Editorial Pointers

Much has been covered in these pages on information retrieval and management, often focusing on new methods or engines for performing text and sometimes image searches. Blazing a new trail in the retrieval effort is projects designed to index and access multimedia content—a flourishing movement as the related databases proliferate worldwide.

Researchers in Music Information Retrieval (MIR) are a growing legion dedicated to developing new methods and systems for users to locate and use musical documents based on aspects of their content, such as melody, harmonic structure, beat patterns, lyrics, and genre. This month’s special section shares the latest work from the field. You will learn of systems that identify and access music by allowing users to hum a piece of it. You will hear how music collections are categorized for easy search and identification. And you will discover the latest in melodic search engines. Guest editor Bryan Pardo, from Northwestern University, called on some of the leading MIR researchers to share their musical challenges and achievements with the rest of the computing community. We hope their musical journeys inspire similar research.

Also this month, Alexander Pons explores methods for uniquely identifying consumers’ needs through biometric marketing. And Proccacino et al. offer insight into developer’s perceptions of project success, noting the elements that influence success and failure are often not related to cost and scheduling.

It is common for online vendors to open their sites liberally at first blush to draw in customers and build up traffic. At some point, however, site access policy begins to be restricted, and Eugenia Huang studies the hidden trade-offs of such action on visitor loyalty. More companies worldwide are monitoring employee online activities than ever before, often treading a fine line between protecting the organization and respecting worker privacy. Nord et al. examine the escalating monitoring practices and complex workplace policies. And McDowell et al. share the results of a study that reflects the power of pair programming in producing better programmers and attracting (and increasing) female interest in the field.

In "Viewpoint," Dan Goldman observes how computer animation in the commercial movie industry has been influenced by the work of academic researchers and calls for collaboration on both sides to take the field further still. In "Practical Programmer," Robert Glass questions the findings of the oft-quoted Standish Group Chaos Report. And in "Digital Village," Berghel and Hoelzer examine the effectiveness of disk wipers.

Diane Crawford
Editor