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 Putting People First
A cyber-house divided
Online as much as in the real world, people bunch together in mutually suspicious groups
From The Eponymous Pickle
Outdoor Augmented Reality
On augmented reality in the outdoors. Makes sense to use it to understand your broader environment. In ReadWriteWeb: " ... How many times have you been driving and wondered "What's the name of that mountain?" or "Which river…
From Schneier on Security
Cyber-Offence is the New Cyber-Defense
This is beyond stupid:
The Pentagon is contemplating an aggressive approach to defending its computer systems that includes preemptive actions such as knocking out parts of an adversary's computer network overseas
From Putting People FirstAttention: This revolution will NOT be televised
Adrian Chan of Gravity 7 and Andreas Weigend, former chief scientist at Amazon.com and lecturer at Stanford and UC Berkeley, together wrote an article on how best to respond to the world of social data, how to metabolize it,…
From Putting People FirstStowe Boyd
Stowe Boyd went to BlogTalk in Galway, Ireland and came back inspired: sociality, he says, has turned out to be the most interesting thing to emerge from the past decade of the web. “The next generation of operating environments…
From Putting People FirstBasque PhD thesis on relationship of youth today with new technologies
A few days ago sociologist Ms Luc
From Putting People FirstMobile devices and privacy
Should we focus on changing the behaviour of people OR changing the behaviour of devices? That is the key question in article by Ajit Jaokar on his blog Open Gardens. “The many privacy related issues raised by the Web will be…
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred ThompsonDr. James Parrish
Dr. James Parrish is on the faculty at the University of Arkansas Little Rock and has recently started a blog. (James Parrish blog) It looks like he will be blogging abut a lot of topics including Cloud Computing. What caught…
From Putting People FirstHow mobile devices could lead to more city living
People pushing sustainability don’t tend to be the same types who love our digital-crazed iWorld. And that’s a problem because it means they don’t push one of the great advantages of dense, energy-efficient cities: urban life…
From Putting People FirstThe library user experience: services before content
Libraries will have to build a new foundation if they are to recover from these economic hard times
From Putting People FirstTo win over users, gadgets have to be touchable
Researchers say that touch screens are the start of a trend to make computers more open to human gestures, argues the New York Times. “Device makers in a post-iPhone world are focused on fingertips, with touch at the core of…
From Putting People FirstInteractions magazine on human nuances
The current issue of Interactions Magazine is generally on the nuances of what makes us human, writes co-editor-in-chief Jon Kolko, and more in particular “about authenticity, complexity, and design-and the political, social,…
From The Eponymous PickleMyers-Briggs Skeptically Viewed
In my years at the big enterprise I took the Myers-Briggs test at least a half dozen times. The results always interesting, largely self-affirming. I always had my doubts about it's generality, brought up my doubts in meetings…
From The Eponymous PickleMacroWikinomics
I see that Don Tapscott's new book: MacroWikinomics: Rebooting Business and the World is about to come out. We were interviewed for his previous book Wikinomics and used it for internal education and discussion. As in the previous…
From Schneier on SecurityWanted: Skein Hardware Help
As part of NIST's SHA-3 selection process, people have been implementing the candidate hash functions on a variety of hardware and software platforms. Our team has implemented Skein in Intel's 32 nm ASIC process, and got some…
From Putting People FirstAesthetics of interaction
The latest issue of the International Journal of Design, eer-reviewed, open-access journal devoted to publishing research papers in all fields of design, is devoted to the aesthetics of interaction design: This special issue…
From Putting People FirstA weird way of thinking has prevailed worldwide
If a provocative new study is to be believed, the world lives in a situation where American undergraduates monopolize our knowledge of human nature, writes Anand Giridharadas in the New York Times. “In the study, published last…
From Putting People FirstDigital dinosaurs and public gardens
Two new articles in UX Magazine: Don’t become a digital dinosaur by Samantha Starmer UX professionals can
From Putting People FirstTechnology aside, most people still decline to be located
Mostly the young are interested in letting others know their physical location. Others are reticent for safety reasons, or against providing too much information. The New York Times reports: “Internet companies have appropriated…
From BLOG@CACMMind Meld in Group Decision Making
Social computing remains a hot research topic, and basic research on understanding group decision making and conditions under which crowdsourcing can lead to advantages is sparse. Here is one recent result on how to combine…
From Putting People FirstNeighborly borrowing, over the online fence
The New York Times reports on how online start-ups are allowing people to rent out their belongings locally, for a small fee. “The Roomba was mine for only 24 hours. I had rented it through a service called SnapGoods, which allows…
From The Eponymous PickleK-Anonymity Privacy Models
In CACM: Privacy protection models for large databases. " ... The "K-anonymity" method of providing anonymity to large data sets has raised excitement in realms as diverse as social networks and medical records, but it appears…
From The Eponymous PickleAisleBuyer on CNBC
Andrew Paradise has sent along a link about his Aislebuyer venture in the news on CNBC. A great example of in-store shopper convenience and engagement via smartphones.
From The Eponymous PickleHannaford's Site
In Progressive Grocer: Hannaford grocer revamps their site to include a number of mobile friendly ideas. Another example of mobile to retail plays. Expect to see much more of this from retail.
From Putting People FirstFrench ethnographic research on smartphone use
Le Monde newspaper published (Google translation) today a summary of an ethnographic research project on smartphone use by young adult, presented yesterday at a Virgin Mobile press conference in Paris. The research was conducted…
From Computational ComplexityIntelligent questions about the alleged P NE NP proof
People have asked me how much the alleged proof of P NE NP was discussed at Barriers II. Actually, nobody discussed the proof; however, we did discuss the aftermath. Most of the discussion was about the same questions I hadYour…
From Wild WebMinklinks for 2010-09-01
The End of OpenSolaris Patrick Finch with an informed view of what happened in the past and informed conjecture about the present and future. (tags: OpenSolaris FOSS) Elections to BCS Council It's time for elections to the BCS…
From Schneier on SecurityMore Skein News
Skein is my new hash function. Well, "my" is an overstatement; I'm one of the eight designers. It was submitted to NIST for their SHA-3 competition, and one of the 14 algorithms selected to advance to the second round. Here's…
From Putting People FirstDublin, Ireland to host Interaction 12
The City of Dublin and the Institute of Art, Design & Technology (IADT) will act as co-hosts for Interaction 12, the annual conference of the Interaction Design Association (IxDA) which will take place for the first time in Europe…
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred ThompsonDreamSpark
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