Communications of the ACM
The blog archive provides access to past blog postings from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
July 2010
From The Eponymous Pickle
Google Image Search Improves
In GigaOM: Image search in Google has improved their user interface to allow you to see many more images per search. They have a reported ten billion images accessible. There is still no way to sort images from newest to oldest…
From The Eponymous Pickle
The Ideas Project
Sponsored by Nokia, The ideas Project is a selection of video presentation by mostly well-known pundits in the area of communications and information tech. If they like an idea you submit they will give you a free Nokia phone…
From The Female Perspective of Computer Science
What's This Educational Games Stuff All About, Anyway?
As you may know, my research focus for my PhD is educational games and augmented reality. But what is this educational games stuff all about, anyway? Do video games really have the potential to support learning?To give a general…
From Putting People First
Social networking and public service provision
I very much enjoyed the reflection of Lee Bryant (Headshift), following the launch of the UK Government’s Big Society initiative. In it, he argues that in the past, UK politics [and not just UK, I'd say] were dominated by two…
From Putting People First
Why traditional intranets fail today
Oscar Berg reflects on the changing role of intranets in knowledge-intensive businesses. “These intranets need to provide flexible access to both information and people by employing pull models for serving as many knowledge worker…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Creation Spaces Exchange Tacit Knowledge
Video from HBR on the Nokia Ideas project. This was something we explicitly intended to do with the creation of innovation centers. First to read realistic contexts that would set the stage for knowledge exchange. Something as…
From Wild WebMink
links for 2010-07-20
Rotten to the (Open) Core? Dave Neary's thorough analysis of the problem with open core is right on the nail. (tags: OpenCore OpenSource) Opening The Rackspace Cloud The thinking behind the launch of open source cloud software…
From Schneier on Security
New GAO Cybersecurity Report
From the U.S. Government Accountability Office: "Cybersecurity: Key Challenges Need to Be Addressed to Improve Research and Development." Thirty-six pages; I haven't read it.
From The Eponymous Pickle
E-Book Sales Exceed Hardcover
Amazon reports in the NYT that E-book sales for books have exceeded hardcover sales. To be clear E-books sales have not exceeded all book sales, which include softcover. Still a remarkable change. When will bits exceed cellulose…
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
Towards a New AP Course in Computer Science
Today at the biennial Snowbird Conference, Jan Cuny (NSF), Owen Astrachan (U. of Virginia), and Larry Snyder (U. Washington) gave an inspiring talk about a new advanced placement
From The Eponymous Pickle
Wolfram Alpha Rx Database
Have followed WolframAlpha for a while. Key is having the right data to support a query. Sometimes it is there an sometimes not. the new introduction of Data for Rx drugs makes the WA capabilities stronger. Much more information…
From Schneier on Security
Violating Terms of Service Possibly a Crime
From Wired News:
The four Wiseguy defendants, who also operated other ticket-reselling businesses, allegedly used sophisticated programming and inside information to bypass technological measures -- including CAPTCHA -- at Ticketmaster…From Daniel Lemire's Blog
Is multiplication slower than addition?
Earlier, I asked whether integer addition was faster than bitwise exclusive or. My tests showed no difference, and nobody contradicted me. However, everyone knows that multiplication is slower than addition? Right? In cryptography…
From Computational Complexity
Factors for getting a job- Arbitrary, random, and complex
The Job Market in Theory (likely in all of academia) has more randomness and arbitrariness (are those the same?) then people may realize. Especially young PhD's who have never been to a faculty meeting where these things are…
From U.S. Public Policy Committee of the ACM
Hill Tech Happenings, Week of July 19
July 20
Hearing: The Health Subcommittee of the House Ways and Means Committee will hold a hearing on encouraging the use of Health Information Technology. 1 p.m., 1000 Longworth Buiding
From Putting People First
On the design process, consistency and product development
Three new articles have been published on the UX Matters site: Design Is a Process, Not a Methodology By Pabini Gabriel-Petit In this installment of On Good Behavior, I
From The Eponymous Pickle
Checking into States of Mind
I like Batelle's point about checking into things other than just location. Advertisers infer this today, does it make sense to make it more explicit? He writes: " ... I wanted to build on my earlier post, "My Location Is a…
From My Biased Coin
New Paper: Popularity is Everything
Another new paper announcement: Popularity is Everything: A New Approach to Protecting Passwords from Statistical-Guessing Attacks, which will appear next month at HotSec 2010, is online. My co-authors are Stuart Schechter…
From Wild WebMink
links for 2010-07-19
NASA and Rackspace open source cloud fluffer Very significant initiative. The fact it's under the Apache licence makes it highly reusable, and the diversity of the participants combined with open governance gives confidence it…
From Schneier on Security
Embedded Code in U.S. Cyber Command Logo
This is excellent.
And it's been cracked already.
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Interesting Links July 19th 2010
I spent some time in California at the CSTA CS & IT Symposium last week. Great stuff to learn and a lot (though never enough) of time to talk to friends both old and new. Doug Peterson has a good review of the event (2010 CSIT…
From Wild WebMink
? Did Open Core Trigger OpenStack?
At the end of the Community Leadership Summit here in Portland people arriving for OSCON started to show up. They included one of the guys behind Rackspace’s announcement of OpenStack that was made today. He gave me a full rundown…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Open Innovation at Tesco
Andrea Meyer on Open Innovation at Tesco.
From The Eponymous Pickle
Crash Course in Google Analytics
Though I have now used Google Analytics for years, I have not spent enough time understanding it and its value and limitations in depth. Here is a pointer to more, and promises a crash course.
From The Eponymous Pickle
Procter Manufacturers Private
So is this a bow to private label? Will they become a developer-manufacturer-marketer of many goods for retailers?Procter & Gamble boosts bet on exclusive brandsIn search of market share, Procter & Gamble expands
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
Friday
The President
From The Noisy Channel
Off to Geneva for SIGIR
I’m flying to Geneva tonight to attend SIGIR. Hope to see some of you there! I’ll be back in a week and will post highlights and personal reactions.
From Wild WebMink
links for 2010-07-18
Oracle's Support for Open Source and Open Standards Looks like this is the canonical list of which open source projects matter to Oracle. Notable for what's missing as well as for what's there. Also interesting that while the…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Brains as Game Controllers
In the BBC: This idea has been around for some time, but does not appear to have taken hold. Here Emotiv claims to have developed neural game control headsets that are designed for the average consumer.
From The Eponymous Pickle
Frito-Lay to Feature Ergonomic Checkout in its Innovation Center
This is new. I had thought there would be some complaints in self checkout, but the you always have to lift the heavy bags charcoal, or 24 packs of drnk out of you cart even in a standard checkout. Yet as I read this the checkouts…