Communications of the ACM
The blog archive provides access to past blog postings from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
July 2011
From The Eponymous Pickle
Smartphone Forensics
It is remarkable what can be determined from information that is stored on your smartphone. Not only where you are but lots of information about what you are doing. A study of why the police want this information, and the cautions…
From The Eponymous Pickle
More on Google and the Brain
A good post in Mind Hacks commenting on the Google and the brain study I also noted recently. Knowing you have something at your fingertips does not mean than you will not increase the store of your knowledge. Books, computers…
From The Noisy Channel
Guest Post: Diego Basch on The Need for Speed
Diego Basch is the CEO and founder of IndexTank, a hosted search service that powers major web sites such as Reddit, Twitvid, blip.tv, as well as providing a WordPress plug-in for blogs (like this one).
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
Mining Health Data, 140 Characters at a Time
Imagine you’re at the CDC, and you’re trying to predict and respond to this year’s flu season in real-time. You could either contact millions of Americans — or let them contact you via Twitter. In an exciting paper titled “A…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Counting the Internet of Things
We continue to look at how things, in addition to people, now reside identified on the network. Trackable, queriable and countable. GigaOM Infographic says among other things, that the things on the net exceeded people on the…
From Putting People First
Talk to Me
In her New York Times review of Talk to Me (online journal), the latest exhibition by Paola Antonelli at the MoMA, Alice Rawsthorn describes what could be considered the essence of interaction design: “Digital technology is enabling…
From The Eponymous Pickle
KTM Advance - Games and e-Learning
Newly discovered, KTM-Advance, E-Learning and serious games. Have been examining that aspect of games recently. In particular regarding sales training. Appears to be an interesting solution to examine. One of their client…
From Putting People First
European museums and libraries in/of the age of migration
MeLa – European Museums and Libraries in/of the Age of Migrations – is a brand new four-year research project, funded by the European Commission under the Seventh Framework Programme, which aims to delineate new approaches for…
From Putting People First
Izmo Summer School 2011
Izmo, the Italian association focused on participatory process, local development, architecture, design and ICT, organizes an International Summer School in Torino from September 5th to 14th 2011 that proposes the public space…
From Putting People First
New RSA Journal out
The Summer 2011 edition of the RSA Journal explores the relationship between business and social change. Brand values As the social, political and commercial spheres become more intertwined, firms are increasingly finding incentives…
From Putting People First
Smartphones could mean end of web
The proliferation of powerful mobile phones could see control of the internet pass into the hands of corporations, positions John Naughton in The Observer today. “We are on the slippery slope towards a much more controlled, less…
From The Eponymous Pickle
G+ Complete Guide
Mashable has what they call a complete Guide to G+. Can't be completely true since what G+ is continues to evolve. Yet it is a good introduction to the parts that can get you started. What they have done is an excellent…
From The Eponymous Pickle
T Commerce Interfaces
Thought about this while slipping through Flipboard on an iPad. A completely configurable magazine and Reader that emphasizes images. Very addictive. I have added this blog to it, so I can see everything in a new enhanced…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Do We Need to be More Social?
Is Microsoft working on a social networking project. Do we need more social? I guess we can see these efforts as competition for our social connections and someone will win, but the time is just not there to connect and try…
From Putting People First
Exploring the shift In search behaviors with Microsoft
Jacquelyn Krones, a Senior Product Manager from Microsoft, is in charge of an ongoing ethnographic research project on understanding search behavior.
From Putting People First
User experience design principles
During the conference “An Event Apart” (AEA) in Boston, UX designer Whitney Hess gave a talk entitled “Create design principles and use them to establish a philosophy for the user experience.” Hess wants to create universal principals…
From Putting People First
Interaction designers convene in Florence
Greg Williams reports in Wired UK on the recent Frontiers of Interaction conference in Florence, Italy. “Few people need an excuse to spend time in Florence, so it speaks volumes for the organisers of Frontiers of Interaction…
From Putting People First
The difference (and relationship) between usability and user experience
In a blog post, Justin Mifsud discuss the terms usability and user experience, highlighting their differences and more importantly the relationship that exists between them. “Usability is a narrower concept than user experience…
From Putting People First
How technology makes us better social beings
Sociologist Keith Hampton (University of Pennsylvania) believes technology and social networking affect our lives in some very positive ways
From Putting People First
Study finds that memory works differently in the age of Google
The rise of Internet search engines like Google has changed the way our brain remembers information, according to research by Columbia University psychologist Betsy Sparrow published July 14 in Science.
From Putting People First
Technology and moral panic
Why is it that some technologies cause moral panic and others don
From The Eponymous Pickle
Caricatures and Facial Recognition
The brain is a powerful facial recognition machine. It is only recently we have figured out how to systematize to a degree this kind of analysis using image recognition with computers. This article shows how caricatures can…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Google and the Brain
Much this week about how Google and web may be changing the way the brain operates. Here an article in Rough Type, with a good view of the debate, with an expected direction. Probably discussed even in Gutenberg's day. Books…
From Schneier on Security
Friday Squid Blogging: Giant School of Squid
Neat pictures.
From Schneier on Security
Interview in Infosecurity Magazine
I think I gave this interview at the RSA Conference in February.
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
Finding One Man in 60 Million Square Miles
Search is a hard problem in computing, but it’s a critical problem in real life, as friends of computer scientist Jim Gray found out when he vanished at sea. In July’s issue of the Communications of the ACM, Gray’s friends describe…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Social Media Stats
A large list of social media stats to Kickstart your slidedeck. Intriguing, though I always worry about the context of such a large and varied assortment.
From Computational Complexity
Math, the Universe, and Everythign: Max Tegmark's Interpretation of reality (guest post)
(This is a guest post by Nadia Jones who blogs at online college about education, college, student, teacher, money saving, movie related topics. You can reach her at [email protected]. Why is she doing a guest blog? She …
From The Eponymous Pickle
Albertsons Removes Self Checkouts
In Progressive Grocer. A combination of concern about service levels and new regulations seems to be driving self-service out. Longer term, though, I believe that self service will prevail. See self checkout start to occur…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Visualizing Wikipedia
Hard to imagine, but the Wikipedia is only ten years old. Have we not beeing using it for much longer than that? Now there is a challenge to visualize its impact.