New Scientist published a great article last week summarizing two new gesture computing technologies developed by colleagues at Microsoft Research and the University of Washington and presented at CHI 2012 earlier this month: THE advent of multi-touch screens and novel gaming interfaces means the days of the traditional mouse and keyboard are well and truly numbered. With Humantenna and SoundWave, you won’t even have to touch a computer to control it, gesturing in its direction will be enough…   As the name suggests, Humantenna uses the human body as an antenna to pick up the electromagnetic fields — generated by power lines and electrical appliances — that fill indoor and outdoor spaces. Users wear a device […]

Ahead of the Alan Turing Centenary next month, SD Times has published an interesting retrospective describing Turing’s influence on the field: Turing’s birthday — June 23, 1912 — will be marked by worldwide celebrations. The Association for Computing Machinery is hosting its Turing Centenary Celebration on June 15 and 16 at the Palace Hotel in San Francisco…   The Turing Award, first given in 1966, is handed out each year to one or more individuals for their contributions of a technical nature to the computing community. The award also includes a US$250,000 prize.   In speaking with past winners of the Turing Award and others who have used his research as a starting point for their […]

Microsoft Research today announced its 2012 Faculty Fellows, recognizing 7 outstanding new faculty members — with diverse research interests spanning robotics, machine learning, human-computer interaction, and social networking, and representing “a selection of the best and brightest in their fields.” Among this year’s Fellows is one of our 2009 Computing Innovation Fellows (CIFellows), Miriah Meyer, who started in the fall as an assistant professor at the University of Utah. According to Microsoft’s announcement: Now in its eighth year, the Microsoft Research Faculty Fellowship program has awarded nearly 50 innovative faculty members in order to stimulate and support creative research undertaken by promising researchers who have the potential to make a profound impact on […]

A little over two years ago, we blogged about the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics’s (BLS) biennial employment outlook — a 10-year forecast of job growth in all occupations — noting the prominence of computing in the decade ahead. Well, earlier this year, BLS released a new employment outlook for the period 2010-2020, and computing was once again front and center: Computer and mathematical occupations are projected to add 778,300 new jobs between 2010 and 2020, after having added 229,600 new jobs from 2006 to 2010. This represents 22.0 percent growth from 2010 to 2020…   Employment in the computer systems design and related services industry is projected to add 671,300 jobs, to reach […]

The New York Times has posted an interesting story to its website this evening — authored by John Markoff — describing researchers’ access to personal data collected by companies: When scientists publish their research, they also make the underlying data available so the results can be verified by other scientists.   At least that is how the system is supposed to work. But lately social scientists have come up against an exception that is, true to its name, huge.   It is “big data,” the vast sets of information gathered by researchers at companies like Facebook, Google and Microsoft from patterns of cellphone calls, text messages and Internet clicks by millions of users around the world. Companies often refuse to make such […]

The Computing Community Consortium (CCC) has developed a new website for undergraduates seeking summer research opportunities as well as advice and tips on applying for graduate school. The website is called CS URGE (CS Undergraduate Research and Graduate Education), and the URL is http://cra.org/ccc/csurge. We URGE you to promote CS URGE with your students and place a link to the site from your departmental website. In addition to sections on “What is CS Research” and “Why Go to Graduate School?”, the site contains links to many undergraduate summer research programs (e.g., NSF REU, CRA-W, and many others) as well as a free service where researchers can post summer research opportunities […]