Communications of the ACM
The news archive provides access to past news stories from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
October 2010
From ACM TechNews
Software Knows What Films You Like
University of Minnesota researchers are using the GroupLens artificial intelligence media recommendation system to develop BookLens, an Internet-based book recommendation system for libraries.
From ACM News
Get Ready For the Decade of Gamification
The popularity of video games and the explosion of social networking are intersecting to redefine how we will experience the Web over the next decade.
From ACM News
What Is Wikileaks?
Months after releasing some 90,000 secret records of U.S. military incident and intelligence reports about the war in Afghanistan, Wikileaks has posted online almost 400,000 similar documents detailing events in Iraq after…
From ACM News
Robotic Gripper Runs on Coffee . . . and Balloons
Opting for simplicity, researchers from Cornell University, University of Chicago and iRobot have bypassed traditional robotic designs based around the human hand and fingers, and created a versatile gripper using ground coffee…
From ACM News
Vietnam Jockeys to Become a High-Tech Player
Vietnam plans to develop fifteen information technology parks to support the country's developing information and communication technology industry through 2020, according to a senior official from the Ministry of Information…
From ACM News
Outsourcing No Longer 'dirty Word' as Tech Spending Rises
First-time customers seeking to simplify back-office operations or upgrade rickety computer systems are helping information technology services companies grow faster than the economies they serve.
From ACM News
Air Force Manual Describes Shadowy Cyberwar World
A new Air Force manual for cyberwarfare describes a shadowy, fast-changing world where anonymous enemies can carry out devastating attacks in seconds and where conventional ideas about time and space don't apply.
From ACM TechNews
Engineering, Computer-Science Pay More Than Liberal Arts
Computer science and engineering graduates generally have significantly higher starting salaries than liberal arts majors, according to a Wall Street Journal and PayScale.com study.
From ACM TechNews
The Robot That Reads Your Mind to Train Itself
University of Washington researchers are developing brain-computer interface (BCI) technology by teaching robots new skills using only brain signals. They are developing a hierarchical BCI for controlling the robot to emulate…
From ACM TechNews
D.c. Hacking Raises Questions About Future of Online Voting
Washington, D.C.'s failure to prevent a team of University of Michigan computer scientists from taking control of its online voting website has called into the question the future of electronic voting.
From ACM News
A Web Pioneer Profiles sers By Name
In the weeks before the New Hampshire primary last month, Linda Twombly of Nashua says she was peppered with online ads for Republican Senate hopeful Jim Bender. It was no accident.
From ACM News
Building The Next Big Thing: 25 Years of Mit's Media Lab
MIT’s Media Lab recently hosted a series of talks to celebrate its 25th anniversary. Anyone who has paid attention to technology news over that period has undoubtedly heard of the various strange and interesting developments…
From ACM News
Psychologist Explores Motivations Behind 2007 Cyberattack on Estonia
Angry ethnic Russians throughout the world launched a cyberattack on Estonia in April 2007, crippling its cyber infrastructure for four days. Researchers analyzing the attack suggest reasons word of the movement spread so quickly…
From ACM News
With Kinect, Microsoft Aims for a Game Changer
Tim Nichols measures fun. A slim, 32-year-old psychologist, he spends his days behind a one-way mirror at Microsoft’s video games research center here, watching people play the company's Xbox systems.
From ACM News
Research Publication Adds Qr Codes
People with "smart phones" can now access videos and slide shows from University of Arkansas' Research Frontiers on the Web directly from the print magazine using "QR code," short for "quick response code."
From ACM News
Computer Scientist Discusses Google Project
Manas Tungare, a 2009 doctoral graduate of Virginia Tech's Department of Computer Science, was the first engineer to work on Google Instant during its earliest developmental stage. Google publicly launched the new search interface…
From ACM News
Feds Plot 'near Human' Robot Docs, Farmers, Troops
Robots are already vacuuming our carpets, heading into combat and assisting docs on medical procedures. Get ready for a next generation of "near human" bots that'll do a lot more: independently perform surgeries, harvest our…
From ACM TechNews
Pentagon Will Help Homeland Security Department Fight Domestic Cyberattacks
The Obama administration has adopted new rules whereby the president would sanction the use of the military's cyberwarfare capabilities, guided by the Department of Homeland Security, in response to an attack on essential U.S…
From ACM TechNews
New Search Method Tracks Down Influential Ideas
Princeton University computer scientists have developed a method that uses algorithms to trace the origins and spread of ideas, which they say could make it easier to measure the influence of scholarly papers, news stories,…
From ACM TechNews
White House Unveils STEM Campaign
The Obama administration will use the White House Science Fair and the USA Science and Engineering Festival to promote education in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. The administration hopes to reach more than…
From ACM TechNews
National Smarter-Car Research Network Established at Mcmaster
Canada has announced NECSIS, the Network on Engineering Complex Software Intensive Systems for Automotive Systems, a national research network that will use innovative approaches to develop technologies for building smarter cars…
From ACM News
Supercomputer Digests Twitter in Real-Time
Specialized hardware and software could provide new insights into the social Web.
From ACM News
Web Ads Tied To News Photos Pop Up More And More
Just because you can do something doesn't mean, of course, that you should. With today's technology, for instance, it's possible to give people who read the National Enquirer online a chance to actually buy a zippered-up crewneck…
From ACM News
India Plans to Cut Internet Services in Case of Cyber Attacks
Indian law enforcement and national security officials are drawing up plans that will give them technology capabilities to cut off all Internet services during emergencies.
From ACM News
Beagle Supercomputer Has Landed in Chicago
The University of Chicago Computation Institute at Argonne National Laboratory has introduced Beagle, a 150 teraflops, 18,000-core Cray XE6 supercomputer that will support computation, simulation and data analysis for biomedical…
From ACM News
Towards Better Explosives Detectors
Over the past decade, a team of NIST scientists have been working to stop the threat of terrorist-based attacks in the form of explosives or explosive-based devices, by providing a sound measurement and standard infrastructure…
From ACM News
AP to Form News Group to Make Money from Mobile
The Associated Press is overseeing the creation of an organization to help newspapers and broadcasters make more money as more people get their news from mobile phones and other wireless devices.
From ACM TechNews
It Jobs Rank High on List of Best Jobs in America
Software architect ranked as the top job on Money magazine and Payscale.com's list of the 100 best jobs in America. Overall, IT jobs accounted for 26 of the 100 positions on the list.
From ACM TechNews
Researcher Reveals Gps Vulnerabilities
University of Texas professor Todd Humphreys says the smart electric grid is susceptible to spoofing attacks that target global positioning system (GPS) timing signals.
From ACM TechNews
Ipv4 Addresses Will Run Out Within Months, Nro Warns
The NRO, which is responsible for allocating IPv4 Internet addresses, predicts that it will hand out the final 12 regional blocks of addresses in early 2011. "Allocation of the last blocks of IPv4 . . . is imminent," says NRO…