SBC Communications plans to spend up to $6 billion over five years for a new fiber-optic network that might bring new services including digital TV to customers' homes. The June 22 announcement is the latest in a race between major telecommunications companies and cable operators to offer telephone service, swift Internet access, and video in single bundles. Such technologies, said SBC chief executive Edward Whitacre, Jr., could mean "a communications revolution." Major cable and telecoms are pouring billions into networks, looking to lure consumers wanting quicker Net connections and less expensive, more advanced phone and video offerings, according to TechNewsWorld…
Think we're kidding? Cablevision unwrapped what's considered an aggressively priced bundle of TV, broadband, and telephone services at $90 a month. That was Monday, the same day BellSouth said they would start trials of a new video service over its DSL network in certain markets over the coming year. "At $90 a month, customers are virtually getting Cablevision's VoIP calling for free," said one published report. "The bundle should put pressure on Verizon Communications, which sells competing telephone and high-speed Internet services in the region."…
Those who make Internet telephony equipment catering to businesses have challenges of their own, like making new things for the technology and equipment to do. On the list are videoconferencing and clicking desktop icons to make a phone call, according to the Supercomm 2004 conference. How fast IBM, Cisco, and other Voice-over Internet Protocol makers can innovate, and how fast they do it, are likely to shape the future of Internet telephony, according to executives at the conference…
A new alliance of tech heavies is working on guidelines for building personal computers and electronics that would "conveniently share content" with each other – music, video, and other. The Digital Home Working Group has changed its name to the Digital Living Network Alliance, and its Home Networked Device Interoperability Guidelines will be used by the 145 member businesses of the alliance – including Sony, Intel, Microsoft, and Hewlett-Packard. These standards are said to include standards picked by the group to "lead to the best experience for the consumer." The group wants a "wired and wireless network for digital content... that can be seamlessly shared" on all devices, everywhere, according to chairman Scott Smyers…
If you think that's pressure, consider this: University of Toronto researchers propose a new dimension to clickable graphics on your screens: pressure. The team's "pressure widgets scheme" uses pressure-sensitive input devices – tablets, for example – that sense a pointing device's position but also tilt and pressure, giving new abilities to computer interface elements. "In tests of pressure widgets that allowed test subjects to control a cursor along a vertical line," says Technology Review, "the researchers found that people are able to use as many as six different levels of pressure for discrete selection tasks, but that pressure is only useful if there is also continuous visual feedback." (Wonder what an adult Website could do with that?!)…
Researchers in Switzerland and South Africa have designed a visual interface that could give independent machines the equivalent to body language. "The interface represents a machine's internal state in a way that makes it possible for observers to interpret the machine's behavior," said Technology Review. "The researchers' autonomous machine interface consists of a clustering algorithm that groups snapshots of the machine's many internal states into a manageable number of representations, and a fractal generator." The first practical applications, though, are still about five years off, the researchers said when they presented their work to Robotics and Autonomous Systems.
