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 Wild WebMink
Garden Monster
Garden Monster, originally uploaded by webmink. Spotted this vapourer moth caterpillar eating the leaves on one of my blueberry bushes. Glad it’s only 3cm long
From My Biased Coin
SODA in Japan
I hadn't even noticed SODA was in Japan before submitting. I just figured wherever it was I'd be willing to go, as January in Boston is a fine time to be elsewhere. And if needed I can send a student instead...My only pastjournal…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Pepsi and FourSquare
Pepsi makes the first attempt at taking Foursquare global. Good case study of generalizing the idea, which has been largely North America. " .... In what appears to be a first, Pepsi is employing a Foursquare badge on a global…
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
In today’s New York Times‘ weekly “Science Times,” science writer
From Wild WebMink
? Dis Harmony
Project Harmony Considered Harmful Bradley Kuhn of the Software Conservancy is clearly opposed both to Project Harmony’s work products and sponsors. In short, Project Harmony is a design-flawed solution looking for a problem.…
From Schneier on Security
Insurgent Groups Exhibit Learning Curve
Interesting research:
After analyzing reams of publicly available data on casualties from Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and decades of terrorist attacks, the scientists conclude that "insurgents pretty much seemed to be following…From Computational Complexity
FOCS Accepts
This list of FOCS accepts are out, with abstracts, with PDF links (via Kintali) and in Algorithmic Game Theory (Nisan) and Algorithms (Eppstein). The FOCS Conference will be held October 23-25 in Palm Springs. Looks like a strong…
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
CS & IT Conference Day 1 - 2011
This year CSTA is trying a bunch of new things with the CS & IT Conference. First off we added a workshop day on the front end. So yesterday there were a number of three hour workshops. You can see what was offered on theCS &…
From The Eponymous Pickle
SearchTeam Emerges
I have seen some fascinating early versions of SearchTeam, the real-time collaborative search engine from Zakta.. A great idea, think of it for collaborative use in a number of situations. Say you are researching a new innovation…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Google Plus and Social Ads
After some playing around with Google+, what I have seen is that it looks much like Facebook. With a few nice, easily copy-able features. Hard to see Google+ taking away Facebook's fast number of general customers. But Google…
From Geeking with Greg
Google and suggesting friends
A timely paper out of Google at the recent ICML 2011 conference, "Suggesting (More) Friends Using the Implicit Social Graph" (PDF), not only describes the technology behind GMail's fun "Don't forget Bob!" and "Got the right Bob…
From Schneier on Security
History of Stuxnet
Nice article.
From The Eponymous Pickle
Reintroduction of TagWhat
I see that TagWhat, an artificial reality vendor has just reintroduced their product. Here is their press release It is delivered via a smart phone and can provide 'stories' linked to any smart phone detected locations. …
From The Eponymous Pickle
Top Digital Marketer
I was just reminded by a communication that Ilonka Laviz was appointed top digital marketer at P&G.
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Are your students entered in the Windows Phone app contest
This Summer, build Windows Phone 7 apps and you could earn exciting prizes to catch a movie, eat ice – cream, buy camping gear and more!! This special competition is especially for students. It’s a great incentive to get creative…
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
Sentience is indescribable
Arguably, one of the most nagging scientific question is the nature of sentience. Can we build sentient computers? Is my cat sentient? What does that mean? Will a breakthrough in cognitive science tell us what are consciousness…
From The Female Perspective of Computer Science
So I Found this Great Learning Games Company...
Persistence pays off. Through a long chain of events
From Putting People First
Red Hat sees user collaboration as the wave of the future
Jim Whitehurst, chief executive and president of Red Hat Inc., the only publicly traded open-source software company, sees user collaboration as the wave of the future, not only for technology companies but for the business world…
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
Reminder: CCC Council Meeting in DC This Friday
As I’ve previously noted in this space, the CCC Council is scheduled to meet in Washington, DC, this Friday, July 15. Among the discussion topics will be the role of fundamental computing research in Smart Health & Wellbeing…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Telework in the US
Steve King in Small Biz Labs collects new data on the state of telework in the US. Good summary.
From The Eponymous Pickle
Competitive Intel as a Natural Extension to Business Intelligence
This is what I did for some years in the enterprise. To understand the competition you also need to know your own company. Rarely done well though, and not with the same tools. This article discusses it further. " ... For…
From U.S. Public Policy Committee of the ACM
Hill Tech Happenings, Week of July 11
July 11 Meeting: The Data Privacy and Integrity Advisory Committee of the Department of Homeland Security will meet. 10 a.m., 111 Massachusetts Avenue, N.W., Washington, D.C. July 13 Meeting: The Information Security and Privacy…
From Wild WebMink
links for 2011-07-11
The Dropbox Blog – Changes to our policies (updated) Dropbox got lots of bad publicity when they first changed their terms of service and included a broad "all your work belongs to us" clause ion it. But I've not seen any further…
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Interesting Links 11 July 2011
If you followed my Twitter or read my blog over the weekend you may be tired of hearing about the Imagine Cup. You may also think I am over sharing on FourSquare (whose co-founder spoke at the Imagine Cup opening ceremonies BTW…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Computing the Brain's Secrets
In Kurzweil AI: Some visual images that give some evidence we may someday understand the brain as a computational problem, but also in their very complexity show how very hard that may be to do. The suggestion is that we understand…
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Kinect Workshop at the Imagine Cup
These are the views that greeted students entering the Sky Lobby of the host hotel of the World wide Imagine Cup this afternoon. We had room for just over 70 people to sit and work the hands on part of the workshop and when we…
From Computer Science Teachers Association
E-Books for Learning (Or Not)?
Summer is here. My textbooks are neatly placed on my bookshelf and my Kindle comes out. I rarely have time to pleasure read during the school year. What did I just write? It's true. I most often use paper textbooks for educational…
From Putting People First
Service design, a strong strategy for local authorities
Design Flanders ["Design Vlaanderen"] and the Association of Flemish Cities and Municipalities (both in Belgium) have just published a bilingual Dutch-English booklet entitled “Service design, a strong strategy for local authorities”…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Exceptional Book: Zero Moment of Truth
ZMOT was a concept we often discussed in the enterprise. Google also uses the concept, borrowed from P&G. See more in a post in their consumer package goods blog. The post also contains a link to a short free eBook on the…
From Putting People First
Inside Google
Smashing Magazine author Dan Redding interviewed Marcin Wichary, Senior User Experience Designer at Google. “Marcin Wichary