The New York Times Jill Smart, an Accenture executive, was skeptical the first time she stepped into her firm’s new videoconferencing room in Chicago for a meeting with a group of colleagues in London. But the videoconferencing technology, known as telepresence, delivered an experience so lifelike, Ms. Smart recalled, that “10 minutes into it, you [...]

The New York Times TiVo, the Silicon Valley company that introduced millions to the joy of skipping television commercials, is trying to crack a decades-old media dream. It wants to turn the television remote control into a tool for buying the products being advertised and promoted on commercials and talk shows. The company, based in [...]

Boston.com The $350,000 scientific display device and its twin backscreen projectors are packed with software designed to impart three-dimensional form and even “feel” to virtual objects, whether a string of molecules seeming to swirl in mid-air, a hovering swath of DNA, or a simulated diseased organ about to be removed. The 3D objects – which [...]

Forbes This story is not a prophesy. It is not a prediction. Nor is it a prescriptive. This story is a warning. Reality is changing. Cheap, widely distributed bandwidth and advanced networking technologies are divorcing an ever-growing segment of the population from traditionally “real” constraints like geography and socio-economic status. At work, your closest colleagues [...]

ZD Net If you ever participated to some virtual reality (VR) experiments, you know that the environment is quite expensive and not always user-friendly. In fact, in some immersive environments, it’s even possible to feel bad because of motion sickness. This is why researchers from Germany and Sweden have developed a new VR environment where [...]

Federal Computer Week An open-standards group has created a framework that could facilitate the global exchange of information among organizations. The naming system could benefit a wide range of disciplines, from disaster response to medical research. The Open Group’s Universal Data Element Framework (UDEF) has the potential to hasten information exchange by indexing the world’s [...]

Star-Telegram.com Bill Gates was the keynote speaker on the last day of Microsoft Convergence 2006, held this year at the Dallas Convention Center. Demonstrating what he believes will be popular future uses, Gates showed off a screen for the home that merged a TV and computer monitor. Touching the screen to view news segments from [...]

CNET News.com U.S consumers bought more Windows Media Center-equipped PCs than the standard edition of Windows XP last month and sales of Media Center will reach 10 million by the end of March, a Microsoft executive said Tuesday. Joe Belfiore, corporate vice president of Microsoft’s Windows eHome Division, disclosed the sales numbers at a keynote [...]

CNET News.com Applied Nanotech has signed a letter of intent to enter negotiations for a trial on carbon nanotube TVs with Da Ling, a Taiwanese contract manufacturer. Under the proposed terms, Da Ling will invest $10 million on a pilot manufacturing facility to make carbon nanotube TVs based on Applied’s technology. In these TVs, nanotubes [...]

CNET News.com As the most influential executives in the telecommunications industry gather this week in Las Vegas for their annual powwow, they’re more likely to be talking about TV than phones. Several industry groups have formed to push their flavor of technology for distributing broadband and video throughout the home. The Multimedia over Coax Alliance [...]