Communications of the ACM
The blog archive provides access to past blog postings from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
May 2009
From Putting People First
In the US, even the homeless stay connected
The Wall Street Journal reports on the use of the internet by homeless people in San Francisco. “A few years ago, some people were worrying that a “digital divide” would separate technology haves and have-nots. The poorest lack…
From Putting People First
Round. The World. Connected. A video series
The Nokia Siemens Network has created an extremely well produced website and video series, entitled “Round. The World. Connected.” that sets out to understand what connectivity means to different people and cultures across Europe…
From Putting People First
Your future job is social Innovator: Predictions from Ezio Manzini
“The main activity of designers will be as social innovators,” said Ezio Manzini during an intimate conversation with o2NYC on May 6. Ezio’s talk outlined an exit strategy for conscious designers, a shift from making things…
From Putting People First
Inside MAYA Design
How a little lab called MAYA is giving firms such as Emerson and General Dynamics an innovation boost. Fast Company reports. “MAYA Design is juicing innovation by teaching techies design basics. The 50-member team of computer…
From Putting People First
Interviews on service design research
Earlier this month researchers Daniela Sangiorgi, Stefano Maffei and Nicola Morelli launched a promising new initiative focused on service design research: While Service Design is now being acknowledged by most within the design…
From Putting People First
The demise of
Alice Rawsthorn, design critic of the International Herald Tribune, reflects on the fact that the appearance of most digital products bears no relation to what they do, and what that might mean for future design. “The dislocation…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Netezza and Columnar Databases
An interesting piece with a number of useful additional links on the topic.
From Putting People First
Considering the future of mobile phones
Ken Banks, creator of FrontlineSMS, writes in PC World on the future of mobile phones and believes that many future mobile innovations will be borne out of the realities of the developing world. “In order to understand what…
From Putting People First
Gartner: Users of mobile payments to double by 2012
The number of people using mobile devices to purchase goods and services is expected to more than double by the end of 2012 globally, research firm Gartner Inc. reported. The impact is to be felt most in developing world where…
From Putting People First
NPR: mobile phones do much more than make calls
In Asia, Africa, Europe and elsewhere, cell phone technology has always been way ahead of what’s available in the states. Around the world, people use their phones in innovative, creative ways. For example, mobile phones help…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Chartle Data Visualization
A simple online data visualization tool called Chartle as a Web application in early Beta that is looking for testers. You can create, embed and share results as you like. All the basic kinds of charts, so if you are not too…
From CERIAS Blog
A Cynic
Today, and Before
On July 17, 2008, (then) Senator Barack Obama held a town hall meeting on national security at Purdue University. He and his panel covered issues of nuclear, biological and cyber security. (I blogged about the…From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
NSF Alan T. Waterman Award
The NSF Alan T. Waterman Award recognizes one extraordinary young scientist or engineer annually.
From U.S. Public Policy Committee of the ACM
President Obama Releases Cybersecurity Review
Today the Obama Administration released its cybersecurity review, a 60 day review of federal cybersecurity activity headed by Melissa Hathaway and completed in late April. The report is available online, along with the remarks…
From The Eponymous Pickle
How little do People Actually Read?
Jakob Nielsen pulls together data from eyetracking about how little people actually read on a web. Its mostly scanning I know, but it is worse than you think: ' .. On the average Web page, users have time to read at most 28%…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Social Media as a Commodity
Good piece by Dave Fleet posts on social media as a commodity. Anyone can provide it, but what do good clients care about when you provide the service?
From The Noisy Channel
Journalism Is Not Like Craigslist
In response to a meeting sponsored by the Newspaper Association of America about “Models to Monetize Content” (i.e., how to charge for online news), Scott Rosenberg writes that charging for articles could hobble the future of…
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
Stop Generating Metadata and Access the Full Content!
Many researchers advocate the use of metadata to help find or recommend content automatically. Metadata is certainly useful when aggregating content for human beings: I first read the titles of research papers before reading…
From The Noisy Channel
Page
I hesitate to cite Valleywag as a news source, but I did read there that Sergey Brin is crediting fellow Google co-founder Larry Page with “Page’s Law“, the assertion that software gets twice as slow every 18 months, and thus…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Re-inventing E-Mail
Google is attempting to re-invent e-mail. This is a good overview article. In Gmail they have been adding little pieces of functionality, with varying levels of success, for years. Google Wave is an attempt to do all of this…
From Putting People First
Tinkering to the future
Alex Soojung-Kim Pang, researcher director at the Institute for the Future, is working on a book on the end of cyberspace
From Putting People First
Nokia
In a long article in The Register, Andrew Orlowski looks at the many problems Nokia faced the other day with the launch of its Ovi Store, and criticises the company for a lack of focus on people’s needs: “Firstly, Nokia should…
From Putting People First
Glued to the machine and going for broke
Natasha Schull, assistant professor in the MIT Program in Science, Technology, and Society, says Vegas gambling machines designed to get people to ‘play to extinction’. “After more than a decade of research that included lengthy…
From Putting People First
In defense of distraction
New York Magazine has published a long article by Sam Anderson on “Twitter, Adderall, lifehacking, mindful jogging, power browsing, Obama
From The Noisy Channel
Waiting for the Big Bing
Everyone is talking about Bing today–well, everyone who isn’t too busy watching Google do the Wave. If you haven’t been paying attention, Microsoft is about to spend $100M to market an upgrade of its web search engine, rebranding…
From Putting People First
CGAP podcast with Jonathan Donner of Microsoft Research India
Leading up to the 2009 Mobile Money Summit CGAP, an independent policy and research centre dedicated to advancing financial access for the world’s poor, is running a podcast series with some of the key people involved in the…
From Putting People First
Africa banks on cell phones
Global Post reports on how millions in Ghana are entering the banking system through mobile phone system. “Nobody stands to benefit quite like Africa’s increasingly powerful telecom companies, the conglomerates who built this…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Jim Stengel
I was late in discovering this, but former P&G CMO Jim Stengel has a web site which promotes his ideas and forthcoming book. ' ... This website captures the journey to rethink marketing, branding and life. It will be dynamic…
From The Noisy Channel
2009 Enterprise Search Sourcebook
I just noticed that the 2009 edition of the Enterprise Search Sourcebook is now available. Published by Information Today, it’s a nice way to survey the landscape. Of course, it goes without saying that you to take vendor claims…
From U.S. Public Policy Committee of the ACM
Federal Advisory Board Recommends Updates to Nation
The Information Security and Privacy Advisory Board (ISPAB) recently released a report to the Director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) on the need to update the nation's privacy policies. Since the Privacy Act of…