BLOG@CACM

When Everything Is Embarrassing: Designing With Teenage Girls

May 6 2011

A discussion of the difficulties of conducting user-centered design with teenage girls.

Stonebraker on Data Warehouses

HCI

May 1 2011

Data warehouses are not only increasing in size and complexity, but also in their importance to business. Michael Stonebraker shares 10 key ideas on the topic.

Michael Stonebraker

Embracing Noise or Why Computer Scientists Should Stop Worrying and Learn to Love the Errors

Apr 28 2011

Precision is not required in everything or even most things. Failures are best handled by expecting them all the time, not treating them as exceptions. We should expect errors and handle them routinely. We should stop worrying and learn to love the noise.

Greg Linden

Architecture and Hardware

Apr 27 2011

Why Have There Been So Many Security Breaches Recently?

We're only five months into this year, but there have been a large number of sensational security breaches. Why have there been so many, and what can we do about it?

Jason Hong

The Long Road to a Seat at the Table

Apr 23 2011

Computer science is still a new discipline compared to the rest of STEM. It will take a while for people to know what a "computer scientist" is in the same way that they know what a "chemist" or "biologist" or "engineer" does.

A Successful NY Celebration of Women in Computing!

Apr 12 2011

A recap of our recent New York regional Celebration of Women in Computing.

Valerie Barr

Stats: We’re Doing It Wrong

Apr 4 2011

A summary of the mistakes researchers make when analysing likert type data and what the correct methods should be.

New York Celebration of Women in Computing

Education

Apr 3 2011

A preview of the upcoming New York Celebration of Women in Computing, which is designed to bring the experience of the Grace Hopper Celebration to students in a smaller, less costly, and local setting.

Valerie Barr

Education

Apr 1 2011

Matters of Design, Part II

Jason Hong discusses how Apple creates well-designed products and what the human-computer interaction community can learn from its methods.

Jason Hong

From ‘Must’ and ‘Unsuitable’ to Design Guidelines in Computing Education

Mar 25 2011

Rhetoric in education tends to be politicized and polarized, and computing education is no different. Research in computing education might learn from design-based research efforts from general education research, that emphasizes developing design guidelines.

Mar 24 2011

Learning Through Twitter

Commentary on a recent study which evalauted the impact of Twitter on student engagement and grades.

Call to Arms: Science and Engineering For Privacy

Mar 21 2011

It is our responsibility as scientists and engineers to understand what can or cannot be done from a technical point of view on privacy.

Jeannette M. Wing

Explaining Science and Engineering

Carnegie Mellon Professor Jeannette Wing

Mar 20 2011

As I have followed the international news regarding the Japanese disaster, I have been struck by the challenges each news organization has faced in explaining technical concepts. We live in a technological society, where understanding of scientific processes and the engineering design balances are essential to informed debate and decision making.

Daniel Reed

Algorithm Visualizations and Community Building

Mar 11 2011

If you’re interested in using or developing algorithm visualizations (AVs), you should visit AlgoViz.org, a portal dedicated to creating a repository of AVs and building an active online community around them.

Jack Rosenberger

TeachScheme! Using Mathematics to Teach Programming

Mar 10 2011

Matthias Felleisen and a team of computer scientists have developed the TeachScheme! Project, which provides high school teachers with courseware and other tools to use mathematics to teach programming.

Jack Rosenberger

Mar 9 2011

Who Needs a Tablet?

Tablets do not solve a mainstream problem, they only serve a niche.

Greg Linden

Scientists, Engineers, and Computer Science; Industry and Research Groups

Mar 1 2011

Mark Guzdial discusses what scientists and engineers should know about computer science, such as Alan Kay's "Triple Whammy." Greg Linden writes about industry's different approaches to research and how to organize researchers in a company.

Mark Guzdial and Greg Linden

Software Verification Turns Mainstream

Feb 28 2011

Verification is maturing to the point where it will become integrated into mainstream software development.

Bertrand Meyer

Systems and Networking

Feb 24 2011

At the NSF CE21 Meeting: We Have Such a Long Way to Go

The NSF CE21 Community Meeting highlighted the opportunity that computing has to catch up with the rest of STEM on education issues.

Let’s Teach Malware When It’s Ready: The Purpose of Undergrad CS

Feb 24 2011

Ledin's call for teaching malware to all undergraduate students conflicts with my understanding of the purpose of an undergraduate CS degree.

The Wonderful World of Cooking Interfaces

Feb 19 2011

This is an article describing some recent (and bizarre) interfaces to support cooking. The intersection of computer science and culinary art is not as small as you might think.

Intellectual Amplification via Computing

Feb 18 2011

As the recent performance of IBM's Watson system on the game show Jeopardy! illustrated, the combination of large-scale data, rich algorithm suites and powerful computing are opening new vistas. Vannevar Bush's 1940s vision of a Memex, a device capable of storing, indexing and retrieving data from a broad knowledge base, is now within our reach.

Daniel Reed

Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning

Feb 15 2011

Who Needs a Netbook?

In only a couple years, improved smartphones and laptops have closed the niche that netbooks lived in. Rather than mourn the loss of netbooks, let's celebrate their demise.

Greg Linden