Communications of the ACM
Innovation Is Overrated: A Provocation
Digital innovation is not working in the interest of the whole of society. It is time to radically rethink its purpose without…
From ACM Opinion
Jobs and Apple Execs on Tracking Down the Facts About Iphones and Location
Although Apple was silent for several days after researchers raised issues about location information being stored on the iPhone, that wasn’t because it was ignoring...
From ACM Opinion
Will Amazon's Recent Server Failures Slow the Rise of Cloud Computing?
Last Thursday morning around 5 a.m. eastern time, Amazon suffered a major data center outage. These sorts of outages happen now and then, but they seldom makewhy...
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 News
Electronic Health Records Face Human Hurdles More Than Technological Ones
In medicine, there's the patient and there's the chart. And the chart is paper.
From Communications of the ACM
The Importance of Reviewing the Code
Highlighting the significance of the often overlooked underlying software used to produce research results.
From Communications of the ACM
An Interview with Steve Furber
Steve Furber, designer of the seminal BBC Microcomputer System and the widely used ARM microprocessor, reflects on his career.
From Communications of the ACM
Online Advertising, Behavioral Targeting, and Privacy
Studying how privacy regulation might impact economic activity on the advertising-supported Internet.
From ACM Opinion
Got an Iphone or 3g Ipad? Apple Is Recording Your Moves
A hidden file in iOS 4 is regularly recording the position of devices.
From ACM Opinion
Web Creator's Net Neutrality Fear
The inventor of the Web has said that governments must act to preserve the principle of net neutrality. Sir Tim Berners-Lee told the BBC that legislation may...
From ACM Opinion
Patently Obvious
On Monday the Supreme Court will consider whether to fundamentally alter the way American patent law is litigated. Specifically, in the context of an otherwise...
From ACM Opinion
The Web's Trust Issues
The most dubious phrase in English after "act natural" is "trust me." A party asking for trust without offering a reason why is probably untrustworthy. And yet...
From ACM News
Just How Creepy Is 'creepy'? A Test-Drive
You probably know that some Internet and cell phone applications like Foursquare or Twitter can broadcast your location to the world. And you might know that...
From ACM News
How Google Is Teaching Computers to See
Computers used to be blind, and now they can see. Thanks to increasingly sophisticated algorithms, computers today can recognize and identify the Eiffel Tower...
From ACM News
Why Cisco's Flip Flopped in the Camera Business
Cisco is shutting down a business unit that it bought for over half-a-billion dollars: the Flip camcorder division. That's a shame, considering how high the Flip...
From ACM Opinion
Forget Space Travel: It's Just a Dream
The clash of two titans—physics and chemistry—are major barriers to human space travel to Mars and beyond, and may well make it impossible... at least with current...
From ACM Opinion
Mars Science Laboratory + Curiosity Rover: Interview with Nasa Jpl's Ashwin Vasavada
Boing Boing visited NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory for a peek inside the clean room where NASA's next Mars rover, Curiosity, and other components of the Mars...
From ACM Opinion
Disappearing Act
Jack Dorsey is the creator and executive chairman of the popular communications network Twitter. In 2009, he cofounded another company, called Square, which lets...
From ACM Opinion