2008 was a year of significant change for Communications. The same will be the case in 2009. After a successful relaunch of the print magazine last year, ACM is getting ready to launch a new Communications’ Web site, which will go live this month. The new site will complement the magazine by providing an easy access point to all the content found in the magazine’s print pages, but perhaps more importantly the site will extend beyond Communications’ current reach and help bring us closer to fulfilling the flagship’s original promise as the primary "communication" tool in the field of computing.
The site will extend beyond Communications’ current reach and help bring us closer to fulfilling the flagship’s original promise as the primary "communication" tool in the field of computing.
Let me say a few words about the new site. Many in the community are now used to downloading Communications’ articles from the ACM Digital Library, reading the print publication on the train or plane, or scanning through the pages of the Digital Edition on your desktop or mobile device (as an aside, the iPhone version is worth trying). For those of you who have your preferred way of digesting and archiving the articles published each month, nothing should change and we will do our best to continue to improve the experience for you. The new site, however, offers you for the first time a robust gateway or digital storefront from which to not only read and download articles, but to comment, share, and interact with the computing community in a meaningful way and in real time without the limitations of page budgets and print schedules.
The new site will be content- and feature-rich with an emphasis on high-quality editorial. Everything found in the print publication will be available via the Web site, but the site will also contain additional news content updated more frequently than is possible in print. A variety of user-generated content, such as the new Expert Blog aptly named the Blog@CACM, will be contributed to by a growing list of distinguished practitioners and researchers. Periodically, the best of those entries and comments will make their way into the print magazine and the result will be a cross-fertilization of content between the print and online Communications. So, for those of you who still prefer to see your name appear in print there is another incentive to go online. The new site will also serve as a gateway to some of the most interesting and relevant existing blogs (see Blog Roll) in the computing community and provide links to related content, books, courses, conferences, SIGs, and other resources. The site will also be heavily integrated with the ACM Digital Library, so as to provide a single entry point for searching both Communications articles and other articles published by ACM.
It is important to say that the site will not be all things to all people. That is not the intention. But, if you are a regular reader of Communications and you are looking for a way to find more high-quality information on advanced computing topics (for practitioners and researchers), we believe this new site will be a great place to start and over time will find its way into your favorites folder and become a highly respected and valuable resource. At least, that is our ultimate goal.
Scott E. Delman
GROUP PUBLISHER
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