Communications of the ACM
The blog archive provides access to past blog postings from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
September 2013
From Schneier on Security
Excess Automobile Deaths as a Result of 9/11
People commented about a point I made in a recent essay:
In the months after 9/11, so many people chose to drive instead of fly that the resulting deaths dwarfed the deaths from the terrorist attack itself, because cars are …From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Interesting Links 9 September 2013
Busy week for me. Lots of stuff going on at school. Seems like the first few weeks of school wear me out no matter how hard I try to be prepared. I have fewer links than normal. I also posted fewer posts last week than normal…
From Putting People First
From nice view to amazing journey: UNstudio and Experientia transforming the observation wheel experience
Click on image to view slideshow This week, both Dezeen Magazine and Wired have featured articles about UNStudio’s design for the Nippon Moon, a Giant Observation Wheel (GOW) to be located in Japan that could rival the London…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Core Blue
A former colleague of mine, Jeff Fenter, reports he has set up an effort called Core Blue. I like the approaches being used here, which mirror some of the work he delivered at Procter & Gamble in digital marketing. I will"…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Cards as the Future of the Web
Cards as design. An interesting challenge. Link contains lots of visual examples. I remember the card systems used on the Mac. Is this a a replay of that method? In particular for mobile applications. Emphasizing packet…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Memories Can Recombine
It has been determined that our memories are less permanent and stable than we thought. Now research that shows memories can be combined to create new experiences.
From The Eponymous Pickle
Crowdsourcing Grocery Shopping
Called Instacart: Personal Shopping remains a narrow market. With crowdsourcing come quality assurance issues. " .... In contrast to the high overhead of Webvan, which had its own refrigerated warehouses and a fleet…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Being Sought
Seth Godin pens a short item item being found versus being sought and how this is of particular interest in a mobile and social world.
From The Eponymous Pickle
Augmented Reality Sandboxes
Sandbox as a UI. We did something related, but without sand. Touch interface. Created a sandbox workbench which implemented a retail design. This allowed customers and designers to work together to build and quantitatively…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Japanese Startup Culture
In FastCompany: Never involved with Japan startup culture, but have a number of times worked with their innovation world. Which I thought was strong, but had a difficult time marketing its own successes. Also rarely funded fringe…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Types of Analytics
Yet another view of categories of analytics, here Descriptive, Diagnostic, Predictive and Prescriptive. Adding diagnostic, which I have not typically added to the list. Reasonable, but I like to keep the list simpler and categorize…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Videos for Learning R
Two popular videos from Stanford, for learning the statistical environment R. Reviewing now. Via Star Bridge Partners.
From Schneier on Security
My New PGP/GPG and OTR Keys
You can find my new PGP public key and my OTR key fingerprint here.
From My Biased Coin
Guest Post by Justin Thaler: A "Mini-Survey" of Practical Verification Algorithms
Justin Thaler, after presenting his most recent work on verifiable computation at Crypto, decided to write up a mini-survey on recent work in the area, and he offered to make it a blog post. It's a somewhat longer-than-average…
From Schneier on Security
Friday Squid Blogging: Giant Squid Found Off the Coast of Spain
The incomplete specimen weighs over 160 lbs. And here's a map of squid spottings.
As usual, you can also use this squid post to talk about the security stories in the news that I haven't covered.
From Schneier on Security
Another Interview
I was interviewed by MinnPost.
From The Eponymous Pickle
Mobile Payments, NFC and Apple
We carefully tracked the emergence of the short range radio frequency approach called NFC, to enable smart phone mobile payments. In Adage, speculation that Apple will not include NFC in their latest operating system and phones…
From U.S. Public Policy Committee of the ACM
2nd Anniversary Forum of the America Invents Act on September 16
The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) will host the America Invents Act (AIA) Second Anniversary Forum on Monday, September 16, 2013, from 1-5 pm ET at the USPTO headquarters in Alexandria, Virginia. A live webcast will…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Personal Care Brands and Mobile
In Mobile Marketing: " ... Personal-care industry slow to embrace mobile-optimized selling --- Manufacturers of personal care products are opting for partnerships with third-party applications such as Shopkick, sometimes in…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Future of Advertising: Pay per Gaze
Paying per gaze, Paying per emotion, is it the future of advertising. Not impossible, but will detecting this kind of behavioral data be considered intrusive?
From Putting People First
Four new papers by anthropologist Brigitte Jordan
Brigitte Jordan, the legendary corporate anthropologist, once described as one of the “godmothers” of design ethnography, has posted four new papers on her website: The Double Helix of Learning: Knowledge Transfer in Traditional…
From U.S. Public Policy Committee of the ACM
FCC’s Accessibility and Innovation Initiative Speaker Series: Yevgen Borodin
The FCC’s Accessibility and Innovation Initiative Speaker Series will feature Yevgen Borodin on “Improving Accessibility for the General Public” on September 12, 2013, at 10 am EDT. The presentation will be followed by accessible…
From Schneier on Security
Conspiracy Theories and the NSA
I've recently seen two articles speculating on the NSA's capability, and practice, of spying on members of Congress and other elected officials. The evidence is all circumstantial and smacks of conspiracy thinking -- and I have…
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
Calling for Proposals: Creating Visions for Computing Research
The mission of Computing Research Association’s (CRA) Computing Community Consortium (CCC) is to catalyze the computing research community and enable the pursuit of innovative, high-impact research. CCC conducts activities that…
From Computational Complexity
Myhill Nerode versus Pumping Lemma
I have seen some recent backlash against the pumping lemma for showing that languages are not regular and as I am now teaching regular languages I had to choose should I teach the pumping lemma or Myhill-Nerode to show languages…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Scoping the Digital Divide
Pew Statistics on US access to the Internet. 20% of US adults have no access. But is that fair since most US libraries do have public connections to the net? Plus lots more statistics." ... The proliferation of smartphones…
From Schneier on Security
The NSA's Cryptographic Capabilities
The latest Snowden document is the US intelligence "black budget." There's a lot of information in the few pages the Washington Post decided to publish, including an introduction by Director of National Intelligence James Clapper…
From Putting People First
Experience design is now part of business logic
Om Malik of GigaOm argues that the cambrian explosion of mobile apps and cloud-based services as well as the exponential growth of data has led him to a very simple understanding: user experience is part of business logic. “The…
From Putting People First
Selected videos from “The Conference” in Sweden
Media Evolution The Conference is an international conference organized annually in Malmö, Sweden. The event focuses on factors that are affecting our society, with a media industry angle to it, exploring who sets the agenda,…
From Putting People First
Thoughts on clever cities
The multiplexed metropolis Enthusiasts think that data services can change cities in this century as much as electricity did in the last one. The Economist – in a piece written by Ludwig Siegele, online business and finance editor…