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 The Eponymous Pickle
Human Centric Analysis
Well known visualization guru Stephen Few on human centric analysis." ... All of the traditional BI software vendors and most of the industry
From The Eponymous Pickle
Data Storm in mHealth
Mark Montgomery of KYield continues his insightful writing about issues in mHealth. Make sure to read the whole thing: " ... Imagine the gasp from the family physician when he is confronted with the first text message from a…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Keeping Retiree Knowledge in the Game
Keeping knowledge in the company is an increasingly difficult task. It is a key part of the whole process called knowledge management. Where is the knowledge I need, what do I know and what do I not know? Often it is selectively…
From Putting People First
UX developments at Telef
Some UX developments at Telef
From Schneier on Security
The Stuxnet Worm
It's impressive:
The Stuxnet worm is a "groundbreaking" piece of malware so devious in its use of unpatched vulnerabilities, so sophisticated in its multipronged approach, that the security researchers who tore it apart believe…From The Eponymous Pickle
Capturing the Biometrics of Motion
In the RFID Journal, a development with a number of interesting applications. Michigan Researchers Develop RFID-based Sensors to Measure Physical ActivityThe system would enable physicians or therapists to capture sophisticated…
From BLOG@CACM
The Importance of Quest to Learn
Why we need more educational projects like Quest To Learn, a New York program in which children's learning is based around game playing and design.
From The Eponymous Pickle
More on IBM and Netezza
O'Reilly has more on the acquisition of Netezza by IBM. In particular about the implications of its use for big data. " ... t's not just the marketers that are throwing petabytes of information at problems. Scientists, intelligence…
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Pretty Code
Way back in the old days when programmers coded using simple text editors and command line editors there was a utility called Pretty Print (or some variation). These utilities would take text files as input and output code that…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Procter Unveils New Drinking Water Effort
Announcement below, see also the Children's Safe Drinking Water Program site:"Procter & Gamble unveils global drinking water effortProcter & Gamble Co. is expanding its efforts to help provide clean drinking water in the developing…
From Schneier on Security
Prepaid Electricity Meter Fraud
Criminals across the UK have hacked the new keycard system used to top up pre-payment energy meters and are going door-to-door, dressed as power company workers, selling illegal credit at knock-down prices.
The
…
From The Eponymous Pickle
On Localization and Globalization
Colleague Donna Sturgess in Am Marketing Assoc Journal, Via Melissa Hobley at Buyology Inc: " .... a great article attached in the new Amerian Marketing Association journal titled "The State of Localization and Globalization"…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Bunchball Nitro: A Gamification example
In my recent Gamification post I received a comment from Rajat Paharia, the founder of Bunchball. He recently gave a talk on Gamification and Behavioral Economics at Stanford. You can see the video here.They write in their site…
From Schneier on Security
Haystack
I stayed clear of Haystack -- the anonymity program that was going to protect the privacy of dissidents the world over -- because I didn't have enough details about the program to have an intelligent opinion. The project has…
From Computational Complexity
The World in Its Own Terms
The New York Times Magazine last Sunday focused on technology on education. Lots of good reads but what caught my eye was an article by Microsoft Research's Jaron Lanier, basically arguing that computational thinking ruins your…
From The Eponymous Pickle
WiFi vs 3G at Panera Bread
This GigaOM article answered some questions I have had about how people access their increasingly large datastream. I always use WiFi at home and have helped several people set up their own secure Wifi connections. I was further…
From The Eponymous Pickle
IBM Acquires Netezza
We see that IBM has acquired the database appliance maker Netezza. You may recall I have a short engagement with Netezza last year. Here is what I have written previously on Netezza. My view is they were an impressive company…
From Schneier on Security
Statistical Distribution of Combat Wounds to the Head
This is interesting:
The study, led by physician Yuval Ran, looked at Israeli combat deaths from 2000 to 2004 and tracked where bullet entries appeared on the skull (illustrated above), finding that the lower back (occipital…From The Eponymous Pickle
Devine Employee Behavioral Assessment
Had a meeting with an interesting company, Devine Group, that links potential employees to what they can really do best. Have always been interested in the modeling of consumer behavior in retail and employee HR behavior in…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Xerox Parc Turns 40
A good CW piece on the innovation that has come out of Xerox Parc. We visited them a number of times and were always impressed by what we saw. Sometimes they are mentioned today only in reference to things they missed, but they…
From Computational Complexity
Joseph B Kruskal passed away (Guest post by Clyde P Kruskal)
(Guest post from Clyde P Kruskal.)
Yesterday (September 19, 2010) my uncle, Joseph B. Kruskal passed away. I just wanted to say a few personal words. Maybe, later, someone will discuss his work. Although he is famous in computer…
From U.S. Public Policy Committee of the ACM
Policy Highlights from Communications of the ACM - August 2010 (Vol. 53, No. 8)
Below is a list of items with policy relevance from the August 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. You…
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Interesting Links 20 September 2010
From Putting People First
Mobile Monday Amsterdam on design
Every other month Mobile Monday Amsterdam organises a network event with visionary speakers and practical cases. The most recent one, on 6 September, was devoted to design and had four top-level speakers. See the videos for yourselves…
From Schneier on Security
Four Irrefutable Security Laws
This list is from Malcolm Harkins, Intel's chief information security officer, and it's a good one (from a talk at Forrester's Security Forum):
From U.S. Public Policy Committee of the ACM
Hill Tech Happenings, Week of September 20
September 22
Hearing:
The Senate Judiciary Committee will hold a hearing on the Electronic Communications Privacy Act. 10 a.m., 226 Dirksen Building
The Consumer Protection, Product Safety and Insurance Subcommittee of the…From The Eponymous Pickle
Visualizing Big Data
The Wikibon Blog, fifteen examples of visualizing big data. Some interesting examples here that are worth looking at. Some beautiful graphics. Yet here I protest again, shouldn't visualization simplify the understanding of data…
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
New York Times Magazine Features Technology in Education
Today’s New York Times Sunday magazine is devoted to
From The Noisy Channel
Search at the Speed of Thought
A guiding principle in information technology has been to enable people to perform tasks at the “speed of thought”. The goal is not just to make people more efficient in our use of technology, but to remove the delays and distractions…
From The Eponymous Pickle
GIS and Agent Based Modeling
An article from a while back that addresses how virtual worlds and agent based modeling can be linked together for research applications. Via Dave Cohen. This blog has covered these and related topics for some time. Here area…