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Association for Computing Machinery

Magazine: Summer 2013 | Volume 19, No. 4

Money and power in academic publishing

COLUMN: Letter from the editors

FREE CONTENT FEATURE

Money and power in academic publishing

We continue our conversation on open access ("Information Wants to be Free" XRDS Spring 2013) by taking a closer look at a few recent developments, which highlight some of the conflicting interests fueling the debate over academic publishing.

By Inbal Talgam-Cohen, Peter Kinnaird

HTML | In the Digital Library
Tags: Computing / technology policy, Document types, Intellectual property

Information wants to be useful

INBOX

Creativity + Computer Science

The crossroads community

Facing your supervisor

More than just computer science

Blogs

DEPARTMENT: Blogs

Blogs

The XRDS blog highlights a range of topics from conference overviews to privacy and security, from HCI to cryptography. Selected blog posts, edited for print, will be featured in every issue. Please visit xrds.acm.org/blog to read each post in its entirety.

By Gidi Nave, Arefin Huq

HTML | In the Digital Library
Tags: Computer science education, Information science education, Law, social and behavioral sciences, Professional topics

The well-programmed clavier

SECTION: Features

The well-programmed clavier

A look into the workings of the Emmy and Emily Howell programs, including musical examples with pointers to where they can be heard as well as seen.

By David Cope

HTML | In the Digital Library
Tags: Arts and humanities, Compilers, Music retrieval, Sound and music computing

Modeling online creative collaborations

Modeling online creative collaborations

A study of the online music writing community FAWM.ORG reveals that people who collaborate share less in common than you might think.

By Steven Dow, Burr Settles

HTML | In the Digital Library
Tags: Database design and models, Software development methods, Web-based interaction

The chilling tale of copyright law in online creative communities

The chilling tale of copyright law in online creative communities

Online content creators are making decisions every day based on copyright laws that even judges have trouble interpreting. What impact does this confusion over the law have on our technology use and our creativity online?

By Casey Fiesler

HTML | In the Digital Library
Tags: Copyrights, Web-based interaction

Running rivers

Running rivers

For animated film "Brave," Pixar Animation Studios adopted a procedural workflow for special effects. This new paradigm changed how Pixar approached effects. It allowed them to iterate, experiment, and layer physics alongside artist-directed elements. The effects artists used proceduralism to create a Scottish river for the main characters to enjoy some mother/daughter time.

By Michael O'Brien

HTML | In the Digital Library
Tags: Animation, Simulation by animation

Making a scene

Making a scene

How can people and AI equally participate in creating something? How do they do it when they cannot edit or revise their work?

By Brian O'Neill

HTML | In the Digital Library
Tags: Artificial intelligence, Arts and humanities, Philosophical/theoretical foundations of artificial intelligence

Profile Ken Muset<br />A career shaped by creativity

Creativity in code

Creativity in code

Mediums such as fine art and poetry are common subjects in computational creativity---but what about something closer to home? Can computers be as creative in programming as they are in poetry?

By Michael Cook

HTML | In the Digital Library
Tags: Algorithmic game theory and mechanism design, Computer games, Interactive games, Massively multiplayer online games, Software and its engineering, Stochastic games

Kodu game lab, a few lessons learned

Kodu game lab, a few lessons learned

Kodu Game Lab is a complete, 3-D game development environment designed to be accessible to children as young as 9 years old. The core of Kodu is a custom visual programming language, which blends ease of use with expressibility.

By Stephen Coy

HTML | In the Digital Library
Tags: 3D imaging, Animation, Education, Visual languages

Computational origami: a creative blend of mathematics and art

Computational origami: a creative blend of mathematics and art

To some, mathematics is an art form. In this interview, we discuss the creativity behind computational origami, a growing area of computational geometry, with Erik Demaine.

By Michael Zuba, Nick DePalma

HTML | In the Digital Library
Tags: Computational geometry, Randomness, geometry and discrete structures, Shape modeling

Using the Twitter API to mine the Twitterverse

Artificial Intelligence & Robotics Technology Laboratory (AIART lab)

Graphics editing software