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 The Eponymous Pickle
The Evolution of the Semantic Web
Evolution Towards Web 3.0: The Semantic Web. A talk by Lee Feigenbaum . Good background and overview of direction.
From The Eponymous Pickle
Mind Map Library for Mobile
I am continuing my exploration of the use of mobile mind maps. Biggerplate is an example of such a library, containing some 1100 examples. Compatible with several popular kinds of mapping software such as IMindmap 5, Mindjet…
From The Eponymous Pickle
MindManager for iPhone and iPad
An App version of the popular MindManager mind mapping software for the Ipad and Iphone is scheduled to come out around June 15. Costing 9 and $7 respectively. I liked the software on Windows, particularly useful for those who…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Using Recorded Future
I have begun taking a closer look at the time oriented search engine Recorded Future for some potential client engagements. Visualization is a key method they use for describing the results. Competitive intelligence is an area where…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Browser Fingerprinting
Who you are can be effectively determined by the visible fingerprint of your browser and its configuration. How much does this undermine your privacy? Slashdot outline and links to a report by the Electronic Frontier Foundation…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Crowds Need Independence for Wisdom
More evidence that crowds need to retain independence to maintain the 'outlier canceling' effect that can make them useful to solve problems. Obvious, but important to remember. Our own experience was that it was easy to have…
From Putting People First
The wisdom and foolishness of crowds
Experiments suggest that wisdom of the crowd can be countered by too much communication within that crowd. “The wisdom of crowds turns out to be an incredibly fragile phenomenon. It doesn’t take much for the smart group to become…
From Putting People First
Patients want more user-friendly medical devices
Cambridge Consultants released the findings of a study which examines how device usability impacts patient acceptance, dosage compliance and ultimately health outcomes. Looking at the role lifestyle factors and device features…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Quite Liked
I was introduced to QuiteLiked today:
What
From Schneier on Security
Friday Squid Blogging: LOLCat and Squid Toy
From Schneier on Security
World War II Tunny Cryptanalysis Machine Rebuilt at Bletchley Park
Neat:
The rebuild team had only a few photographs, partial circuit diagrams and the fading memories of a few original Tunny operators to go on. Nonetheless a team led by John Pether and John Whetter was able to complete this…From The Eponymous Pickle
Supermarkets Morphing to Restaurants
Prepared foods continue to increase in availability in supermarkets, due to bigger margins. The next step is to wrap in the restaurant as well. More margin and more time spent in the retail space as well equal more earnings…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Dunnhumby Acquires BzzAgent
BzzAgent is a company that seeks to get people talk about brands.They are being acquired by loyalty data agent Dunnhumby. BzzAgent reminds, in name and direction, of a company called PlanetFeedback, which I was involved with…
From Schneier on Security
Security vs. Privacy
Daniel Solove on the security vs. privacy debate.
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Student Insiders and Imagine Cup Game Teams
I thought I might highlight a few student related things going on at Microsoft these days. I
From Putting People First
Internet of things blurs the line between bits and atoms
In the past few months, companies ranging from giants such as Google to small start-ups have been touting the possibility of interconnecting people and objects – lightbulbs, fridges, cars, buildings – to create an internet of…
From Schneier on Security
Open-Source Software Feels Insecure
At first glance, this seems like a particularly dumb opening line of an article:
Open-source software may not sound compatible with the idea of strong cybersecurity, but....But it's not. Open source does sound like a security…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Online Currency: Bitcoin
Bitcoin, the experiment with encrypted online currency. Dangerous? A Scam? Revolutionary or just a renaming of something old? Will it be made illegal? It ultimately comes down to how many people will accept it.
From Schneier on Security
Spear Phishing Attacks from China Against Gmail Accounts
Reporters have been calling me pretty much constantly about this story, but I can't figure out why in the world this is news. Attacks from China -- old news; attacks from China against Google -- old news; attacks from Chinaold…
From Putting People First
Digital You: a NESTA discussion on telepresence
Digital You was an early morning discussion in London, organised by NESTA, that looked at telepresence and the psychology of electronic communications. NESTA is the UK’s National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts…
From Putting People First
Is car sharing the future of the automobile industry?
As much as the car chieftains of Detroit try to fight it, America is slowly but surely turning away from the concept of car ownership. Instead, hundreds of thousands of Americans are choosing to share their cars by the hour and…
From Putting People First
Five similarities between collaborative consumption and open-source technology
Tim Hyer, the founder of Rentcycle (an online rental marketplace for those looking to share access rather than retain ownership), was hugely inspired by his previous experience at Red Hat, the open source technology company,…
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
This following a special contribution to this blog by Cindy L. Bethel, a 2009 Computing Innovation Fellow (CIFellow) working with Brian Scassellati in the Social Robotics Laboratory at Yale University. Cindy received her Ph.D…
From Computational Complexity
Partioning Students
One last Molly post for the end of the school year. Tomorrow is her birthday and I enter that moment I have been dreading for the past thirteen years: Two teenage daughters. Molly's 7th Grade Science teacher wanted to breakExact…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Archiving Everything
Remembering being surprised in 2010 that the US Library of Congress was archiving Twitter. Lots of details about that effort here. So many data mining opportunities will exist based on this data in the future. Is that scary…
From Schneier on Security
Man-in-the-Middle Attack Against the MCAT Exam
In Applied Cryptography, I wrote about the "Chess Grandmaster Problem," a man-in-the-middle attack. Basically, Alice plays chess remotely with two grandmasters. She plays Grandmaster 1 as white and Grandmaster 2 as black. …
From BLOG@CACM
Our Big Idea: Open Social Learning
Imagine a Facebook where the point is for students to study together, not trade pictures and jokes. Imagine a World of Warcraft where students earn levels and points by helping each other learn. Imagine an educational experience…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Crowd Sourced Eyetracking
A look at YouEye ... An interesting concept that is likely very cheap. But what will the quality be like? Tracks using your own camera for user interface design and analysis.
From The Eponymous Pickle
Touchscreen vs Heavy Lifting OS
A look at touchscreen as an interface versus full operating systems. Praises an early look at Windows 8, but says it cannot match the simplicity of an iPad. But can it provide more functionality? Certainly a full spreadsheet…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Ford's Cars to Talk to Each Other
GigaOm report on development of technology by Ford to allow cars to talk to each other and avoid crashes and otherwise cooperate. Cooperative autonomy is interesting, but could also lead to some curious liability issues. We…