European researchers hope to take news agencies into the internet age by commercialising a platform of integrated Web services that can automatically classify, annotate and analyse news stories.

It will mean stories can be defined, on the fly, with a precision greater than a library’s card catalogue.

The News Engine Web Services (NEWS) platform is aimed at news agencies, governments and large enterprises and will enable them to develop highly advanced analysis to r

The University of Southampton’s School of Electronics and Computer Science (ECS) has launched the first video podcast news service from a UK university.

The School, which carries out world-leading research in multimedia and mobile communications, unveiled the first editions of ECS News this month. The programme is available on the School’s web site (www.ecs.soton.ac.uk), and can be downloaded either to be viewed on a portable device (such as an i-Pod video), or a laptop

This document has just been released by the PerX Project (a project funded by JISC, as part of the UK Digital Repositories Programme).

It is an advocacy document, aimed at content providers of various kinds (for example – journal publishers, professional societies and database providers and owners) who may have descriptive data (metadata) available for the actual content they produce. It introduces the various benefits of sharing metadata, in standardised and reusable ways, with

Multimedia providers and distributors are being sought by Leeds researchers, to test some of the latest technology for handling digital media such as music, games and TV.

In today’s digital world, multimedia entertainment reaches us in a huge variety of ways, whether it’s films watched on a laptop, interactive games on our mobile phones or music downloaded through the internet. As technology advances, these outlets proliferate, raising problems of compatibility and copyright prote

A project supported by the European Space Agency has combined satellite multicasting techniques and improved content management to enhance information delivery for education .

The use of information and communications technology in schools all over Europe is on the increase. Although the various Ministries of Education have set up networks that offer recommendations on content, as well as advice and support to educators, challenges still remain in the take-up of information techn

The country’s first interactive website to help students cut down on alcohol has launched at Leeds. If successful, it could be rolled out across the UK and beyond.

The e-UNICAL project will use tailored online feedback based on reported alcohol consumption to help students make informed decisions about their drinking. It aims to reduce consumption by ten per cent in two years, following feedback from the UNIQOLL student experience survey which showed that, in common with all yo

You no longer need to sit in front of a computer to get news from ESA. With ESApod, you can now watch and listen to selected audio and video content anytime, anywhere.

ESApod delivers digital audio and video files directly to you, downloading the information on your personal computer or portable digital device. You can choose to listen or view the content the traditional way, sitting at your desk, or download the information on your portable digital device, such as your ipod, and listen/view

The development of a rapidly deployable interoperable communication system for future public safety is becoming increasingly important in today’s world. For any disaster relief operation requiring multinational efforts and rapid deployment a recently tested prototype communications network offers hope.

Fresh from a recent successful test-run of its system, the IST-funded project WIDENS has succeeded in developing a prototype network that could be quickly deployed in areas where there i

Corporate sponsors seek positive results from their investments. By automatically monitoring TV programmes and print media, a new system promises to keep sponsors and media analysts well informed and happy.

Developed within the IST project DIRECT INFO, a prototype of the Web Services-based system was successfully tested in the sports arena. “We tracked sponsorship of the Italian football team Juventus,” says Herwig Rehatschek, the project coordinator, “looking at videos of the

Coinciding with the Winter Olympics, the MobiLife project will showcase its innovative array of third-generation mobile services and applications at an exhibition in Turin, demonstrating to winter sports fans how emerging technologies can improve their lives on the piste and off it.

The MobiLife exhibit will be at the Experimenta innovation exhibition between 17 and 21 February giving visitors the chance to use and see applications that in the future are likely to become part o

If you were asked what station is currently orbiting 400 km above the Earth at 28 000 km/h you may be tempted to answer the International Space Station (ISS). This is of course correct but if you were to look with a good telescope behind the ISS (or tune in with the appropriate equipment) you may soon pick up a second station: a radio station.

On Friday 3 February, at 23:20 Central European Time the ISS Crew of Valery Tokarev and William McArthur are due to start an EVA from t

The Centre for Telecommunications Value-chain Research (CTVR) has been awarded the world’s first software-radio test licence. The licence will be used to investigate and develop more flexible ways of communicating to mobile devices, including ‘thinking radios’ and other cutting-edge communications systems.

Radio frequencies are valuable assets – particularly for mobile phone operators who have paid huge sums for them in the past – and as a result are very tightly regulated. Yet despite thei

Does media influence the allocation of disaster relief? Thomas Eisensee answers this question in his dissertation at The Institute for International Economic Studies, Stockholm University.

Each year, around 150 natural disasters occur taking about 63,000 lives and affecting 125 million people.

– Given the huge losses involved, it is essential that disaster relief is provided to those most in need. It is crucial to understand whether media has a causal effect on the deci

The New Year got off to a multimedia start for the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation), with the public launch of its new image DVD “Discovering, Funding, Growing”, presented on 16 January 2006 in Berlin. The DVD contains a 20-minute film as well as an interactive multimedia DVD-ROM section, which can be viewed on any computer. It complements the DFG’s existing range of publications and is intended both for members of the general public who have an interest in scien

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