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 Computer Science Teachers Association
So What Are You Doing the Week of December 5?
The process of starting a new school year is empowering, exhilarating, and exhausting all at the same time. Even though it's been five years since I was in the classroom, I still get the itch to make big plans and do new cool…
From The Eponymous Pickle
BI Platform is Dead: an Interactive e-book
The BI Platform is Dead: A fresh look at what business analytics means for today's organizationsView this interactive eBook now (Registration with Information management required)The promise of business intelligence (BI) has…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Retailer Helpers
In Bloomberg BusinessWeek: a Good overview article on a number of startups that are using smartphones to bring e-commerce advantages to real-world stores. Mentions a number we have looked at and some not. Some useful statements…
From My Biased Coin
Doing the Right Thing? (Quick Links Edition)
From Shots in the Dark, a pointer to a new "feature" -- apparently, there's not a tweet system recording and listing books checked out from Harvard libraries. No, they're not putting names with it, just times. But who thought…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Whorfian Hypothesis
An extensive NYT Magazine article on the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis: That the language you speak effects how you think. Was often characterized by the observation that some far-northern peoples had many more words for snow, caused…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Field Agent Re-look
I mentioned the Field Agent IPhone App some time ago. It allows a retailer or manufacturer to pay people to perform simple tasks at a store and get paid for doing it. The companies get data about what is really on shelf and…
From The Eponymous Pickle
The RBR Group and other Sites Then and Now
I have been loosely affiliated with the RBR group since my retirement from Procter & Gamble over two years ago. The just updated their web site with some new features and information. P&G has also updated their web site, giving…
From The Female Perspective of Computer Science
Getting Ready for a Conference
Grace Hopper is fast approaching so I find myself, once again, madly going through my usual routine list of tasks to do before heading to a conference. Here's my process:Get funding. This comes from different sources depending…
From The Eponymous Pickle
IBM Makes a Nano Map
IBM makes a clever nano world map 1000 times smaller than grain of sand . Small things can be useful.
From Wild WebMink
History In Action
Google Code Blog: An update on JavaOne Google pulls all their people out of JavaOne. That’s going to be a big hole in the agenda since they employ all the good speakers… (well, most of them) (tags: Google Oracle Java JavaOne)…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Changing Your Privacy Mind
EchoEcho: A startup that lets you ask of anyone: Where are you? - The receiver can provide or deny the information. The approach is different because you can change your answer each time, not set it as a forgotten parameter setting…
From The Eponymous Pickle
RFID Location of Sponges, Instruments
In RFID Journal: The FDA has approved the use of passive RFID tags for the location of instruments and sponges. I recall this being brought up in sessions ten years ago. Surprising that it has taken this long to get the approval…
From Schneier on Security
Friday Squid Blogging: Jewel of the Sea
From The Eponymous Pickle
On Luring Shoppers to the Store
A good WSJ article on various uses of technology to get people to physical retail. This was an area we worked on extensively with a number of vendors.
From Computer Science Teachers Association
Students Need Both Knowledge and Facts
As the new school year starts, an old complaint resurfaces. A recent opinion piece has said once again that US higher education is failing US employers. Students are graduating without knowing how to write, how to do a critical…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Character Amnesia in Chinese
Lots of thoughts out about how technology is altering aspects of literacy. This article from Language Log, about how text messaging is influencing Chinese characters. From the language log: " ... Pessimists and alarmists have…
From Schneier on Security
Me at the EastWest Institute
Back in May, I attended the EastWest Institute's First Worldwide Cybersecurity Summit in Dallas. I only had eight minutes to speak, and tried to turn the dialog to security, privacy, and the individual.
From The Eponymous Pickle
Seaswarm Spill Robotics
Report about an MIT project called Seaswarm. Autonomous robotics to address oil spills. Includes an interesting video. I do always wonder about the contextual complexity of a system that claims to be autonomous.
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
Computing Research in Astronomy
Every 10 years, U.S. astronomers come together to generate what has become a highly influential report recommending which astronomy and astrophysics projects should be funded by Federal agencies in the following decade. This…
From Schneier on Security
Is the Whole Country an Airport Security Zone?
Full-body scanners in roving vans:
American Science & Engineering, a company based in Billerica, Massachusetts, has sold U.S. and foreign government agencies more than 500 backscatter x-ray scanners mounted in vans that can …From The Eponymous Pickle
Learn from Old Spice
This received considerable publicity. Is it for everyone? Likely not, but it does indicate what can work: What Marketers Can Learn From the Old Spice 'Your Man' Campaign Stick to P&G's Well-Stirred Mix of the Three Media: Paid…
From Wild WebMink
links for 2010-08-27
The long, sordid tale of Sun RPC, abbreviated somewhat, to protect the guily and the irresponsible. One of the long-running projects I had at Sun was to get the (pre-GPL, permissive) license on Sun RPC changed so that GNU/Linux…
From Computational Complexity
Theory Journals
I got the following request from a reader. I have a question about TCS journals. As I am trying to follow your advice on being more diligent about journalizing my papers, I realized that I am surprisingly ignorant about where…
From Wild WebMink
The debate over the demise of "Open Core" has led to a reprise of "which open source license is best" arguments again. But the real driving force is not the licence; it's the equality of participants.
From The Noisy Channel
HCIR 2010: Bigger and Better than Ever!
Last Sunday was HCIR 2010, the Fourth Annual Workshop on Human-Computer Interaction and Information Retrieval, held at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, collocated with the Information Interaction in Context Symposium (IIiX…
From Apophenia
Regulating the Use of Social Media Data
If you were to walk into my office, I’d have a pretty descent sense of your gender, your age, your race, and other identity markers. My knowledge wouldn’t be perfect, but it would give me plenty of information that I could use…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Millenials
Paul Gillin deftly discusses Millenials Coming soon to a cubical near you. I see the same behavior in my millenial children.
From BLOG@CACM
My Top 10 Assertions About Data Warehouses
Data warehouses, business intelligence, business analytics, and complex analytics are the subject of increasingly intense marketing wars, seemingly accelerated by Oracle’s recent introduction of the Exadata appliance. Here is…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Weak Link between Popularity and Influence
HP Researchers find only weak link between popularity and influence. " ... It is worth emphasizing that HP's studies are designed to the highest scientific standards; they are not isolated case studies or the musings of a "social…
From Computational Complexity
Cryptography if P = NP
Bill is at Barriers II in Princeton and promises a full report upon his return. Ask many computer scientists what happens if P = NP and you'll get the response that it will kill cryptography. Let's ignore solving all optimization…