The last issue marked our farewell to editor-in-chief extraordinaire Chris Harrison. This issue is dedicated to fresh starts and growth, and XRDS is indeed growing! We—Peter Kinnaird and Inbal Talgam-Cohen—are humbled to be taking over as editors-in-chief from Chris, and are eager to build upon the fruits of his leadership. Our immediate goal is to maintain the magazine's great reputation and strong trajectory.

Peter is a Ph.D. student at Carnegie Mellon's Human Computer Interaction Institute. His research interests are in social computing, crowdsourcing, and civic engagement. Inbal is a Ph.D. student in Stanford University's Theory Group, currently researching algorithmic aspects of game and auction theory. Together, we're pleased to be leading XRDS, along with our new departments chief Vaggelis Giannikas, managing editor Denise Doig, and the rest of our dynamic and dedicated editorial staff.

Readers of XRDS may notice several changes in the coming issues. We're formulating a series of new initiatives, which we hope will broaden the magazine's appeal. One of the most obvious changes you'll notice is that articles now close with a QR code. Point your favorite smartphone at these icons to view the article online. This will be handy when you come across an article in print that you'd like to share with a friend, especially now that we're offering more open access than ever to XRDS online content.

We'll also be working hard to improve the content selection on the website, without sacrificing quality of course. In the next few months we'll be launching a new blog, similar to the Communications of the ACM blog, which will feature regular contributors on a number of topics. We feel the computer science blogosphere, however expansive, is currently missing a comprehensive blog voicing students' concerns, interests, and opinions. If you agree and would like to nominate someone as a blogger—that student in your group who's always up-to-date on the most cutting-edge research, the one whom you can always count on for good advice or interesting opinions—please do send in their nomination. We plan to select some of the blog entries for inclusion in the print magazine.

Another effort will be to increase engagement with undergrads. Shawn Freeman, one of our feature editors went to the ICPC World Finals undergraduate programming competition in May. For those who missed the event, Shawn live blogged updates throughout the competition and conducted an interview with the winning team, which will run in the Fall issue. Visit the XRDS website for recaps of ICPC World.

Finally, we hope to engage more with ACM student chapters at universities, and to showcase more leading student research. If you're involved with a student chapter, look out for news about how you can contribute to XRDS and get your name in print.

Ultimately, our goal in current and future initiatives is to make XRDS as valuable as possible for ACM's student members. In our quarterly issues, we focus on topics we think will be motivating, inspiring, interesting, and relevant to the student community—highlighting informative, thought-provoking, and useful topics and ideas. As always, if any of these initiatives or topics look interesting or objectionable, or you'd like to see how you can get involved, send an email to [email protected] with comments or feedback. We hope you enjoy the issue!

—Peter Kinnaird and Inbal Talgam-Cohen

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