The Signal Processing for Communications and Networking Technical Committee (SPCOM TC) aims at illuminating and exploring signal processing challenges in communications and networking. The SPCOM TC is pleased to welcome several new members, and thank three retiring members for their contribution. The SPCOM TC joined forces with the SAM TC joined forces in organizing two joint sessions at ICASSP 2010. The TC's flagship event is the IEEE International Workshop on Signal Processing Advances in Wireless Communications (SPAWC). This year's SPAWC10 will be held June 20-23, 2010, in Marrakech, Morocco.

US 7,646,328 “Versatile Constant Altitude Plan Position Indicator for Radars”; US 7,645,929 “Computational Music-tempo Estimation”.

The Industry Digital Signal Processing Technology (IDSP) Standing Committee was formed in 1999 to promote industry participation in the IEEE Signal Processing Society (SPS) and particularly in ICASSP. The IDSP SC is organized similarly to a technical committee, with committee members elected from SPS membership in industry, government, or academia (with strong industrial involvement). The IDSP SC recently completed reviews for the Industrial Technology Track of the ICASSP 2010 conference. Individuals interested in involvement with IDSP SC are encouraged to contact the Chair.

# US 7,640,069 "Editing audio directly in frequency space"; # US 7,555,432 "Audio steganography method and apparatus using cepstrum modification"; # US 7,522,773 "Using time in recognizing persons in images".

The Multimedia Signal Processing Technical Committee (MMSP TC) successfully organized the 2009 MMSP Workshop in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, marking a milestone for the first time one of the major IEEE Signal Processing Society events being held in Latin America. Planning is underway for MMSP 2010, which will be held in Saint-Malo, France. The TC also invites proposals to organize the 2011 MMSP Workshop. Another major effort in 2009 that the MMSP TC is actively engaged in was to revitalize the IEEE International Conference on Multimedia & Expo (ICME) jointly organized by four IEEE societies. The TC welcomes a new Chair and eight newly elected members in January 2010.

Recently DISPS TC members organized the first special issue devoted to the important emerging topic of multicore design and implementation of signal processing systems on IEEE Signal Processing Magazine. The TC sponsors Workshop on Signal Processing Systems (SiPS) -- the 2009 edition was successfully held in Tampere, Finland, and the 2010 edition is calling for papers and participation.

In September 2009, USA Today and other media outlets have reported a successful servicing mission to the Hubble Space telescope. The In-the-Spotlight column in the January 2010 issue of the IEEE Signal Processing Magazine provided a closer look at the imaging sensors and the associated processing and control mechanisms in the Hubble and its successor.

An exclusive article by Alex Acero, the SPS's first Vice President-Technical Directions, on many society-wide initiatives on technical directions in recent years. These include the formation of the Technical Directions Board, review of Technical Committees, the creation of new TCs and TC-sponsored workshops, and the renaming of several TCs to better reflect their latest scope and interests.

Synthetic attendance--immersive communications with people in a meeting happening afar--has been one of mankind's elusive dreams. The Exploratory DSP column of the IEEE Signal Processing Magazine (November 2009) discusses critical questions in immersive communications that are still awaiting resolution.