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
Ethnographic research in a world of big data
Following up on her earlier piece on ethnographic research in a world of big data, Jenna Burrell, sociologist and assistant professor in the School of Information at UC-Berkeley, continues her argument against the idea that big…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Fujitsu Vein Based Biometrics
From Fujitsu Labs: A Unique way of identifying yourself: " ... The module shines near-infrared light onto a person
From The Eponymous Pickle
Improving Marketing Through Gamification
Playful Wingmen. What looks to be an interesting thought. Marketing improved via game dynamics. Everything is a game, and some new views of their dynamics. Their position paper.
From The Eponymous Pickle
Power Stifles Innovation
Hardly needs to be said.. Have seen it many times. When you are in a position of power in a group meeting, it's often better to shut up rather than express your initial reservations. Save them for later individual meetings,…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Seismic Interpretation via Expert Systems
Brought to my attention by LPA, which was used for this system. My particular interest here is the broader application to image and meta data analysis. Abstract only:International Journal of Scientific & Engineering Research…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Qlikview Look
Several people have pointed me to Qlikview ... Anyone have thoughts about it, pass them along. " ... The QlikView Business Discovery platform delivers true self-service BI that empowers business users by driving innovativeLate…
From Putting People First
Book: The Mobile Frontier
The Mobile Frontier – A Guide for Designing Mobile Experiences By Rachel Hinman Rosenfeld Media June 2012 Publisher’s page | Amazon page Mobile user experience is a new frontier. Untethered from a keyboard and mouse, this rich…
From Putting People First
Marty Kaplan: From Attention to Engagement (video)
Barcelona Media, an interdisciplinary center of research and innovation, hosted Lear Center director Marty Kaplan to speak at its 10th anniversary celebration on March 6, 2012. His talk was titled “From Attention to Engagement…
From Putting People First
Manifesto for design upholding human talents and innovation
This morning I got an invite in the mail to attend a London design symposium at Brunel University next week (16 June) that will debate the core themes of a new design manifesto, strangely called “Big Potatoes” Although I cannot…
From Putting People First
Dark Matter and Trojan Horses
“Dark Matter and Trojan Horses – A Strategic Design Vocabulary” is a short e-book by designer and urbanist Dan Hill in which he argues that in an age of wicked problems, conventional solutions are failing, and a new culture of…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Intel Facial Recognition
From Intel: A means of using facial recognition to target ads. " ... Intel has developed a new set-top box that will monitor who is watching TV at that moment, enabling advertisers to target the most appropriate ads to them…
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
From time to time, we feature on this Blog an exciting research result that’s been picked up the mainstream media. Here’s one that’s garnered some interest this week, having first appeared on The New York Times‘ Bits Blog:
From The Eponymous Pickle
Mapping Medical Conversations
Discursis maps and visualizes medical conversations. Adds insight to what really helps. "... The system can identify effective doctor-patient communication as well as poor communication. "Using a checklist style of consultation…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Use of QR Code
Using QR codes as a time station: The simple check-in idea has become more common. Simple is often good to build upon. Via Walter Riker.
From Putting People First
Genevieve Bell: women are tech
Social scientist Genevieve Bell – who is also the interaction and experience research director at Intel Labs – gave a major talk on what the future of technology looks like, and why middle-aged women may determine that future…
From The Eponymous Pickle
After Broadband: Chocolate Printers
Knowledge@Wharton on what happens when there is truly all pervasive connectivity. " ... Chocolate printers. Corporate "health meters" based on the Facebook posting of employees. Wearable devices that jolt wearers with the functional…
From Apophenia
Why
On Wednesday night, I arrived at the Hilton Doubletree in Washington DC after an intense day of meetings ready to do a few more hours of work. When I got to the desk, the clerk told me that the hotel was oversold. I raised my…
From Computational Complexity
A new bound on 3-hypergraph Ramsey Number! Why wasn't it discovered earlier?
When a new result is first discovered one question to ask is Why wasn't it discovered earlier? We look at a result in Ramsey Theory from 2010 and speculate as to why it was not discovered earlier. Let R(k) be the least n such…
From Schneier on Security
Friday Squid Blogging: Baby Opalescent Squid
Baby squid larvae are transparent after they hatch, so you can see the chromataphores (color control mechanisms) developing after a few days.
As usual, you can also use this squid post to talk about the security stories in the…From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
U.S., Japan Collaboration on Big Data and Disaster Research
The heads of the
From The Eponymous Pickle
Bing Links with Britannica
ComputerWorld reports: To provide thumbnail encyclopedic information based on search requests. This would be akin to the fact that Wikipedia hits often come up first on Google searches. Promotes the Britannica's online resources…
From My Biased Coin
New SIGACT Officers
Lance informs me we have newly elected officers at SIGACT.Chair: Paul BeameMembers-at-Large:Venkatesan GuruswamiRocco ServedioAvrim BlumTal RabinCongratulations/condolences to the winners. I'm sure Paul will do a great job…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Visirule for Expert Systems
I have had reason recently to re-examine the use of expert systems to understand and improve complex business processes. I have mentioned a package called Visirule in this blog a number of times. Those mentions also outline…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Wal-Mart and P&G Team for Mobile Shopping
In a unique and novel approach a faux food truck in NYC and Chicago is decorated with QR codes. Allows the walking shopper to buy an assortment of popular consumer package goods. Similar to some of the virtual stores reported…
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
NSF, Science Seeking Video Games, Apps for Visualization Challenge
The National Science Foundation (NSF)
From The Female Perspective of Computer Science
When to Use Math Problems for Teaching Programming
Last time I talked about Dan Meyer's work, I pondered how his ideas about perplexing problems applied to educational games. He recently did an Ignite talk that gives the rationale behind his 101questions website, which is essentially…
From Gödel's Lost Letter and P=NP
Mihai P?tra?cu 1982
A pathbreaking researcher taken too soon from us (src) Mihai Pătraşcu passed away on Tuesday of brain cancer, having not yet reached age 30. We, Dick and Ken, did not know about his year-and-a-half battle until yesterday, even…
From Wild WebMink
Old Arguments Resurfacing
I’ve been working with corporate open source for long enough now that arguments against it that were popular years ago, which I’d assumed were fully explained and forgotten, are now coming round again. One of them, the “there’s…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Mapping Learning to Value
In Chief Learning Officer: " ... Economic models change and firms follow, dragging the accountants kicking and screaming. Understanding business
From Schneier on Security
The Catastrophic Consequences of 9/11
This is an interesting essay -- it claims to be the first in a series -- that looks at the rise of "homeland security" as a catastrophic consequence of the 9/11 terrorist attacks:
In this usage catastrophic is not a pejorative…