EP Topic News: 29 and 27 March 2001EP Topic News: 29 and 27 March 2001
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Dr. George Miller has written a clear statement of the problems of natural language processing, created as a consequence of ambiguous words, for the latest edition of Information Impacts Magazine. For non-experts in the field it sets out the problems and shows why we are not likely to see a resolution of the difficulties of search engines and related applications in the near future.
URL: http://www.cisp.org/imp/march_2001/miller/03_01miller.htm
By 2004, the United States will account for a paltry 38% of worldwide ecommerce revenue, down from nearly half (46%) in 2000, according to IDC's Internet Commerce Market Model, Version 7. While the United States in 2004 will still represent the largest single market, by region Western Europe is closing in fast, with a projected 33% market share. The stakes are growing. The new projections for worldwide ecommerce in 2004, including both B2B and B2C, total $3.14 trillion, up from $350.38 billion in 2000. The report comes from IDC eBusiness Trends newsletter. These figures are considerably lower than Gartner estimates of $6 trillion in B2B by end 2004.
URL: http://www.idc.com/ebusinesstrends/ebt20010322.stm
URL: http://www3.gartner.com/Init
Analysts webmergers.com report that only 10% of dotcom closures in the period January 2000 through February 2001 were in W. Europe, with 2% in Asia-Pacific and the majority in the US with 33% in California alone. The latest Pew report on the Internet and American Life found that Americans blame the dot com downturn on overeager investors, poor business plans and inexperienced managers.
URL: http://www.webmergers.com/
URL: http://www.pewinternet.org/
Iconocast CEO Michael Tchong is trying to get netizens to Back the Net on April 3 by buying or giving to charity online. The idea is that massive net activity will inject some backbone into investors and dotcom workers. Vist the web site to see what to do.
OSCAR is a collaborative project among major research centers and technology companies to provide software tools that greatly simplify the process of installing and maintaining a Linux cluster. The OSCAR software supports the ability to replicate a supercomputing environment, based on a Linux cluster. The tools included in OSCAR are tested, integrated, and freely distributable. The software is currently available as a development release but will be also be distributed with MSC.Linux V2001 Beta in April.
URL: http://www.msclinux.com/press/mar2201.html
URL: http://www.openclustergroup.org/
URL: http://www.csm.ornl.gov/oscar/
Beatnik, Inc., a leading provider of enhanced audio solutions and content for digital devices, games and the Web, today announced immediate availability of the Beatnik® Player 2.2. For the first time, Macintosh Internet Explorer (Mac IE) users can now enjoy the rich interactive musical experience that Beatnik's audio technologies enable like Beatnik sonified web pages and Mixman® eMixes™. Beatnik has also posted an update to the Beatnik MusicObject API, version 3.4, for Web developers, which will provide support for the Mac IE version of the Beatnik Player. The player is available for Windows platforms as well as Mac.
ThinkQuest Inc. is a non profit organization which offers programs designed to advance education through the use of technology. One of its activities is an international competition for web sites designed by 12-19 year olds. The Thinkquest web site contains links to the winners of the 2000 competition and registration for the 2001 competition. The web sites are remarkable and truly international - for example the top site in the arts and literature section 'Van Gogh at Etten' was jointly created by three students from the Netherlands, Singapore and Nigeria.
For music while you work, tv-radio.com carries links to nearly 8000 worldwide net broadcasters. Download the mini-tuner to get access to over 70 French FM stations from the desktop. The site uses Apple Quicktime extensively to broadcast specialist stations and also links to major broadcasters through its L'ANNUAIRE DES MEDIAS DU MONDE . Music can be bought online from Alapage.com
The Centre for Digital Video Processing at Dublin City University has received funding of about £400,000 from Enterprise Ireland, as well as a further £350,000 from the EU and other sources, to develop tools and techniques that will automatically analyse and digitally index TV programmes. At present a user can pre-set the recording of TV broadcast programmes and can choose from a set of different browser interfaces which allow navigation through the recorded programmes.
URL: http://lorca.compapp.dcu.ie/Video/ research details
URL: http://www.ireland.com/newspaper/computimes/2001/0319/compu2.htm news article
Cubiceye is a new 3D web browser under development by 2ce. The product projects web pages onto the sides of a cube that can be rotated and zoomed. The web site has demos of the multiscreen layout and information about the company. It is possible to sign up for test versions on the web site.
URL: http://www.2ce.com/
The Commission has prepared a short document with an evaluation of the eEurope initiative and new priorities for the future.
URL: http://europa.eu.int/rapid/start/cgi/guestfr.ksh?p_action.gettxt=gt&doc=IP/01/362|0|RAPID &lg=EN
Chaincasting is a peer-to-multipeer content distribution system that passes streaming media on from peer-to-peer. "Chaincasting is a unique content delivery technology that improves effectiveness and QoS as user demand increases - this is the key to true scalability for high-bandwidth, delay-sensitive internet applications." says the web site. The ChainCast palyer for Windows can be downloaded and currently supports a variety of web radio stations.
UN/CEFACT and OASIS announced March 28th that all ebXML specifications have been submitted to the initiative's quality review process. These specifications are the result of more than a year's work by organizations and standards bodies around the world, which have come together to advance a common framework for global electronic business. The complete body of ebXML specifications defining business process methodology, core components, messaging, registry/repository, security, technical architecture and trading partner agreements are expected to be ratified in plenary May 2001.
Hiawatha Island Software Company has released HiSoftware Metadata Server, enabling organisations to automatically label Microsoft Office and "web-bound" documents with descriptive metadata. The company believes that the automation of meta tag inclusion will aid companies to structure and manage their corporate information, yielding faster, more accurate information retrieval.
URL: http://www.hisoftware.com/
URL: HiSoftware Metadata Server http://www.hisoftware.com/press/mdsp.htm
Adobe have announced that Acrobat 5.0 will be released in April. The software can be pre-ordered from Adobe's web site.
The Independent Games Developers Association for UK (TIGA) is a new trade association which aims to "keep the UK at the cutting edge of games development by offering advice and support and encouraging innovation". The publicity accompanying the launch claims the association will be "run by developers for developers" and aims to benefit the commercial and creative interests of the UK games development industry through:
- encouraging a climate for investment in games development;
- providing professional advice, guidance, information, services and goods for its members;
- representing the games development industry to the legislative and regulatory process (eg. lobbying for tax breaks similar to those available to the UK film industry);
- improving skills and training, professional standards and education within the games development industry.
The XML Conformance Test Suite, v1.0, Second Edition, now available, contains over 2000 test files and an associated test report. The test report contains background information on conformance testing for XML as well as test descriptions for each of the test files included in this release. This test suite provides a set of metrics for determining conformance to the W3C XML 1.0 (Second Edition) Recommendation.
URL: http://www.oasis-open.org/
URL: test suite http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/xml-conformance/xml-test-suite.shtml
URL: W3C XML 1.0 (2nd Ed.) Recommendation http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-xml
XML4Lib Electronic Discussion is an email list which focuses on XML and its use in, by, and for libraries and library users. XML4Lib is specifically aimed toward librarians and library staff, but anyone is welcome to join the discussion. To subscribe: send the message "subscribe XML4Lib YOUR NAME" to the email address below.
Email: subscribe mailto:listserv@sunsite.berkeley.edu
URL: http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/XML4Lib/
Cordis, the European Commission's information service on EU research has announced a number of new web services available from the Cordis site.
- "RTD beyond 2002" provides central access to information related to the European Research Area (ERA) keeping users aware of the developments leading to the next Framework Programme (FP6).
URL: http://www.cordis.lu/rtd2002- "Socio-economic Dimensions of the Information Society Technologies (IST) programme" provides information and links to calls, funded projects and events.
URL: http://www.cordis.lu/ist/socioeconomic/- "Nanotechnology-related research" is a thematic service to help promote European funding opportunities.
URL: http://www.cordis.lu/nanotechnology/- "The Technology Marketplace" service has been updated to include more projects with research results ready for exploitation. The service is divided into three sections: Business, Science, and Society - projects with exploitable results can use the site to promote the potential of their research.
URL: http://www.cordis.lu/marketplace/
The ASP Community is a web resource sponsored by organisations active in the fledgling Application Service Provision marketplace. The aims of the site, which provides a number of interesting ASP resources, are twofold:
- to educate and inform potential users of the benefits and arguments supporting an ASP solution;
- to support those who wish to become an ASP or an ASP enabler.
Protocols.com provides a wide range of of useful pointers to resources on communications protocols, standards and the organisations responsible for their development and standardisation. You can register from a free update newsletter, though complete personal information is requested.
The International Distance Learning Course Finder claims to be the world's largest one-stop distance education directory online, with information on over 50,000 distance learning courses offered by universities, colleges and companies from 127 countries. The course finder can be searched by course name, subject, country or institution name. The site also features:
- "Who's Who in Distance Learning" featuring the names and details of around 1000 experts in Online Learning in 58 countries worldwide;
- "Distance Learning Glossary" which contains over 230 Distance Learning Terms;
- a list of distance learning conferences and exchanges from around the world.
IBM are promoting the "Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA)" which is an XML-based architecture for authoring, producing, and delivering technical information. There is an article online which explains how "DITA establishes design principles for creating technical content for delivery in online help and in product support portals on the web".
Version 0.3 of eXist, a repository and retrieval engine for XML documents built on top of an relational database system (currently MySQL or Oracle) has been released. According to the program's author: "it provides structured retrieval of arbitrary xml documents with support for fulltext search, based on traditional relational database management system (RDBMS)". Comments and help with development are being requested.
Ericsson has issued many press releases to coincide with the CEBIT show, amongst the interesting items:
- demonstration of integrating Windows Media Audio and Video support in Ericsson Handsets, which when added to the R520 handset can apparently playback personal music collections and streamed Internet radio;
- Cordless Internet Radio H100 which utilises Bluetooth technology, and allows access to thousands of Internet radio stations without the use of a computer. It is battery powered and can be placed anywhere in the home, up to 100 meters from a Bluetooth access point that has broadband Internet connection or it can be connected via an Ethernet cable to a broadband modem. Release is expected towards the end of the year.
- sponsorship of Media Lab Europe, a new research and development center recently established in Dublin, Ireland "to research and develop new insights into the potential uses of wireless communications for the future".
- plans, with Motorola and Siemens, to develop industry initiative for Universal Mobile Games Platform based on "existing and emerging standards".
- a mobile for camera for GSM, the CommuniCamtm, the first of Ericsson's imaging products
URL: press information http://www.ericsson.com/press
URL: Windows Media http://www.microsoft.com/windowsmedia/
URL: Media Lab Europe http://www.media.mit.edu/
URL: Siemens IC Mobile http://www.siemens.com/mobile
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