acm-header
Sign In

Communications of the ACM

News


bg-corner

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


Microsoft Builds a Browser for Your Past
From ACM News

Microsoft Builds a Browser for Your Past

Mining personal data to discover what people care about has become big business for companies such as Facebook and Google. Now a project from Microsoft Research...

The Soul of the New Hacktivist
From ACM News

The Soul of the New Hacktivist

In 1988, a Cornell graduate student, Robert Tappan Morris, let loose a computer worm on the fledgling version of the Internet. He said it was meant to be an experiment...

Preserving Digital Data
From Communications of the ACM

Preserving Digital Data

Scientific data is expanding at an unprecedented rate. While new tools are helping preserve this data, funding must be increased and policy coordination needs improvement...

Talking to Machines
From Communications of the ACM

Talking to Machines

Voice recognition programs like Siri are now capable of understanding spoken commands, recognizing a conversation's context, and answering questions in a personable...

Open For Business
From Communications of the ACM

Open For Business

Should academic articles be available for free on the Web?

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

Free Apps Eat Up Your Phone Battery Just Sending Ads

Free versions of Android apps use up to 75 percent of their energy serving ads or tracking and uploading user data, says Purdue University's Abhinav Pathak. Free...

DARPA Challenge Doesn't Go Viral on Twitter
From ACM TechNews

DARPA Challenge Doesn't Go Viral on Twitter

The U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency recent ended its Cash for Locating and Identifying Quick Response Codes challenge without anyone successfully...

Study: Including Ads in Mobile Apps Poses Privacy, Security Risks
From ACM TechNews

Study: Including Ads in Mobile Apps Poses Privacy, Security Risks

North Carolina State University researchers recently conducted a study on the privacy and security risks associated with mobile application advertisements, and...

The NSA Is Building the Country's Biggest Spy Center (Watch What You Say)
From ACM News

The NSA Is Building the Country's Biggest Spy Center (Watch What You Say)

The spring air in the small, sand-dusted town has a soft haze to it, and clumps of green-gray sagebrush rustle in the breeze.

­sing Virtual Worlds to 'soft Control' People's Movements in the Real One
From ACM TechNews

­sing Virtual Worlds to 'soft Control' People's Movements in the Real One

Northwestern University researchers have found they can influence smartphone users' movements by creating mobile games with incentives designed to steer user behavior...

U.s. Army to Soldiers: 'check-Ins' Can Kill
From ACM News

U.s. Army to Soldiers: 'check-Ins' Can Kill

While the U.S. Army knows its soldiers live in the modern world and carry location-aware, socially networked smartphones, it is reiterating the dangers of broadcasting...

Tracking Pedestrians Indoors Using Their Smart Phones
From ACM TechNews

Tracking Pedestrians Indoors Using Their Smart Phones

The embedded inertial sensors in many smartphones could be used to track the movement of smartphone users when indoors, even without global positioning systems.

How Hackers Are Caught Out By Law Enforcers
From ACM News

How Hackers Are Caught Out By Law Enforcers

The Internet has gained a reputation as somewhere you can say and do anything with impunity, primarily because it is easy to disguise your identity.

Three Things that Scare Google
From ACM News

Three Things that Scare Google

Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt told a crowd of journalists Wednesday night that there are some things about technology and the Internet that scare him,...

Cebit's Pole-Dancing Droids and Other New Technologies
From ACM News

Cebit's Pole-Dancing Droids and Other New Technologies

Robots everywhere, driverless cars, new eco-solutions, screens that "read" feelings, and smart museums and stadiums—just some of the "City of the Future" technologies...

5 Thieves, 5 Cities, 12 Hours: Can Twitter Catch Them?
From ACM TechNews

5 Thieves, 5 Cities, 12 Hours: Can Twitter Catch Them?

The U.S. State Department's Tag Challenge will offer a $5,000 prize to anyone who can use Twitter and other social media and online tools to track down five fictional...

Fbi's 'sabu' Hacker Was a Model Informant
From ACM News

Fbi's 'sabu' Hacker Was a Model Informant

As soon as he was caught, an influential computer hacker agreed to become a government informant and "literally worked around the clock" to help federal agents...

Your Kinect Is Watching You
From ACM News

Your Kinect Is Watching You

There is a wave of concern—completely justified, to my mind—over the privacy implications of our increasing reliance on Facebook and Google. What most people don’t...

From ACM News

How a Web Link Can Take Control of Your Phone

A chilling demonstration to a small, packed room at the recent RSA security conference showed how clicking a single bad Web link while using a phone running Google's...

When Gaming Is Good For You
From ACM News

When Gaming Is Good For You

A growing body of university research suggests that gaming improves creativity, decision-making and perception.
Sign In for Full Access
» Forgot Password? » Create an ACM Web Account