'm glad they finally changed the name -- see previous posts here and here.)This year the conference is moving…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Open Social Learning Guild
In the ACM: Ashwin Ram on Open Social Learning. Some good ideas about how to take the obsessions of the youner generation and use them to make learning more efficient and enjoyable. " ... here is our idea in a nutshell. Call…
From Computational Complexity
The Longest Day
Tuesday at FCRC. 7 AM: A grad student at Northwestern administers my final exam at 9 AM Chicago time. He has my mobile number just in case but luckily I never get a call. 7:30: Saw Sampath Kannan in lobby. Says he has a sister…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Generosity at Work
Harvard post on key success strategies at work, focusing on generosity. Very well put, it is not always reciprocated, but almost always works.
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
Is Wikipedia anti-intellectual?
Sander recently posted a provocative piece where he argues that geeks suffer from anti-intellectualism. To some extend, his stance is that democratic sites such as
From The Eponymous Pickle
Revenue Performance Management
An overview of Revenue Performance Management (RPM), which we were always doing, but saw some traction a few years ago. It appears to be driven increasingly to being systematized. Its basics remind me too of Retail Revenue…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Linked in Games
In Mashable. You can now play a whimsical Tetris-like game in Linkedin with profile head-shots. Does not drive you to a serious goal. But could make you stay on their site longer. This post also reminded me of LinkedIn's blog…
From Putting People First
WHO report on mHealth
The World Health Organisation has just issued a major (free) report on mHealth, entitled “mHealth: New horizons for health through mobile technologies“. Abstract Only five years ago who would have imagined that today a woman…
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
TouchStudio
OK you have a smart phone and you want to create an application for it. But you don
From Wild WebMink
Happy IPv6 Day
The why and wherefore of IPv6 Day, as well as plenty of handy links, are over on my blog at ComputerWorldUK.
From Computer Science Teachers Association
Share Those Great Resources
Whew! I can almost hear the collective sigh as the school year winds down and wraps up for teachers across the country and throughout the CSTA membership (except for our friends in the Southern Hemisphere, of course).
I remember…From Wild WebMink
Another year older
No chickens, and not the peregrine falcon I had hoped for, but the owl I was given for my birthday is splendid and we get on fine.
From The Eponymous Pickle
The Future through the NYC 1939-40 World's Fair
Biblion, from the NY Public library. A big fan of predictions of the future and their success or failure. The design of this free ipad app is very well done, with an introduction to this premier issue and forthcoming work…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Promise of Flexible Displays on the Shelf
We looked at the prospect of using flexible displays on the retail shelf. This CACM article updates more of the possibilities (not full text). Takes thinking beyond the rectangular. Imagine a display molded onto most any…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Reinventing the Pawnshop
Groupon founders reinvent the pawnshop with Pawngo. Have always been interested about recycling and leveraging the wealth of modern life. Here is another clever example in Pawngo. It may be the kind of thing that will not…