Communications of the ACM
The blog archive provides access to past blog postings from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
May 2013
From Computational Complexity
Are you smarter than a fifth grader? I'm not.
My darling sometimes watches TV in the middle of the night when she can't sleep.So I found myself watching (actually listening) to the quiz show Are You Smarter than a Fifth Grader? They asked the following Math Question:
What…
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
How to be effective at open source: by programmers, for programmers
Though it does not get much press, one of the great social and technological innovation of the last 30 years has been open source software. To about 90% of the population, this remains a mystery. Are the people producing open
…From BLOG@CACM
CHI 2013 in Paris: A Personal Review of the Conference
In this short report I offer some reflections on the 2013 ACM SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (commonly known just as "CHI") that took place in Paris last week. The conference had 16 parallel tracks.
…From The Eponymous Pickle
Visualizing Geographic Data
An interesting HBR Blog case study on visualizing geographic data. They conclude reasonably: " ... There are lots of ways to sequence development. But the end principle is simple: create more data visualizations than you need
…From Schneier on Security
Honeywords
Here is a simple but clever idea. Seed password files with dummy entries that will trigger an alarm when used. That way a site can know when a hacker is trying to decrypt the password file.
From Computer Science Teacher – Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Interesting Links 6 May 2013
About five weeks left to my school year. I’m behind in grading. I’m behind in lesson planning. This means less time on the Internet for the next week or so. Somehow I managed to collect a bunch of interesting links last weekMakey
…From The Eponymous Pickle
IX Research
Announcing the innovation research and delivery arm of Innovation Excellence: IX Research. Did not know it was coming, but who tells me anything? Research for Innovation Practitioners. Worth looking into.
From The Eponymous Pickle
Linkedin Changing the World
Only a few days ago we were looking at the first Web page, developed twenty years ago. Now another anniversary, of Linkedin, only ten years ago. How has this changed the world? Establishing a one place global white pages for
…From Apophenia
How would you define work in a networked world?
(This post was originally written for LinkedIn. Go to the LinkedIn version to engage in the conversation.) I’ve been scratching my head trying to think about how to understand the different facets of labor that are shaping contemporary
…From The Eponymous Pickle
Google Car Gathers Massive Data
In Kurzweil: Saying that the Google self-driving car gathers 1 GB data per second. Quite a formidable amount. Talk about opening yourself to analytics data mining opportunities. Or offloaded for later analysis? The integration
…From The Eponymous Pickle
Strategic Planning
Colleague Ed Burghard on strategic planning. A popular but often misunderstood topic. I like his views here about communities and dreams. Note this is first in a series that is worth following. See also his eBook on the topic
…From The Eponymous Pickle
Sankey Diagram Blog
A blog devoted to Sankey diagrams. Discovered in my quest for ways to deliver these. Many good examples. " ... With this blog I would like to share with you my fascination for Sankey diagrams. My goal is to present to you
…From My Biased Coin
Calling Out Stupidity
While I greatly enjoy working at Harvard, there are many painfully stupid things said and done by people here -- as I suppose is the case anywhere -- that either I don't feel merit commenting on or I don't feel it's appropriate
…From The Eponymous Pickle
New: Visual Footprint Resources App
Ken Karakotsios was the author of the remarkable SimLife genetic playground game. He worked with us to build agent based simulation models that were used for years in the enterprise to understand product demand. Now he hasFollow
…From The Eponymous Pickle
Tibo and Teradata and Real Time Event streams
TIBCO and Teradata Enable CIOs to Extract Actionable Insights From Real-Time Event Streams to Deliver the Two-Second AdvantageEvent Processing within the Teradata(R) Unified Data Architecture(TM) enables analytics for any user
…From The Eponymous Pickle
P&G Business Sphere Wins Edison Silver Award
Quite a considerable accomplishment, built on work started years ago with innovation in Executive Information Systems. Much more in this blog about Business Sphere:" ... From a highly competitive pool of applicants, Procter
…From Schneier on Security
Friday Squid Blogging: Squid Escape Artist
It's amazing how small a hole he can fit through.
As usual, you can also use this squid post to talk about the security stories in the news that I haven't covered.
From U.S. Public Policy Committee of the ACM
5th Annual State of the Mobile Net Conference on May 9, 2013
The Congressional Internet Caucus Advisory Committee brings you the 5th Annual State of the Mobile Net Conference on Thursday, May 9, 2013. Key members of Congress and their staff, Administration officials, tech executives, and
…From U.S. Public Policy Committee of the ACM
U.S. Election Assistance Commission Roundtable on Voting Accessibility on May 9, 2013
The U.S. Election Assistance Commission will hold a roundtable on “Transforming Election Administration, Voting System Accessibility, and the Certification Process” on Thursday, May 9 from noon to 5:30 pm EDT to explore current
…From U.S. Public Policy Committee of the ACM
HHS: Technology Accessibility and Inclusion Conference on May 7, 2013
The Department of Health & Human Services (HHS) will hold its first “a11y@HHS: Technology Accessibility and Inclusion Conference,” on Tuesday, May 7, 2013 at the FDA White Oak Campus. The conference is open to the public. A live
…From Schneier on Security
Another WWII Message Decoded
It's a really interesting code and story. (The first link has the most detailed information about the code and the cryptanalysis.)
From The Eponymous Pickle
SAS Visual Analytics
In SASCom: SAS visual analytics methods, seen through the problem of retailing. Video of their method. Would like to see more of this in the retail space.
From The Eponymous Pickle
Physical by Smartphone
Thinking of a smartphone as a sensor driven device. How might they ultimately be used as a means to give remote physicals? Still some issues, but the possibilities are evolving.
From Wild WebMink
Stockholm Syndrome Stopping Seeing How Linux Has Won?
Amazingly, the debate about when we will see the “year of the Linux desktop” is still active. Maybe it’s software Stockholm Syndrome making us all love our captor, but the focus on desktop applications, coupled with the idealistic
…From Schneier on Security
The Public/Private Surveillance Partnership
Our government collects a lot of information about us. Tax records, legal records, license records, records of government services received-- it's all in databases that are increasingly linked and correlated. Still, there's
…From U.S. Public Policy Committee of the ACM
USPTO Patent Public Advisory Committee Meeting – May 16, 2013
The USPTO Patent Public Advisory Committee will hold its quarterly meeting on Thursday, May 16, 2013 from 9:30 am to 3:30 pm at the USPTO campus in Alexandria, Virginia. The meeting is open to the public. The meeting will also
…From The Eponymous Pickle
Anti Churn Analytics
A not uncommon application for analytics. Decreasing customer churn. This loyalty problem is an expensive issue in many periodic sales industries. A case study.
From Wild WebMink
What does the Special 301 really reveal?
Reblogged from Meshed Insights & Knowledge: This week the United States Trade Representative (USTR) released the annual Special 301 Report. For those of you who are not aware of this report, it assesses the standard to which
…From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
New Activities of the Federal Big Data Initiative
In recent weeks, several new activities of the Federal Big Data Initiative have been launched with the goal of addressing the challenges and opportunities of Big Data. The initial launch last year featured more than $200 million
…From Gödel's Lost Letter and P=NP
A Trillion Dollar Math Trick
How linear algebra can make databases go really fast Mike Stonebraker is one of the world’s leading expert on database technology. He started in academe at Berkeley, is now again in academe at MIT, and has launched a raft of
…