Communications of the ACM
The blog archive provides access to past blog postings from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
June 2012
From Putting People First
Why are contextual inquiries so difficult?
Jim Ross, Principal of Design Research at Electronic Ink, thinks contextual inquiry is the most difficult user research technique to perform effectively, as it requires a difficult balance between traditional interviewing and…
From The Eponymous Pickle
New Smarter IBM Analytics
The quantity of financial sector data is increasing at some 70% a year, says an article in CIO. So it is clear that even if small and medium, size businesses don't have 'big data' today, it won't be long before they do. In"The…
From Wild WebMink
It
Now the UK’s open standards consultation is over, let’s get back to basics. All these power plugs didn’t give us more choice – they instead inconvenienced us all as every vendor chose a different “standard” that suited them to…
From Schneier on Security
Security and Human Behavior (SHB 2012)
I'm at the Fifth Interdisciplinary Workshop on Security and Human Behavior, SHB 2012. Google is hosting this year, at its offices in lower Manhattan.
SHB is an invitational gathering of psychologists, computer security researchers…From The Eponymous Pickle
SimCity and Facebook
I have had an interest in SimCity since its early days. Executives came to us soon after its launch to ask if we could produce a similar simulation for the entire enterprise. At the very least for training, and potentiallySimCity…
From The Eponymous Pickle
SAP Visual Intelligence
From SAP " ... launched new data visualization software that taps into one of its standby BI releases and relies heavily on HANA, the in-memory database that
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
Last week, the UC Berkeley’s School of Information held a forum — called the
From Schneier on Security
Interesting Article on Libyan Internet Intelligence Gathering
This is worth reading, for the insights it provides on how a country goes about monitoring its citizens in the information age: a combination of targeted attacks and wholesale surveillance.
I'll just quote one bit, this list…From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
There Is More To Computing Than Computer Science
Last week Doug Peterson pointed me to an article called
From The Eponymous Pickle
MIT Tech Review Goes Digital First
I have read MIT's Digital Review for many years, it used to be my prime source for digital information, long before there was much rich forward looking content on the Web. I received their print mag for years Now it is reported…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Bayesian Analysis
For those interested in Bayesian Network Analysis as a modeling technique, I see that BayesiaLab has come out with a new version with many new capabilities. All described in their newest newsletter. We used Bayesian network…
From The Eponymous Pickle
You Can be too Rational
In the Sloan Review: I agree that you can over quantify. But you should not ignore the numbers either. Its also good to think about the exogenous interactions that are still beyond numbers. Still, I disagree with being an…
From The Eponymous Pickle
English Skills for Key Contexts
Correspondent John Lucke tells me about some of the work they are doing at Carnegie Speech to increase English proficiency among airline pilots. This was written about in a recent NYT article. What interests me is how this approach…
From Computational Complexity
Which Books to Keep?
Moving is an excuse to go through your possessions and weed out what you don't need anymore. Over my professional life I've collected two large bookcases full of CS, Math and Econ books and all the STOC, FOCS and Complexity proceedings…
From Gödel's Lost Letter and P=NP
Transcendental Aspects of Turing Machines
Mathematical effects of the Hartmanis-Stearns conjecture David Champernowne is one of a select few to have a number named for him. His number is obtained by writing all the decimal natural numbers in sequence after the decimal…
From The Female Perspective of Computer Science
The Confusion Between Computer Science and Computer Programming
Are we getting mixed up between computer science and computer programming? Are degrees in the former trying to train more people for the latter? Is any of this a problem? Jason Gormon thinks so, and I think it's worth looking…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Diet Glasses
Another example of augmented reality. And an application of integrating wearable devices to adjust your sensory data view. I wonder how such a method will be tolerated. An implanted solution might be better used here. But…
From Wild WebMink
Standards Consultation Deadline
Please send a contribution to the UK Open Standards Consultation TODAY, before the deadline at midnight UK time. It’s really simple, as little as an e-mail if you want – see the end of today’s article in ComputerWorldUK.
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
NIST Holding BIG DATA Workshop Next Week
The National Institute of Standards and Technology’s (NIST) Information Technology Laboratory (ITL)
From Schneier on Security
The Unreliability of Eyewitness Testimony
Interesting article:
The reliability of witness testimony is a vastly complex subject, but legal scholars and forensic psychologists say it's possible to extract the truth from contradictory accounts and evolving memories. According…From Schneier on Security
Flame
Flame seems to be another military-grade cyber-weapon, this one optimized for espionage. The worm is at least two years old, and is mainly confined to computers in the Middle East. (It does not replicate and spread automatically…
From BLOG@CACM
My Scientific Big Data Are Lonely
Although there are daunting technical challenges posed by big data in science and engineering, the social and economic challenges are just as difficult, though much less often discussed. Two issues merit special attention, the…
From Putting People First
UX challenges when building collaborative consumption platforms
Rachel Botsman, founder and chief innovator of the Collaborative Lab (part of the Collaborative Consumption movement) writes that the biggest initial barrier to implementing Collaborative Consumption ideas is typically inertia…
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Interesting Links 4 June 2012
This past Saturday was my 9th anniversary working full-time for Microsoft. It
From The Eponymous Pickle
On the Limits of Anti Virus Software
A telling post on the topic. I recently had to deal with several episodes that were potentially the result of virus attacks. My installed software apparently did not deal with the problem. A quick search of other similar events…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Waves of Motivation
My previous note about Dan Ariely's Conscious+ App led me to reinvestigate the concept of Motivation Waves, as described by BJ Fogg in this excellent video. He specifically uses the example of health UX design via a keynoteMore…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Technology Testing City
The establishment of a technology testing city. " ... An international technology company is creating an empty city in New Mexico to test and evaluate emerging technologies without having to worry about interfering with human…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Apps of Conscience
Can an App significantly help you make the right choice? Dan Ariely has published an App called Conscience+, which contains a number of simple reminders about many of the common choices in life we make every day. I downloaded…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Bionic Brains and Beyond
In the WSJ: " ... High-tech implants will soon be commonplace enhancements under our skin and inside our skulls, making us stronger and smarter. Daniel H. Wilson on our 'superabled' future. .... " And controversy, like that…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Social Media and Customer Service
In Forbes: Simplistic, makes some large assumptions. But should be read by management that does not understand the power of social media.