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 Putting People First
Internet
“The internet has not become the great leveller that it was once thought it could be,” according to Harvard academic Ethan Zuckerman at the TED Global (Technology Entertainment and Design) conference in Oxford. The BBC reports…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Tibco Announces Free BI Tool
Clever marketing approach from Tibco, maker of Spotfire. Have not taken a look yet at exactly what it is yet. In ReadwriteWeb: " ... Tibco has launched a business intelligence tool designed for the small business market that…
From Computer Science Teachers Association
2010 CSIT Symposium
This is a reposting of a blog piece written by Doug Peterson on his blog http://dougpete.wordpress.com/.
Yesterday, I had the honour of attending the 2010 CSIT Symposium in Sunnyvale, CA. This symposium is hosted by the CSTA…From The Eponymous Pickle
Smartphones as Checkouts
Very likely I think, it simplifies a number of things, and creates a new channel to the shopper. What are the implications for manufacturer and retailer?Smartphones may be checkouts of the futureGreg Buzek, president of the…
From Schneier on Security
Burglary Detection through Video Analytics
This is interesting:
Some of the scenarios where we have installed video analytics for our clients include: to detect someone walking in an area of their yard (veering off of the main path) that they are not supposed to be;…From The Eponymous Pickle
Recorded Future Examined
I have been asked to take a closer look at the Recorded Future site. A number of posts will follow that will track my interaction with the site and company. The idea of a temporal analytics engine much intrigued me because time…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Robot Industry
A good CWorld article on the the bloom of the robotics industry. I like this because it links the challenge to artificial intelligence (AI) which I covered for the enterprise for year. Advances in AI are a necessity for the…
From The Female Perspective of Computer Science
Cooperative Board Games Take Some Getting Used To
I'm sure getting together every two weeks to play board games and calling it research isn't anything new, but it's definitely something I need to do. I pride myself on work-life balance, but unfortunately this makes it really…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Old Spice and Social Engagement
Insider Dave Knox on taking social engagement to a new level at Procter & Gamble's Old Spice brand. Via Walter Riker.
From Computational Complexity
GCT Workshop (Guest Post by Josh Grochow)
Last week, the Center for Computational Intractability hosted a Geometric Complexity Theory Workshop. Geometric complexity theory (GCT) is an approach to P vs NP and related problems proposed by Ketan Mulmuley and Milind Sohoni…
From Wild WebMink
Open Core Case Study
SugarCRM 6 Debuts with Open Source and Commercial Features While their marketing guy may claim “that overall, Sugar 6 is an open source product from an open source company”, it’s hard to see how they are anything other than a…
From Schneier on Security
Caller ID Spoofing on the Android
It's easy to access someone else's voicemail by spoofing the caller ID. This isn't new; what is new is that many people now have easy access to caller ID spoofing.
The spoofing only works for voicemail accounts that don't have…From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Advice For An Imagine Cup Team
The following is a guest post by Pat Yongpradit. Pat is the computer science teacher at Springbrook High School in Silver Spring, Maryland. His students competed in this year
From Putting People First
Ethnography in industry
PARC, the legendary California-based research centre owned by the Xerox Corporation, is hosting a series of talks on ethnography in industry. The three talks that took place are already available online in video. More talks are…
From Putting People First
People-focused innovation in healthcare
Philips Design has published a downloadable paper on how it uses qualitative research and design thinking to support development of solutions for the ever-changing healthcare landscape. “Our lifestyles are increasingly out of…
From The Noisy Channel
The War on Attention Poverty: Measuring Twitter Authority
I gave this presentation today at AT&T Labs, hosted by Stephen North of Graphviz fame.
From Schneier on Security
Hemingway Authentication Scheme
From 1955, intended as humor:
In the future when I should ever call on the telephone to make a request or issue an order I will identify myself as follows: This is Hemingway, Ernest M. Hemingway speaking and my serial number…From The Eponymous Pickle
The Math Book
The Math Book: From Pythagoras to the 57th Dimension, 250 Milestones in the History of Mathematics by Clifford A. Pickover. Just found this recently published book by a well known biophysicist who I have read over the years…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Field Agent Crowd Sources Retail Discovery
I was recently pointed to the Field Agent IPhone App. It implemented an idea which was discussed a number of times in the enterprise before the emergence of Apps and Smartphones. The idea was to crowdsource some of the time-consuming…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Dominos Credits Social Media
Dominos is crediting social media for increases in profits. Good case study. Via Paul Gillin. See also his blog.
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
General Versus Domain Intelligence
Our brains come with hard-wired algorithms. Cats can catch birds or mice without thinking about it. I can grab and eat a strawberry without thinking. The Savanna-IQ Interaction Hypothesis says that general intelligence may originally…
From Schneier on Security
The Chaocipher
The Chaocipher is a mechanical encryption algorithm invented in 1918. No one was able to reverse-engineer the algorithm, given sets of plaintexts and ciphertexts -- at least, nobody publicly. On the other hand, I don't know…
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Microsoft Research Illuminates Mars in 3-D With WorldWide Telescope
Cool stuff for us space nuts. It
From The Eponymous Pickle
Crisis of Choice Online
Intriguing project and link to video.In CACM: Solving the Crisis of Choice OnlineThe MyMedia Project Content is everywhere these days, forcing consumers to make decisions at every turn: Which TV channel to watch? Which website…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Delivering Exceptional Customer Experience
This eCommerce Times article reminded me how difficult this is to do. And how it has become necessary for companies, large and small to manage a number of channels to be successful. Not only multichannel, but multiple delivery…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Insurance Companies Build Games
Insurance companies build games to engage consumers and educate them. In a startup I worked for we examined simple games to bring people in, you had to win in a puzzle task to proceed in the game.
From U.S. Public Policy Committee of the ACM
ACM Washington Update, Vol. 14.4 (July 9, 2010)
CONTENTS
[1] Newsletter Highlights [2] USACM and ACM's Education Policy Committee Offer Support for COMPETES [3] USACM Releases Issue Brief on Internet Voting [4] USACM Comments on Internet Privacy Bill Discussion Draft [5] …From The Female Perspective of Computer Science
My Favourite Grace Hopper Memories
My fellow Grace Hopper Communities Committee members wanted to share our favourite Grace Hopper memories over the next few days, and we hope you'll do the same! It's so much fun reflecting back on what has made Grace Hopper so…
From Schneier on Security
Serial Killers Are Now Terrorists
Try to keep up:
Leslie Van Houten, a one-time member of Charles Manson's infamous 'family' is up for parole for the 17th time today.... "These are serial killers," she said. "These would be domestic terrorists if it was today…From U.S. Public Policy Committee of the ACM
Hill Tech Happenings, Week of July 12
July 14
Markup:
The House Science and Technology Committee will markup pending legislation 10 a.m., 2318 Rayburn Building
July 15
Hearing:
The Technology and Innovation Subcommittee of the House Science and Technology Committee…