Telecommunications

With wireless home networks becoming increasingly crowded as more and more mobile devices appear under our roofs jostling for bandwidth, many will be pleased to see the upcoming 802.11ac WiFi standard stepping out from the planning meetings and laboratories and into the real world. Both Netgear and Belkin have announced plans to release dual-band routers supporting the new 5G WiFi standard that will boast speeds of up to 1,300 Mbps on the 5 GHz band and 450 Mbps on 2.4 GHz. Read More

It is possible to get addicted to almost anything. The most obvious candidates are things like cigarettes, drugs, alcohol, and food. But anything which causes some kind of obsessive behavior in even one individual has the potential to be addictive. That includes the Web and, in particular, social networking sites such as Facebook. New research from the University of Bergen (UiB) suggests Facebook addiction is not only real but measurable using the Bergen Facebook Addiction Scale. Read More

Remember all those science fiction movies and television shows that depicted people in a future time, talking to life-sized holographic images? That time is now. A research team from Queen's University in Ontario has developed a video communications system that allows you to speak with an eerie three-dimensional representation of the person on the other end of the line. Read More

Smart phones are techno wonders, and they are also energy guzzlers, which is not a problem for people living in the developed world. However, their high energy requirements has stymied the adoption of mobile internet services in developing countries where mobile internet can be a real lifeline. In Africa, for example, few people can access the internet from a wired connection but 90 percent of the population lives in areas with mobile phone network coverage. There’s one problem though. Access to the power grid in Africa is limited. Read More

Japanese telecommunications giant NTT is developing a videoconferencing system that literally turns heads. In an attempt to more accurately give the feeling of a face-to-face conversation between more than two people, the MM-Space system features displays that physically mimic the head movements of the person being displayed on screen. Read More

Cellphones play an obvious role in dating, meet-ups, and generally keeping in touch ... but they also have an increasing role to play in our breaking apart. Data snaffled from smartphones is flourishing as divorce evidence, and on the other side of the ledger, apps exist to help in the process of hanging up marital connections - there are apps to initiate, manage and survive a divorce as well as apps for assessing the costs and scheduling time with kids afterwards. Read More

While cop shows have shown us that it’s easy for service providers to track a person’s location via their mobile phone, researchers at the University of Minnesota have revealed it’s also an easy task for hackers. Using a cheap phone and open source software, the researchers were able to track the location of mobile phone users without their knowledge on the GSM network, which is estimated to serve 80 percent of the global mobile market. Read More

Vehicles such as cars, ships and aircraft need to stay in stable contact with earth-orbiting satellites, in order for on-board functions like GPS, internet access and satellite television reception to work properly. As the vehicles move, their orientation to those satellites changes, so electronically-redirectable phased-array antennas are typically required. According to scientists at Germany's Technische Universität Darmstadt, however, these are "either very expensive or only sluggishly redirectable." That's why doctoral candidate Onur Hamza Karabey is working on a low-cost, fast-performing alternative - a liquid crystal antenna. Read More

Facebook has filed an S-1 document with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission announcing its intention to sell shares to the public. The eagerly anticipated move by the world’s dominant social networking site sees Facebook’s books open to potential investors – and the just plain curious - for the first time. Although the IPO will mean the internet giant will answer to shareholders and a board, the stock structure will see Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg controlling 57 percent of voting shares. Read More