Virginia Tech researcher Wu Feng hopes his work on the HokieSpeed supercomputer will help make supercomputing more accessible (Photo:Virginia Tech)

When Wu Feng looks at an iPad, he sees something more than a great way to play Fruit Ninja. To him, Apple’s sleek device looks more like a compute node on a supercomputer of the future: 1.5 gigaflops of computer power just waiting to be harnessed.

Feng — an associate professor of computer science at Virginia Tech University — hopes to one day bring the supercomputer to an entirely new audience. Today, supercomputers are used by research lab...

Compiling this year's list of the best viral videos proved a slightly more difficult task than just finding cute kittehs and epic fails. In 2011, it seemed, viral videos weren't just watched as a fun distraction from the more somber daily news — they were the news.

From uprisings in Egypt to the end of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," online video did about as much to inform us about what was happening outside our cubicles as anything.

For example, anyone could read any of a dozen news stories about Occupy protests popping up around the country (and around the world), but do those reports spark the...