Communications of the ACM articles from August 2000

Communications of the ACM archives from August 2000

Editorial Pointers.
August 1, 2000... If this issue does nothing else, it should convince you that personalization means something different to anyone who uses it, creates it, designs tools around it, even writes about it. Indeed, this milestone edition came about because of...

News Track.(News Briefs)(Technology Information)
August 1, 2000... EVERYBODY MUST GET CLONED A human-image animation system that manipulates stored images of a person's facial movements in response to phonemes (the smallest units of speech) and can then replicate voice and image in a realistic video...

The Other Side of Embedding the Internet.(Technology Information)
August 1, 2000... AT FACE VALUE, THE SPECIAL section "Embedding the Internet" (May 2000) presents an exciting new direction for the semiconductor industry and a bold challenge to those who produce software. For semiconductor vendors, there is the opportunity to...

The Economic Espionage Act: Touring the Minefields.(Government Activity)
August 1, 2000... In order to protect homegrown secrets from foreign competitors, the U.S. Congress concocted the EEA, a cause of broad concern on the domestic front. In 1996 the U.S. Congress passed the Economic Espionage Act (EEA).(1) Viewed simply, the...

The Case for a New Business Model.(for software)(Industry Trend or Event)
August 1, 2000... Is software a product or a medium? There is no doubt the triumph of modern production has been the development of the manufacturing process. From Eli Whitney's cotton gin, through Simeon North's use of standardized rifle parts, to...

Does Typography Affect Proposal Assessment?
August 1, 2000... Experience from assisting in the review of 30 proposals to a major funding agency suggests that mundane aspects of proposal formatting have an effect on proposal assessment. Why do these apparent connections between mundane formatting and...

Personalized Views of PERSONALIZATION.(Industry Trend or Event)
August 1, 2000... Our vocabulary of Internet-related words has become socially popular and, of course, an essential tool of trade in the hands of marketing initiatives. I recall in the early 1990s when words like "agent" and "multimedia" were so overused they...

Finance with a PERSONALIZED TOUCH.(Industry Trend or Event)
August 1, 2000... The banking industry has sure benefited from new technologies, but how can we ensure customer satisfaction? A key challenge facing banks today is how to offer the service provided by the old one-to-one relationship a customer had with their...

Growth in Personalization and Business.(Industry Trend or Event)
August 1, 2000... The mass production age does not deter increases in personalizing goods, services, and delivery that build customer satisfaction and loyalty. Business growth with a concierge-like quality con result from: a business composed of interchangeable...

Experience with PERSONALIZATION ON YAHOO!(Company Business and Marketing)
August 1, 2000... When designing Web personalization products, make sure you address all your users. Yahoo! was one of the first sites on the Web to use personalization on a large scale, most notably with its My Yahoo! application introduced in July 1996....

Personalized COMMUNICATION NETWORKS.(Company Operations)(Interview)
August 1, 2000... What does personalization mean to AT&T and what are the important business propositions to provide personalized services to its customers? Guest Editor Doug Riecken recently interviewed Kathleen Earley, Vice President of AT&T Internet Services,...

A USER-CENTERED DESIGN APPROACH to Personalization.(Industry Trend or Event)
August 1, 2000... The key to successful design is grounding the choice of features and tools upon value to the end user. Personalization is a toolbox of technologies and application features used in the design of an end-user experience. Features classified...

AFFORDANCES, MOTIVATION, and the DESIGN of USER INTERFACES.(Industry Trend or Event)
August 1, 2000... Creating tools that enable rather than restrict add value to the product and loyalty from the customer. People use tools to achieve desired results. Goal-directed behavior is a human characteristic. While in rare instances someone might...

MEASURING SUCCESS.(Internet/Web/Online Service Information)
August 1, 2000... E-business intelligence is a complex, yet vital, element to building a strong customer base. How can we measure success in the design and evolution of personalized interactive services for e-business? The ability to design, implement, and...

HELPING PEOPLE FIND WHAT THEY DON'T KNOW.(Technology Information)
August 1, 2000... Recommendation systems help users find the correct words for a successful search. Imagine you are performing a task while interacting with a service hosted on the Internet or with an automated speech recognition mobile phone service. What...

CREATIVITY ENHANCEMENT with Emerging Technologies.
August 1, 2000... For the creative person, the ability to determine how the creative process evolves is of critical importance There is much to learn for the development of personalized technology systems by looking at creativity in action. By its very...

Commonsense-Based INTERFACES.(Technology Information)
August 1, 2000... To build a machine that truly learns by itself will require a commonsense knowledge representing the kinds of things even a small child already knows. To make our computers easier to use, we must make them more sensitive to our needs. That...

Phenomenal DATA MINING.(Technology Information)
August 1, 2000... Tracing the road from data to phenomena--using a supermarket environ as the backdrop--illustrates the essence of data mining with commonsense knowledge. Science and common sense both tell us that the facts about the world are not directly...

Representation is EVERYTHING.
August 1, 2000... Issues of representation pose many questions--and challenges--that must be solved before implementation. Representation is everything. It permeates all aspects of personalization. The extent to which a personalized interactive service or...

Personalization and PRIVACY.(Industry Trend or Event)
August 1, 2000... Does personalization jeopardize our privacy? If so, what should the law do about it? People are constantly learning information about us. They see what we do, what we buy, what we look at, and the like. If they know who we are, and if they...

PERSONAL End-User Tools.(Industry Trend or Event)
August 1, 2000... "If we perceive our role aright, we then see more clearly the proper criterion for success: a toolmaker succeeds as, and only as, the users of his tool succeed with his aid. However shining the blade, however perfect the heft, a sword is tested...

BUILDING Personal Tools by Programming.(Product Information)
August 1, 2000... The Stagecast Creator can make a programmer out of every user. The most flexible way to personalize a PC or information appliance or computer network service is to program it. Since the PC is the most powerful information processing device...

Intermediaries Personalize INFORMATION STREAMS.(Internet/Web/Online Service Information)
August 1, 2000... A software-based middleman transforms data between client and server for faster delivery and discovery. Intermediaries are software programs or agents that meaningfully transform information as it flows from one computer to another. Just as...

LEARNING to Personalize.(Industry Trend or Event)
August 1, 2000... Recognizing patterns of behavior helps systems predict your next move. A typical user exhibits many patterns when interacting with a computer system. Machine-learning algorithms are being used to recognize such regularities and integrate...

A Personalized TELEVISION LISTINGS SERVICE.(Internet/Web/Online Service Information)
August 1, 2000... Mixing the collaborative recommendation approach with content-based filtering seems to bring out the best in both methods. The goal of content personalization is to ensure the right people receive the right information at the right time....

Capturing HUMAN INTELLIGENCE in the Net.(Technology Information)
August 1, 2000... A new software system allows Web searchers to connect with others who have been there, done that. What if your navigation of the Web were assisted not only by various search engines and software systems, but also by many other people who...

NATURAL LANGUAGE DIALOGUE for Personalized Interaction.(Technology Information)
August 1, 2000... Technologies that successfully recognize and react to spoken or typed words are key to true personalization. Front- and back-end systems must respond in accord, and one solution may be found somewhere in the middle(ware). The pragmatic...

Personalization on the Net using Web Mining.(Internet/Web/Online Service Information)
August 1, 2000... On the Internet, we have experienced massive growth in systems that can personalize content delivered to individual users. The science behind personalization has undergone tremendous changes in recent years, yet the basic goal of...

Web Usage Mining for Web Site Evaluation.(Internet/Web/Online Service Information)
August 1, 2000... Making a site better fit its users. The Web has become a borderless marketplace for purchasing and exchanging goods and services. While Web users search for, inspect and occasionally purchase products and services on the Web, companies...

A Broader Approach to Personalization.(Technology Information)
August 1, 2000... Establishing an architecture for providing automatically generated, machine processable, dynamic user profiles to Web servers while conforming to users' privacy preferences. Personalization generally refers to making a Web site more...

Automatic Personalization Based on Web Usage Mining.(Internet/Web/Online Service Information)
August 1, 2000... Web usage mining can help improve the scalability, accuracy, and flexibility of recommender systems. The ease and speed with which business transactions can be carried out over the Web have been a key driving force in the rapid growth of...

Adaptive Web Sites.(Internet/Web/Online Service Information)
August 1, 2000... Examining the potential use of automated adaptation to improve Web sites for visitors. Designing a complex Web site so that it readily yields its information is a difficult task. The designer must anticipate the users' needs and structure...

Shrink-Wrapping Our Rights.(Industry Trend or Event)
August 1, 2000... Laws relating to computers, software, and the Internet are being proposed and passed at such a breathless rate that even those of us trying to follow them are having trouble keeping up. Unfortunately, bad laws, such as the Uniform Computer...