EP Topic News: 12 and 10 April 2001EP Topic News: 12 and 10 April 2001
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Collection Management and Scholarly Electronic Publishing Resource is a bibliography of STM library and publishing that is updated monthly. It is thus a hybrid between an e-zine and a resource. The resource has been divided into two complementary areas: Collection Management and Scholarly Electronic Publishing. Scholarly Electronic Publishing contains general references as well as sub-sections on Authority and Digital Signatures; Charging, Licences and Copyright; and Preservation and Legal Deposit and Practical Aspects of Electronic Publishing. 13/04/01
humanITy, the world's first digital charity, was founded to investigate and tackle social exclusion problems raised by the information technology (IT) revolution. Its director, Kevin Carey, recently presented a paper 'Provisional but forever: Two faces of Internet publishing' at the Future of Publishing conference in Amsterdam. It is full of insights into publishing on the Internet, convergence and related needs of the disabled. The web site contains a copy of the paper and other consultation papers on related topics such as Copyright and visually impaired people. 13/04/01
URL: http://www.humanity.org/
URL: http://www.humanity.org.uk/events/hiltonam.html
URL: http://www.humanity.org.uk/publications/copyright.html
Nature is hosting an online debate on the future of e-access to primary literature in STM. In part, due to the most recent and prominent manifestation of the debates surrounding this topic, an initiative by researchers -- "The Public Library of Science". (PLS) who, by threatening a boycott, are trying to force publishers to release archive reports of original research into centralized, (as opposed to dispersed) databases that are freely available and to which there is unrestricted access. Nature believes it is time to explore the many dimensions of these issues and debate them fully. The way they have chosen to do this is to invite leading representatives of the main groups of stakeholders and observers -- including libraries, promoters of free access, non-profit and for-profit publishers, database publishers, digital libraries, online-repositories, economists and people at the forefront of technological advance -- to express their views in 1,000-word articles. The forum will be moderated by Declan Butler of Nature and Tony Delamothe, web editor of the British Medical Journal. 13/04/01
URL: http://www.nature.com/nature/debates/e-access/index.html
Yack.com claims that there are over 10,000 competing streaming media sites, or "channels", on the Web today. Their portal aims to let you know where to go to find what you like. Although rather US oriented it does have access to International channels like Ananova - a computer driven animated newscaster that covers UK news - and Telerama - a french cultural channel and event guide. There are specific guides for teen, online film, animation, radio and games; which may say something about the future of Internet broadcasting. Another step on the road to usable playlists? 13/04/01
URL: http://www.yack.com
URL: http://www.ananova.com
URL: http://www.telerama.fr
The global TV-Anytime Forum is an association of organizations which seeks to develop specifications to enable audio-visual and other services based on mass-market high volume digital storage in consumer platforms – simply referred to as local storage. Recently they published the first version of their XML based metadata standard. They say, "We use the term "metadata" to mean descriptive data about content, such as program title and synopsis. We call such metadata "attractors" because they can attract a consumer to content. Attractors allow consumers to find, navigate and manage content from various sources. In addition to attractors, metadata as defined by TV-Anytime also includes information about user preferences and history. User preference information, such as favorite actors or TV shows, is included within the scope of TV-Anytime metadata to allow software agents to select content on the consumer's behalf. The set of metadata described in the document was selected in order to satisfy the usage scenarios listed in the TV-Anytime business models requirements document." 13/04/01
URL: info and documents for download http://www.tv-anytime.org/
URL: background study of interactive TV from 2000 http://www.itvt.com/etvwhitepaper.html
2ce have now released a beta 2 download of their Cubic browser on their web site. 13/04/01
URL: http://www.2ce.com/
Puppettime the 3D storytelling system for MAC that were acquired by Cycore last year have finally released a Windows version. The beta (for MAC and Windows) can be downloaded from their web site, although some people are having trouble getting the system up and running. Puppettime is a tool for creating 3D animations that comes with a set of actors and scenes, automatically converts scripts to sound and links actor and camera movements to scripts via a visual interface. 13/04/01
The Group for User Interface Research at UC Berkeley have released DENIM, a system that helps web site designers in the early stages of design. DENIM supports sketching input, allows design at different refinement levels, and unifies the levels through zooming. Versions for Windows and Linux/Solaris are available. Although the system is designed for pen based sketching it can be used with a mouse. The underlying sketching tool kit SATIN (Java based) is also available for download. Other projects in information analysis, speech interfaces and interface design. 13/04/01
The BAILANDO projects at UC Berkeley aim to make access to information seem as graceful and effortless as the dances that they have named their projects after. The goal of the WebTango (effortless?) project is to develop tools and techniques to improve the web design process via the application of automated evaluation techniques. Two new papers are available on the web site "Content or Graphics? An Empirical Analysis of Criteria for Award-Winning Websites" and "Empirically Validated Web Page Design Metrics". 13/04/01
URL: http://bailando.sims.berkeley.edu/
URL: http://webtango.berkeley.edu/
ISTAG have completed their work on longer term scenario planning that was started during 2000 with the production of the report "Scenarios for Ambient Intelligence in 2010". The report results (available for download) from three expert workshops held during 2000 and has been supported by the Commission's DG Information Society and Joint Research Center in Seville (IPTS). The report is intended to stimulate debate and discussion about some of the key areas of research to pursue in the context of FP6.
ISTAG's current work focuses on the preparations for FP6 as well as providing recommendations for the IST workprogramme for 2002. In order to provide input to the Commission as they prepare the Framework level definition of FP6, ISTAG produced at the end of 2000 a short paper ("ISTAG recommendations for FP6 - December 2000") giving "interim recommendations". Further recommendations can be expected during 2001 - see the web site for details. 10/04/01
URL: ISTAG http://www.cordis.lu/ist/istag.htm
URL: Scenarios for Ambient Intelligence download ftp://ftp.cordis.lu/pub/ist/docs/istagscenarios2010.pdf
URL: ISTAG recommendations for FP6 ftp://ftp.cordis.lu/pub/ist/docs/istagfp6a.pdf
Although research on New Methods of Work and Electronic Commerce issues is well underway, information on this research is not easily available. There is a need for better understanding of the status of the Programme, the outcome of the calls, and the results of present and past projects.
To satisfy this need, the European Commission is producing a newsletter, R&D Insider. You are invited to review the newsletter and to receive it regularly by email. Highlights of the March Issue include: IST Work Programme 2001 (WP 2001); Sixth IST Call for proposals; Regional and Sectorial Pilot Applications and Demonstrations for the Digital Economy; e-Work; Social and Economic Research in IST; Knowledge Management; Smart Organisations; Trust & Confidence. 10/04/01
Ericsson Internet Community Action (ERICA) is again challenging developers to submit "creative ideas that could help your organisation achieve its goals". The top five ideas submitted will see their dream become a reality - winning US$100,000 worth of web development services and equipment from Ericsson. The application form for the 2001 ERICA Awards is now available on the web. Entries from "not-for profit" organisations, can be submitted directly on the site starting from April to June 5, 2001. 10/04/01
The April 2001 issue of First Monday (volume 6, number 4) is now available online. The issue includes a range of articles, including:
- a report on the "Web-Wise: The Second Annual Conference on Libraries and Museums in the Digital World" held on 12-14 February 2001 in Washington, DC
- "They Threw Me a Computer ... But What I Really Needed Was a Life Preserver" - the Keynote Address from the Web-Wise Conference;
- "Mobile Library Literacy: Solutions for a Rural Environment";
- "Growing a National Learning Environments and Resources Network for Science, Mathematics, Engineering, and Technology Education: Current Issues and Opportunities for the NSDL Program";
- "Afya: Social and Digital Technologies that Reach across the Digital Divide";
- "Toward Context-Centered Methods for Evaluating Public Library Networked Community Information Initiatives";
- "Piloting a Course: Using a Pilot Project to Identify Training Needs". 10/04/01
Instant messaging (IM) is generally considered to be a preserve of the very young. However, it is now starting to infiltrate the business world. According to IDC, the number of worldwide instant messaging corporate users will increase at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 140%, from 5.5 million in 2000 to more than 180 million in 2004. For worldwide corporate and consumer segments, the number of total messages sent will approach 2 trillion per year by 2004.
A barrier to this is the lack of interoperability between services, notably between AOL (the market leader, nearly 90% of subscribers) and other services. A similar problem exists in the SMS (short messaging service), the mobile phone version of IM, that is popular in Europe and Asia but not in the US, where due to a proliferation of standards (CDMA, TDMA, APS) there is not the same degree of interoperability as in GSM based Europe.
IETF is currently trying to standardise IM through the IMPP initiative but it is reported that a lack of consensus between the proposals is likely to stall progress (to products at least). IM may appear to be a peer-to-peer application but existing systems are essentially client-server based.
This may leave Jabber, an open source IM initiative, with some hope of success as these days the corporate world are not keen on proprietary systems. Jabber is fully based on XML, so it provides an extensible architecture for creating the next generation of services and applications on the Internet. The benefits of using Jabber include presence management, transparent interoperability, and real-time routing of structured information. 10/04/01
URL: http://www.idc.com/
URL: IMPP formal http://www.ietf.org/html.charters/impp-charter.html
URL: IMPP working group http://www.imppwg.org/
URL: jabber company http://www.jabber.com/
URL: jabber open source group http://www.jabber.org/
Cycore and Sanyo Electric Co, together with Sanyo Electric Software Co and Sanyo Electric Trading Co, have reached an agreement to jointly develop solutions that simplify the generation of e-business ready i3D objects. The companies are merging their products, Cycore Cult3D and Sanyo CyberModeler, part of Sanyo's series of scanning and modeling solutions, to make an initial step for Web3D.
The Hypermedia Research Center of Sanyo Electric Co's R & D Headquarters has been developing the 3D modeling technologies that include Sanyo's 3D reconstruction algorithm and a robust camera calibration technique since 1996. 10/04/01
The second issue of volume four of the Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation (JASSS) was published on March 31. JASSS is an electronic, refereed journal devoted to the exploration and understanding of social processes by means of computer simulation. Available free of charge, the latest issue includes eight refereed articles, three commentaries, a Forum piece and four book reviews. 10/04/01
URL: latest issue http://jasss.soc.surrey.ac.uk/JASSS.html
URL: http://www.soc.surrey.ac.uk/JASSS/
EPIC Alert, the news service from Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) reports that the Council of Europe (CoE) draft Cybercrime Convention has encountered opposition from the European Union's independent Advisory Body on Data Protection and Privacy who have "criticised the proposed international treaty as providing inadequate protections for personal privacy" - further details from the EPIC site.
The Electronic Privacy Information Center is a public interest research centre based in Washington DC, USA established in 1994 to "focus public attention on emerging privacy issues such as the Clipper Chip, the Digital Telephony proposal, national ID cards, medical record privacy, and the collection and sale of personal information". 10/04/01
URL: EPIC http://www.epic.org/
URL: opinion http://www.epic.org/security/cybercrime/data_wp_3_01.pdf
URL: draft of Convention on Cybercrime http://conventions.coe.int/treaty/EN/projets/cybercrime25.htm
A public preview of Internet Explorer 6 (for Windows 98/2000/ME is now available for download and evaluation. 10/04/01
Jakob Nielsen's latest Alertbox essay (dated April 1, 2001) reviews the usability of web sites aimed at journalists. In a recent study Nielsen claims that of the sites surveyed journalists were only able to "find answers" to 60% of their questions across a range of corporate sites. The company is also looking for suitably qualified researchers to carry out international usability studies. 10/04/01
URL: Alertbox http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20010401.html
URL: usability researchers http://www.nngroup.com/about/internationaltesters.html
IBM is working with NeTune Communications with the aim of developing "new digital technologies to film and TV production worldwide". NeTune's ShowRunner services make high-resolution, digital content available anywhere in the world during film and TV production. The NeTune advanced digital network will use multiple IBM e-business hardware and software products, and NeTune will outsource many services to IBM. IBM will make an equity investment in NeTune. 10/04/01
The latest quarterly issue of Ariadne has been published online and includes among its main articles:
- "After the Big Bang: the forces of change and e-learning", which examines what recent developments in the area of "e-learning" might mean for the custodians of the information resources required to support teaching and learning.
- "The filling in the PIE - HeadLine's Resource Data Model", which explains the concepts of representation and use of metadata in the Resource Data Model (RDM) that has been developed by the HeadLine project.
- "The Digital Preservation Coalition" which reports on proposals to establish a Digital Preservation Coalition in the UK.
- "e-Books for Students - EBONI" discovers how the EBONI project will investigate the usability of e-books through user evaluations.
- "Hylife: Ten steps to success" on some important aspects of running a Hybrid Library Project. These feature articles join the regular columns which include reviews of: how search engines affect a web site's statistics, and a description of moves to develop a cross-sectoral metadata for the education domain. 10/04/01
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