Communications of the ACM
The blog archive provides access to past blog postings from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
August 2011
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
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From The Eponymous Pickle
Slogans vs Logos
Penn's always interesting language log blog has an interesting post about how while verbal slogans can be resisted as a form of meme, logos and graphical forms are more difficult to avoid. Is this an example of conscious vsThe…
From Computer Science Teachers Association
Sock Monkey and Computer Science Advocacy Specialists
The CSTA Computer Science Advocacy Specialists play a huge role in advocating for K-12 computer science education at the state and national level.
Here is Sock Monkey helping Computer Science Advocacy Specialists Stephanie…From Schneier on Security
Home-Made Wi-Fi Hacking, Phone Snooping, UAV
From Apophenia
Everyone’s abuzz with the “nymwars,” mostly in response to Google Plus’ decision to enforce its “real names” policy. At first, Google Plus went on a deleting spree, killing off accounts that violated its policy. When the community…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Empower Media Marketing to Acquire MIG
I have mentioned Market Intelligence Group here a number of times. More companies should be using their analytical methods. Now they are being acquired by Empower Media Marketing. Much more about that and both companies here…
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
One of mankind’s oldest dreams is to fly like a bird. And now, thanks to a team of German researchers, we’ve moved one step closer with
From Schneier on Security
Hacking Lotteries
Two items on hacking lotteries. The first is about someone who figured out how to spot winner in a scratch-of tic-tac-toe style game, and a daily draw style game where expcted payout can exceed the ticket price. The second…
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
Gigabit in the Home
We’ve covered the US Ignite and Gig.U initiatives on this blog over the course of the past few months, and now we’ve been pointed to a great video that explains, in fairly concrete terms, exactly what high-capacity networking…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Becoming Acquainted with Data
Stephen Few on on becoming acquainted with a dataset for the first time. Nicely done, this was a situation I often encountered and simple visualization was the best technique.
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Computer Crackers are Evil
Recently a friend of mine, Vicki Davis, received a pre-publication copy of the new book by Kevin Mitnick the famous cracker. Vicki wrote here review of the book at Ghost in the Wires: Kevin Mitnick's memoir. She found the book…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Back to School Tablet Sales
Forbes suggests that tablet sales will boom with the new school year. Not unexpected, but I still think that laptops are today still more versatile, and tablets will act as an augmentation device.
From The Eponymous Pickle
Facebook Analytics Tool
A new Facebook Analytic tool of interest. ...PageLever shows impressions (any time a story loads in a browser whether on your page or not) for any date range, not just month or week. It separates unique impressions from repeat…
From Schneier on Security
New Information on the Inventor of the One-Time Pad
Seems that the one-time pad was not first invented by Vernam:
He could plainly see that the document described a technique called the one-time pad fully 35 years before its supposed invention during World War I by Gilbert Vernam…From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
DoD Enters National Robotics Initiative
Back in mid-June, we noted the President’s announcement of a $70 million National Robotics Initiative (NRI) — a multi-agency investment spanning the NSF, NIH, NASA, and U.S. Department of Agriculture –
From Computational Complexity
If I was a tweeter (is that a word?)
Since Lance is not tweeting this week, I will take up the slack. So, here is my once-in-a-while post
If I tweeted AND if tweets didn't have to be so short, here is what I would tweet:Possibly the youngest blogger: a 7-year…
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
mHealth Winter Institute Announced
The NIH has just announced a Mobile Health Winter Institute — to be held in conjunction with the 2011 mHealth Summit in Washington, DC, in early December. Applications for the weeklong training opportunity — specifically geared…
From The Eponymous Pickle
QR Code Mistakes
Good Mashable piece on the use of QR codes. A useful quick read for anyone considering a QR code based promotion idea.
From Schneier on Security
Identifying People by their Writing Style
The article is in the context of the big Facebook lawsuit, but the part about identifying people by their writing style is interesting:
Recently, a team of computer scientists at Concordia University in Montreal took advantage…From Putting People First
Ezio Manzini on the economics of design for social innovation
Sarah Brooks of Shareable has just published the second part of her interview with the Italian design strategist Ezio Manzini, who is one of the world
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Imagine Cup Projects
Many of the best projects that are entered in the Imagine Cup are inspired by real people solving problems that have deep meaning for the project team. For some it is a family member or friend who suffered a great loss. For others…
From The Female Perspective of Computer Science
Do I Want to Be an Entrepreneur?
Even though it's early, I have been starting to think about what I want to do when I graduate. Teaching is high up there is I can find a good local job doing it, but I have also been toying with the idea of starting something…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Skype on the iPad
Skype now has an available native App on the iPad. Tested it and it works quite well on wifi.Could use better contact management and additional client options. A few crashes. Overall though it creates a nice video 'desktop' on…
From Schneier on Security
Developments in Facial Recognition
Eventually, it will work. You'll be able to wear a camera that will automatically recognize someone walking towards you, and a microphone that will automatically tell you who that person is and maybe something about them. None…
From The Eponymous Pickle
The Science Fiction Behind Search
In the Google Quarterly. A looking at what works very well, not quite so well and not at all in search by Google, and how we may start to think about the future of search. I think one thing missing is strong collaborativenewly…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Eight Pillars of Innovation
In the Google Quarterly. "... The greatest innovations are the ones we take for granted, like light bulbs, refrigeration and penicillin. But in a world where the miraculous very quickly becomes common-place, how can a company…
From Putting People First
Book: Design for Services
Design for Services Series: Design for Social Responsibility Authors: Anna Meroni and Daniela Sangiorgi Gower Publishing, August 2011, 298 pages In Design for Services, Anna Meroni and Daniela Sangiorgi articulate what Design…
From Putting People First
Design research: what is it and why do it?
In a long post on reBoot, Panthea Lee has laid out some basic principles, approaches, and tools of design research so public institutions can better understand how it serves their work. As pointed out by Tricia Wang, the article…
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
Could the Next Big Thing
It’s not everyday the national news media envisions computing research. But it happened on Sunday, when
From The Eponymous Pickle
Brain and Brain Vibrations
Martin Lindstrom in his latest article writes about phantom cellphone vibrations That have us reaching for our pockets even without any conscious cues. He relates how this work relates to fmri studies he did concerning the influence…