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User mobility in WLANs becomes more and more popular because of the wide deployment of WLANs and numerous applications on it. Some of these applications, for example multimedia applications, require fast handoffs among access points to maintain the quality of service. In order to support multimedia applications for roaming users, IEEE 802.11i defines pre-authentication to reduce the re-authentication delay. The primary drawback of IEEE 802.11i pre-authentication is that the full 802.1x/EAP authentication consumes too much overhead. In this paper, we propose two secure fast pre-authentication schemes that greatly improve the efficiency and achieve high security level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents research on variability and speaking styles that was done in the framework of the COST 258 action on "Naturalness of Synthetic Speech." Progress both in the domains of language and speech technology and of computer technology has given rise to the emergence of new types of applications including speech output, such as multimedia applications, tutoring systems, animated characters or embodied conversational agents, and dialogue systems. One of the conse quences of this development has been an increased need for possibilities for variation in speech synthesis as an essential condition for meeting quality requirements.

The article focuses on developments related to the optical interconnect architectures and technologies. Optical interconnections provide an alternative technology to solve the interconnection problem. The multigigabit bandwidth allowed by the technology is more than sufficient for applications such as communications within a multimedia system for the foreseeable future. Furthermore, it is easier to control reflections in this technology for both point-to-point and multi-drop structures than in metal links. Optical links generally exhibit less ground-loop noise because fibers do not carry currents as do metal links.

This article presents information on distributed multimedia systems. Advances in computer processing and storage performance and in high speed communications has made it feasible to consider continuous media servers that scale to thousands of concurrently active clients. The principle characteristics of continuous media is their sustained bit rate requirement. Most of the compression schemes are Constant Bit Rate (CBR) but some are Variable Bit Rate. With both techniques, the data must be delivered at a pre-specified rate. Typically, CBR schemes allow some bounded variation of this rate based on some amount of memory at the display.

The article presents a list of computer terminology with initial letter "K." The list contains terms such as: "Kaband," "KBS," and "Kiosk Application." "Kaband" is a range of radio or electromagnetic frequencies 18-30 GHz. "Katakana," is a character set used in a Japanese phonetic alphabet. "Kiosk application," is a multimedia application intended to interface with the general public. The multimedia system may or may not be housed in a physical kiosk. Such applications might provide maps, tourist information, point-of-information, point-of sale etc.

An encyclopedia entry for "Multimedia Home Platform" is presented. Multimedia Home Platform (MHP) refers to a set of common application programming interfaces (API) designed to establish an operating system-independent, level playing field for broadcasters and consumer-electronics manufacturers. Its goal is to provide services and programs access to digital video broadcasting (DVB)-based terminals.

An encyclopedia entry about the "X Multimedia System (XMMS)" is presented. It refers to a free audio player which is similar to Winamp that runs on several Unix-like operating systems.

A definition of the term "T.120" is presented. It refers to an ITU-T standard that is made up of a suit of communication and application protocols. The protocols is designed for multipoint Data Conferencing and real time communication, which includes multilayer protocols that considerably enhance multimedia, MCU and code control capabilities.

An encyclopedia entry for "Screencast" is presented. It refers to a digital recording of computer screen output, often containing voice narration. Lotus ScreenCam and other early screencast products produced large files and had limited editing capability. Advanced versions support more compact file formats.

A definition of the term "Macro-Media Flash" in computer software is presented. The term refers to both a multi-media authoring program and the Flash Player, written and distributed by Macro-media (now part of Adobe Systems). It utilizes vector and raster graphics, a native scripting language called Action-Script and bidirectional streaming of video and audio.

An encyclopedia entry for the software "DirectX" is presented. DirectX is a suite of multimedia application programming interfaces built into Microsoft Windows OS by Microsoft. It provides a standard development platform for Windows-based personal computers by helping software developers to access specialized hardware features without the need to write hardware-specific code.