Accomplishments
Video for “What Makes Paris Look Like Paris”
An interview with Carl Doersch about his paper, which shows how Google Street View images can be deconstructed to extract a city’s characteristic features. Shot at at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh.
Association for Computing MachineryPresentation, Video
November, 2015
4 minutes
Video for “Information Cartography”
Interviews with Carlos Guestrin and Eric Horvitz, who join Dafna Shahaf in a project to map and connect information much as a metro map visualizes a city subway. Shot in Seattle and Redmond, Washington.
Association for Computing MachineryPresentation, Video
October, 2015
5 minutes
Video for “Rise of Concerns about AI”
Interview with Thomas Dietterich about fears — both real and imagined — as artificial intelligence gains capabilities. Shot in the forests of Eastern Oregon.
Association for Computing MachineryPresentation, Video
September, 2015
5 minutes
Mental Health Apps Listen and Guide
An article about apps that attempt to discern when their users exhibit signs of depression, mania, and other mental issues.
Association for Computing MachineryArticle
September, 2015
1000 words
Video for “Programming the Quantum Future”
Interview with Benoît Valiron about programming quantum computers, in particular about his new language, “Quipper”. Shot at the University of Waterloo (Canada) during a conference on the subject.
Association for Computing MachineryPresentation, Video
July, 2015
4 minutes
The Filter Bubble: Is It Real? Does It Matter?
An article reviewing whether search engines et al. isolate us from unusual ideas and beliefs through a “filter bubble”.
Association for Computing MachineryArticle
June, 2015
950 words
Video for “Exascale Computing and Big Data”
An interview with ACM Fellow Daniel Reed about the division between exaflop supercomputing and exabyte data management — and how each field can inform the other. With lots of B-roll, thanks to staff and faculty throughout the University of Iowa.
Association for Computing MachineryPresentation, Video
June, 2015
4 minutes
Video for “Michael Stonebraker, 2014 ACM A.M. Turing Award Recipient”
Similar to the video I produced last year to celebrate 2013 recipient Leslie Lamport, this one describes highlights from the career of this venerable name in relational database science.
Association for Computing MachineryPresentation, Video
May, 2015
5 minutes
Video for “Optimization as Motion Selection Principle in Robot Action”
An interview with two French roboticists, with a demonstration of how a humanoid robot actualizes their research.
Association for Computing MachineryPresentation, Video
April, 2015
5 minutes
Video for “Sketch-Thru-Plan”
A researcher and a military expert at Adapx discuss how they speed up battlefield planning with “multi-modal input” that marries speech, sketch, and writing.
Association for Computing MachineryPresentation, Video
March, 2015
5 minutes
Video for “Local Laplacian Filters: Edge-aware Image Processing with a Laplacian Pyramid”
Adobe researcher Sylvain Paris explains how a new method of combining Gaussian and Laplacian pyramids results in image filters that can enhance details without distorting edges.
Association for Computing MachineryPresentation, Video
February, 2015
5 minutes
Car Talk
Article about vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communication, touching on vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) efforts, government involvement, and models that feature V2V technologies.
Association for Computing MachineryArticle
February, 2015
1700 words
Video for “Hacking Nondeterminism with Induction and Coinduction”
Videojournalism about a new method for comparing the processes called “finite-state machines” that underlie much of computer science.
Association for Computing MachineryPresentation, Video
January, 2015
5 minutes
Energy Harvesting Extends Life of Small Devices
Article about using power gathered from radio waves, heat, and motion to power small devices such as sensors and cell phones.
Association for Computing MachineryArticle, Online
January, 2015
850 words
Video for “Distributed Information Processing in Biological and Computational Systems”
Videojournalism introducing a paper that outlines how both computers and members of natural communities (such as ants, birds, and cells) cooperate.
Association for Computing MachineryPresentation, Video
December, 2014
5 minutes
Video for “Computationally Modeling Human Emotion”
Videojournalism about how researchers are teaching computers to understand the processes that create human emotion, possibly leading to better decisions and human-computer interfaces.
Association for Computing MachineryPresentation, Video
November, 2014
5 minutes
Boot Camps Promise PhDs Fast Track to a Data Science Career
Ph.D.s: Want a month of all-expenses-paid training, with a six-figure job waiting for you when you’re done? That’s what a new crop of “data-science boot camps” offer — for those who qualify. (Online-only article.)
Association for Computing MachineryArticle, Online
October, 2014
1000 words
Video for “Scene Understanding by Labeling Pixels”
Videojournalism about algorithms that help computers recognize objects within an image, and undestand the scene itself.
Association for Computing MachineryPresentation, Video
October, 2014
5 minutes
Freelancers: Want Regular Pay? Consider a Retainer Agreement
A blog post to support my course, “Freelancing Fundamentals“.
lynda.comBlog post
October, 2014
550 words
Waiting for the Smart Grid
The “smart” electric grid has held great promise for 15 years, but it’s not always been clear how deeply it’s penetrated our infrastructure — or what benefits it’s delivered. This article summarizes the current state of smart-grid technology, who’s implemented it, and where improvements are likely to appear. Online only.
Association for Computing MachineryArticle, Online
October, 2014
1000 words
Video for “Reading News with Maps by Exploiting Spatial Synonyms”
Videojournalism about a system at http://newsstand.umiacs.umd.edu/ that interprets newsfeeds, placing items on a map (among other things).
Association for Computing MachineryPresentation, Video
September, 2014
4 minutes
Video for “Moving Portraits”
Videojournalism about turning photo collections into movie-like “Face Movies”, via a system that’s been incorporated into Google’s Picasa photo program. (Many thanks to guest interviewer Teresa Meek.)
Association for Computing MachineryPresentation, Video
August, 2014
4 minutes
Computing’s Narrow Focus May Hinder Women’s Participation
I was afraid to work on this article about the gender gap in computing because it’s a topic surrounded by dogma, strong feelings, and poorly conceived statistics. As a result, most coverage on it is timid and shallow. But I think the hours of interviewing and research paid off. I’m happy with how it turned out. Online-only.
It’s gotten lots of coverage:
- Interview subject Meta Brown’s mention in her series, “Meta’s Binder Fulla Women”
- Slashdot article with a misleading attribution in the headline. (My comment on it.)
- Andrew Leonard’s thoughtful musings, again with a misleading attribution. (My comment on it.)
- The Spiceworks community forum for IT/tech professionals is hosting a heated discussion in response to the article.
Article, Online
August, 2014
1000 words
Does Bitcoin Matter?
A blog post to support my course, “Up and Running with Bitcoin“.
lynda.comBlog post
August, 2014
600 words
Video for “Efficient Maximum Flow Algorithms”
Videojournalism about the applications of, and solutions to, the “maximum-flow/minimum-cut” problem, which affects surprisingly diverse fields. As before, I did most of this, with the help of two shooters.
Association for Computing MachineryPresentation, Video
July, 2014
5 minutes
Appearance on “Authored Content” show, talking about Bitcoin
I talk off the cuff about the popular cryptocurrency with fellow lynda.com authors Morten Rand-Hendriksen and Ray Villalobos on their Google Hangout show, “Authored Content”.
Authored ContentOnline, Presentation, Video
July, 2014
63 minutes
Video for “Community Sense and Response Systems: Your Phone as Quake Detector”
Videojournalism about a program at Caltech that collects seismic data through the cell phones of volunteers throughout the Los Angeles area. I did pretty much everything — shooting, editing, titles, narration, audio, intro music — with the help of an experienced primary cameraperson.
Association for Computing MachineryPresentation, Video
June, 2014
6 minutes
Up and Running with Bitcoin
Description by lynda.com: “Understand the basics of bitcoin, the popular virtual currency, and then learn the nuances of bitcoin transactions and security issues that can be difficult to navigate on your own. Tom Geller addresses both the big and small issues swirling around bitcoin right now, and prepares you to use or accept bitcoin as a currency for your transactions. Discover how bitcoin compares to US dollars and other forms of money; how to send, receive, and “mine” it; and how to protect and track your bitcoin transactions. Tom will even show you how to connect with the Bitcoin development community, in case you’re interested in contributing to the spread of this modern cryptocurrency.”
lynda.comOnline, Presentation, Video
June, 2014
60 minutes
Drupal in Context column: Handrails for Everybody
A column for Volume 4, Issue 1 of “Drupal Watchdog”, the print magazine distributed at the semi-annual DrupalCon. It discusses the importance of an “easy entry” to technology, and the struggles Drupal has experienced in that regard.
Tag 1 PublishingArticle
June, 2014
750 words
Video for the 2013 ACM A.M. Turing Award
A celebration of the life work of Leslie Lamport, recipient of the 2013 ACM A.M. Turing Award. I did production, direction, editing, voiceover, and most of the shooting. Promoted in the article at http://cacm.acm.org/news/175166-general-agreement/fulltext , and presented at the awards banquet.
Association for Computing MachineryVideo
May, 2014
6 minutes