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 Putting People First
The Economist on social innovation
In America and Britain governments hope that a partnership with
From Putting People First
Innovation in Kenya
In Making Do: Innovation in Kenya
From Putting People First
Clay Shirky
In this review of the book Over the holidays, I read Clay Shirky’s new book Cognitive Surplus: Creativity and Generosity in a Connected Age and found it quite wanting. In an excellent review of the book, researcher and author…
From Putting People First
It pays to be useful
In this review of the book 50 Ways to Make Google Love Your Website, published by The Hindu, the author emphasises very strongly the importance of usefulness. “Create your website for your users, advise Steve Johnston and Liam…
From Putting People First
Why web tracking isn
Companies spend so much money on free services because of online advertising that trades in personal information. If Web users supply less information, the Web will supply less information to them, says Jim Harper in the Wall…
From Putting People First
Finding happiness while spending less
Stephanie Rosenbloom writes in the New York Times on what will make us happy. “The practices that consumers have adopted in response to the economic crisis ultimately could
From Putting People First
The dirtiest word in UX: complexity
In an article for UX Mag designer Francisco Inchauste examines some of the many faces of complexity and explores the balance we need to find for successful solutions. Simplicity for its own sake should not be the goal. Balancing…
From Putting People First
Information seeking behaviour of Generation Y doctoral students
Emerging findings from the first annual report of a major three-year study into the information seeking behaviour of Generation Y doctoral students show that there are striking similarities between students born between 1982…
From Putting People First
The Internet Generation prefers the real world
They may have been dubbed the “Internet generation,” but young people are more interested in their real-world friends than Facebook. New research shows that the majority of children and teenagers are not the Web-savvy digital…
From My Biased Coin
RATS roundup
I didn't see every talk (my brother lives in the area, so I took a break to see family) but I did have a fun day at RATS. There was a brief introduction by Chris Anderson of Wired/The Long Tail fame (on video -- I was disappointed…
From The Eponymous Pickle
FM Radios Mandatory on Cells?
The buzz is out that there may be US laws enacted that require an FM receiver on ever cellphone. Essentially another subsidization of an industry, the broadcasting community. Free market? I wonder who will pay for that?
From Schneier on Security
Friday Squid Blogging: Flying Squid
Who knew?
"Hulse was shooting with burst mode on his camera, so I know exactly what the interval is between the frames and I can calculate velocity of squid flying though the air," O'Dor says. "We now think there are dozens …From My Biased Coin
MonkeyBusiness : Some Resolution
Wow. After days of various speculation and reports from multiple new sources, Dean (Mike) Smith of the Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences has made an announcement regarding the investigation of Marc Hauser. The opening paragraph…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Tom Peter's Slides
Sort of a Friday's assortment of things for contemplation. Tom Peters shares some of the slides he uses for presentations. Some interesting, some confusing, some insightful that are worth a ponder. Is this an example of the good…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Developing Software for Digital Cameras
Open source software development for digital cameras. Great direction." ... "My hope is that this will shift the camera industry," says Stanford's Marc Levoy, who leads the group that released the software this week at the SIGGRAPH…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Railfax Data
A good example of using Tableau systems online, by Drew Robertson Summary of Rail Freight Traffic from Atlantic Systems Inc.Data through July 31, 2010 -- 30 W 2010A Weekly Report of North American Rail Freight Traffic, by Major…
From The Female Perspective of Computer Science
Grace Hopper How-To's
The Online Communities Committee for this year's Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing has been working to bring you a series of how-to's that are intended to help you get the most out of the conference this year (before…
From Computational Complexity
NSF Updates
Many changes at the National Science Foundation both in programs and personnel. Some highlights of upcoming CISE programs. Expeditions is moving to an 18-month cycle but this year's preproposal deadline is September 10. Last…
From Wild WebMink
links for 2010-08-20
Digital Bang: Sub Pop's Amazon Sampler A rare Amazon UK free MP3 sampler (people located outside the UK need not even try, Amazon UK uses an IP whitelist). This is worth downloading just for the Iron & Wine track. (tags: Amazon…
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Shortening the Time To Fun
Recently my friend and co-worker Dan Waters was giving a presentation about XNA Game Studio as a development platform for the new Windows Phone 7s. One of the benefits of XNA is that it reduces the “time to fun.” In other words…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Procter Future Friendly
Press Release: P&G Future Friendly Joins National Geographic Society, National Geographic Channel and Nat Geo WILD to Launch Interactive School Conservation Program ... "
From The Eponymous Pickle
A First Look at Facebook Places
I downloaded the new Facebook IPhone App that includes the Places locational capability. It took about 24 hours before Places was implemented 'for my area'. It is very similar to Foursquare, showing you nearby places and then…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Tags in Ducts
A curious little discovery about passive RFID tags, their read range can be extended by placing them in metal ducts. The ducts act as wave guides for the RF transmission. It is suggested that the phenomenon could be used to have…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Jim Stengel's Blog
Was just reminded of the blog of Jim Stengel, former CMO of Procter & Gamble. Lot of useful thoughts there. Recent post " .... working as a consultant with Luxottica ... "
From Schneier on Security
Intel Buys McAfee
It's another example of a large non-security company buying a security company. I've been talking about this sort of thing for two and a half years:
It's not consolidation as we're used to. In the security industry…From My Biased Coin
Various Quick Pointers
While it may not be news elsewhere, I'm certainly interested in the "local" case of Marc Hauser, the evolutionary psychologist at Harvard whose work has been "under review". The latest interesting update appears at the Chronicle…
From The Eponymous Pickle
On the Power of Choice
Marketing and merchandising are about choice. Is there too much or too little? How do we make the consumers choice the choice of our product? What separates one choice from another? This recent Knowledge@Wharton video is related…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Complex Adaptive Healthcare
Colleague Mark Montgomery posts in his Kyield blog about complex adaptive healthcare. Inspired by a meeting at the Santa Fe Institute. I was an enterprise representative there for a number of years and often found the interactions…
From Wild WebMink
? Helpless?
Lawsuit Raises Questions about Open Invention Network, Linux Foundation Tweets get as much coverage as interviews these days, it seems. Tweets lack nuance and usually lack context and do not form a good basis for journalism (or…
From Computational Complexity
Spielman Receives the Nevanlinna Prize
Dan Spielman wins the Nevanlinna prize for "smoothed analysis of Linear Programming, algorithms for graph-based codes and applications of graph theory to Numerical Computing." Let's also not forget that as an undergrad Spielman…