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
Case for Abolishing Patents
In the Atlantic: No doubt they are a mess. Though many have invested so much in them that it will be a very tough task. I have seen both truly phenomenal and completely ridiculous things patented. Do patents make an economy…
From The Eponymous Pickle
SAP Bundles Analytic Database
SAP has bundled the IQ database with its analytics offerings, seeking to establish an easier to use and less risky adoption process for companies. " ... SAP announced a new family of products that marry its Business Objects…
From Gödel's Lost Letter and P=NP
Why We Lose Sleep Some Nights
Is the end of the world uncomfortably close? src Derek de Solla Price created scientometrics, which is “the science of measuring and analyzing science.” You can tell you’re a natural theoretician if you instantly think, what…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Tears of Steel
The Blender Foundation's all open source short movie: Tears of Steel is now out and available. On their site and on YouTube. Is this the future of film?
From The Eponymous Pickle
Loss of Web History
I did several projects to look at corporate history in the enterprise as it addressed computing technology, and found the Internet Archive a useful resource. Yet as they say, it contains a large number of artifacts, but notThe…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Symmetrical Faces
Are apparently more influential. I recall that there have been studies to use this idea in advertising. Reference? The site has some striking examples. A commenter suggests that this is why people tend to not like pictures…
From Putting People First
Book: Doing Design Ethnography
Doing Design Ethnography By Andrew Crabtree, Mark Rouncefield, Peter Tolmie Springer Publishers – Human-Computer Interaction Series March 2012, 212 pages (Amazon link) Ethnographic approaches associated with social and cultural…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Text Analytics News
A newsletter that looks interesting on text analytics methods. Sign up for their briefing here. " ... We have compiled a 3000 word briefing on realizing true value from text analytics investments. It's full of practical insight…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Intel Shows Roadmap
Correspondent Michael Curran of Micro Industries, a company we used extensively for in-store displays, posts about Intel's Developer's forum, which I do not normally follow. He suggests this shows a roadmap for technologies…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Gifts
In Adage: Facebook trolls for deeper participant data using the popular birthday notification feature.
From Wild WebMink
Still Nutty After All These Years
Madness @ The Roundhouse, a set on Flickr. I was lucky enough to win tickets for an iTunes Festival show again this year. I was even luckier that it was my wife’s favourite band. And best of all, it was a tremendous performance…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Automatic Mapping
Via MIT News: A prototype wearable sensor system that can automatically map a building interior. Seen as useful for emergency responders. " ... In experiments conducted on the MIT campus, a graduate student wearing the sensor…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Don't Rely Entirely on Big Data
CIO Article: An interesting article, though I don't quite agree with the premise. Unless your problem is very simply constructed you cannot have it depend strictly on a data set, however large or volatile. It always depends…
From Wild WebMink
But What About Patents?
News of government support for open source in the US and EU this week is great. But at the same time, software patents are stifling innovation and the same administrations are doing nothing about it – even permitting supposed…
From The Eponymous Pickle
The Obsession of Mobile
Mobile makes people more productive. It is clear that it has become an obsession to be connected for many people. Productive, but to a breaking point?
From Geeking with Greg
Code Monster and teaching programming to kids
I recently launched Code Monster from Crunchzilla. It helps parents teach a little programming to their kids.
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
Artificial Intelligence for Developing Technology for Older Adults – AI for Gerontechnology Symposium
The following is a contribution to this blog from Parisa Rashidi, Assistant Professor in the Feinberg School of Medicine at Northwestern University. In this blog entry, Dr. Rashidi describes a symposium being held in Arlington…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Full Scale Virtual Research Continued
I made another working visit to John Milby's Full Scale Virtual Research laboratory today and remain very impressed by their abilities and direction. He has taken the capabilities far beyond our enterprise lab work. I had professor…
From BLOG@CACM
The Ph.D. Grind: Lead From Below
A common question faced by young professionals is, "How can I implement my own creative initiatives when I am at the very bottom of an established hierarchy?"
From Putting People First
How cultural differences affect mobile use
CNN reports on mobile phone culture and how use differs starkly across cultures. Whereas the article is rather superficial, the “open mic” videos from New York and Nairobi and the photo gallery are recommended.
From The Female Perspective of Computer Science
My Processing Workshop Materials
Last weekend I taught a one-day workshop called 'Create Interactive Art and More! Learn to Program with Processing.' I developed the materials from scratch for the workshop and hope to use them again. Overall the day went quite…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Funding of Innovation
In Technology Review: On the funding of innovation. The thoughts of Nathan Myhrvold.
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Find The Bug
The big problem I have with using professional quality sample code in class is that it is too professional. By that what I mean is that it is too complete and often too complicated for beginners to use. Oh it is great as an example…
From Apophenia
Free Speech, Context, and Visibility: Protesting Racist Ads
On Tuesday, Egyptian-American activist Mona Eltahawy was arrested for “criminal mischief” – or “the willful damaging of property” – when she responded to disturbingly racist ads that were posted in the New York City subway system…
From Computer Science Teachers Association
Microsoft Groundbreaking Speech and Report on CS Education
Today Microsoft's General Counsel Brad Smith spoke at the Brookings Institution at an event on education and immigration reform and the presentation (and the report on which it is based) represents a huge leap forward in the …
From The Eponymous Pickle
Vanishing Electronics
Research into disappearing electronics. Electronic 'pills' that dissolve inside the body after their function is done.
From The Eponymous Pickle
Analytics in Action Talk
From Schneier on Security
NPR on Biometric Data Collection
Interesting Talk of the Nation segment.
From The Eponymous Pickle
Smartphones Provide Economic Data
An economist looks at how smartphones are a gold mine of economic data. " ... An economist taps into payment apps for their every financial transaction ... "
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
GNS Healthcare and Aetna Collaborate to Make Use of Big Data
GNS Healthcare, a healthcare analytics company and Aetna, an American managed health care organization, are collaborating to make use of GNS’ supercomputer “REFS” (Reverse Engineering and Forward Simulation). By using predictive…