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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.


Laptop ­
From ACM News

Laptop ­

Gregory Nagy, a professor of classical Greek literature at Harvard, is a gentle academic of the sort who, asked about the future, will begin speaking of Homer and...

Google Introduces New Search Tools to Try to Read Our Minds
From ACM News

Google Introduces New Search Tools to Try to Read Our Minds

The company revealed some new search tools on Wednesday at I/O, its annual developers conference.

A New 'smart Rifle' Decides When To Shoot And Rarely Misses
From ACM News

A New 'smart Rifle' Decides When To Shoot And Rarely Misses

A new rifle goes on sale on Wednesday, and it's not like any other. It uses lasers and computers to make shooters very accurate.

Google Overhauling Flagship Search with 'answer, Converse, Anticipate'
From ACM News

Google Overhauling Flagship Search with 'answer, Converse, Anticipate'

During its Keynote today, Google announced new features coming to its flagship search function—you know, that thing we all started using Google for. VP Amit Singhal...

The Coming Political Battle Over Bitcoin
From ACM Opinion

The Coming Political Battle Over Bitcoin

Given that Bitcoin first broke into mainstream attention when Gawker explained how to use it to buy drugs, perhaps the surprise is that it took federal regulators...

New Android Boss Finally Reveals Plans For World's Most Popular Mobile Os
From ACM Opinion

New Android Boss Finally Reveals Plans For World's Most Popular Mobile Os

For the past few years, Sundar Pichai has been part of a tag-team routine staged at Google's annual I/O developer conference.

The Evolution of the Web, in a Blink
From ACM News

The Evolution of the Web, in a Blink

The Web browser you're probably using to read this article is a small marvel of engineering.

Neuroprosthetics: Once More, With Feeling
From ACM News

Neuroprosthetics: Once More, With Feeling

Sitting motionless in her wheelchair, paralysed from the neck down by a stroke, Cathy Hutchinson seems to take no notice of the cable rising from the top of her...

Researchers at Parc Give ­S a Glimpse of the Future
From ACM News

Researchers at Parc Give ­S a Glimpse of the Future

It was a high-tech speed-dating session, Silicon Valley-style: I would sit in the storied memorabilia-laden Room 2306 in the bowels of PARC, the former Xerox research...

U.s. Cyberwar Strategy Stokes Fear of Blowback
From ACM News

U.s. Cyberwar Strategy Stokes Fear of Blowback

Even as the U.S. government confronts rival powers over widespread Internet espionage, it has become the biggest buyer in a burgeoning gray market where hackers...

Big Data from Cheap Phones
From ACM News

Big Data from Cheap Phones

At a computer in her office at the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston, epidemiologist Caroline Buckee points to a dot on a map of Kenya's western highlands...

Apple: An End to Skeuomorphic Design?
From ACM Opinion

Apple: An End to Skeuomorphic Design?

Why do most smartphones make a clicking noise, like a camera shutter closing, when you take a picture with them? Why do the virtual pages of a book on a tablet...

Stephen Wolfram on Personal Analytics
From ACM Opinion

Stephen Wolfram on Personal Analytics

Don't be surprised if Stephen Wolfram, the renowned complexity theorist, software company CEO, and night owl, wants to schedule a work call with you at 9 p.m. In...

Netflix, Reed Hastings Survive Missteps to Join Silicon Valley's Elite
From ACM Careers

Netflix, Reed Hastings Survive Missteps to Join Silicon Valley's Elite

On a normal weeknight, Netflix accounts for almost a third of all Internet traffic entering North American homes. That's more than YouTube, Hulu, Amazon.com, HBO...

Smartphones Put a Translator in Your Pocket
From ACM News

Smartphones Put a Translator in Your Pocket

The days of madly flipping through bilingual phrase books while trying to converse with somebody in another language is fast giving way to a technological alternative...

Here's How Smartphones, Tablets, and Huge Databases Will ­pend Market Research
From ACM News

Here's How Smartphones, Tablets, and Huge Databases Will ­pend Market Research

If you're tired of those annoying 8 p.m. phone calls asking questions about where you shop, or of carrying an Arbitron sensor to provide radio ratings, your omnipresent...

Bitcoin vs. Ben Bernanke
From ACM Opinion

Bitcoin vs. Ben Bernanke

Could a virtual currency created by an anonymous Internet hacker someday replace the U.S. dollar?

After an iPhone Is Snatched, a High-Speed Chase
From ACM News

After an iPhone Is Snatched, a High-Speed Chase

The woman was talking on her iPhone, and never saw coming her induction into a large and growing subset of crime victims.

How Facebook Designs the 'perfect Empty Vessel' For Your Mind
From ACM News

How Facebook Designs the 'perfect Empty Vessel' For Your Mind

One day in March, I was sitting across from Facebook's design director, Kate Aronowitz, at 1 Hacker Way in Menlo Park when she told me, "It takes a lot of work...

Digital Tattoos, Mind-Reading Headphones: The Shape of Things to Come?
From ACM Opinion

Digital Tattoos, Mind-Reading Headphones: The Shape of Things to Come?

Forecasting future technology has never been easy. In the 1950s, scientists and technologists envisaged that by now the world would be free from disease, traversed...
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