Communications Media

Improving the integration of satellite networks with more traditional terrestrial telephone infrastructures, will help next generation telephony move from concept towards reality, as researchers are demonstrating.

Historically, we have been accustomed to using fixed-line infrastructures for traditional telecommunications, cellular networks for mobile services, and satellite architectures for high-capacity links and ‘one-to-many’ broadcasting. While more and more operators are

You like a certain song and want to hear other tracks like it, but don’t know how to find them? Ending the needle-in-a-haystack problem of searching for music on the Internet or even in your own hard drive is a new audio-based music information retrieval system.

Currently under development by the SIMAC project, it is a major leap forward in the application of semantics to audio content, allowing songs to be described not just by artist, title and genre but by their actual musical

The Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Circuits IIS and Thomson today announced the addition of two new elements to the MP3 Surround demo software: MP3 SX (MP3 Stereo eXtended) allows enhancing MP3 stereo files for multi-channel playback and Ensonido provides portable MP3 Surround sound using stereo headphones. Demo software of these two new enhancements to the MP3 Surround technology are now available and can be downloaded for free at www.all4mp3.com.

Supporting a seamless transition f

Thanks to support from successive EU-funded projects, Tiga Technologies, an advanced IT consultancy, is creating a spin-off company to commercialise a pioneering electronic arbitration system called e-Dispute.

The e-Dispute prototype provides fast online arbitration, mediation and conciliation services. Claimants and respondents can be anywhere in the world and select from a range of languages to work in. They can send messages securely and explain their preferences to an arbitra

Europe is helping to push forward the boundaries of current radio technology looking at the next generation of radio devices. A whole new Ultra WideBand (UWB) communications industry is emerging and once all phases of a major European research effort into UWB are complete, Europe will be in a stronger position to exploit this new technology.

Ultra wideband usually refers to a radio communications technique based on transmitting very-short-duration pulses, down to nanoseconds (billio

Jürgen Schieble, doctoral candidate at Helsinki’s University of Art and Design Media Lab, wants to create “new types of enriching social experiences.” Combining his experience in mobile technologies with his music performance skills, Jürgen created MobiLenin, a participatory entertainment system. In recognition for his MobiLenin research, Jürgen, together with thesis advisor Timo Ojala, was awarded the Best Arts Paper at the ACM Multimedia 2005 conference in Singapore.

Lenin’s God