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 The Eponymous Pickle
Advances in Vending
We did lots of work on kiosk implementations in the innovation centers. I recently talked to a company, Utiqueshop that was doing some interesting things in advanced kiosks for samples. In the WSJ today, a good article on advances…
From U.S. Public Policy Committee of the ACM
USACM and SIGPLAN Comment on SEC Python Proposal
The Securities and Exchange Commission recently issued a request for comments on proposed changes to the rules regulating asset-backed securities. Part of the suggested changes included a requirement to file a computer program…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Floating Wind Lens
From IdeaConnection. The Floating Wind Lens. Improvement in wind power technology?
From The Eponymous Pickle
Retail Realities Column
Evan Schuman, editor of Storefrontbacktalk, points me to their Retail Realities column published every Friday on CBSNews.com. Add it to your feed. Also on Twitter.
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Interesting Links August 3 2010
You may have noticed that I wasn
From BLOG@CACM
CS Education Gets Congressional Attention
Two Congressman introduced two pieces of legislation -- The Computer Science Education Act and the Computer Science Education Week Resolution -- to offer reforms for computer science education and bring attention to the field…
From Schneier on Security
Location-Based Quantum Encryption
Location-based encryption -- a system by which only a recipient in a specific location can decrypt the message -- fails because location can be spoofed. Now a group of researchers has solved the problem in a quantum cryptography…
From The Noisy Channel
Overcoming Spammers in Twitter
As I blogged a few months ago, University of Oviedo professor Daniel Gayo-Avello published a research paper entitled “Nepotistic Relationships in Twitter and their Impact on Rank Prestige Algorithms“, in which he concluded that…
From BLOG@CACM
Evaluating the Success of Mentoring Programs
Can HCI evaluation methods help to assess the effectiveness of mentoring programs for women?
From Putting People First
Mobile youth activism around the world
A couple of years ago I wrote about Mobile Revolutions, a blog about mobile phones, youth and social change by Lisa Campbell Salazar. The blog also supported TakingITMobile, an international study on youth mobile communications…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Future of Social Gaming
In the Recorded Future blog, a post about an analysis of the future of social gaming this is a nice example of the use of the novel Recorded Future predictive approach and the use of visualizations to support it. Follow their…
From Schneier on Security
Eavesdropping Smartphone Apps
Seems there are a lot of them. They do it for marketing purposes. Really, they seem to do it because the code base they use does it automatically or just because they can. (Initial reports that an Android wallpaper app was…
From Wild WebMink
Is the
I was pleased to be able to attend this year’s OSCON, O’Reilly Media’s open source convention held once again in Portland, Oregon in mid-July. There have been numerous reports about it, not least from the New York Times, but…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Rapportive Contact List Management
I just took a look at the Rapportive Rich Contact resource add on to the Chrome browser. It works with the GMail service only. It will not work with the Explorer browser, but will work with Firefox. It replaces the advertising…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Internet Time Budgets
Not unexpected, and here social networks are including blogs, which is also blogs, broadly defined to include newsfeeds. Not necessarily including any actual social engagement. Most Internet time now spent with social networks…
From U.S. Public Policy Committee of the ACM
Hill Tech Happenings, Week of August 2
The House is presently on recess until after Labor Day, and the Senate is scheduled to join them by the weekend.
August 4 (Continues to noon on August 6) The Information Security and Privacy Board will meet to discuss a variety…From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Fixing the Computer Science Problem with an Act of Congress
Bills get written and submitted to Congress without getting passed all the time but if nothing else the process often gets the discussion going. A recent bill to assess and help improve the state of K-12 Computer Science Education…
From Computational Complexity
I want your intuitions on this, so the less you know the more I want you to post
Let f(n) be a monotone increasing function from N to N. (CLARIFICATION ADDED LATER: N is the naturals.) Consider the following game: Let n be a natural number which we thing of as being large. Mark and Betty alternate (Mark…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Scientopia
A new science blogging network.-
From Computer Science Teachers Association
Students Benefit from Programming Contests
"Go to a programming contest? Me? Never! I'm not good enough. I'm not fast enough. I'd never win. Why bother?"
That's what I'd always thought. I started programming later in life (after I was 20) than all those really fastI…From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
NSF
Last week, the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) announced a new report titled “Telling the Stories of the BPC Alliances”. This report describes how the National Science Foundation
From The Eponymous Pickle
Wireless Technology on the Road
Addresses some of the standards and issues involved:In CACM: Communications technology is transforming the driving experience. Automatic toll collection, crash reporting, and satellite-based navigation with traffic updates
From Schneier on Security
Book Review: How Risky Is It, Really?
David Ropeik is a writer and consultant who specializes in risk perception and communication. His book, How Risky Is It, Really?: Why Our Fears Don't Always Match the Facts, is a solid introduction to the biology, psychology…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Deeper Motives
This article quotes Gary Singer, CEO of Buyology Inc.Deeper Motives: Getting Beyond Targeting by Steve Smith, Friday, July 30, 2010, 2:45 PM Behavioral targeting generally hunts for affinities. You read this -- so you must…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Building a Lego Universe
Via IEEE Spectrum. I much like the idea of a company which has been known for incremental play to become involved in the broader area of gaming. Building the Lego UniverseTen years in the making, the online computer game Lego…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Virtual Views of Store Environments
Linking virtual environments and brain behavior. Makes sense since a virtual environment can be quickly modified to construct new experiments. Then the human reaction to the environment can be quickly gauged. Addresses aspects…
From Wild WebMink
Now On Kindle
If you’re a Kindle owner, you may be interested to know that Wild Webmink is now available for the Kindle. Go to the Kindle Store to subscribe.
From The Eponymous Pickle
Pepsi and Enterprise Learning
New at Pepsi, in Consumer Goods Tech:PepsiCo's New Approach to Enterprise Learning PepsiCo launched an innovative initiative in May 2009 that can serve as a valuable learning model for companies in any industry. Called the PepsiCo…
From Wild WebMink
links for 2010-08-01
WikiLeaks disclosures are a 'tragedy' Yes, I get the fact the documents smear the war and that the US government spins the facts. I also get that there's a damage control media campaign in progress. But this former General makes…
From Putting People First
Reputation managers addressing our internet footprints
In the modern digital age where seemingly everything and everyone is online, a new industry is emerging to “manage” the internet footprint that people and businesses leave online. “Reputation managers” can clean up and shape…