nanowire topography You powered cellphones made possible with piezoelectric nanowires!The trick thing about piezoelectric materials is that they can generate electrical currents through simple mechanical stresses - they essentially convert mechanical energy into electrical energy. The technology has great potential for future energy-generation solutions, including future cellphones powered by your body!

 

 

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Twitter, the micro-blogging phenomenon, has resurrected plans to allow UK users to send and receive notifications via SMS. The firm has signed an initial deal with Vodafone UK and is expected to make arrangements with other operators soon. Once activated, the Vodafone service allows incoming Twitter messages - known as 'Tweets' - to be received free of charge, while sending a message will form part of the subscriber's existing text messaging bundle and will incur no extra cost. Twitter already offers such a service in the USA, Canada (via an agreement with Bell Mobility) and India.

 

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On2 Technologies, a leader in video compression solutions, announced that it has licensed its On2 VP6® video format and software to VisualOn Inc. VisualOn will optimize and integrate VP6 decoding software into its multimedia application suite for mobile platforms.

On2 VP6, through its inclusion in the Adobe Flash and Sun JavaFX application platforms, has become the de facto format for web video and a fundamental requirement for Internet-connected mobile devices.

When compared to H.264 Baseline profile (an emerging video format used in wireless applications) On2 VP6 content offers 10% to 20% better video compression performance while requiring less computing power to play. As a result, VP6 enables a wider range of mobile devices to play high-quality content without sacrificing battery life. For more information about On2 VP6 visit the site.

VisualOn's highly optimized software applications allow consumers to play rich multimedia content on mobile devices without expensive dedicated hardware. VisualOn's highly optimized power-efficient software codecs and multimedia applications offer everything needed to enable video, audio, and still image applications on mobile devices.

 

Could this technology be used in CAT-iq products, so that video content could be distributed via CAT-iq as well?

The number of Dutch consumer VoIP connections grew 4.4 percent during the fourth quarter to reach 3.11 million on 31 December 2008, passing the 3 million customers milestone for the first time, according to independent market research firm Telecompaper’s report Dutch Fixed Telephony Market Q4 2008. Year-on-year, the market grew 18.4 percent, with more than 570,000 net additions. The growth was driven by DSL providers, who increased their VoIP subscriber base by 5.4 percent during the quarter, while the number of cable VoIP subscribers showed a quarterly increase of only 2.9 percent, the lowest growth rate since the third quarter of 2004. Year-on-year, DSL VoIP users grew by 28.6 percent to 1.6 million on 31 December 2008, compared with an increase of 15.6 percent for cable VoIP, to reach 1.449 million customers.

The total Dutch consumer fixed telephony market grew by slightly more than 35,000 connections during the fourth quarter of 2008 to 5.86 million, despite a 4.2 percent drop in PSTN/ISDN connections to 2.358 million on 31 December 2008. Year-on-year, the total number of fixed telephony subscribers dropped by almost 490,000 or 20.7 percent. The number of Wholesale Line Rental (WLR) users grew by around 2 percent during the fourth quarter to 396,000 on 31 December 2008. Year-on-year, the WLR total grew by 50,000 or 12.8 percent.

KPN saw its share of the Dutch digital telephony market grow to 34.9 percent at the end of 2008. During the fourth quarter, KPN won 56,000 new VoIP customers, growing 5.4 percent compared with the third quarter of 2008 and 28.2 percent compared with 2007, ending 2008 with 1.086 million users. Ziggo won 15,000 new telephony customers during the quarter to end the period with 803,500 VoIP users, while its market share dropped by 0.7 points to 25.8 percent. The third-largest VoIP provider, UPC reported 21,800 net additions during the fourth quarter, ending the year with 572,400 VoIP customers. Year-on-year, UPC grew 17 percent, while its market share on the VoIP market dropped by 0.7 percentage points to 18.4 percent. Tele2 saw its VoIP customer base grow by 16,000 to reach 241,000 on 31 December 2008. Year-on-year, the growth amounted to 25.5 percent or 49,000 additions and its market share grew by 0.2 points to 7.7 percent.

SiTel Semiconductor today announced it is jointly developing Integrated Access Device (IAD) reference designs with Broadcom Corporation, a global leader in semiconductors for wired and wireless communications. The new designs will combine Broadcom’s Digital Subscriber Line (xDSL) gateway chipsets and SiTel’s DECT / CAT-iq solutions, allowing manufacturers to get to market faster with feature-rich and energy-efficient consumer premises equipment (CPE).

 
Data from electronics industry analysts IMS Research suggests that the number of DSL broadband internet users in the world will rise from 234 million in 2007 to 407 million by 2013. During the same period, the proportion of IADs shipped that include DECT or CAT-iq functionality is projected to grow from 4% to 31%, with the advanced features and better sound quality of CAT-iq replacing the elder technology entirely by rount 2012

 

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For every ten gateways shipped, between five and seven additional handsets are expected to be bought. When buying additional handsets, consumers will make their choice based on features, aesthetics and price. They will expect any additional handsets to work correctly with their broadband access device. In addition to the improved voice quality, it is the interoperability challenge that is driving the move to CAT-iq.

But it is the combination of ultra-low power and proven low-cost that makes DECT ideal as the radio interface for a low / medium bit rate wireless LAN (WLAN) in the smart home environment. From wireless metering to door phones and safety / emergency system sensors, there is a whole host of systems in today’s home that will benefit from the cost and infrastructure benefits that DECT and specifically CAT-iq deliver.

Through this cooperation, Broadcom and SiTel aim to ensure that all the necessary technologies can be easily and seamlessly integrated to speed development times and reduce the design resources manufactures need.

ZeeVee has released the Beta 3 version of its Zinc internet video browser for the living room.

 

 

 

The browser, formerly called Zviewer, helps users navigate Web content through a single, user-friendly interface that can be operated with a remote and viewed on a TV or video screen.

ZeeVee added a significant amount of content from existing providers to its on-demand library, as well as the addition of Netflix and CBS to the lineup. There are now nearly 15,000 feature length movies and tens of thousands of TV shows that can be watched instantly.

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Total Telecom reported new statistics presented at Broadband Forum yesterday.

Fibre connections reach 50-million mark, but DSL is still the dominant access technology.
The number of broadband lines worldwide rose by 62.6 million during 2008 to reach 410.9 million by the end of the year.


New statistics announced by the Broadband Forum on Wednesday revealed that Latin America and Eastern Europe recorded the highest growth after their broadband connections rose by 7.55% and 6.22% respectively.


The figures provided by analyst firm Point Topic showed China had the highest number of broadband lines with 83.37 million by the fourth quarter, up from 66.56 million a year earlier. The U.S. and Japan came in at second and third.


Germany leads the European market with 23.43 million connections.
"Germany is still not a saturated market, it showed 15% year on year growth," commented Gavin Young, Broadband Forum technical committee chairperson.

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Two months before its start, ANGA Cable, Europe’s leading Trade Fair for Cable, Broadband and Satellite, matches last year’s record booking level. The international meeting place for the broadband industry counts more than 360 exhibitor bookings from 32 countries for 95 percent of the space booked in the previous year. In the record year 2008, 369 exhibitors showcased on 22,000 sqm gross exhibition space. This year’s ANGA Cable will take place from 26 to 28 May in Cologne (Germany).

An essential part of the accompanying congress and the highlight of the English programme will be the international Broadband Summit. Under the headline „Cable versus Wireless: Next Generation Competitors?“ CEOs and CTOs from five countries will discuss the effects of new wireless networks (such as LTE and Wimax) on the broadband competition in Europe: Svein Erik Davidsen (Canal Digital Norway), Nick Fielibert (Cisco), Thomas Hintze (UPC Austria), David Keeley (Motorola), Martin Kull (Com Hem Sweden), Philippe Le May (Numericable France), Parm Sandhu (Unitymedia Germany) and Wim Sweldens (Alcatel-Lucent). The Broadband Summit will be presented by Julian Clover (Editorial Director Broadband TV News).

The second highlight of the congress, the Strategy Summit, will again be the floor for the top representatives of German network operators and content providers. With Thomas Braun (President ANGA Association of German Cable Operators) as the host of the event and Dr. Adrian von Hammerstein (CEO Kabel Deutschland), Parm Sandhu (CEO Unitymedia), Markus Schmid (CEO Tele Columbus), Harald Rösch (CEO Kabel Baden-Württemberg), Werner Hanf (CEO NetCologne), Ferdinand Kayser (President and CEO SES ASTRA) and Pro­f Dr Carl-Eugen Eberle (General Counsel ZDF), there will be a first-class panel discussion on the future of broadband and Triple Play in Germany. ProSiebenSat.1 Board Member Dr. Marcus Englert completes the discussion.

Zero in on what your peers are watching and say goodbye to long, fruitless EPG and Internet TV searches.


IPTV World Forum , Olympia, London - Neptuny and TVBLOB announce "BLOBwise", the first Social TV Recommendation System for over-the-top IPTV. Based on Neptuny's ContentWise engine, "BLOBwise" along with a Telsey BLOBbox radically change what's possible on TV: users expand their range of content options including EPG, podcasts, pay-per-view VOD, and other Internet TV channels and services, plus experience never before possible social interactivity on TV. The potential of the recommendation engine will be demonstrated at IPTV World Forum London (25-27 March).

 

"We are very happy to work with Neptuny because of their visionary approach in applying the spirit of the Internet to TV," says Fabrizio Caffarelli, TVBLOB CEO and founder. "They go beyond uni-directional recommendations that are based only on a user's taste and history and integrate new Web 2.0 social media possibilities. In fact, BLOBwise also leverages a user's social networks to provide suggestions of relevant content highlighted by friends and family; privacy is protected by considering just relationships and ignoring sensitive data."

 

TVBLOB integrated the ContentWise technology in the BLOBbox middleware, making it accessible to a whole new range of TV-centric consumer electronics devices that promise average television viewers new freedom in using their televisions by letting them directly tap into the explosion of content and services available on the Internet.

 

"Once the richness of Internet arrives directly on TV (and BLOBbox is making this possible), the challenge for users will quickly become how to find and discover what's most relevant and interesting to them", says Fabio Violante, Neptuny CEO. "ContentWise works transparently in the background, processing only relevant data and providing personalized recommendations available on the television screen. It's a great way to streamline the content discovery process and a whole new way to experience TV."

Content recommendation applications that leverage Facebook and BLOBwise are planned to be publicly availabile this summer . TVBLOB has released a free, open source SDK available at BLOBforge, an Open Source TV Development Community that lets developers invent new services for TV while using standard web technologies like Java, Ajax, HTML and open Web technologies.

 

The BLOBbox is available for purchase now from TecnologieCreative at in Italy or directly on the BLOBbox website. It requires a standard television with analog or HDMI input and a broadband connection.

 

The technology can be used on other platforms as well.

According to an article in the Wall Street Journal, TV use will change dramatically due to tools like Yahoo widgets.

 

So this week, Samsung Electronics introduced a television with truly integrated Internet smarts: the $3,000 Samsung LED TV 7000 with the Yahoo Widget Engine. It lets people watch TV and access the Web on the same big screen at the same time, with special on-screen applications that appear on a strip at the bottom of the screen and fetch online content. By this summer, Sony and LG Electronics also will offer TVs with the Yahoo Widget Engine, and Vizio will offer models soon thereafter.

 

This is an interesting trend, which opens new opportunities for consumer electronics products with wireless connections, like Wi-Fi but CAT-iq as well. Interesting to the operator who deploys CAT-iq in the future.

 

Read the article, and learn.