In some specific areas (like mine: graphics and vision), there are compiled lists of recent papers from the best conferences, along with links to the papers, project pages, etc.:
http://kesen.realtimerendering.com/sig2010.html
http://www.cvpapers.com/cvpr2010.html
I have been a member of ACM for the last 2 years, but just let my membership lapse. Their site is nearly useless for anyone who is not already at least an advanced undergraduate in CS or IT. The parent post is looking for resources for learning CS, not advanced study (or so I understood it).
Yes, it's behind a pay-wall. Not much I can do about that [1]. And yes, you will have to read academic papers. But that's where people talk about real computer science.
[1] Although, if you find a title and abstract that sounds interesting, you can usually just Google for the title and find a copy on the author's site. All of my papers, for instance, are also on my webpage. And, yes, this is explicitly allowed by the copyright transfer agreement.