Recent news coverage describes a collaboration between SBC Communications and Microsoft to combine telephone, television and internet access under one highspeed network connection. This Topic in Depth explores fiber optic technology, its history and implications. This article from SFGate reports on the recent negotiations between SBC and Microsoft and the implications of the new technology for Internet and television access. This website from SBC provides video footage and background information on their initiative called Project Lightspeed. This initiative is based largely on fiber technology, which is described further on this website from How Stuff Works. This website provides a brief history of fiber optics technology along with links to sections on the applications of fiber optics and more basics on transmission. This article from PC World discusses how fiber optics became a viable option. This article from Telephony Online reviews some of the challenges that remain.

TechOnline develops and delivers online educational resources to the engineering community. It provides an interface for the electronics manufacturers reach and educate their employees, distributors and customers online. The website content includes electronics engineering information, resources, training materials, courses, virtual labs, live webcasts, featured articles, technical papers, forums and technical products. The access to TechOnLine contents is free and open to all and requires registration.

The Nobel Prize is an international award given every year for achievements in physics, chemistry, medicine, literature, economic sciences and peace. Visit the site to know about the prize winners of the year 2007. Also available here is information about Alfred Nobel, the Nobel Foundation and all the previous Nobel prize winners.

OWL is a Web Ontology language. It is compatible with the architecture of the World Wide Web in general, and the semantic web in particular. Additional capabilities include the ability to be distributed across many systems, scalability to web needs, compatibility with web standards for accessibility and internationalization, openess and extensibility. This W3C site provides information including language specifications, tutorials, articles and presentations, a sample of the tools, projects, and applications utilising OWL and example ontologies.

The site provides a database of useful resources relating to various fields of artificial intelligence such as neural networks, genetic algorithms, reinforcement learning etc. The types of information provided includes essays, news, discussion forums, book lists, tutorials, papers, software, programs, java applets and online demos. The contributors to the site include academic researchers as well as game programmers.

Launched in September 2007, the Chip History Center web site has been developed by VLSI Research Inc as the semiconductor industry’s history channel on the Internet. It intends to be an information focal point and to help strengthen the industry’s infrastructure by providing the industry’s history and its development. Available here is information regarding computer chips and semiconductors in three main sections: Documents with key papers and presentations; Videos with product brochures; A gallery of equipment landmarks arranged chronologically.

Specially designed for those working on signals, SigLab aims to allow the analysis of signal processing simulation results (telecommunication and others) or results of measures. It handles signals that have several million points by keeping the minimum necessary data in memory. One can load, save, generate signals and make varied operations on and between the signals. SigLab has been tested on Solaris and Linux and easy to adapt for Windows. SigLab is under General Public Licence and is a "sponsorware".

The Disappearing Computer is an initiative funded by the European Union (EU) as part of its focus on Future and Emerging Technologies (FET) within the Information Society Technologies (IST) research program. The mission of the Disappearing Computer initiative is "to see how information technology can be diffused into everyday objects and settings, and to see how this can lead to new ways of supporting and enhancing people's lives that go above and beyond what is possible with the computer today." The three main objectives of this initiative are based on a definition of "information artefacts" as "future forms of everyday objects that represent a merging of current everyday objects (tools, appliances, clothing, etc) with the capabilities of information processing and exchange (based on sensors, actuators, processors, mircosystems, etc)." The organization's goal is to create individual artifacts, understand how individual artifacts can work together and then design interactive systems. The research projects address issues such as pervasive computing in real work environments and finding ways to develop sound models that are based on the physics of sound-generating phenomena and can inform the design of artifacts that interact with humans. Each project has its own website where visitors will find detailed explanations and publications relating to it.

The Super Computing Science Consortium is a partnership among university, state and Federal research organizations aimed at improving "the ability of the partners to advance energy and environment technologies through the application of high performance computing and communications (HPCC)." The website describes the organization's project on MFIX, for which it has made available open source code, and another project investigating topics such as gas flow and the catalytic decomposition of ozone, for which it offers several images and video simulations. Information on grants for researchers affiliated with the partner colleges and universities is also available. Hardware and software resources available for partner researchers are described along with photo images when applicable. The News section highlights recent activities such as conferences and new products from the Super Computing Science Consortium.

More and more people are realizing the possibility of utilizing forms of art as a method of therapy and also as a way of affecting social change. One such organization that has worked in this area for some time is the Arts and Healing Network, which was founded by Marion Weber. This site was created in 1997 as a way for people to learn about the healing potential of art, and includes sections where people can learn about projects that combine art, community, and healing. Additionally, visitors can browse through the organization's newsletter and also funding opportunities for artists. Visitors will definitely want to visit the projects area as they will learn about thematic ideas that combine these two worlds, including those that raise environmental awareness and those that build community.

This Ohio State website provides an introduction to the principles of quantum mechanics as a supplement to the "discussion of hydrogen and many- electron orbitals commonly found in general chemistry text books." Users can find informative text and graphics explaining Classical Mechanics, uncertainty, Pauli Principle, stationary states, and much more. Through the tutorial, students can explore how physical objects can be perceived as both particles and waves. With the Macromedia Shockwave plug-in, visitors can hear discussions of the quantum mechanics topics covered.

Computational Information Technology is a research group of the Laboratory of Computational Engineering at the Helsinki University of Technology in Finland. This section of the website introduces visitors to the group's work on modelling and analyzing complex physical, technical and economic processes and systems. Researchers "carry out method development and application oriented research on advanced probabilistic and information theoretic methods." Some applications include statistical modelling of financial markets, pattern recognition in neural networks, machine vision for microscope image processing, data mining, and intelligent human-machine interfaces. The Research Projects section describes the group's work in these areas and highlights the mathematical and statistical methods used, such as Bayesian methods, vision geometry, Turing's reaction-diffusion systems, and time-frequency analysis. Each research area has its own website, where the overall project and theoretical framework is described along with images and diagrams. Publications, such as theses and journal articles are listed and some conference proceedings and articles are available to download.

The University of Toronto's Artificial Perception Lab investigates the theory, implementation, and application of multi-sensor information systems. The lab's research addresses microphone arrays, camera arrays, sensor networks, Multi-Sensor Information Systems and applications for human-computer interactions and robotics. The Projects section provides abstracts of the lab's work, along with photos and diagrams and links to additional information and program source code for related projects. Several research articles are posted online, along with links to media coverage the lab has received. For example, a November 2007 press release describes its work in developing a three-dimensional multi-camera system that can capture images of a scene from multiple angles and then sort the images to improve surveillance in public places.

The Network Telecommunications Research Group (NTRG) at Trinity College in Dublin focuses on "a wide range of areas involving core networking and telecommunications technology." This website highlights the group's project on 4th Generation Telephony. The reference to fourth generation telephony puts the work within a historical context, beginning with analogue-based mobile phone systems and leading into systems using digital technology, such as Global System for Mobile (GSM) Communications, in the second generation. The third generation of research currently under way, focuses on defining standards for the third generation mobile systems. The fourth generation telephony follows from third generation efforts, "but starts with the assumption that future networks will be entirely packet-switched using protocols evolved from those in use in today's Internet." The website highlights some of the benefits of this approach and describes the research issues NTRG is addressing, including compatibility, mobility, and quality of service. The Dublin Ad-hoc Wireless Network (DAWN) project, which serves as a prototype for this research, is also described. Several publications and some older video demonstrations are available online to download free of charge. Websites developed through Undergrad Coursework and Projects provide additional resources on the topic of telecommunications technology.

The IBM software library offers a variety of literature and technical resources on IBM software products and offerings. The website consists of literature such as briefs, case studies, brochures, newsletters, manuals, technical documentation, demos, Redbooks etc to help the users to learn about IBM software. A search interface and browsing by type and brand are provided. The users can download, view and mail documents.

The Natural Language Software Registry (NLSR) provides information about capabilities and sources of a large amount of natural language processing (NLP) software available to the NLP community. It includes academic, commercial and proprietary software with specifications and terms on which it can be acquired. The NLP software products in the registry have been hierarchically organized under various sections such as annotation tools, evaluation tools, language resources, multimedia, multimodality, NLP Development Aid, spoken language, written language. The users can easily browse through this classification.

The Web Standards Project (WaSP) has the goal of promoting core web standards and encouraging browser makers to do the same, thereby ensuring simple, affordable access for all. This website provides resources pertaining to web standards. It consists of tutorials, articles, reference charts, templates, related links and a medium for reporting browser bugs.

The web site offers online facility to small and medium companies, professionals and even individuals to use web tools to design logo, design creative services such as business cards, company letter-heads, company envelopes, graphic and image building, and branding service and other third-party services. This is a fee based service. For more details, please visit the site.

"A network protocol is a formal set of rules, conventions and data structure that governs how computers exchange information over a network". Over years of technological developments, several network protocols have been evolved by standard organisations worldwide. This website, offered by the Javvin Company, is a online compilation of the various network protocols defined by various organizations and technology vendors. The protocols are organized according to their key functions and their origin/sponsors. Descriptions of each protocols can be found in the corresponding linked pages.

This site offers information in the fields of machine learning, knowledge discovery, case-based reasoning, knowledge acquisition, and data mining. The site contents include links to projects, research groups, persons, software and data sets, jobs, events, and news.

ProcessLibrary.com is a useful resource for anyone who wants to know the exact purpose of every single process on the PCs. "In the recesses of your computer, 20-30 invisible processes run silently in the background. Some hog system resources, turning your PC into a sluggish computer. Worse yet, other useless processes harbour spyware and Trojans - violating your privacy and giving hackers free reign on your computer". ProcessLibrary.com is a free online service provided by Uniblue Systems Ltd. It gives users easy access to detailed descriptions enabling them to figure out what is running on their systems, the latest information about spywares, adwares, trojans, viruses, system processes and common applications using which one can discard useless processes and make computer run safer and faster.

The mission of the American Institute of Physics' (ADP) Center for History of Physics "is to preserve and make known the history of modern physics and allied fields." Visiting the History Exhibits, teachers and students can find interactive tutorials about many prominent physicists and important research such as Heisenberg's theory of uncertainty and the discovery of the electron. Users can search Emilio Segrè's collection of 25,000 historical photographs, slides, lithographs, engravings, and other images. Researchers can find out how to gain access to the books, journals, photographs, interviews, and other historical documents held at the Niels Bohr Library. Educators can find helpful sample syllabi and reading lists created by physics instructors. With so much historical physics information to offer, anyone interested in physics would benefit by visiting this site.

The American Association of Physical Anthropologists (AAPA) "is the world's leading professional organization for physical anthropologists. Formed by 83 charter members in 1930, the AAPA now has an international membership of over 1,700." The AAPA website contains a capacious job board with listings from universities across the country; a News and Announcements board; and downloadable copies of the Association's Newsletter. The site also offers information about: the upcoming annual meeting, other meetings of interest, membership, contact information for officers, and links to associated organizations. For up-and-coming professionals, the site provides links to graduate programs at leading universities and colleges, as well as information about student prizes, and physical anthropology careers.

This site is a virtual gallery of pictures from all over the world, and is dedicated to fostering a global community interested in photography. The registered members strive to provide engaging photographs and useful critiques for each other, and for benefit of cyber community at large. Created by Adam Silverman and in operation since October 2002, the underlying theme of the Web site to learn more about the world through photography, by allowing photographers to display their work grouped by regions in supportive and orderly environment. This is accomplished by an easy-to-use system which encourages people to critique each other's work. Integrated with this system are forums designed to encourage discussion about specific photos, countries and general topics. Since TerkEarth is globally oriented, it is completely multilingual capable, allowing for the widest audience possible. Ultimately TerkEarth depends on the civility, honesty and participation of its members.

The 2007 Living Planet Report is the fifth in a series of global ecological updates from the WWF. The Report assesses the state of ecosystems around the world using two primary measures: The Living Planet Index, which is based on population trends for hundreds of forest, freshwater, and marine species, and the Ecological Footprint, which is based on human demands on renewable natural resources. The 44-page report shows, among other things, that as human consumption has continued to rise beyond sustainable levels, global animal populations have been declining at a rapid pace. English and Portuguese versions of the 2007 Report are available in portable document format, as well as Reports from 2002, 2000, and 1999. In addition, the site offers a world map animation representing the growth of our ecological footprint during the past few decades.