The NSF’s Science Nation has a great feature today on the “Science of Shopping,” describing how computer scientists Rajeev Sharma and Satish Mummareddy have developed cameras and software that track our shopping behavior in brick-and-mortar stores, with the goal of showing retailers and manufacturers the best areas to place products within stores. Next time you go to a store, take a minute to look at all the things that are trying to grab your attention. With so many products available and so many stores and websites, how do you decide what to buy and where to shop? Whether it’s convenience, good service or finding the best deals, store owners want […]

A few months ago, we announced a call for short videos describing exciting research and results in computer science — with the goal of communicating to undergraduates what computing research is all about. The first of these videos, titled Exploring PhotoBios, debuted in mid-June. Today I’m pleased to present the second of these videos — about Seattle, a new testbed platform that allows researchers to access computational resources on a wide variety of devices and machines provided by everyday users. Users today are increasingly running applications on devices like cell phones and tablets. Similarly, companies are increasingly moving services to separately managed services like the cloud or content distribution networks (CDNs). However, […]