Communications of the ACM
The blog archive provides access to past blog postings from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
August 2014
From The Eponymous Pickle
Unilever Brand Experiences
Short piece in The Hub on the Unilever Brand experience. Regarding such topics as sustainability. I followed and reported on Unilever as a competitor and technology innovator for a number of years. See external posts on Unilever…
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
CSTA 2015 CALL FOR PROPOSALS
Time flies when you’re having fun. It seems like just yesterday I got home from this summer’s CSTA conference. But it has actually been a while. And then yesterday I saw the call for proposals for the Annual CSTA conference.
The…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Collection of Big Data and Analytics Presentations
David Pittman's selection of recent slide shares on Big Data and Analytics. He writes:" ... To close out our week of looking at the most popular content from the first half of 2014, we turn to the royalty of shareable content…
From The Eponymous Pickle
On Google+ Value
I have been on Google+ nearly since its formation, posted now and then. Have participated in Hangouts, which work well. It integrates well, as you would expect, into a mostly Google ecosystem. But I have not been convinced in…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Dealing with Supply Chain Complexity
Short piece with four simple ideas. Good place to start, but many details to be completed. " ... Organisations of all shapes and sizes are faced with their supply chains becoming more complex to support the diverse levels…
From The Eponymous Pickle
An Anthropologist at Intel Labs
How and why do companies use anthropologists? Here a conversation with one at Intel Corp. Last I know our enterprise had one, though that was not the title used. Answering questions like "What is the future of technology…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Coolest Toys on Earth
Brought to my attention and meeting with: Coolest Toys on Earth. See their About for more. Local Cincinnati store. Could gamification be connected? See previously here on the Tamagotchi.
From The Eponymous Pickle
Tracking Workforce Fitness
Probably inevitable. But the fairness of how this data will ultimately be used and shared could be a problem. A clear place for wearable sensor use. Will you get a badge and a wrist watch/sensor when you show up for a job?
From Computer Science Teachers Association
a first post from Fred Martin, your new University Representative
Dear CSTA members,
I am delighted and honored to be elected for a 2-year term to the CSTA board, which began this July.
I was with all of you who attended the annual conference in St. Charles this summer. Then I stayed the …From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
Cloud Computing Testbeds to be created for the Research Community
On August 20, 2014, the National Science Foundation (NSF) Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) announced two new $10 million projects for cloud computing testbeds. These new testbeds will enable…
From Putting People First
E-Government for the post-2015 era: the usage perspective
E-Government for the post-2015 era: the usage perspective is the title of the 7th chapter of the recent report “United Nations E-Government Survey 2014 – E-Government for the Future We Want“. The chapter outlines the current…
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
Expert performance and training: what we really know
Movies such as Good Will Hunting tell beautiful stories about young people able to instantly master difficult topics, without any effort on their part. That performance is unrelated to effort is an appealing belief. Whether you…
From My Biased Coin
Hashing Summer School
Back in July I took part in the Hashing Summer School in Copenhagen. This was nominally set up by me, Rasmus Pagh, and Mikkel Thorup, though Mikkel was really the host organizer that put it all together.The course materials. …
From Computational Complexity
Turing's Oracle
My daughter had a summer project to read and summarize some popular science articles. Having heard me talk about Alan Turing more than a few times, she picked a cover story from a recent New Scientist. The cover copy says "Turing's…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Sensor Operated Augmented Fingers
In CACM: More in the sensor and robotic space space. The advances continue. Human augmentation. " ... Massachusetts Institute of Technology researchers have developed a robotic extension to the human hand that could make…
From BLOG@CACM
Recursion and Language at ICER 2014: A Conference Report
Recursion and the unique challenges of programming languages were highlighted at ICER 2014
From Schneier on Security
Disguising Exfiltrated Data
There's an interesting article on a data exfiltration technique. What was unique about the attackers was how they disguised traffic between the malware and command-and-control servers using Google Developers and the public Domain…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Simon: The First Smartphone
A look in Time Mag at the first phone that could be called 'Smart': Simon, offered in 1994, at about $900. Link includes usage videos. Only about 50K units were sold. With a lot less capabilities than we have today. Had…
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Hacking Away at Little Problems
We have a fairly nice system for student information and the like. It is not perfect but then what system is? For example, our student management system will output class rosters as PDF, Word or Excel files. The problem with …
From The Eponymous Pickle
Decide What you Need from Big Data
Podcast from Knowledge@Wharton. Data has value, and the analytics that uses the data to improve process has value. Now everyone can have the data and analytics they need." ... Big data and predictive analytics are creating a…
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
Recent ISAT/DARPA Workshop: Rethinking CAD: New Design Paradigms in the Age of 3-D Printing
The following is a special contribution to this blog by CCC Executive Council Member Mark Hill and workshop organizer Wade Shen of MIT Lincoln Laboratory. Recently DARPA ISAT organized a workshop on the future of Computer Aided…
From Putting People First
Facebook uses ethnography to deliver more relevant ads
“As researchers focusing on Facebook’s advertising, we led research trips with a cross-functional team of product managers, marketers, and engineers to Indonesia, Turkey, and South Africa to develop a solid understanding of cultural…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Analytics Languages in Use
KDNuggets, always a great resource, I often referred to it from the enterprise, surveys the principal analytics and data mining languages in use today. Nicely done article. I would further like to see how cognitive interaction…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Heirs Get Digital Asset Rights
Thinking the implications of this. A further recognition that data is an asset. " .... Delaware becomes first state to give executors broad digital assets access Meet the "Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets and Digital Accounts…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Negotiating Mistakes
In Fast Company: Good points, but not not quite enough about how to achieve them. A particular sales mistake I remember well: " ... Talking too much is a sure-fire way to kill a deal. In fact, Lewis-Fernandez says it’s not…
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
New Widget–CS Teaching Tips
I added a new widget to my blog last night. It is connected to CS Teaching tips which is a webpage and Twitter account – @CSTeachingTips. The widget provides a different teaching tip when ever this blog is opened in a web browser…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Gartner Hype Cycle and Digital Business
In the Informs Analytics Magazine: " .... The journey to digital business is the key theme of Gartner, Inc.'s “Hype Cycle Report for Emerging Technologies, 2014.” According to Gartner, for enterprises setting out on the journey…
From My Biased Coin
Reviewing Scales
I'm just about finished reviewing for CoNEXT (Conference on Emerging Networking Experiments and Technologies), and am starting reviewing for ITCS (Innovations in Theoretical Computer Science). One notable variation in the process…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Free Supermarket for Advertising
In Retailwire: An idea that has been tried a number of times, including in stand alone sample machines. Also called 'tryvertising'. Imagine the potential data from associated promotional message, or linked to loyalty data. Or…
From The Female Perspective of Computer Science
Gram's House Project Team Receives Two NSF Pathways Grants!
Gram's House is a research project I started several years ago with a prototype originally designed for Microsoft's Imagine Cup competition. Since then, a core research team has formed around the project: me (Carleton University)…