Communications of the ACM
The blog archive provides access to past blog postings from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
July 2014
From Putting People First
Improve the travel experience at airports
Over the past years the Amsterdam agency edenspeakermann_ collaborated in a European cooperation that aims to create a seamless air travel experience for passengers to Europe. As a result of research on four European airports…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Paths to Learning
Stephen Few reviews a recent book on the Science Learning. A good topic, because we still have much to learn about learning. Worth a look, I plan to read: " ... Many of the strongly held and frequently espoused notions about…
From Schneier on Security
US National Guard is Getting Into Cyberwar
The Maryland Air National Guard needs a new facility for its cyberwar operations: The purpose of this facility is to house a Network Warfare Group and ISR Squadron. The Cyber mission includes a set of capabilities, expertise…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Riken Research
A long time research resource on Japan, Riken Research writes:" ... The latest printed edition of RIKEN Research, containing a selection of articles published on our website, has just come out. In our Perspectives and PlacesRIKEN…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Big Data, Marketing and Finance
Some thin case studies in the HBR blogs. But it is clear that the deeper use of analytics techniques on growing and complex gathered data will from now on be essential to running the marketing side of financial businesses.
From The Eponymous Pickle
Pipelines and Forecast Timing
In E-Commercetimes: The timing of forecast value is an important aspect. It's part of the decision process that is often forgotten." ... Analytics should be able to tell you the likelihood of each deal's completion in time for…
From Putting People First
When science, customer service, and human subjects research collide. Now what?
Mary L. Gray wrote a long essay for ethnographymatters that argues that technology builders and interface designers, data scientists and ethnographers (working in industry and at universities alike) “are now, officially, doing…
From Putting People First
Ethnography : an antifragile practice?
Simon Roberts of Stripe Partners continues his three part series on ethnography. In the first two posts in this series he examined ethnography as practiced in two different contexts – the (1) market research (MR) industry and…
From Computational Complexity
Elfdrive
From Schneier on Security
Hackers Steal Personal Information of US Security-Clearance Holders
The article says they were Chinese but offers no evidence: The intrusion at the Office of Personnel Management was particularly disturbing because it oversees a system called e-QIP, in which federal employees applying for security…
From The Eponymous Pickle
MOOCs and MBA Programs
In Knowledge@Wharton, Interview and video:" ... In a new research paper, Christian Terwiesch, professor of operations and information management at Wharton, and Karl Ulrich, vice dean of innovation at the school, examine the…
From Gödel's Lost Letter and P=NP
Constructive Sets
An approach to complexity lower bounds? Book source Kurt Gödel did it all, succinctly. His famous 1938 paper “The Consistency of the Axiom of Choice and of the Generalized Continuum-Hypothesis” was pages long. Since the Proceedings…
From The Eponymous Pickle
IBM and Apple Partnership for Mobile
I was struck by this announcement yesterday because it includes many of the needs we addressed in the enterprise when we understood that mobile capabilities would change the way we did work. We would have to provide new functionality…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Searching for Live Hangouts
Interesting idea to search for live events in Google Hangouts. In test. Have now used hangouts a number of times for small group communications. Simple interface, and is usually without problems.
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Save The Date for the 2015 CSTA Annual Conference
Yes, we just finished the Computer Science Teachers Association conference. And it was a great one. You can get copies of many of the presentation decks at http://csta.acm.org/ProfessionalDevelopment/sub/CSTA14/Presentations.html…
From The Eponymous Pickle
IT is Cracking the C Suite
In the HBR Blog: Well yes, but it has been there selectively, for a long time. Well understood for several decades that its values are not overhead, but essential. Just managed differently in different enterprises.
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
Dr. Keith Marzullo reappointed as Division Director for Computer and Network Systems at NSF
Below is a Letter from Dr. Farnam Jahanian, Assistant Director at the National Science Foundation (NSF) for the Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) Directorate. Dear CISE Community, I am delighted to announce…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Creating Future IT Organizations
In CIOInsight: Transformation yes, but also making things work efficiently." ... If I have one major complaint about how IT executives have seen their role, it is that, generally speaking, they think too small. For many IT…
From Schneier on Security
Security Against Traffic Analysis of Cloud Data Access
Here's some interesting research on foiling traffic analysis of cloud storage systems. Press release....
From The Eponymous Pickle
Samsung and SmartThings
In GigaOM: Samsung is in negotiation to buy home automation company SmartThings. The connection makes lots of sense. Though as I have mentioned here before, I do hope that the user experience under Samsung is improved" ...…
From Writing
The Saga Of The Stank
My hand is over my mouth, my eyes are watering, and I'm trying to hold my breath, but every few seconds, my throat tries to turn itself inside out. Most smells, after a little while, fade into the background -- you become desensitized…
From Writing
The Saga Of The Stank
My hand is over my mouth, my eyes are watering, and I’m trying to hold my breath, but every few seconds, my throat tries to turn itself inside out. Most smells, after a little while, fade into the background—you become desensitized…
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
CSTA 2014 Day Two
CSTA like so many great conferences is as much about learning from face to face informal conversations as it is about formal sessions. I’ve been able to talk with a bunch of CS teachers about a bunch of topics. The picture on…
From Schneier on Security
Risks of Keyloggers on Public Computers
Brian Krebs is reporting that: The U.S. Secret Service is advising the hospitality industry to inspect computers made available to guests in hotel business centers, warning that crooks have been compromising hotel business center…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Thermoelectric Materials
In Tech Review: Turning waste heat into energy. With an abundantly available material. " ... California-based Alphabet Energy plans to begin selling a new type of material that can turn heat into electricity. Unlike previous…
From The Eponymous Pickle
New Compounds from Microbe Interaction
Synthetic biology (WP Overview) is of interest for product development, some readers of this blog have indicated an interest in how this domain could link to analytic methods. You will see some pieces like the below appearing…
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
My Big Learning at CSTA 2014 Day 1–Not From A Session
Usually I’m good about writing up the events of a conference at the end of the day and putting up a blog post. Not this time. I blame it on Peli de Halleux from Microsoft Research. Peli is running a Code Hunt Contest for CSTA…
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
Capabilities Reincarnated: Compatibility and Better Memory Protection
The following is a special contribution to this blog by by CCC Executive Council Member Mark D. Hill of the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Background: Senior computer scientists remember memory “capabilities” as an abstraction…
From BLOG@CACM
The Perfect Candidate
What makes a good candidate for a research position?
From The Eponymous Pickle
Major Urban Data Observatory
Interesting concept, in Venturebeat: A means to observe and compare data about major cities. And I hope visualizing related analytics. Sounds akin to work that was done with P&G's Business Sphere.TED co-founder Richard Saul…