Communications of the ACM
The blog archive provides access to past blog postings from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
September 2012
From The Eponymous Pickle
Kalido and Teradata
Brought to my attention regarding agile data consolidation, late but worth noting:" ... Teradata (NYSE: TDC), the leading analytic data solutions company, and Kalido, the leading provider of agile information management software…
From BLOG@CACM
When Is User-Centered Design Selfish?
User-centered design is now firmly established within HCI research. It is commonly praised for democratising system development and empowering users. But is this always the case? This article raises some ethical questions surrounding…
From Wild WebMink
Apple and Connector Standards
It seems Apple wasn’t serious when it promised the European commission it would use micro-USB. Read more about it in my article in ComputerWorldUK this week.
From Schneier on Security
Friday Squid Blogging: Giant Squid Museum
In Valdés, Spain.
As usual, you can also use this squid post to talk about the security stories in the news that I haven't covered.
From The Eponymous Pickle
Social Analytics with Voziq
Correspondent Chris Herbert sends along a link to Voziq. ... Monitor the social web for mentions of your brand, competitors and industry- Benchmark how you compare with your competitors and identify strategic focus areas- Identify…
From Schneier on Security
<i>Schneier on Security</i> on <i>Elementary</i>
Two of my books can be seen in the background in CBS' new Sherlock Holmes drama, Elementary. A copy of Schneier on Security is prominently displayed on Sherlock Holmes' bookshelf. You can see it in the first few minutes of …
From The Noisy Channel
RecSys 2012: Beyond Five Stars
I spent the past week in Dublin attending the 6th ACM International Conference on Recommender Systems (RecSys 2012). This young conference has become the premier global forum for discussing the state of the art in recommender…
From Schneier on Security
Man-in-the-Middle Bank Fraud Attack
This sort of attack will become more common as banks require two-factor authentication:
Tatanga checks the user account details including the number of accounts, supported currency, balance/limit details. It then chooses the…From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
Agencies Announcing First Round of NRI Awards
The first round of awards for next-generation robotics R&D through the National Robotics Initiative (NRI) are being announced today, according to White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) deputy director for…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Protest Monitoring
I mentioned Recorded Future's monitoring analysis of the embassy attacks. Now they have followed with a thirty minute video that examines the approach. A good example of using future oriented analysis that can be used in government…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Transparent Mobile Computing
From CIO: The ability to have Apps run on multiple mobile platforms. From Intel: "... "With transparent computing, software developers no longer must choose one environment over another in order to maintain profitability and…
From Schneier on Security
UGNazi
Good article on the hacker group UGNazi.
From Wild WebMink
Software Patent Solution Under Our Noses
I was blown away by a paper by legal scholar Mark Lemley when I read it in full this week. He plausibly claims there’s a very simple and elegant solution to software patents in the USA that simply needs a future defendent to…
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Think Outside The Textbook
I was talking to a teacher, well chatting online via Facebook actually, and I described what he does as “thinking outside the textbook.” Speaking as someone who has written several textbooks I will easily admit that textbooks…
From Putting People First
The age of data sharing (report)
We live in an age of sharing. As consumers and online, we regularly share personal information, and generate new data through our browsing or purchasing history. Businesses and government are increasingly aware of the value of…
From The Eponymous Pickle
The Connected Consumer
Correspondent Gib Bassett curates The Connected Consumer. Which contains a number of items about consumer packaged goods that I had missed. Worth checking out and following.
From The Eponymous Pickle
GS1 and VICS Merger
Via Kevin Judd of Fujitsu.Yesterday, September 10th 2012, GS1 US and the Voluntary Interindustry Commerce Solutions (VICS) Association announced that they have signed a memorandum of understanding to merge their operations. This…
From Schneier on Security
Estimating the Probability of Another 9/11
This statistical research says once per decade:
Abstract: Quantities with right-skewed distributions are ubiquitous in complex social systems, including political conflict, economics and social networks, and these systems sometimes…From Computational Complexity
Max Flow
A couple of weeks ago Suresh tweeted the following result of James Orlin
Max flows in O(nm) time or better. jorlin.scripts.mit.edu/Max_flows_in_O… — Suresh Venkat (@geomblog) August 31, 2012I'm thinking, wow, max flow is one…
From Geeking with Greg
Will tablets replace PCs?
I just bet Professor Daniel Lemire $100 that they won't. At least, any time soon. The specific terms of the bet are, "In some quarter of 2015, the unit sales of tablets will be at least twice the unit sales of traditional PCs…
From Apophenia
“Socially Mediated Publicness”: an open-access issue of JOBEM
I love being a scholar, but one thing that really depresses me about research is that so much of what scholars produce is rendered inaccessible to so many people who might find it valuable, inspiring, or thought-provoking. This…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Winning the Show Rooming War
Good post on the growing behavior of shoppers using the retail environment to see and touch products, but then buying them elsewhere or online. Good examples of the reactions of retailers that I have not seen before. By …
From The Eponymous Pickle
Future Intelligence with Recorded Future
An excellent case study of the use of Recorded Future for understanding the recent Middle East unrest and embassy attacks. A use of semantic analysis of multiple textual databases that predict future events, the aggregation…
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
Launching a New Feature: Show Us Your “Research in Motion”!
Every week for the last several years, the Computing Community Consortium (CCC) has showcased an interesting computing (or related) research project as a “Highlight of the Week.” Today, in an effort to build upon the success…
From The Eponymous Pickle
A Look at Educational Technology
An opinionated view. " ... Education is in some respects one of the most stagnant of all major industries. A farmer from 150 years ago would not comprehend a modern farm. A factory worker from 150 years ago would not be able…
From Schneier on Security
Steganography in the Wild
Steganographic information is embedded in World of Warcraft screen shots.
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
To App Or Not To App
I was at the industry advisory board meeting for one of the career/vocational schools I am involved with earlier this week and the topic of apps came up. Apps for phone and tablets are a big deal in industry these days. The advent…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Designing API's for Mobile Performance Best Practice
In CACM by Kate MatsudairaWhile there are lots of informative articles on mobile performance, and just as many on general API design, you’ll find few discussing the design considerations needed to optimize the performance of…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Risk Bias
In Mckinsey Quarterly: Overcoming a bias against risk. " .... Risk-averse midlevel managers making routine investment decisions can shift an entire company’s risk profile. An organization-wide stance toward risk can help.
…From Gödel's Lost Letter and P=NP
The ABC Conjecture And Cryptography
A missed point in the history of cryptography Shinichi Mochizuki recently released a series of four papers (I, II, III, IV) totaling 512 pages that claim to contain a proof of the ABC Conjecture of number theory. I understand…