Communications of the ACM
The blog archive provides access to past blog postings from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
August 2010
From Schneier on Security
Yet Another Way to Sneak Liquids onto an Airplane
Coffee cup disguised as a camera lens.
From The Eponymous Pickle
Tesco Mobile Shopping App
In the UK MarketingWeek. Tesco is always innovative. In particular interesting is their motivation for bypassing some more popular smartphone platforms:"Tesco is set to roll out its first mobile shopping app on Nokia's Ovi…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Airline Booking Augmented Reality
Metaio sends along this simple application of augmented reality in travel services: ' .. The air transport IT specialist, SITA and Malaysia Airlines have developed an augmented reality app - based on the Unifeye Mobile SDK -Please…
From Schneier on Security
More Brain Scans to Detect Future Terrorists
Worked well in a test:
For the first time, the Northwestern researchers used the P300 testing in a mock terrorism scenario in which the subjects are planning, rather than perpetrating, a crime. The P300 brain waves were measured…From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Silverlight 4 XNA Platformer Level Editor for Windows Phone 7
Interesting in developing games for the Windows Phone 7? David Rousset has just finished a complete series of blog posts explaining a demo he
From Computer Science Teachers Association
University Faculty Can Help with K-12!
I think many of us (including faculty at liberal arts colleges) hold a pretty outdated view of what goes on in different kinds of institutions. We tend to think that at the larger universities people walk into giant lecture halls…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Mass Customization Friday
An interesting mass customization event will be held today on Facebook. They are described at the link. " ... 20 startups in the mass customization space will advertise in a coordinated fashion on Friday (6/8) on Facebook to…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Google Small Business Blog
Just started up, the Google Small Business Blog. " ... a central hub that brings together all the information about our products, features and projects of specific interest to the small business community ... "
From Wild WebMink
? CWUK Blog Changes
Small administrative note: ComputerWorldUK switched over to a much more attractive design last night, and at the same time switched their blogging platform to Moveable Type. As a consequence, the URL’s for my blog postings over…
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
10 Most Popular Posts June and July 2010
It
From The Eponymous Pickle
Crowd Wisdom in Small Business
A colleage recently talk to me about projects we had proposed using crowd wisdom. A good NYT article on the use of 'Wisdom of the Crowd' plays, broadly defined, in small business. I always take notice when a new method is successfully…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Gulf Spill's Lessons for Robotics
In IEEE Spectrum: A number of strategic and tactical lessons learned for robotics during the Gulf spill.
From The Eponymous Pickle
Ferrari Quits Barcode Logo
It was one of the major claims in Martin Lindstrom's book: Buyology that the tobacco industry was using subliminal triggers in ads, even when explicit brand logos had been removed. In his latest newsletter he reports: " ..Here…
From Schneier on Security
NSA and the National Cryptologic Museum
Most people might not be aware of it, but there's a National Cryptologic Museum at Ft. Meade, at NSA Headquarters. It's hard to know its exact relationship with the NSA. Is it part of the NSA, or is it a separate organization…
From Putting People First
The strategic arc of interaction design
Steve Baty, principal at Meld Studios and vice president of IxDA, argues in a long article on Core77 that interaction designers now have the opportunity to move their purview beyond the shallow plane of interaction into the design…
From Putting People First
Design for social change and the museum
From April 12 through April 14, 2010, 22 designers, historians, curators, educators and journalists met at Rockefeller Foundation
From The Eponymous Pickle
Google Drops Wave
In a surprising development Google has decided to drop its Wave social-collaborative capability by year's end. Some of the functionality will be included in other services. I only knew a few people that used it. I played with…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Context Aware Computing
In the August IEEE Computer an issue devoted to Context Aware Computing. Including a good video. So what is it and why does it matter far beyond just your location? How does it link to many new kinds of sensor data being provided…
From Computer Science Teachers Association
CS Education Gets Congressional Attention
Last week was a huge one for computer science education in the Nation's Capital. Congressmen from both parties introduced two pieces of legislation -- The Computer Science Education Act and the Computer Science Education Week…
From The Eponymous Pickle
AisleBuyer
Just brought to my attention via Andrew Paradies. AisleBuyer A Smartphone based engagement and convenience enhancement idea for retail. An idea we explored a number of times in the innovation center. The broad use of smartphones…
From U.S. Public Policy Committee of the ACM
CS Education Gets Congressional Attention
Last week was a huge one for computer science education in the Nation's Capital. Congressmen from both parties introduced two pieces of legislation -- The Computer Science Education Act and the Computer Science Education Week…
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
What do you want in a Textbook
I
From Schneier on Security
WikiLeaks Insurance File
Now this is an interesting development:
In the wake of strong U.S. government statements condemning WikiLeaks' recent publishing of 77,000 Afghan War documents, the secret-spilling site has posted a mysterious encrypted file…From Wild WebMink
? Career Bets
Its Official Software Will Be Unpatentable In NZ “Despite what appears to be a big-budget lobbying effort by the pro-patent fraternity, Hon Simon Power announced [on July 15] that he wouldn’t be modifying the proposed Patents…
From Wild WebMink
Will Illumos Bring OpenSolaris Back To Life?
Today sees the launch of the Illumos Project, heralded last week in a message on the OpenSolaris mailing lists. The announcement caused much excitement, with many assuming it was a fork of OpenSolaris or another OpenSolaris distribution…
From Computational Complexity
The Solution to the Mark-Betty Game
RECALL from my last post the following game:
Let f(n) be a non-decreasing function from naturals to naturals. Consider the following game:
Let n be a large natural number. Mark and Betty alternate (Mark goes first) putting…From The Noisy Channel
HCIR 2010 Accepted Papers
The 4th Workshop on Human-Computer Interaction and Information Retrieval (HCIR 2010) is coming up on August 22 in New Brunswick, NJ, taking place immediately after the Information Interaction in Context conference (IIiX 2010)…
From The Eponymous Pickle
What Online Marketers Know About You
In Flowingdata: What Online Marketers Know About you. I do like the topic, it is something we should be aware of. I am not sure that the graphics add enough to the topic. I remain an advocate of graphics that are just complicated…
From Schneier on Security
UAE to Ban BlackBerrys
The United Arab Emirates -- Dubai, etc. -- is threatening to ban BlackBerrys because they can't eavesdrop on them.
At the heart of the battle is access to the data transmitted by BlackBerrys. RIM processes the information through…From The Eponymous Pickle
QR Codes get Needed Publicity
The square two dimensional QR code, commonly used in Japan, is uncommon in North America. And that is the problem. If people don't know there may be something interesting behind the code, they won't try to scan it. And, also…