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
Can Social Save Media?
Talk from Supernova: Moderators are Wharton's Peter Fader and Eric Barlow ... Via WIMI: Wharton Interactive Media Initiative.
From The Eponymous Pickle
Chrome Calling Phone
I like this idea, sending multimedia things to your phone. I have often been in this fix. Need to get things to my phone and ready to go. Android-only according the the article.
From BLOG@CACM
Research in the Wild: Making Research Work in Industry
What is the best way to organize researchers into a company? An independent research lab? Mixing researchers in with product teams? Or not hiring researchers at all?
From The Eponymous Pickle
Visual Meetings!
Newly brought to my attention, we used David's methods to do group productivity sessions. Always very imppressive. I recognize parts of the book as some of the excellent training he provided for us. I will provide more detail…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Best Practices
Interesting thoughts about the development and use of best practices, a common thing in the enterprise. Best practices work under a set of given contexts.
From Wild WebMink
links for 2010-08-12
Why We Need To Abolish Software Patents "Patents make a lot of sense in many industries …. But in software these are just nuclear weapons in an arms race. They don
From Schneier on Security
Security Analysis of Smudges on Smart Phone Touch Screens
"Smudge Attacks on Smartphone Touch Screens":
Abstract: Touch screens are an increasingly common feature on personal computing devices, especially smartphones, where size and user interface advantages accrue from consolidating…From My Biased Coin
Monkey Business
I see Harvard's in the news yet again, as the Boston Globe broke a story about psychologist Marc Hauser, who is "taking a year-long leave after a lengthy internal investigation found evidence of scientific misconduct in his laboratory…
From Wild WebMink
The King Is Dead, Long Live The King
The move back to collaborative co-development of open source will characterise the next phase of the open source movement.
From The Eponymous Pickle
How to Build a Mind
Still waiting for some of the required details for reverse-engineering. I am no neuroscientist, but even I can see that all the blueprints are not ready yet. "The Mind and How To Build OneAugust 12, 2010 by Ray KurzweilAt the…
From Computer Science Teachers Association
Can Our Classrooms Be More Collaborative
I recently had the privilege of attending the Computer Science and Information Technology Symposium at Google Headquarters in Mountain View, California. Wow! What a cool place! Lava lamps! Foosball tables! Who wouldn't want to…
From My Biased Coin
Other UK Adventures
While in the UK, I went out to some other places to give talks -- Liverpool and Cambridge.At both places I gave my talk on our analysis of the auction site Swoopo, which seemed well received. Of course it's a topic that cantalks…
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Windows Phone 7 Sample applications
Windows Phone 7 Program Manager, Sean Mckenna, visited the Channel 9 studio to demo of some Windows Phone 7 applications. The idea is that these are some core applications, for which the source code will be made available at,…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Smartphones and Retailers
The possibilities of having shoppers use their own devices to get information to help them understand their options has existed for some time. But now shoppers are getting unprecedented capabilities to make this easy. In a recent…
From Computational Complexity
Factoring in P ?
(Update on alleged P NE NP proof: There are some issues with it. See these posts on Lipton's blog: here and here and also see a Wikipedia site that (I think) Terry Tao set up here. )
I recently read the following: (Backdrop…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Robot Roadmap
In the CACM, A roadmap for the robotic future. " ... The EU-funded CARE project (Coordination Action for Robotics in Europe), coordinated by Rainer Bischoff and Tim Guhl of KUKA Roboter in Augsburg, Germany, was set up in 2006…
From The Eponymous Pickle
How Many Books Are There?
I am a book and library nut. A nice piece by Google that takes a cut at the 'N' question about books. Along the way you learn quite a bit about books and how they are classified and counted today. If you have interest in"Books…
From Wild WebMink
links for 2010-08-11
Oracle Details Upcoming Solaris 11 Release "We're really getting our grip around building a mission critical operating system that includes technologies from openSolaris that we've been working on for some time as well as technologies…
From BLOG@CACM
Better Game Playing Using Parallel Algorithms
Innovations in playing the game "Go" using Monte Carlo Tree Search and parallel algorithms.
From Schneier on Security
Late Teens and Facebook Privacy
Facebook Privacy Settings: Who Cares?" by danah boyd and Eszter Hargittai.
Abstract: With over 500 million users, the decisions that Facebook makes about its privacy settings have the potential to influence many people. While…From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Bytes by MSDN and TechNet
Microsoft has just started a new series of blogs that will highlight various developers and IT professionals from around the US and beyond. This is a chance to see and hear interviews with a lot of people who are in the business…
From The Female Perspective of Computer Science
A Different Perspective on P != NP
Ok, obviously this potential proof for P != NP is causing quite a stir. I really wasn't planning on blogging about it, but today I had the opportunity to share the buzz with a group of grade 6-8 girls, so I thought I'd write…
From Schneier on Security
Apple JailBreakMe Vulnerability
Good information from Mikko Hypp
From The Eponymous Pickle
Saffron Associative Experience Management
I just received a note announcing Saffron Technologies forthcoming book: Making Memories, Applying Neuron-inspired Associative Memories to National, Business and Consumer Intelligence by Manuel Aparicio IVYou can register and…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Forbes Requires its Reporters to Blog
Via Paul Gillin ... Forbes is requiring its reporters to blog and is opening a new blog. Will newspapers survive by morphing into blogs? That seems to be be happening on the editorial pages.
From Wild WebMink
links for 2010-08-10
The golden age of open source? Matthew Aslett describes what I called "the open source bubble" as open source 3.0 and agrees it's ending in favour of what he calls "open source 4.0" or company-dominated (but not controlled) collaborative…
From Schneier on Security
A Revised Taxonomy of Social Networking Data
Lately I've been reading about user security and privacy -- control, really -- on social networking sites. The issues are hard and the solutions harder, but I'm seeing a lot of confusion in even forming the questions. Social …
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Accessibility and Computer Science
My first real knowledge of differently abled people using computers came about 35 years ago when I was in college. There was a recent graduate of the college who was seriously physically limited. He lived most of his life in …
From Michael Nielsen
Cameron Neylon on Practical Steps Toward Open Science
Cameron Neylon is a scientist at the UK Science and Technology Facilities Council, an open notebook scientist, and one of the most thoughtful advocates of open science. In an email interview I asked Cameron a few questions about…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Book Review: Hamlet's Blackberry
Just completed the recently released: Hamlet's BlackBerry: A Practical Philosophy for Building a Good Life in the Digital Age by William Powers. The link includes section examples. See also the author's blog.The broad topic…