Communications of the ACM
The blog archive provides access to past blog postings from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
August 2009
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
Attributes of good research
Paul Graham gives a list of attributes characterizing start-ups. It strikes me that many of these attributes could describe research projects as well:
Good research projects fail. If there is no risk of failure, you are doing…From The Eponymous Pickle
Google Turning Over IP Addresses
Wikileaks says that Google is turning over information about the IP addresses of some of its users. The article says: ' ... Google has elected to keep extensive, non-anoymized records on its users, but not defend these records…
From Return 42;
Conception, Evolution, and Application of Functional Programming Languages
While I was doing some research for myself about the evolution of the different families of functional programming languages, I came across an interesting ACM Computing Survey by Paul Hudak, published in 1989, about the conception…
From Wild WebMink
links for 2009-08-31
Seems obvious to me that the US was built on the entrepreneurship of immigrants and that shutting them down will lead to decline. After all, …
From The Eponymous Pickle
Feeding Local News
If has been suggested that newspapers will survive by gathering and organizing local news and markets. I still get my local newspaper. Applications like FWix on the IPhone are attempting to take this away as well. Crowdsourcing…
From Wild WebMink
Mine, all mine (& theirs too)
One of our design principles for blogs.sun.com over the years has been to allow everything and let good sense and existing rules prevent mishaps - at least until it's clear we need a new rule of some kind. It's been almost…
From The Noisy Channel
Finding, Locating, Discovering
Thanks to Tony Hollingsworth for alerting me to a post by Alex Campbell entitled "Stark realisation: I no longer depend on Google to find stuff." The title is provocative link bait, but the take-away is very down to earth: Google…
From Schneier on Security
On London's Surveillance Cameras
A recent report has concluded that the London's surveillance cameras have solved one crime per thousand cameras per year.
David Davis MP, the former shadow home secretary, said: "It should provoke a long overdue rethink on where…From The Eponymous Pickle
View Of German Processus Semantic Project
Mark Montgomery sends this along:" A video from ICE '08 on the German government/ SAP project that looks to be the closest competitor to Kyield I've seen to date. Certainly not identical, although the understanding of the need…
From BLOG@CACM
Update on Connectivity
Update on internet connectivity in Colombia
From Computer Science Teachers Association
The Path to Forming CSTA of Ohio
Fellowship and community are the central foundations for the Computer Science Teachers Association of Ohio. The 2008-2009 academic year has been one of building collegial networks. ''
Several informal meetings were held throughout…From Return 42;
Communications of the ACM's Blogroll
"In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice ..."Not too long ago, I wrote about my happiness about the new Communications of the ACM. I kind of grew up with it and in my opinion it has never been as good as…
From The Noisy Channel
Blogs I Read: Chris Dixon (cdixon.org)
From The Eponymous Pickle
Cellphone Coupons
NYTimes on mobile coupons. They are a behind in knowing this idea exists. Yet reasonably good overview.
From Putting People First
The good enough revolution: when cheap and simple is just fine
For years, the experience design community has been using the term ‘good enough prototyping’. Wired UK argues quite convincingly that this approach is now moving into product design: “Cheap, fast, simple tools are suddenly everywhere…
From Putting People First
Using Nokia Life Tools in India to learn English
Dina Mehta, founder and managing director of Mosoci India, reports on how Nokia Life Tools actually gets used in India, and more in particular, how the how the Learn English program, a part of Nokia Life Tools, really works on…
From The Noisy Channel
Free as in Freebase
From CERIAS Blog
Still no sign of land
I am a big fan of the Monty Python troupe. Their silly take on several topics helped point out the absurd and pompous, and still do, but sometimes were simply lunatic in their own right.
One of their sketches, about a group of…From The Eponymous Pickle
Two Nostrils: Sensing and Competing
It is fairly obvious why we have two eyes and two ears. We use a form of triangulation to determine direction and distance. Models in the brain fit the data and make useful conclusions. But why two nostrils? It has been suggested…
From BLOG@CACM
Robotic Delight
Corporate showrooms offer floor after floor of lovable digital strangeness. It's easy to forget they're after your cash.
From The Eponymous Pickle
Four Technologies that are Reshaping BI
From Computerworld: 4 Technologies That Are Reshaping Business Intelligence: Next-generation BI is being formed by predictive analytics, real-time monitoring, in-memory processing, and SaaS. By Doug Henschen...' . Some good points…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Emergent Tech Ethics
A new blog I just discovered on the ethics of emergent technologies:The Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies was formed to study and debate vital questions such as: - Which technologies, especially new ones, are likely…
From Schneier on Security
Friday Squid Blogging: Squid Police
I like to think this isn't a typo.
From Computer Science Teachers Association
Qualifications for Teaching AP CS
I got a panicked e-mail from a local school in August that they didn't have an Advanced Placement Computer Science A teacher for fall. They were planning to use the retired teacher who had taught it the year before, but he had…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Google Book Settlement
One of my favorite and long-time read blogs, the Language Log, has a good piece by Mark Liberman on the Google Book Settlement. There is an ongoing conference at Berkeley that he is covering about how the settlement will effect…
From Schneier on Security
The Security Risks of Accepting Free Laptops
The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation is trying to figure out who is sending laptop computers to state governors across the U.S., including West Virginia Governor Joe Mahchin and Wyoming Governor Dave Freudenthal.
…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Social Media as Mass Marketing
Tom Peters posts on Social Media as Mass Marketing ... Not the Future. A critical and historical view of the topic.
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
Trading compression for speed with vectorization
Bitmap indexes are used by search engines (such as Apache Lucene), they are available in DBMSes such as Oracle and PostgreSQL. They are used in column stores such as the Open Source engines Eigenbase and C-Store, as well as by…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Location-Aware Home Screen on IPhone
It is reported in ReadwriteWeb that Apple is patenting the idea of a location-aware home screen for the IPhone. Imagine a home screen that would show a map, local restaurants, weather, sights, local promotional offers based on…
From Apophenia
Vacation, Vacation, Vaaaay-kaaaay-shun! (offline till Sep 8)
This is the time when all of the crazy people run off to the desert to "survive" with tons of art, fake fur, and countless supplies. Burning Man of course. Normally, I'd be playa-bound, but I'm rebelling and inverting the whole…