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An edited collection of advanced computing news from Communications of the ACM, ACM TechNews, other ACM resources, and news sites around the Web.


Network Your Stuff: Amateurs Inventing a New Internet
From ACM TechNews

Network Your Stuff: Amateurs Inventing a New Internet

A growing number of computer hobbyists are merging the online and physical worlds in new ways.  

Free Apps Eat Up Your Phone Battery Just Sending Ads
From ACM News

Free Apps Eat Up Your Phone Battery Just Sending Ads

Struggling to make your smartphone battery last the whole day? Paying for your apps might help.

Better Living Through Video Gaming
From ACM News

Better Living Through Video Gaming

From AI-designed games to realistic virtual worlds and social physics, gaming is changing our world view.

Double-Sided Touchscreen Changes When You Fold It
From ACM TechNews

Double-Sided Touchscreen Changes When You Fold It

Juergen Steimle, working with developer Mo Khalilbeigi and his team at the Darmstadt University of Technology, Germany, has developed a range of foldable displays...

From ACM News

Slow Graphene Down, Speed Computers Up

Astonishing conductivity helped the discoverers of graphene win the Nobel prize in physicsin 2010. Now a way to switch off the easy flow of electrons in this wonder...

Phase-Change Materials Can Fix Machine Memory Crunch
From ACM TechNews

Phase-Change Materials Can Fix Machine Memory Crunch

Phase-change materials (PCMs) could thwart the limits of digital memory and enable a massive increase in storage density. PCM's biggest advantage is that it can...

Pinch-Screen Puts All Your Fingers in Control
From ACM TechNews

Pinch-Screen Puts All Your Fingers in Control

Tablet computers and smartphones are designed to be used by a person's thumbs, but a new device developed by the Technical University of Berlin's Katrin Wolf enables...

Apple Power Adapters Could Remember Your Passwords
From ACM News

Apple Power Adapters Could Remember Your Passwords

Apple has worked out a way in which the power cords for computers or smartphones can help people recover their forgotten login passwords—or the answers to secret...

From ACM News

Body-Sharing Robot Lets You Experience Another Place

Ever wished you could be in two places at once? Now you can share your body with a telepresence robot created by Dzmitry Tsetserukou of Toyohashi University of...

From ACM News

Enhance Your Senses: High-Tech Ways to Play

Sometimes the best inventions are just for fun. At the 2011 Siggraph Asia event, a leading conference on computer graphics and techniques, researchers will be...

Casino Cheats Snared by Smart Camera System
From ACM News

Casino Cheats Snared by Smart Camera System

People trying to cheat in casinos may soon be taking more of a gamble than they realise. Grosvenor Casinos, a major UK chain, is assessing software that can spot...

Smarter Cameras Help You Take Slicker Snaps
From ACM TechNews

Smarter Cameras Help You Take Slicker Snaps

University of Glasgow researcher Stephen Brewster is developing a camera interface designed to make it easier for photographers to get pictures right on the first...

From ACM News

Light Is Not Fast Enough For High-Speed Stock Trading

Every microsecond counts in stock trading. The New York Stock Exchange handles a third of the world's stock trading—around 22 billion messages a day. But NYSE Euronext...

­nbridled Ingenuity at Maker Faire
From ACM News

­nbridled Ingenuity at Maker Faire

Around noon this past Sunday, I found myself asking a young girl why, even though the music-producing device she and her family had made was called "Slugophone...

Quantum Computer Chips Pass Key Milestones
From ACM TechNews

Quantum Computer Chips Pass Key Milestones

University of California, Santa Barbara researchers have developed a quantum computer design based on superconducting electrical circuits that adds a more sustainable...

From ACM News

Robot 'mission Impossible' Wins Video Prize

You could call it Mission Impossible: Robot Library Heist. An army of flying, rolling, and climbing robots have been taught to work together to find and snatch...

Mapping the Most Complex Object in the Known ­niverse
From ACM News

Mapping the Most Complex Object in the Known ­niverse

It's paint-by-numbers for neuroscientists. At the Max-Planck Institute for Medical Research in Heidelberg, Germany, researchers have devised a faster way of computing...

'Fluid Cloak' to Help Submarines Leave No Wake
From ACM News

'Fluid Cloak' to Help Submarines Leave No Wake

Super-stealthy submarines may one day glide through the water without creating a wake, if a plan to channel fluid intelligently around objects can be made to...

Ok, Climate Skeptics: Here's the Raw Data You Wanted
From ACM News

Ok, Climate Skeptics: Here's the Raw Data You Wanted

Anyone can now view for themselves the raw data that was at the centre of last year's "climategate" scandal.

From ACM TechNews

Computers Understand Hand-Waving Descriptions

A new gesture-based interface developed by the Hasso Plattner Institute's Christian Holz and Microsoft Research's Andy Wilson does not require users to memorize...
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