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.


How Apple Really Invented the Iphone
From ACM News

How Apple Really Invented the Iphone

Like many of Apple's inventions, the iPhone began not with a vision, but with a problem.

Vesta in Dawn's Rear View Mirror
From ACM News

Vesta in Dawn's Rear View Mirror

NASA's Dawn mission is releasing two parting views of the giant asteroid Vesta, using images that were among the last taken by the spacecraft as it departed its...

The Accidental History of the @ Symbol
From ACM News

The Accidental History of the @ Symbol

Called the "snail" by Italians and the "monkey tail" by the Dutch, @ is the sine qua non of electronic communication, thanks to email addresses and Twitter handles...

Facebook's China Problem
From ACM Opinion

Facebook's China Problem

Last May when Mark Zuckerberg wed his Chinese-American girlfriend, Priscilla Chan, a joke began to make the rounds on China's version of Twitter, a microblog—or...

Tech's New Wave, Driven by Data
From ACM News

Tech's New Wave, Driven by Data

Technology tends to cascade into the marketplace in waves. Think of personal computers in the 1980s, the Internet in the 1990s, and smartphones in the last five...

Anonymous: Behind the Masks of the Cyber Insurgents
From ACM News

Anonymous: Behind the Masks of the Cyber Insurgents

Spalding railway station in Lincolnshire is not a big place. It takes me about two seconds to scan the platform and spot who I'm looking for: Jake Davis, aka Topiary...

Are Hackers Heroes?
From ACM News

Are Hackers Heroes?

On the last day of June of this year, a tech Website called Redmond Pie posted two articles in quick succession that, on their face, had nothing to do with each...

From ACM News

Insiders Suspected in Saudi Cyber Attack

One or more insiders with high-level access are suspected of assisting the hackers who damaged some 30,000 computers at Saudi Arabia's national oil company last...

Calibration Target For Curiosity's Arm Camera
From ACM News

Calibration Target For Curiosity's Arm Camera

This view of the calibration target for the Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) aboard NASA's Mars rover Curiosity combines two images taken by that camera during the...

Big Brother on a Budget: How Internet Surveillance Got So Cheap
From ACM News

Big Brother on a Budget: How Internet Surveillance Got So Cheap

When Libyan rebels finally wrested control of the country last year away from its mercurial dictator, they discovered the Qaddafi regime had received an unusual...

Nokia's Visionary Wants to Out-Design Apple
From ACM News

Nokia's Visionary Wants to Out-Design Apple

Marko Ahtisaari spreads out several models of Nokia's new smartphone with the self-assurance of a Tiffany diamond salesman.

Nasa Sparks Its Imagination
From ACM Opinion

Nasa Sparks Its Imagination

It's been a month since Curiosity’s remarkable soft landing on the surface of Mars. Remember the massive, supersonic parachute that slowed the spacecraft’s descent...

How the Pros Thwart Computer Spies with James Bond Tricks
From ACM News

How the Pros Thwart Computer Spies with James Bond Tricks

H.D. Moore wasn't taking chances.

What Do the H-Bomb and the Internet Have in Common? Paul Baran
From ACM News

What Do the H-Bomb and the Internet Have in Common? Paul Baran

Paul Baran set out to build a means of communication that could survive a nuclear war. And he ended up inventing the fundamental networking techniques that underpin...

Bae's Striker Helmet Gives Fighter Pilots 'x-Ray Vision'
From ACM News

Bae's Striker Helmet Gives Fighter Pilots 'x-Ray Vision'

When a pilot in a Eurofighter Typhoon jet glances down, he doesn't see a steel-grey floor. Instead he sees clouds, and maybe sheep and cows in green fields below...

Computational Social Science: Making the Links
From ACM News

Computational Social Science: Making the Links

Jon Kleinberg's early work was not for the mathematically faint of heart.

Meet the Man Who's Rewiring Google From the Inside Out
From ACM Opinion

Meet the Man Who's Rewiring Google From the Inside Out

It was a tweet that fired the imagination like few others. On May 10, 2011, at 1:35 in the afternoon, Eric Brewer told the world he was redesigning the most important...

Making Web Applications More Efficient
From ACM News

Making Web Applications More Efficient

Most major Websites these days maintain huge databases: Shopping sites have databases of inventory and customer ratings, travel sites have databases of seat availability...

The Digital Wallet Is Starting to Take Shape
From ACM News

The Digital Wallet Is Starting to Take Shape

Imagine if, in addition to all the things your smartphone does now, it could also act as your keys to the real world.

Take a Spin on the Moon and Mars
From ACM News

Take a Spin on the Moon and Mars

The death of first moonwalker Neil Armstrong and the success of NASA's Curiosity rover have reignited interest in the idea of taking a spin on the moon and Mars...
Sign In for Full Access
» Forgot Password? » Create an ACM Web Account