Technology : Telephony
Secret messages could be hidden in net phone calls
THE next time your internet (VoIP) phone call sounds a bit fuzzy, it might not be your ISP that's to blame. Someone could be trying to squeeze a secret message between the packets of data carrying the caller's voice. Wojciech Mazurczyk and Krzysztof Szczypiorski, information scientists at the Institute of Telecommunications in Warsaw, Poland, revealed last week that they are developing a "steganographic" system for VoIP networks (www.arxiv.org/abs/0805.2938). Steganography is the art of hiding messages by embedding them in ordinary communications. For example, a message can be encoded as a string of numbers which are used to modify the brightness and colour of an image. The effect is too subtle to be noticed by unwitting observers but the message can be deciphered with appropriate software by anyone who knows it's there.
May 30, 2008, 14:17

Technology : Telephony
IDF to issue tender for a VoIP telephone system
The Defense Ministry will soon put out a Request For Proposals (RFP) for a huge tender for a new telephone infrastructure and about 100,000 new phones - all based on VoIP technology. Voice over Internet Protocol is used for telephony services over the Internet. The tender is estimated to be worth tens of millions of dollars, and companies including Alcatel-Lucent, Nortel, Broadsoft, Avaya, Nokia-Siemens and Sonus are expected to compete.
May 7, 2008, 19:12

Technology : Telephony
Israeli phone provides more secure lines for clients
Petah Tikva based Tikal Networks has developed a new Internet telephone that scrambles messages before they are sent down the line. Unlike other scrambling devices on the market, Tikal's Cryptone phone uses coded Internet protocol (VoIP) technology to encrypt the voice of the caller, a technology that makes it nearly impossible to decipher.
Apr 6, 2008, 13:46

Technology : Telephony
Phones that plan their meals
People worry that future cellphones could make your location and your call history available to third parties. A more benign use for such information could be to make your phone be smarter with it's battery life, suggests a paper by researchers at Microsoft, Intel and Rutgers University researchers in the US. Their idea is to have phones preemptively request a top-up when near a charger (but not if it expects electronic 'feed' sometime soon) and to predict how many calls you a likely to want to make each day.
Jan 25, 2008, 10:49

Technology : Telephony
Cameraphone used to control computers in 3D
A camera-equipped cellphone can be used to control a computer as if it was a three-dimensional mouse, thanks to prototype software developed by UK researchers. The software makes it possible to move and manipulate onscreen items simply by waving a handset around in front of a screen, a bit like the motion-sensitive Nintendo Wii controller. "It feels like a much more natural way to interact and exchange data," says Nick Pears, of York University, UK, who made the system with colleagues from Newcastle University, also in the UK. "Most people who see it think it is really cool." Pears says the current prototype, which can be used to control a desktop computer, is just the first step. "The invention really comes into its own when you realise that modern large public displays are really just computers with big screens," he says. For example, the software could let people interact with video advertisements. To control a screen, a user simply aims their cellphone's camera at it. The handset then connects, via Bluetooth, to the computer that operates that screen.
Jan 15, 2008, 12:36