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Bike Crash Wiped Details; Gps Data Filled Them In
From ACM News

Bike Crash Wiped Details; Gps Data Filled Them In

After racing and biking back roads on the San Francisco Peninsula for almost half a century without serious incident, on July 3 I crashed while riding downhill...

From ACM Opinion

Internet Memes 101: A Guide to Online Wackiness

In the olden days, it was simple to keep up with pop culture. There were only three channels on TV, and everybody saw the same shows at the same time.

From ACM News

The Auteur vs. the Committee

At Apple, one is the magic number.

Art That Interacts If You Interface
From ACM Opinion

Art That Interacts If You Interface

The Museum of Modern Art’s "Talk to Me: Design and the Communication Between People and Objects" is one of the smartest design shows in years—by which I mean...

From ACM News

Decoding Your Email Personality

Imagine, if you will, a young Mark Zuckerberg circa 2003, tapping out mail messages from his Harvard dorm room. It's a safe bet he never would have guessed that...

From ACM Opinion

How to Design a Hot Product

When Cisco killed the beloved Flip camcorder a few months ago, a lot of people were shocked and upset—including me. It just seemed like such a ham-handed, thoughtless...

From ACM Opinion

Free to Search and Seize

This spring was a rough season for the Fourth Amendment.

From ACM Opinion

Internet Piracy and How to Stop It

Online piracy is a huge business. A recent study found that Web sites offering pirated digital content or counterfeit goods, like illicit movie downloads or bootleg...

From ACM Opinion

When the Internet Thinks It Knows You

Once upon a time, the story goes, we lived in a broadcast society. In that dusty pre-Internet age, the tools for sharing information weren’t widely available....

Data Privacy, Put to the Test
From ACM News

Data Privacy, Put to the Test

To the catalog of corporate "bigs" that worry a lot of us little people, add this: Big Data.

The Persistence of Conspiracy Theories
From ACM Opinion

The Persistence of Conspiracy Theories

No sooner had President Obama released his long-form birth certificate than Orly Taitz, the doyenne of the "birther" movement, found reason to doubt it.

Your Iphone Is Tracking You. So What.
From ACM Opinion

Your Iphone Is Tracking You. So What.

Have you heard the news? Two researchers have discovered that the iPhone keeps a minute-by-minute, time-stamped log of everywhere you go. That’s right: Your phone...

From ACM Opinion

Teaching to the Text Message

I've been teaching college freshmen to write the five-paragraph essay and its bully of a cousin, the research paper, for years. But these forms invite font-size...

From ACM Opinion

Have You Driven a Smartphone Lately?

I’m barreling along a rural Michigan highway at 75 miles per hour in a gray Ford Taurus X when I glance down to check a number on a screen.

From ACM Opinion

Forgive Me, Father, For I Have Linked

Our Father, who art in pixels, linked be Thy name, Thy Web site come, Thy Net be done, on Explorer as it is on Firefox.

Where Anonymity Breeds Contempt
From ACM News

Where Anonymity Breeds Contempt

There you are, peacefully reading an article or watching a video on the Internet. You finish, find it thought-provoking, and scroll down to the comments section...

What Steve Jobs Learned in the Wilderness
From ACM Opinion

What Steve Jobs Learned in the Wilderness

The saga of Steven P. Jobs is so well known that it has entered the nation’s mythology: he’s the prodigal who returned to Apple in 1997, righted a listing ship...

I Tweet, Therefore I Am
From ACM Opinion

I Tweet, Therefore I Am

On a recent lazy Saturday morning, my daughter and I lolled on a blanket in our front yard, snacking on apricots, listening to a download of E. B. White reading...

From ACM Opinion

Are Cells the New Cigarettes?

The great cosmic joke would be to find out definitively that the advances we thought were blessings--from the hormones women pump into their bodies all their lives...

My (brief) Life as a Robot
From ACM Opinion

My (brief) Life as a Robot

On Wednesday I attended a Silicon Valley press conference dressed as a robot. Actually I was physically in New York City and virtually in Menlo Park, Calif. For...
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