Have you ever sat through a painfully unfunny television ad that you knew was actually meant to be funny? Because one out of every five ads are designed to be humorous, chances are that you’ve witnessed a dud or two…or three. What makes an ad funny is the subject of research presented in the December 2004 issue of the Journal of Consumer Research by Josephine L.C.M. Woltman Elpers, a German marketing specialist, and her colleagues.

“Humor is one of the most widely used techniques in

FogScreen is a futuristic innovation that creates a thin white screen of fog. The screen can be projected onto, touched, and even walked through – a sure-fire attention-getter for publicity or educational purposes.

“FogScreen is the world’s first walk-through projection screen, based on our proprietary technology,” says Mika Herpiö, CEO of the company with the same name. “With an add-on interactivity set, FogScreen also allows you to write and draw in the air. It can easily be us

Jay Leno’s comedy routines are helping to advance technologies for distance learning on the Internet.

Ohio State University engineers are using video recordings of Leno and other TV personalities to test software that transmits more information in an Internet video using less bandwidth.

One of the obstacles to distance learning on the Internet is the difficulty with viewing lectures, explained James Davis, professor of computer science and engineering at Ohio State. A hi

All stories have one beginning, one middle and one end. But with MECiTV’s interactive television (iTV) authoring platform, producers can easily create programmes in which viewers choose how the story unravels and ends.

As Carmen Mac Williams, MECiTV Project Manager at Cologne’s Institute at the Academy of Media Arts explains, MECiTV arose out of “discontent with traditional linear recording of political events or anything happening in the world, where only one viewpoint is pres

Core Web Architectural Principles Described and Explained

The World Wide Web Consortium announces the publication of “Architecture of the World Wide Web, Volume One” as a W3C Recommendation. The authors of this document, W3C’s Technical Architecture Group (TAG), have documented the architectural principles that make the Web of today work well, and will help build a better Web tomorrow.

Technical Architecture Group Distills Conventional Wisdom

In Nov

Will your medical or bank records stored on CD or DVD still be retrievable 10 or 20 years from now? The answer depends on how well this type of media are cared for and on specific manufacturing processes used, according to a study* by researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).

Knowing that CDs and DVDs will work reliably for a certain number of years is critical to government agencies, hospitals, banks and other organizations that store massive amou

Children watching commercials aired during televised sports events may frequently be exposed to violent and unsafe behavior, a study by a Penn State Children’s Hospital physician suggests.

“Our study found that nearly one in five commercials during televised major sporting events depict unsafe or violent behavior,” said Robert F. Tamburro, M.D., associate professor of pediatrics, Penn State Children’s Hospital, Penn State Milton S. Hershey Medical Center. “Studies re

Culture vultures enjoy exploring museum collections online. New 3D technology promises to make their experience richer still. With a mouse click, people can manipulate valuable objects as if they were in their own hands.

“As far as I know, no European museums offer 3D presentations of their prized treasures,” says Martin White, coordinator of the IST project ARCO. “Their websites are mostly just a catalogue of what they own or are exhibiting. But with our software, a museum can e

Media companies are being offered the opportunity to capitalise on their audio and video materials without losing their rights, thanks to new software applications developed by BiBC.

BiBC (British Internet Broadcasting Company) is one of the seven companies presenting at the Connect Yorkshire Springboard Investment Conference today. The company has developed a software application that enables it to offer a service that creates channels and broadcasting programming as well as o

Talking to your family and friends through your television could soon become a reality, if the set-top-box technology developed by Red Embedded Design Co Ltd receives the investment it is looking for at the Connect Yorkshire Springboard Investment Conference today.

The broadband videophone, which has been designed and built by an experienced team of ex-Pace employees who have formed their own company, Red Embedded Design Co Ltd. The videophone is a set top box device rather

The future of TV is digital and promising: ultra-high definition images, unlimited choice, interactive features, and much more. But for many of these features, the future is now. With this tone, Rector Professor Klaus Fischer opened the 2nd Product Placement Congress, an event jointly organized by Nürtingen University and the Andreas Waldner Marketing and Communications Agency.

According to host Ronniccia Eisenmann the starting point for advertisers in the dawning digital TV-age is

The Mobile and Portable Radio Research Group (MPRG) in Virginia Tech’s Bradley Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering has developed the fundamental software for use in designing software radios and is offering this tool free to other wireless communications researchers throughout the world.

“The tool available on the Virginia Tech website already has been downloaded by numerous companies and universities from around the world,” said Jeffrey Reed, professor of electrical

Want a romantic version of Star Wars? Or your own cut of Big Brother? Ever wish you could get more news from the headlines? Or less from a documentary?

Manipulating your favourite films and programmes to make more personalised viewing is just the beginning of a £5.1 million project involving the University of Ulster.

New Media for a New Millennium (NM2) will see the development of a completely new media genre, which will allow audiences to create their own media worlds

The launch of the biggest TV boom in history, the digital terrestrial services that form the platform for the phenomenally successful Freeview, was made possible thanks to a grant of 6.45 million euros from the EU’s Framework Programme.

The VALIDATE (Verification and Launch of Integrated Digital Advanced Television in Europe) project, technically underpinned by a BBC-led partnership, gave the UK the technical confidence to launch digital terrestrial TV in 1998. This technical expe

Aeronautics researchers at MIT have developed a manned-to-unmanned aircraft guidance system that allows a pilot in one plane to guide another unmanned airplane by speaking commands in English.

In a flight test, the pilotless vehicle, called a UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle), responded to sudden changes in plan and avoided unexpected threats en route to its destination, in real time. “The system allows the pilot to interface with the UAV at a high level–not just ’turn right, tu

On October 29th MSc. (Inf. Sys.) Teemu Santonen defended the doctoral thesis “Four Essays Studying the Effects of Customization and Market Environment on the Business Success of Online Newspapers in Finland” at the Helsinki School of Economics. The opponent was Professor, Dr. Arjen Wassenaar (University of Twente, Netherlands) and the custos Professor Markku Sääksjärvi (Helsinki School of Economics, Finland).

In his doctoral thesis, Santonen is especially interested in analyz