Communications of the ACM
The blog archive provides access to past blog postings from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
July 2013
From The Eponymous Pickle
Customers Provide Marketing Value
I always thought this approach was obvious, but it is nice to have it restated here. Get your best marketing materials directly from your customers. Now there are so many new ways to harvest that intelligence and value. Of…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Predicting Earthquakes with Smartphones
An interesting example of using a network of smartphones as sensors, and converting that data into a form that can detect earthquakes and then communicate them through the same network. How predictive this system can be in accurate…
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
NSF Expeditions in Computing PI Meeting Synopsis
The following is a special contribution to this blog from our Vice Chair Gregory Hager (Johns Hopkins University). In the following entry Greg reflects on the first annual PI meeting for the National Science Foundation’s Expeditions…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Stanford's Startup Garage
An Overview of Stanford's Startup Garage Course. From the perspective of innovation vs Invention. Have heard of this course, but this is the first detailed view I have seen. " ... Like so many important lessons, StefanosSee…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Boosting in-store Sales
In Journal Gazette: On boosting in-store sales:" More food retailers are getting in on the technology game, offering multiple options to boost convenience and compete with online retailers. Kroger's in-store technology lets cashiers…
From BLOG@CACM
What's Our Goal For a CS Degree, and How Do We Know We Got There?
A history of computing suggests that the computer science undergraduate degree is unnecessarily rigorous and may not be achieving the goals we have for it.
From Schneier on Security
Walls Around Nations
A political history of walls: Roman walls such as Hadrian's Wall, the Great Wall of China, the Berlin Wall, and the wall between Mexico and the U.S. Moral: they solve the wrong problem.
From The Eponymous Pickle
Web Based Brain for Robots
In the BBC: A little tongue in cheek, but I agree with the long range premise. That the Web has become a sort of brain with memory and store of expertise. And that our machines will need to be taught to use it. I disagree…
From U.S. Public Policy Committee of the ACM
Accessible Technology Demos at the FCC on July 16
Tomorrow, the FCC will feature demonstrations of accessible technology solutions from 12:30 to 3 p.m. in its Technology Experience Center. The event is part of the FCC’s Accessibility and Innovation Initiative Speaker Series.…
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Interesting Links 15 July 2013
Today is the first day of the CSTA Annual conference. Ten workshops today and later a tour of Microsoft’s New England Research and Development Center (Yeah I’ve been to NERD before but still …) I’ll be helping out with some demos…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Do Things that Don't Scale
Via Paul Graham. As a person who has always been warned up front to always worry about how things scale in practice, I like the brashness of this suggestion. Includes a number of examples " .... One of the most common types…
From The Eponymous Pickle
An Optical Stethoscope
An idea I remember hearing about a decade ago. Besides the direct visualization of the data, the ability to transmit that data would be useful. Consider then that you would be part of an internet of things. Appears to still…
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
What Is It With US Students and Programming Contests?
I saw this recently on SlashDot - No US College In Top 10 For ACM International Programming Contest 2013 Now the ACM International Programming Contest is sort of a big deal. In the first fifteen or so years US teams won first…
From My Biased Coin
Sleeping in Seattle
Unless I'm asked not to, I'll try to live-blog a bit over the next few days from the Microsoft Faculty Summit. It's my first time to this event. I understand Bill Gates will give some sort of keynote tomorrow morning, and there…
From The Eponymous Pickle
More on Engelbart
A good overview by Jason Hong, of some of the accomplishments of Douglas Engelbart, whose passing and personal interconnections I mentioned last week.
From Putting People First
Why behavior change apps fail to change behavior
“Too many well-intentioned products fail because they feel like ‘haftas,’ things people are obligated to do, as opposed to things they ‘wanna’ do,” writes Nir Eyal on Techcrunch. “When faced with ‘haftas,’ our brains register…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Gesture Control
Using a Wifi doppler shift to do gesture control. In Hackaday. Not sure how practical this is, but an interesting play. Includes a demonstration video.
From Gödel's Lost Letter and P=NP
Surely You Are Joking?
A new way to write mathematics Vladimir Voevodsky won the Fields Medal in 2002 for his work on homotopy theory of algebraic varieties. Using his pioneering methods he proved, among many other things, a deep conjecture of John…
From Schneier on Security
My Fellowship at the Berkman Center
I have been awarded a fellowship at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University, for the 2013–2014 academic year. I'm excited about this; Berkman and Harvard is where a lot of the cool kids hang out, and…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Stickers Sell in Japan
In Nextweb: A phenomenon that I had not heard of. And based on my experience it is hard to see how blocks of emoticons could sell as a service. But it is selling very well in Asia, and particularly in Japan. " ... Stickers…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Looking for Active Design
Sites scrape lots of information to get better understanding of the user. So why can't this information be used to create active interface design, and a better personalized experience? Good guest post in GigaOM.
From The Eponymous Pickle
GS1 Urges Case Data Accuracy
Sometimes the very obvious need to get some little things correct can make all the difference. Here is just one simple example from GS1. Get your data right first. " ... A group of food retailers, wholesalers and manufacturers…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Loyalty Via Social Intelligence
Interesting piece from ..... Susan Ganeshan, Chief Marketing Officer at newBrandAnalytics, writes .... " ... Various industries use social intelligence to make strategic business decisions in a number of ways. Whether making…
From Wild WebMink
Virtual Choir 4 from Eric Whitacre
Unexpectedly awesome. When he described it (“synths”, “pop feel”) it sounded like it might be a step down from the previous 3, but it’s actually very good. And congratulations to Tim for his first VC performance too!
From Schneier on Security
Friday Squid Blogging: Squid–Bacteria Symbiotic Relationships
This is really interesting research.
As usual, you can also use this squid post to talk about the security stories in the news that I haven't covered.
From The Eponymous Pickle
POPAI on Front End Shopper Behavior
In POPAI: A diagrammatic look at shopper front end and check out behavior. This is an infographic that I like, because it shows how things work, as opposed to being a replacement for a data visualization, that shows quantitative…
From BLOG@CACM
Reaching For Engelbart's Vision of the Future
A meditation on Douglas Engelbart's impact on interactive computing.
From The Eponymous Pickle
Supermarkets and Customers Dropping Loyalty Programs
In Time: Numbers of people in the programs are still increasing, but number of programs are decreasing. A fairly extensive article about this mini trend. Customers concerned about data privacy, and the sheer inconvenience…
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
CCC Sponsoring Computational Sustainability Track at AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI-13)
The following entry is a special contribution to this blog from Douglas H. Fisher, Associate Professor of Computer Science at Vanderbilt University. This year Doug and Carla Gomes (Cornell University) are co-chairing the Computational…
From The Eponymous Pickle
The Future of Humans
In the Atlantic: The Future of humans in the approaching era of artificial intelligence. Its is coming, but I am still skeptical of the timing predicted, but it will happen. How many humans will be replaced, now many more…