Communications of the ACM
An edited collection of advanced computing news from Communications of the ACM, ACM TechNews, other ACM resources, and news sites around the Web.
From ACM News
California Chosen as Home for Computing Institute
The Simons Foundation, which specializes in science and math research, has chosen the University of California, Berkeley, as host for an ambitious new center for...
From ACM News
Smartphone Patent Wars: The Coming Sequel
Billions of dollars are being spent to amass patent arsenals, and lawsuits are flying worldwide.
From ACM News
Seeking Robots to Go Where First Responders Can't
In the event of another disaster at a nuclear power plant, the first responders may not be humans but robots.
From ACM News
A Little Device That's Trying to Read Your Thoughts
Already surrounded by machines that allow him, painstakingly, to communicate, the physicist Stephen Hawking last summer donned what looked like a rakish black headband...
From ACM News
Google Begins Testing Its Augmented-Reality Glasses
If you venture into a coffee shop in the coming months and see someone with a pair of futuristic glasses that look like a prop from "Star Trek," don’t worry.
From ACM News
Police Are Using Phone Tracking as a Routine Tool
Law enforcement tracking of cellphones, once the province mainly of federal agents, has become a powerful and widely used surveillance tool for local police officials...
From ACM News
New Interest in Hacking as Threat to Security
During the five-month period between October and February, there were 86 reported attacks on computer systems in the United States that control critical infrastructure...
From ACM News
Life on Mars? Funds to Find Answer Fade
Just as NASA is on the cusp of answering the most fascinating questions about Mars—is there, was there or could there be life there?—the money needed to provide...
From ACM News
Automatic Recharging, From a Distance
Think how convenient it would be if you could recharge electronic devices without ever having to plug them in—or even take them out of your briefcase.
From ACM News
Microsoft Ponders Future of Kinect, Tech
When Microsoft thinks about the future of technology, it seems to do so with its stomach.
From ACM News
In Attack on Vatican Web Site, a Glimpse of Hackers' Tactics
The elusive hacker movement known as Anonymous has carried out Internet attacks on well-known organizations like Sony and PBS. In August, the group went after its...
From ACM News
A Law Apple Would Like to Break
These days, it’s hard to find a superlative that adequately describes Apple. But maybe simplest is best: biggest.
From ACM News
Behind the Google Goggles, Virtual Reality
It wasn't so long ago that legions of people began walking the streets, talking to themselves. On closer inspection, many of them turned out to be wearing tiny...
From ACM News
Physicists Create a Working Transistor From a Single Atom
Australian and American physicists have built a working transistor from a single phosphorus atom embedded in a silicon crystal.
From ACM News
In Data Deluge, Multitaskers Go to Multiscreens
Workers in the digital era can feel at times as if they are playing a video game, battling the barrage of emails and instant messages, juggling documents, Web sites...
From ACM News
Pursuing Iphone Thief, Officer Knew Right Buttons to Push
As crime-solving tools go, it may not have the same pedigree as, say, the oversize magnifying glass.
From ACM News
When Self-Driving Cars and the Real World Collide
Even as Google tests its small fleet of self-driving vehicles on California highways, legal scholars and government officials are warning that society has only...
From ACM News
How .s. Lost Out on Iphone Work
When Barack Obama joined Silicon Valley's top luminaries for dinner in California last February, each guest was asked to come with a question for the president.
From ACM News