Communications of the ACM
The blog archive provides access to past blog postings from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
September 2010
From U.S. Public Policy Committee of the ACM
Policy Highlights from Communications of the ACM - September 2010 (Vol. 53, No. 9)
Below is a list of items with policy relevance from the September issue of Communications of the ACM. As always, much of the material in CACM is premium content, and free content one month may slip behind a pay wall the next.…
From BLOG@CACM
Grace Hopper Conference 2010
On Wednesday I began GHC 2010 by attending a gathering of people who are planning regional celebrations of women in computing.
From BLOG@CACM
Why Enterprises Are Uninterested in NoSQL
Here's my two cents worth on why an estimated 61% of enterprise users are either ignorant about or uninterested in NoSQL.
From U.S. Public Policy Committee of the ACM
USACM Expresses Concern About IP Piracy Enforcement Bill
The Senate Judiciary Committee recently introduced the Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act to fight piracy of intellectual property. That is an appropriate goal for Congress to pursue, but the means by which it…
From The Female Perspective of Computer Science
Usable Security
One of the sessions I attended on Wednesday at GHC was a PhD forum. In this special type of session, three PhD students present their research in an hour, and the audience fills in feedback forms to give them suggestions and…
From The Female Perspective of Computer Science
The Impact of the Grace Hopper Celebration
In addition to my own blog, I'm writing a few posts for the Communications of ACM blog about the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing.From my first post:This year's edition of the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women…
From The Eponymous Pickle
BMW Integrates IPads
Report in Engadget: BMW has shown an integration of IPads into the back seats of one of their cars. Interesting and amusing. I am assuming these would then be removable as required. Click through to see more. This is a pretty…
From Putting People First
Crowdsourcing: turning customers into creative directors
Is turning your customers into both creative director and chief of research the ideal low-cost model for business? The BBC reports on the role of crowdsourcing in business: “Not everyone is so sanguine about the benefits. Jaron…
From Putting People First
Facebook exec: All media will be personalized in 3 to 5 years
Facebook’s Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg said in New York today that in the next three to five years, a website that isn’t tailored to a specific user’s interest will be an anachronism, according to coverage from media…
From Putting People First
Manuel Castells: Mobile internet will outstrip
By 2014, the number of mobile internet users will surpass the number of users browsing the internet via a desktop computer, says a former adviser to Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign and member of technology panels on…
From Schneier on Security
Wiretapping the Internet
On Monday, The New York Times reported that President Obama will seek sweeping laws enabling law enforcement to more easily eavesdrop on the internet. Technologies are changing, the administration argues, and modern digital systems…
From Putting People First
What does the Internet of Things mean for UX people?
Last week, the Sixth European Information Architecture Summit took place in Paris, and all the presentations are already online. Here are a few that caught my attention: Design Beyond the Glowing Rectangle: User experience design…
From The Eponymous Pickle
P&G Innovation Center in Asia
Procter & Gamble continues to open new innovation centers. Increasingly focused to region and goal. Just begun in Singapore " ... the LWC-S is an independent innovation research center focused on revolutionizing product design…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Future Jobs
In Small Business Labs: Future jobs that are available today. A look at job, primarily technically related, that are exploding today.
From The Eponymous Pickle
Texting with no Hands
In GigaOM: An Android App that allows texting and receiving texts without hands. The dangers of texting and driving are much in the news. A possible solution. But at what accuracy? The claim is that the speech recognition…
From The Female Perspective of Computer Science
Sight Seeing in Atlanta
I arrived in Atlanta on Monday for this year's Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing. The conference officially started on Tuesday night, so we had a bit of time to explore before registering. There's lots of great…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Neurofocus Announces own Standards
Nielsen associated Neuromarketing company Neurofocus sets up their own standards. They further offer to share these standards with companies. You can hardly set up a standard unless others join in. They have not joined the…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Future of Augmented Reality
Just received from Metaio. This is interesting because it talks about both a definition of AR and its direction. This is clearly a marketing piece, but it does provide some excellent examples. See the video below. Others"…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Phones Nagging Patients
In CACM: a study about using a cell phone to improve pharma compliance. Not a new idea at all. The general idea was demonstrated in the contextual innovation centers including things like a 'smart' medicine cabinet which would…
From Schneier on Security
NSA Publications
There is an interesting list of NSA publications in this document, pages 30
From Wild WebMink
? Unplanned Consequences
The “legal blackmail” business: inside a P2P settlement factory Very interesting article. The practice of “legal blackmail” extends further than this, of course. That would also be an excellent description of the use to which…
From BLOG@CACM
The Impact of the Grace Hopper Celebration
This year's edition of the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing is officially underway, and you can almost taste the excitement. Last night I had the opportunity to speak with an external evaluator about my experiences…
From Computational Complexity
NRC Rankings
The NRC "rankings" of Graduate programs was released yesterday. I put up a Google spreadsheet of the CS rankings. Phds.org will also generate rankings using various criteria. You are not getting actual ranking from the NRC rather…
From Putting People First
Creating a patient-centered future for health care
Minneapolis firm Worrell looked at the future of health care through the patient’s perspective. Fast Company’s Co.Design site reports. “When it comes to designing new medical devices, most of the talk is about how easy products…
From Putting People First
Forrester Research: Many social networkers happy just to lurk
Online social networks are growing, but the percentage of users uploading content to sites like YouTube and Facebook has “plateaued” worldwide, according to a report released Tuesday by Forrester Research, writes CNN. The report…
From Putting People First
PhD: Mobile phone use by young adults in India: a case study
“Mobile phone use by young adults in India: a case study”, the PhD thesis of Priyanka Matanhelia at the University of Maryland, is available online. Abstract This study explored the use of mobile phones among young adults in…
From Putting People First
UK campaign for inquiry into
The potential transformation of our brains caused by intensive use of computers and the internet is a threat to our quality of life on the same scale as risks to the planet from climate change, according to an eminent neuroscientist…
From Putting People First
US market research: Few Americans are consuming digital media
Connected devices are still having trouble finding a mass audience, a new report from market-research firm The NPD Group has found. But that is likely to change over time. “According to NPD, a whopping 75 percent of all U.S.…
From Putting People First
In study, children cite appeal of digital reading
Many children want to read books on digital devices, while parents worry that technology will distract young bookworms, according to a survey by the publisher Scholastic. The New York Times reports: “Many children want to read…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Open Questions in Neuroscience Symposium
Ongoing ... note also that founder Paul G Allen is now on Twitter ... ALLEN INSTITUTE FOR BRAIN SCIENCE2010 Annual Symposium: Open Questions in NeuroscienceSeptember 28-29, 2010Seattle, WAThe theme of this first annual symposium…