Switzerland
Experienced journalist, specialises in technology and the arts.
Could pure AI encoding reinvent compression and make traditional codecs obsolete? Monica Heck examines what the future might look like in the encoding space.
Hydrogen produced with renewable energy, dubbed green or low carbon, is becoming an option to decarbonize industrial processes. Standards can help to overcome some of the hurdles.
The future will see a blend of 5G applications working together to tailor coverage to the unique profile of each sporting event. Monica Heck examines how 5G is allowing broadcasters to create ever more engaging content.
By 2060, we could be sharing our homes with a whopping three billion robots. What are the technical challenges for house robots and the standards produced to deal with their safety and performance?
Cybersecurity live session reporting from ISE2026 conference
Richard Mulholland keynote at the Integrated Systems Europe 2026 show
The cover feature of this edition of the magazine explores the rise of microdramas, which are believed to have generated $11 billion in global revenue in 2025, nearly twice that of FAST channels. Monica Heck investigates how the short, mobile-first episodic series are faring in Europe and the technology behind the phenomenon.
Sensor tech used to monitor the environment, including CO₂ emissions, is constantly evolving. Today, it is even possible to monitor the planet from space, using artificial intelligence (AI) to combine data from satellites and other observation ecosystems to track drought, monitor crop growth and estimate agricultural yield.
Provided international coverage to the Irish Times following the Crans-Montana disaster of New Year's Day 2026
Healthcare is the new frontline in cyber warfare. Hospitals and healthcare-related outlets are targeted more than other industries because they hold large amount of hackable digital records and because healthcare providers often cannot compromise the health of patients and refuse to pay ransomware.
Every summer, youth sports players flock to Gothenburg, Sweden, to take part in footballs Gothia Cup and the Partille World Cup handball tournament. Over the past three years, the OTT production, distribution and delivery of thousands of live matches have exploded across both tournaments, managed by a core team that can be counted on the fingers of one hand, with the support of innovative AI-driven and automated technology.
One in eight people now watch Formula One. This once-dwindling sport has made a remarkable comeback, thanks to a focus on storytelling supported by technology advances. These insights were revealed by Ruth Buscombe, Race Strategist at Formula 1, speaking at the "Pushing the Limits: AI Innovation in Live Sports with Formula 1" session on the Future Tech Stage today.
At the "Streaming of Live Sport: Have We Reached a Tipping Point?" session on the IBC2025 Content Everywhere Stage in Hall 4, industry leaders highlighted that the industry today is in a mad race to acquire sports rights.
We can now do the imaginative things that were once only fantasy by blending creativity with huge amounts of data and AI, according to Andy Hood, VP Emerging Technologies at WPP.
Public service broadcasting is both competing against industry behemoths and dealing with unprecedented political pressure, Noel Curran, CEO of the EBU, revealed at the IBC2025 Conference.
The Media Climate Accord was launched at IBC2025 to be "a unifying framework to bring the global media industry together to measure, report, and take action," according to Barbara Lange, Co-Founder at MTSS, Founder and CEO of Kibo121.
Renewable and clean energies are one of the most effective solutions to reduce carbon emissions, but they are also affected by climate change. As global temperatures continue to rise, the move to renewable energies is becoming a prerequisite. However, renewable energy installations face hurdles linked to the very climate change they are trying to mitigate.
Whether through e-mobility, renewable energy generation or the management of e-waste, India is driving towards greater sustainability.
Ligue 1+, the official name of the new LFP channel, was announced today in Paris by LFP Media. “It’s the dawn of a new era, Ligue 1 is the first big championship to own its own channel,” said journalist Thibault Le Rol, who was named to the editorial team alongside well-known journalists, presenters and pundits.
The era of bio-digital convergence is upon us two decades after it was first predicted, and the merging of biology and digital technology is accelerating thanks to genomics, the growth of artificial intelligence and the development of quantum-based encryption.
French football fans recently enjoyed a unique experience when Canal+ simultaneously covered 17 of the 18 Champions League matches taking place on the ...
Education facilities are evolving and must incorporate this into their designs, according to Juan Antonio Martínez Carrascal of the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB). "Higher education institutions have to consider the evolution from classical space by providing new features to encourage people to attend campuses, as it provides better outcomes."
AI is expected to drive continued spend on sports media technology by making tools more accessible and creating more data from sports
Does a building being smart increase its value? It depends on who is looking at it, according to Michael Grant, co-founder and COO at Metrikus, speaking as part of a panel session on the ROI of smart buildings at yesterday's Smart Building Conference.
AI technology, teamwork and art collided to give birth to the recent exclusive mapping of Casa Battló, entitled 'Structures of Being', by Argentinian artist Sofia Crespo.
Jaume Collboni, mayor of Barcelona, opened the inaugural European/Latin American AV Summit in style by pointing out that the city once described by writer Gabriel García Márquez as "bella, lunàtica e indescifrable" (beautiful, moody and inscrutable) is home to 70% of Spain's tech companies.
Discover comprehensive insights on the AV industry with our latest informative articles. Stay updated and informed.
InfoComm special report: as 3G and 4G LTE cellular technology – and now 5G trials — make headlines around the world in the field of mobile video delivery, the same technology has quietly emerged in the digital signage space.
Despite conflicting reports about the health of the wider e-book market worldwide, e-textbook technology is making inroads into the academic world. Monica Heck looks into how e-books are revolutionising higher education
Live streaming app gives IRFU and FA coaches a real-time edge during games In the unforgiving world of coaching, the live streaming of video content to mobile devices is changing the face of video analysis by giving coaches and analysts in the fields of rugby and football a competitive edge, making them more mobile, nimble and responsive whether the teams are playing on home ground or abroad.
Avaya chose Dublin as the location for the European premiere of its reincarnation as a digital, software-centric enterprise. The company's Nidal About Ltaif explained that in a world of economic and political uncertainty, Avaya's digital transformation was driven by macro economic disruption.
Italy is poised to be an early adopter of LTE broadcast technology according to Alberto Fontana, sales and delivery manager at Ericsson. Commenting on the recent success of Italy's first LTE broadcast concert during Expo 2015 in Milan, Fontana noted that while the Italian market is behind on things like IPTV, it is much ahead in terms of the use of mobile and personal devices.
How can digital signage users ensure their solutions achieve their goals instead of just generating visual noise?
The official newspaper of the Integrated Systems Europe show. Contributing journalist, front page stories.
December 2014 edition of the magazine, which I wrote, edited and laid out.
This page contains a Flash digital edition of the Autumn 2014 edition of the magazine, which I wrote, edited and laid out.
The Autumn 2014 cover 20,000 attendees from 109 countries have descended on the Irish capital for three days of tech innovation. Monica Heck seeks the retail angle at the Web Summit The Web Summit in Dublin, now in its fourth year, is a pot-pourri of technology-related themes, where the likes Bono, Lily Cole and Eva Longoria rub shoulders with bleeding edge tech gurus, angel investors and people who use virtual reality to treat war-induced post-traumatic stress disorder.
The humanitarian organisation recently opened the doors of its Brussels warehouse to Retail Technology. Monica Heck reports "We are the purchasing and forwarding agency of MSF," explained deputy site manager of MSF Supply Pierre-Paul Lamotte. "We run emergency projects in 68 countries.
Do you start your digital signage conversations with technology? Think about kicking things off with content. Experts say the best way to start is to learn what needs to be displayed and where, so you as an AV professional can recommend the best way to display it. Read the special report.
No longer niche, the delivery of live or on-demand content Over-The-Top (OTT) is now a major consideration of the broadcast workflow
By Monica Heck, Special to InfoComm International® - It's safe to say that laser has ushered in a new era for projection technology. Challenging the dominance of lamps in an increasing number of market segments, laser technology has been key to the development of the new era of solid-state light sources.
The coupling of mobile and BI, which will flourish in the next two years, is already benefitting retailers. Monica Heck reports from Barcelona
Sports giant adidas highlighted the influence of BI and analytics on its brand this week during a MicroStrategy conference, Monica Heck reports.
"We want to be a more strategic partner" says Xerox at launch of new SMART Centre tool for channel
The maturation of IP networks has strongly influenced broadcast automation workflows.
Video streaming may seem like an IT application, but it's really a networked AV system. Here's how it works.
Storage vendor uses three-day conference to flesh out its flash ambitions.
Many non-traditional broadcasters (schools, churches, corporations) are now using broadcast-grade equipment to create compelling video content for a variety of purposes.
With the recent arrival of 4K players, digital signage seems to be joining the rush towards bigger and better resolutions. However, there's a feeling in the industry that it's too soon to talk about 4K, never mind 8K for most commodity, real-world deployments. Monica Heck provides an in-depth look.
Retail Technology speaks exclusively to the IT director and business systems manager of UK-based fashion empire Arcadia Group about overhauling its entire electronic point-of-sale (EPoS) estate across its eight brands
Whether you call it simply unified communications (UC) or you also throw collaboration into the mix (UCC), it's clear that this years-old-yet-bleeding-edge technology has finally gained its footing.
With high resolution rapidly becoming the standard choice for many applications, this sector of the projection market is in healthy shape, with demand for even more pixels likely in the future, writes Monica Heck
Speaking at NetApp’s three-day Insight EMEA conference in Dublin this week, director of technology and strategy, Matt Watts, reflected on how best to handle operations that have now become “low value, commodity IT”.
HP’s converged systems business unit, which launched at the end of 2013, says working with partners is the key to the success of its new ConvergedSystem portfolio, a family of integrated IT systems built for key workloads such as virtualisation, big data and hosted desktops.
As the broadcast industry buzzes with 4k excitement, the MAM world, once a trendy headline term, has kept on evolving quietly behind the scenes...
New demo centre at Westcon HQ allows partners to see array of multi-vendor products working together.
Already established in the #multiscreen delivery, #streaming and #storage environments, cloud-based solutions are increasingly appearing across the #broadcast chain for #production and #post-production.
Interactivity is a human instinct. Toddlers have always explored the world using their senses but they now graduate from chewing their toys to gaming on a tablet. Society may have sought to curb those instincts in the past, but recent evolutions in technology have turned tablets and screens into acceptable extensions of our hands, a trend that has transferred to digital signage.
4k, the catch-all term for what is essentially 3840x2160 UHD-1 in the broadcast world, has reached cruising speed in 2014.
Monica Heck speaks to the CTO and co-founder of the video wall manufacturer about LPD technology and the future of the market.
“We want to be a more strategic partner” says Xerox at launch of new SMART Centre tool for channel.
Retail Technology recently spoke excusively to Aleem Cummins of successful omnichannel, department store retailer, John Lewis about mining machine data to drive greater profits and ultimately, better customer experiences
Monica Heck discusses Ireland's recent budget announcement for 2014 on NearFM's French language programme 'Qu'est-ce que c'est le Craic'.
It can sometimes be difficult to get a top-level view of digital signage. This article investigates this fragmented and diverse market.
https://www.installation-international.com/technology/high-resolution-projectors-the-bigger-pixel
Charting the emergence of 4k within the professional AV space and predicting its growth has a soothsaying quality to it, with analysts and integrators doing their best to predict the most likely future of a proAV industry on the cusp of 4k.
The demand for screens in broadcast studios is on the rise and Monica Heck fi nds out there is no ‘one size fi ts all’ approach when it comes to answering this call.
THE inaugural Sunday Independent 50 most powerful and influential business women in Ireland list provides a snapshot of the game-changing executives at the helm of some of the country's most innovative, fast-moving and profitable companies.
Last month's Digital Biscuit event in Dublin served up a weird and wonderful menu for TV technologists and creatives alike.
The second all-HDTV facility in Ireland opened this week at the new National Film School building, part of the Dun Laoghaire Institute of Art, Design and Technology (IADT).
Monica Heck fait le point sur la loi sur l'avortement en Irlande sur l'emission 'Qu'est-ce que c'est le Craic'. Monica Heck discusses the ups and downs of the Irish abortion legislation on NearFM's French programme 'Qu'est-ce que c'est le Craic'
My interview with Ed Hall, CEO of Comux - the company that won the bid from the British government to provide the infrastructure to all local TV stations around the UK.
If my particular cancer was put in front of me and scleroderma was put in front of me and I could choose, I'd pick up cancer, strangely. I'm better from cancer, I'm not going to get better from scleroderma."
You need to find a pair of blue shoes to match your suit for a wedding. You hate shopping and wish you were still home in bed. Unfortunately, you're standing in the middle of a shop. Suddenly you hear a voice. "Hello, Sir, can I help you?"
AVG outlines managed services push followinglast year’s LPI acquisition. Following the 2013 acquisition of remote management and monitoring (RMM) company LPI Platform to accelerate its cloud-based services model, AVG is in the process of...
Who hasn't seethed behind the wheel in bumper to bumper traffic, imagining the thrill of driving a powerful car at top speed through some of the roughest terrain on the planet?
In a development that may come as a surprise, lamp-based projectors were a major focus for manufacturers at this year's ISE2014 show.
The roar of the 80,000 people rises like a war cry around the iconic north Dublin Croke Park stadium on an All-Ireland Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA) Final weekend, writes Monica Heck.
Symantec (NASDAQ:SYMC) has unveiled the details of its new partner programme, which delivers more financial rewards and focuses on helping partners develop competencies around specific subject matters.
Season 2 of ITV's celebrity diving show Splash!, ended its latest run on disappointing declining viewer numbers. But a deep-dive into the underwater TV production reveals that Splash! is unique in many ways.
McAfee top partners outstripping market; increased adoption for partner programme. McAfee has announced its top partners are growing at three times that of the security market.
The original article is now behind a firewall but you can view the text on my website: http://heckthehack.wordpress.com/2012/10/13/the-writings-on-the-wall-graffiti-in-ireland/
Virtualisation technology in the Intel server environment has stepped up to the next level, so why aren't we reading more about it? Just say the word 'virtualisation' in the right context and you are greeted with grave shakings of heads and knowing looks.