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 Computer Science Teachers Association
Computer Science and Reading Literacy
Recently, my school received their results from the high stakes testing in our state. While my school maintained the Excellent rating for the fifth year in a row, my school is not meeting the AYP (Average Yearly Progress) reading…
From Computational Complexity
Should You Mentor High School Students?
I have mentored many high school students on projects (21 in the past, 6 right now). Is this a good use of ones time? I note my experiences and advice- if you have different experiences and advice, feel free to share. Unlike…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Social Media Campaigns
In Mashable, a good set of case studies of social media campaigns. " ... A great social marketing campaign can be hard to describe; sometimes it's better just to study what works. Zachary Sniderman rounds up five of this year's…
From Schneier on Security
DHS <i>Still</i> Worried About Terrorists Using Internet Surveillance
Profound analysis from the Department of Homeland Security:
Detailed video obtained through live Web-based camera feeds combined with street-level and direct overhead imagery views from Internet imagery sites allow terrorists…From The Eponymous Pickle
Data Mining in Financial Industry
Banks using data mining to answer marketing questions. Very large quantities of data are becoming available and mining methods are obvious approaches to synthesize useful choices for marketing and other decisions.
From The Eponymous Pickle
Wolfram Alpha Includes US Sales Data
I see that Wolfram Alpha has now included some US retail sales data. I admit it has been some time since I have played with WA. I much like the interface, which is reminiscent of 'vector-stype' methods we set up for executives…
From The Eponymous Pickle
The Flow Game
I was reminded of the Flow game in Daniel H. Pink's recent book: Drive: The Surprising Truth about what Motivates Us. (P. 118) by Jenova Chen and based on Csikszentmihalyi's theory about theories of being 'in the flow' in ancan…
From Schneier on Security
Popular Usernames and Passwords
Graphical representation.
From BLOG@CACM
Talking With PCAST
I told three stories at PCAST — The Google Story, Model Checking, and Machine Learning — as a way to illustrate the importance of sustained federal funding of basic research in computer science, the rapid pace of innovation in…
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Being Careful About Examples
Yesterday I posted some very simple sample code. I have to admit that I spent a lot of time on some of the details but may not have spent enough on some of the other details. This is always an issue when working on sample code…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Big Data
Infoworld on the value of what is being called big data. Good piece for the enterprise to understand the implications of such data stores: " ... several pharmaceutical companies, and numerous energy companies have amassed huge…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Sound and Taste
We did research on a number of sensory interactions in retail. In an interesting study, Unilever looks at the interaction of taste and sound. Have not seen a study of this kind done before. Implications in restaurant applications…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Disruptive Innovations in Retail Sector
From Sammy Haroon's innovation blog:Dis-ruptive Innovations - Technology in Retail Investment Sector The Financial Times published a well thought through analysis on high-frequency trading and its impact on traditional and retail…
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
Is MapReduce obsolete?
Last week, the Register announced that Google moved “away from MapReduce.”
From Schneier on Security
Highway Honeypot
Police set up a highway sign warning motorists that there are random stops for narcotics checks ahead, but actually search people who take the next exit.
From Putting People First
Eric von Hippel and 2.9 million British innovators
Ethan Zuckerman reports on yesterday’s Berkman Center lunch talk by Eric von Hippel, where he discussed what he called the
From Putting People First
On the importance of social interaction design for social startups
On his Gravity7 blog, Adrian Chan tries to convince startups and social application companies to embark on in-house social interaction design “The problem, as I see it, is that many small startups, and even some larger social…
From Putting People First
The impact of design ethnography and WordPress
Kristina Krause has recently finished a master’s degree in social anthropology at the University of Kent, with a thesis titled: The impact of design ethnography and WordPress | Client – web designer relationships in the nonprofit…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Specialized GMail Statistics
I have done some specialized statistics macros for my Gmail conversations, and now just discover a report on a Chrome extension that does just that. Very nice to know about for future needs. Examining further now.
From The Eponymous Pickle
Gender Discrimination in Graduate School
The numbers show clear gender discrimination in US Graduate school attendance. We are awaiting broad press coverage of this problem, government studies and remedial adjustments.
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
How Many Letters Are There in The Alphabet?
You saw the title and a single number came to mind. If you are English speaking your probably thought
From Schneier on Security
Not Answering Questions at U.S. Customs
I was detained last night by federal authorities at San Francisco International Airport for refusing to answer questions about why I had travelled outside the United States.
The end result is that, after…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Decluttering the Organization
This Harvard Business Review View reminds me of experiences we had during the artificial intelligence days in the early 90s ... When we brought up the reasoning behind saving the knowledge of past executives and making it accessible…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Shoppers Stick to their Lists?
Reported in Mediapost: This seems to be contrary to our own experiences, even overstating how many people actually make lists. Its good to see more research coming out on this ... The final statement in the paragraph below says…
From Wild WebMink
links for 2010-09-14
Twitter kills the password anti-pattern, but at what cost? Jon Udell argues that the switch to OAuth comes at the cost of a loss of flexibility and the potential for innovation. Interestingly, he doesn't mention the other problem…
From Wild WebMink
links for 2010-09-14
Commons Law – ComputerworldUK.com Great to see UK open source law expert Andrew Katz is now blogging on the (steadily expanding) open source blog at ComputerWorldUK. Andrew's work is definitely worth bookmarking and reading.…
From Wild WebMink
? Wise Handling
Twitter kills the password anti-pattern, but at what cost? Jon Udell argues that the switch to OAuth comes at the cost of a loss of flexibility and the potential for innovation. Interestingly, he doesn’t mention the other problem…
From Schneier on Security
Vulnerabilities in US-CERT Network
You'd think US-CERT would do somewhat better.
From Computational Complexity
How Can You Spend $150 Million?
Suppose you happen to have $150 million burning in your pocket that you want to use to help the theoretical computer science community ($150 million endowed will bring in about $6 million/year) How would you use it? Create an…
From Putting People First
Experience-based product design from Intel
The Day Zero event of the Intel Developer Forum started off with a presentation by Intel Fellow (and anthropologist) Genevieve Bell who is now also the head of Intel’s Interaction and Experience Research (IXR) division, that…