Communications of the ACM
The blog archive provides access to past blog postings from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
June 2014
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Final Thoughts–ISTE 2014
There is still one more day for ISTE but today was the last day for me. My brain is full and I am tired so I am ok with missing another day. ISTE is a huge conference. There are many sessions, a gigantic exhibit hall and 13,000…
From U.S. Public Policy Committee of the ACM
Hill Tech Happenings, Week of June 30
July 1 Field Hearing: The Senate Judiciary Committee will hold a field hearing on Internet rules to foster competition. 10 a.m., Davis Center at the University of Vermont 590 Main St., Burlington, Vermont
From The Eponymous Pickle
Watson Assists with Recipes
A strong area of interest of mine as well. Note again the assistant mode of expertise delivery:" ... IBM has found a new partner for its supercomputer called Watson: Bon Appetit magazine.Together the companies are introducing…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Resources: Wolfram Programming in the Cloud
Last week I posted about Wolfram's in the Cloud implementation of what they are calling 'Knowledge-Based Programming'. I have been asked by a client to explore this. Just received this from Wolfram, which I thought I would"…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Flexible Loyalty Systems Needed
Makes a very good point. My own interviews with consumers in the earlier days of loyalty programs showed that there was clearly loyalty segmentation. More difficult to communicate and effectively execute. Opportunity here…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Retail View of the Future
What we attempted to do, for a while at least, in innovation centers. Like what I see here.RETF Offers Glimpse Into the Future of GroceryTesser, a San Francisco brand strategy and design firm, was tapped by FMI to lead a creative…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Uses of Thermal Cameras
Why do you need one on your camera phone? Popular Mechanics looks at some examples.
From The Eponymous Pickle
USAA Marketing Analytics
Keys to marketing analytics, a good case study of the process. United Services Automobile Association USAA, In the Financial, Insurance, Marketing space. Good, logical detail provided. " ... Which Insights Would PromoteAs…
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
The Next Generation Driverless Car
We all have seen pictures of a driverless car, loaded with quite a bit of equipment on top of the car to help in the autonomous nature of the car. On June 24, researchers from Carnegie Mellon University brought their next generation…
From Schneier on Security
Blackphone
First review of the secure Blackphone....
From Gödel's Lost Letter and P=NP
A Pretty Identity
Or rather two beautiful identities src Joseph Lagrange was a mathematician and astronomer who made significant contributions to just about everything. Yet like all of us he could make mistakes: he once thought he had proved Euclid’s…
From Gödel's Lost Letter and P=NP
A Pretty Identity
Or rather two beautiful identities src Joseph Lagrange was a mathematician and astronomer who made significant contributions to just about everything. Yet like all of us he could make mistakes: he once thought he had proved Euclid’s…
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Day Two–ISTE 2014
So much of what makes a conference for me is the people. I’m missed the last two ISTE conferences and it has been a while since I have seen a number of people who I interact with online in person. Today was a day to reconnect…
From Computational Complexity
3000 lunches
Last week fortune smiled on two of my friends:
From The Eponymous Pickle
In Car Facial Recognition
In Motor Authority: A means to determine who is in the drivers seat. Security, safety? Insurance? " .... In order to expand the capabilities of in-car tech, Ford is working with Intel to bring facial recognition to the dashboard…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Phone as Quake Detector
Thousands or possibly millions of smartphones can create a new kind of monitoring network, according to "Community and Sense Response Systems: Your Phone as Quake Detector" (cacm.acm.org/magazines/2014/7/176219) in the July 2014…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Apple Wearable Strategy
An interesting piece. A few weeks ago I saw a presentation about the Disney Parks arm bands and how the data from them was being gathered and leveraged. I was also struck how Apple was moving in a similar direction. I have…
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Day One–ISTE 2014
I actually got here on Friday but things started for real this afternoon. More or less. I was not able to get into one big session of mini talks because the room (and overflow room) filled up. Poor planning I think. I was not…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Nanotechnology Update
Been a while since I looked at the Foresight Institute's nanotechnology update. We used it as a means to stay up to date on new materials we might want to use in product development.
From The Eponymous Pickle
Fierce Retail IT
Newly brought to my attention, newsletter and blog:Free Retail IT Industry News BriefWhether it’s mobile payment fiascos, PCI security changes, E-Commerce hiccups at your largest rivals or new CRM legal hurdles you now need to…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Social TV, Syncing Social and TV
Recently started to use a system that included what was called 'Social TV'. Which aimed to show a social feed from the other people watching. But there was almost no activity there. And no synchronized offers for me. IReal…
From U.S. Public Policy Committee of the ACM
FCC Chairman Offers Thoughts On Cybersecurity
In remarks at the American Enterprise Institute on June 12, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler outlined how he sees the Commission addressing cybersecurity. While perhaps not the first government entity that…
From Schneier on Security
Friday Squid Blogging: WTF Evolution Features a Squid
I have always liked the "WTF, Evolution?" blog. Consistently funny, but no squid. But now they have a bit on the vampire squid. As usual, you can also use this squid post to talk about the security stories in the news that I…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Virtual Banking Assistance
In Engadget: Seeing an increasing interest the assistant idea. It was a big emphasis back in the AI days. The area here, in banking and financial, is an ideal domain, which confuses most people. I wonder if much of the caution…
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
Toys on my desk (June 2014)
We all have mobile phones or tablets with lightning or micro-USB plugs, and we all have laptops with USB ports. Sure, you can easily find a USB-to-micro-USB cable, and your iPhone came with a USB-to-lightning cable… but who wants…
From Apophenia
‘Selling Out’ Is Meaningless: Teens live in the commercial world we created
In the recent Frontline documentary “Generation Like,” Doug Rushkoff lamented that today’s youth don’t even know what the term “sell-out” means. While this surprised Rushkoff and other fuddy duddies, it didn’t make me blink for…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Measuring Goosebumps in Real Time
In CACM: A particular kind of sensory -emotional measurement I had not seen before. How does this compare to galvanic skin response, which it seems to be related to? " ... The system works by recording a drop in the sensor's…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Birthday of the Barcode
The Barcode is 40 years old. Like with many computing anniversaries, the age seems small. My enterprise was involved with its development, standardization and use in manufacturing and retail. I tested packaging designs against…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Mining Data in this Blog: Old Links
Had cause to help several people use this blog to mine efforts in the area of Big Data applications of value to Retail. We found a number of interesting applications that existed before the term was invented. This also reminded…
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
Computing a Cure for HIV
On June 26, the National Science Foundation (NSF) released a Discovery article titled Computing a Cure for HIV, written by Aaron Dubrow, Public Affairs Specialist in the Office of Legislative & Public Affairs. The article provides…