public void updateHighScore(PlayerScore newScore) {
ServletContext ctx = getServletConfig().getServletContext();
AtomicReference holder = (AtomicReference) ctx.getAttribute("highScore");
while (true) {
HighScore old = holder.get();
if (old.score >= newScore.score)
break;
else if (holder.compareAndSet(old, newScore))
break;
}
}

How to Succeed in Graduate School: PART II *http://www.acm.org/crossroads/xrds1-3/advice2.html

Some professors have well defined long-term research programs and expect their students to contribute directly to this program. Others have much looser, but still related ongoing projects. Still others will take on anyone with an interesting idea, and may have a broad range of interesting ideas to offer their students.

Be wary of the advisor who seems willing to let you pursue any research direction at all. You probably won’t get the technical support you need, and they may lose interest in you when the next graduate student with a neat idea comes along.

If you’re more of a risk-taker, choose a topic that branches out in a new direction. The danger here is that it can be difficult to carefully define the problem, and to evaluate the solution you develop. If you have a topic like this, it helps a lot to have an advisor or mentor who is good at helping you to focus and who can help you maintain a reasonably rigorous approach to the problem.

A good way to focus on a topic is to write one-sentence and one-paragraph descriptions of the problem you want to address, and do the same for your proposed solution; then write an outline of what a thesis that solved this problem would look like (i.e., what chapters would be included, or if you’re ambitious, what sections in the chapter).

The proposal should provide a foundation for the dissertation. First, you must circumscribe the problem and argue convincingly that it needs to be solved, and that you have a methodology for solving it. You must identify and discuss related work: has this problem been addressed before? What are the shortcomings of existing work in the area, and how will your approach differ from and be an improvement over these methods?

How to Succeed in Graduate School: PART II *http://www.acm.org/crossroads/xrds1-3/advice2.html

There are two key properties of a good paper: significant content — original, important ideas that are well developed and tested — and good writing style. The degree to which the paper’s content has to be “significant” depends on where you’re submitting it. Preliminary ideas and work in progress are more suitable for a workshop or symposium; well-developed, extensively tested ideas are more appropriate for a journal. One way to decide where your paper should be submitted is to read papers in potentially appropriate publications (e.g., last year’s conference proceedings and current journal issues). Another method is to show a draft or outline of the paper to your advisor or other colleagues and ask their advice.

School Survival Guide *http://projects.ischool.washington.edu/wpratt/survive.htm

Continually update your:

Problem statement

Goals

Approach (or a list of possible approaches)

One-minute version of your research (aka the elevator ride summary)

Five-minute version of your research

Tireless twitter users are good to follow but sometimes I’m annoyed with all the retweets which I’m not interested in.

If you want follow someone’s tweets but not his/her retweets, all you have to do is to click the ID and get into his/her page, then click the green icon just nearby Following text.

Simple task.

Starting with the famous sentence, “the most profound technologies are those that disappear”, the author brought writing technology as an example. Writing technology is an ability to capture the symbolic description of spoken languages that can help to overcome the limits of individual memory and move toward long-term information freed from storage.

In this paper, the author located the state of 1991‘s computing technology was similar to that of writing technology when the writing requires scribes to know how to make ink and burn clay when they want write something. As well, 1991‘s knowledge navigators such as laptop could not realize integral, invisible environment. Here, the author’s point of view is that disappearance is a consequence of human psychology rather than technology improvement, which means invisibility doesn’t represent vanish of device, and does represent vanish of complex steps to achieve the goal on using the device. The author seems to define ‘free’ as ‘without attention and thinking’ and ‘focus beyond them on new goals’ in whole paper. What is the meaning of invisible, fading into background? It could be realized when the user achieve his/her ultimate goal though he/she doesn’t give careful attention on the system details.

The author was skeptical about virtual reality and mentioned about embodied virtuality which draws computers out of electronic shells. He said, as location-aware and more-interconnected computing system with a little existing artificial intelligence technologies, embodied virtuality could bring us invisible computing.

There are 3 types of prototypes the author suggested as the components of embodied virtuality, tab, pad, and board, which were characterized by its display size. 3 types of components are interconnected so that user could do tasks freed to location. Tabs were the smallest components among them, which could represent individual’s characteristics as badges or ID cards.

The second prototype device was Pad. The author said pads are “something of a cross between a sheet of paper and current laptop computers.” Using pads, users spread them on the real desk or table and do their tasks independent from the display desktop in traditional windows system does.

Boards were yard-sized component used as bulletin boards or whiteboards. Also, users could download books or any information from it into their pads or tabs. To achieve this kind of component, large-size display was needed.

M. Weiser mentioned three technology required: “cheap, low-power computers with convenient displays, tied network, and software systems implementing ubiquitous applications.” He expected these requirements are fulfilled in the future, with specific numerical quantities. Actually, most of his expectations are realized or overachieved year 2010 today, except the software system to implement ubiquitous applications are ongoing issue.

Discussion

M. Weiser categorized the components by its size of screen. In different way, they might be categorized by its ownership, personal and infrastructural devices. Personal hand-held devices including  laptops and net-books had succeed greatly. Recently, with iPhone’s lead, smart phone market was grown significantly. Including iPad, a note-sized tablet device which Apple has recently released, the personal-owned devices are improved fast and seemed to be enough to realize the environment which M. Weiser mentioned.

Otherwise, infrastructural devices hadn’t improved compared to personal devices. Though there are so many prototypes such as smart office, smart home, etc., yet we only can see them in laboratory or conceptual spaces in expos. Suppose that the iPad is not personal device like as M. Weiser said as Pad in this paper, can it come into our life? I think the reason why infrastructural device cannot be implemented our daily life is that the difficulty of maintenance and lack of investment by massive organizations. Hand-held mobile devices are currently improved and rapidly changing its standards so that it’s hard to prepare public components right now with all cares about future personal components. I think infrastructural way will be naturally issued in near future, at the timing that the personal device technologies are mature and standardized. Consequently, I think we are in Tabs and Pads age. As computer science engineers, we should prepare standard framework to support smooth interconnection between personal and infrastructural components to realize Tabs, Pads, and Boards age.

1 How I Use Facebook
2 Ways I Embrace My Audience
3 Should My Town Use Social Media?
4 A Community I Love
5 Technology That Empowers Me
6 How Flickr Did it Right
7 How Best to Comment on a Corporate Blog
8 Ways to Save a Bad Time at a Conference
9 How I Find Blogging Ideas
10 Somebody Has to Say It
11 My Children Will Do it Differently
12 How Schools Could Use Social Media
13 The Best Parts of Marketing
14 Presentation Skills for a New Conversation
15 How I Find Time to Make Media
16 Empower Your Best Customers
17 After the Event- Carrying the Conversation Forward
18 Just Jump Into Podcasting- Heres How
19 My Community and How You Can Engage It
20 Twitter Jaiku Pownce Facebook- And Then What
21 Making a Miniseries
22 If I Were an Advertiser Today
23 My Mother is On Facebook
24 Does a Big Brand Need You
25 Books I Want to Write
26 Serving the Deep Niches- How I Do It
27 How Women Use Social Media
28 A Hard Look at My Media Habits
29 If I Were a Television Producer
30 Social Media Marketing vs Traditional Marketing
31 Elements of a Marketing Campaign
32 Social Media Campaigns are NOT Traditional Campaigns
33 Idea Making and How I Make Something
34 What I Spend Money On
35 Do Rock Stars Need Social Media Strategies
36 How I Use My Website
37 Book Shopping- Buy These Books
38 MTV Changed the World in the 80s- Here is What Comes Next
39 How I Process Blogs and What I Do With All That Info
40 Ten Guilty Pleasures
41 The Internet Application I Havent Seen
42 If I Worked for a Venture Capital Firm
43 My Day Job Versus My Passion
44 The Difference Between Fark and Truemors
45 Fixing Conferences
46 Making Marketplaces for Media Makers
47 When I Feel Frustrated
48 Branding Strategies I Use
49 Your Ideas And My Ideas- How We Play Together
50 Friends I Cant Wait to Meet
51 The Art of Chaos
52 Telling My Boss About Social Media
53 Could I Quit My Day Job
54 When to Cut Back on Web Habits
55 Breaking Down My Favorite Blog
56 Explaining Social Media to Your Chamber of Commerce
57 Non-Internet Equivalents to Internet Tools I Use
58 Considering Media for the Rest of the Globe
59 Twitter is Too Simple- Twitter is Just Right
60 The Future of Podcasting
61 Video Made Simple
62 Facebook Applications I Love
63 You Are Here
64 Blogging Tactics- How to Keep it Fresh
65 I Want to Brag A Minute
66 Who Says What About Your Brand
67 Tools for Blogging
68 Wordpress Plugins I Use And Why
69 Media Topics That Need More Coverage
70 Comments versus Blog Posts
71 How I Drive Traffic to My Site
72 News- Is it Useful and How I Might Fix It
73 Which TV Network Gets Videoblogging and PodCasting
74 Franchising My Media
75 Handling Critics
76 My Audio Tricks
77 Ning Sites I Like and Why
78 Controlling My Brand
79 Sharing and Contributing
80 How Twitter Improved My Blog
81 Email After Twitter
82 Facebook Video Improved My Social Network
83 Letting Go
84 Downtime- What I Do Offline to Recharge
85 How I Went From Very Shy to Less Shy
86 The RIGHT Number to Track for Podcasting
87 PodCamp Has to Change
88 Shaking Things Up
89 Joining A Network- Things to Consider
90 Newspapers and How I Would Change Them
91 Interview With a Veteran
92 The Countries of My Social Media World
93 Giving it Away
94 Consulting Strategies for Social Media Experts
95 Turning Media into a Business Card
96 Podcasting on a Budget
97 For Every Excuse a New Strategy
98 Just When I Think I Am Done
99 Buying Gear- My Shopping Tips for Podcasters
100 When is Free Better- When Not

FROM: 100 Blog Topics I Hope YOU Write

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