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
Brands Pushing to Shoppers
Brands increasing push notification to mobile shoppers on the move. In BrandWeek. " .... The notifications can be triggered by contextual factors such as location. "The big difference between traditional text alerts and push…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Ditching Powerpoint Bullets for Pictures
Picture superiority, which means using very few written words in presentations, is evoked in Forbes. Made me think of an important proposal I was part of crafting today, and how it could be done with few words. Despite what…
From My Biased Coin
By the Numbers
Pretty much matching my predictions....My graduate course has 50 enrolled right now, fairly close to 50-50 between undergrads and grads.Salil's introductory complexity course currently has 129 -- far and away the biggest the…
From Schneier on Security
Stopping Terrorism
Nice essay on the futility of trying to prevent another 9/11:
"Never again." It is as simplistic as it is absurd. It is as vague as it is damaging. No two words have provided so little meaning or context; no catchphrase hasThe…From Daniel Lemire's Blog
Fast integer compression: decoding billions of integers per second
Databases and search engines often store arrays of integers. In search engines, we have inverted indexes that map a query term to a list of document identifiers. This list of document identifiers can be seen as a sorted array…
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
New National Robotics Initiative Solicitation Issued
The National Science Foundation (NSF), together with the National Institutes of Health (NIH), NASA, and U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), yesterday issued a new solicitation for the National Robotics Initiative (NRI), seeking…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Mobile as a Bridge to In-Store
In AdAge: Writing about a recent Google study. Obvious at one level, but also an increasingly important concept as mobile becomes our ever available information platform. " ... 80% of searches on smartphones are spontaneous…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Center for Business Analytics
In development and talking to:The UC Center for Business Analytics (CBA) brings together organizations and a world-class, multidisciplinary group of faculty and students to educate and exchange ideas and best practices on how…
From Schneier on Security
A Real Movie-Plot Threat Contest
The "Australia's Security Nightmares: The National Security Short Story Competition" is part of Safeguarding Australia 2012.
To aid the national security community in imagining contemporary threats, the Australian Security Research…From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
What Have I Gotten Myself Into?
One of the things I hear from university computer science faculty on a regular basis is that they have trouble retaining students. What happens is that students sign up to be computer science majors but after a course or twoThis…
From U.S. Public Policy Committee of the ACM
USACM Expresses Concerns Over Support For Scientific And Technical Conferences
Part of the response to the reported excesses in conference spending involving the General Services Administration has been to restrict conference and travel spending across the government. Several pieces of legislation are working…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Driving Profitability with Retail Analytics
From the current issue of Analytics Magazine. An excellent, practical publication that deals with quantitative analytical methods. Here: " ... How to make choices and investments that deliver on expectations ... "
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
NSF’s CISE, OCI Leadership Issue Letter to Community
The National Science Foundation (NSF) announced an organizational realignment last week, including plans to integrate the Office of Cyberinfrastructure (OCI) within the Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering…
From The Eponymous Pickle
A New Internet Association
From the Precursor Blog:" ... Google, Amazon, eBay, and Facebook reportedly are launching a new Internet Association in mid-September to be "the unified voice of the Internet economy, representing the interests of America's leading…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Unilever Balancing Creativity and Sales
In Adage: " ... The task of delivering on both sales and creativity falls to Chief Marketing and Communications Officer Keith Weed, a career Unilever executive named to his leadership post and placed on the company's executive…
From The Female Perspective of Computer Science
Grad School + Baby: Why Tracking Time is Useful
Last week was the official start to the fall semester, which also marks my official return to being a student. This time, things are a little different: I have a baby to look after in addition to figuring out my thesis. I'mI've…
From Wild WebMink
OSS2012 Keynote
What’s driving open source in 2012? I presented a keynote address at OSS2012, the 8th International Conference on Open Source Systems this morning. My talk, entitled “What’s Driving Open Source”, tried to capture the forces that…
From BLOG@CACM
All Hands on Deck! Scaling K-12 Computer Science Education
Announcing ACM's new project developed in parntership with NSF, Google, Microsoft, CSTA and NCWIT to study the elements and capacity for scaling K-12 computer science education.
From Computational Complexity
Some quantum Stuff
Two quantum announcements (emailed to me by Umesh Vazirani, and produced here almost exactly) and then some thoughts of mine quantum computing. Announcement one: The NSF has a new initiative to try to address the lack of tenured…
From Schneier on Security
New Attack Against Chip-and-Pin Systems
Well, new to us:
You see, an EMV payment card authenticates itself with a MAC of transaction data, for which the freshly generated component is the unpredictable number (UN). If you can predict it, you can record everything …From Putting People First
From design fiction to experiential futures
In honor of its Ten-year Anniversary, the Association of Professional Futurists (yes, they exist!) launched its first publication, The Future of Futures. Edited by Andrew Curry, the book (also available as ebook) is orrganized…
From Putting People First
Peter Merholz on Reframing 'UX Design'
Peter Merholz, a UX thinker and practitioner whom I have always held in high esteem, has written a well thought through blog post on reframing UX design. The two central paragraph in his discourse are these ones: "UX Designer…
From The Eponymous Pickle
P&G Decision Cockpit Detailed
P&G's CIO Filippo Passerini provides some detail about P&G's long in development Decision Cockpit, the brains behind the Business Sphere information delivery approach mentioned here previously. " ... Sometimes you have to put…
From Putting People First
Intel conversations about the future
Intel dabbles in science fiction, titles ReadWriteWeb. On Monday, they write, Intel debuted a book of science fiction stories. Dubbed Imaging the Future And Building It, the book includes a number of stories – from professional…
From Putting People First
The bling approach to the school of the future
Recently I have been exploring developments on the impact of new technologies on the future of education, particularly in high schools. The latest trend in education is all about tablets, of course. My provisional assessment…
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
New School Year Brings New Round of “CS Bits & Bytes”
With the start of the 2012-13 school year, the National Science Foundation (NSF) yesterday released the first issue of the second volume of CS Bits & Bytes, focusing on biomimetic robotics, relating optimal control to the 2012…
From Schneier on Security
Security at the 9/11 WTC Memorial
There's a lot:
Advance tickets are required to enter this public, outdoor memorial. To book them, you’re obliged to provide your home address, email address, and phone number, and the full names of everyone in your party. It…From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Are You The Best Part Of A Student’s Day/
Yesterday is used a quote from an educator friend of mine that “I may be the best thing that happens in my students and my staff's lives that day. I can handle the other stuff. They come first.” I’ve been thinking about thatObviously…
From U.S. Public Policy Committee of the ACM
Hill Tech Happenings, Week of September 10
Congress has returned from its August break, and will attempt to get a little work done before it breaks for fall campaigning in early October. September 12 Hearing: The Emergency Preparedness, Response and Communications Subcommittee…
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Yes I’m Still Excited about Computer Science
It’s the start of a new school year and a new chapter in my life. I thought I would report this from about a year ago.
The short version is that 38 years after the life changing experience that writing my first computer program…