Communications of the ACM
The blog archive provides access to past blog postings from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
April 2013
From The Eponymous Pickle
First Web Site Launched 20 Years Ago
CERN published the first Web site twenty years ago. Seems like a much longer time ago. CWorld reports on the event. Consider how much it has changed how we work and play. And how many people globally are connected. Very…
From Computer Science Teachers Association
The Sexiest Job in the 21st Century
According to the Harvard Business Review and reported in the New York Times data science is "the sexiest job in the 21st century." Experts expect that this hot new field promises to revolutionize industries from business to …
From Wild WebMink
Components Becoming Major Source Of CVEs
Reblogged from Meshed Insights & Knowledge: Earlier today Sonatype released the results of their annual survey. The survey looks at the extent to which developers use open source components, with a particular focus on how they…
From Schneier on Security
The Importance of Backups
I've already written about the guy who got a new trial because a virus ate his court records. Here's someone who will have to redo his thesis research because someone stole his only copy of the data. Remember the rule: no one…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Problem Framing Through Behavioral Heuristics
This sounds much like what we tried to do when building simulation systems with agent models. But it seems different when I read the abstract. Once you have found reliable and accurate human behavior heuristics, derived from…
From Putting People First
Developing digital books with user-centred design
Digital books are software. The more interactive the experience, the more complex that software is to develop – and the greater the risk of creating a digital product that alienates. Taking a user-centered design approach to…
From Putting People First
Exploring Problem-framing through Behavioural Heuristics
Article published in the April 2013 issue of the International Journal of Design By Dan Lockton, David J. Harrison, Rebecca Cain, Neville A. Stanton, & Paul Jennings Design for behaviour change aims to influence user behaviour…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Big Data University
A repository of free course ware on the topic, now in Beta. Supported by IBM and others. As they say, at your place and pace. Many courses now available. Other places, like Coursera, also have content in this space.
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
New Toy–Raspberry Pi
It is hard to resist a new technology toy. I’ve been hearing about the Raspberry Pi computer for some time now. A couple of weeks ago I talked to a teacher friend who was using some to help teach computing and computer science…
From The Female Perspective of Computer Science
Motherhood, Tech, and Leaning In With Marissa Mayer
Recently, I happened to start looking at some of the stories featured on the new Lean In website and came across Marissa Mayer's. For all the interest and controversy she's drummed up in the news lately, I quite liked hearing…
From Schneier on Security
Pinging the Entire Internet
Turns out there's a lot of vulnerable systems out there:
Many of the two terabytes (2,000 gigabytes) worth of replies Moore received from 310 million IPs indicated that they came from devices vulnerable to well-known flaws,On…From BLOG@CACM
The Role of Hypercard in Today's World
HyperCard is an end-user programming tool from the 1990's. A new version that runs on most modern platforms raises the question of the role of end-user programming and the directions in modern programming languages.
From Putting People First
Unpaid internships are harming the design industry
Mark Busse calls on the design industry to set a higher standard (and as a company which has always paid its interns, we endorse this call): ” Employers, especially visible leaders in our community, are obligated to demonstrate…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Big Data at The Speed of Business
I was just informed of this online broadcast, done twice today, 4/30. I plan to attend and tweet.Follow with hashtags #bigdatamgmt and #ibmsmb .... " ... Today, there are exciting opportuniies to take advantage of all data11AM…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Flattening of Design
A good NYT article which explains this concept which I had heard of, but not understood. How a number of companies are beginning to use it: " ... “Every so often there is a new fashion that comes about in design for any number…
From U.S. Public Policy Committee of the ACM
New GAO Report on Voting Accessibility
Almost all polling places had an accessible voting system during the 2008 elections, according to a new report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO). That’s the good news. The bad news: At nearly half of the polling…
From Geeking with Greg
More quick links
Again, it has been too long, but here you go, what has caught my attention lately: "Employees who ate at cafeteria tables designed for 12 were more productive than those at tables for four, thanks to more chance conversations…
From The Eponymous Pickle
On Demand Marketing
McKinsey and on-Demand Marketing. A new term to me. " ... Digital marketing is about to enter more challenging territory. Building on the vast increase in consumer power brought on by the digital age, marketing is headed toward…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Owning Social Media in the Enterprise and Beyond
Who owns an employee social media account? In an excellent blog post Debbie Laskey brings up an excellent question that leads me to a number of related questions. Some years ago our enterprise talked to IBM about how they were…
From Schneier on Security
More Links on the Boston Terrorist Attacks
Max Abrahms has two sensible essays.
Probably the ultimate in security theater: Williams-Sonoma stops selling pressure cookers "out of respect." They say it's temporary. (I bought a Williams-Sonoma pressure cooker last Christmas…From Putting People First
Documentary examines the end of print books
People have used books as a reliable tool to transmit and preserve information, ideas, and stories for hundreds of years. E-books have enjoyed wide use for only about six years — counting from when Amazon introduced its Kindle…
From Putting People First
Your body does not want to be an interface
Have you heard that Google Glass will let you snap photos by winking? John Pavlus of the MIT Technology Review writes why that’s still going to feel weird. “The assumption driving these kinds of design speculations is that if…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Critical Thinking about Nanotechnology
A proposal for a defined structure about the technology, to promote critical thinking. When we examined how it would be useful in product development and R&D, we quickly discovered there were multiple definitions. You need…
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
Look Inside: Massive Open Online Courses
The following is a guest post by Justin Herbert, a professional educator and coach who works at Montreat College in Montreat, NC. One of the most popular topics in higher education right now is the idea of Massive Open Online…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Robert Scoble Reviews Glass
He says it will come down to price, at least initially. Not too much about the social implications, just the dazzle of being connected even more than we are now. I can feel myself resisting.
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Interesting Links 29 April 2013
Last week was school vacation week and I was away with less than ideal Internet. I’m still not sure if that is better or worse than no Internet at all. In any case I spent a lot less time on the Internet than usual. That doesn…
From The Eponymous Pickle
The Best Interface is No Interface
Via Jeff Dyck. He sends along a note from SXSW by Golden Krishna. The video of the 'Best Interface is no Interface' is here. A good overall philosophy. Also his slides and background material.
From The Eponymous Pickle
Best Interface is no Interface
Via Jeff Dyck. He sends along a note from SXSW by Golden Krishna. The video of the 'Best Interface is no Interface' is here. A good overall philosophy. Also his slides and background material.
From My Biased Coin
Some Recent Books
If you've been reading the other computer science blogs, you know that there are some new books out. First is the Golden Ticket, by Lance Fortnow, about the P vs. NP problem. I got sent a review copy; I haven't read it yet,…
From Gödel's Lost Letter and P=NP
Happy Birthday, Kurt Gödel
Wang on Gödel, and Gödel on Wang source, with more Wang quotes Hao Wang was a logician who made many important contributions to mathematics and especially logic. His creation of the now famous tiling problem was of great importance…