Opera Software Opera Software ASA today announced their voice-enabled Electronic Program Guide (EPG) for home media, introducing home entertainment users across the globe to the future of human-computer interaction. The voice-enabled EPG is a significant breakthrough in the effort to enhance the customer experience. Finally, there is an easier way for people to interact with [...]

SFGate A few years ago, a team of Microsoft engineers invited some SBC executives to a small Mountain View apartment. The engineers had jury-rigged an Xbox gaming console into a set-top box to control the television set. The SBC executives were getting their first glimpse of IPTV, or Internet Protocol Television, which uses your phone [...]

CNET News.com No one to talk to when you get home from work? One Voice Technologies has a technological solution. Its One Voice software add-on for Windows XP Media Center is designed to allow users to control their TV, stereo and computer via verbal commands. The One Voice slogan is “Just say it to play [...]

SFGate One recent evening, a high-energy crowd buzzed through the Palm’s condo sales office South of Market to a pulsing bossa nova beat. A social scientist looking for a demographic group to profile would throw in the towel, pick up a neon green cocktail (it matches one of the logo colors) and simply mingle. Singles [...]

Web Wire Vizrt Ltd. announced today that two broadcasters belonging to the CME group (Central European Media Enterprises) each bought 3-camera virtual set systems totalling over USD 700,000 of Q1 revenues, thereby significantly increasing their Vizrt graphics installations. Vizrt is the world’s leading provider of HD/SD real-time 2D and true 3D broadcast graphics. The company’s [...]

Government Computer News Many think the Internet is mainstream now, but that’s only true for nonpaying use, such as surfing for free information. As of 2003, commercial operations involving monetary exchange were limited to about 23% for broadband, 10% for e-tailing, 12% for B2B, 10% for distance learning, and 5% for music. And these are [...]

CNET News.com Wireless Internet service providers would be allowed to operate freely on new chunks of unused TV spectrum, according to two new bills in the U.S. Senate. A pair of similar measures introduced Friday would give wireless device manufacturers the green light to develop products for unlicensed use on the broadband airwaves’ “white spaces”–that [...]

Wired A virtual human, Santos may save corporations big money and help the military save lives. “Human modeling technology today is so refined, we can use it to test products before they’re ever produced,” said Karim Abdel-Malek, professor of biomedical engineering and director of the Virtual Soldier Research program at Iowa. Because just about every [...]

Pew Internet & American Life Project A decade after browsers came into popular use, the Internet has reached into–and, in some cases, reshaped–just about every important realm of modern life. It has changed the way we inform ourselves, amuse ourselves, care for ourselves, educate ourselves, work, shop, bank, pray and stay in touch. This entry [...]

Wired In another 10 years, Marty Cooper predicts, high-speed mobile internet connections will be so commonplace people will take them for granted. He’s convinced that a key technology behind such capability will be the wireless broadband standard known as WiMax. Cooper is not alone. Fans of mobile WiMax — which is designed to provide broadband [...]