EP Topic News: 1st June and 30th May 2001EP Topic News: 1st June and 30th May 2001
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VR World Congress latest The latest speaker to be added to the line-up for the VR World Congress in Barcelona is Alberto Aza of EDS, Spain. He will illustrate his presentation with the "virtual Opera House, Barcleona" and show how VR/i3D is used from the web, through seat selection and purchase to set design for the famous theatre.
The latest agenda for the VR World Congress, to be held in Barcelona on June 27-29, 2001, and organised by the EPIFOCAL project, has been published on El.pub. In addition to attending the sessions outlined in the published agenda, there will be ample opportunity for delegates to network with prospective partners in the commercial and public sectors.
The event has been designed to appeal to the widest audience of professionals interested in the development of VR and interactive 3D (I3D) applications. Applications which will be exploited in a wide range of disciplines, including: publishing, healthcare, education, culture and heritage, entertainment, services, manufacturing, engineering. The event will also consider the hardware, software, systems and services which will provide the necessary infrastructure.
Throughout the three days the conference will:
- address a diverse range of issues raised by the Internet, remote collaboration, distributed working;
- consider the application of VR and I3D, ranging from design and prototyping, to operator training, to simulation and through to "visualisation communication".
The event is already proving to be very popular, so potential attendees are encouraged to register with the event administrator as soon as possible (using the details published on the conference agenda page below). Attendance at the event is free of charge. A limited amount of space is available for tabletop demonstrations, please contact the administrator for further information. 01/06/01
URL: vrcongress.htm
Email: Administrator Sophie Lafond mailto:slafond@mva.co.uk
dom4j is an "easy to use", open source Java library for working with XML. dom4j combines the best of DOM, SAX, XPath and the Java Collections Framework to provide a flexible and powerful toolkit for working with XML optimised to take advantage of the Java platform. The latest release, version 0.4 and further documentation is available on the web. This release includes:
- a new more flexible & powerful event notification mechanism;
- alpha XML Schema Data Types support;
- a number of optimisations and bug fixes. 01/06/01
URL: http://dom4j.org/
"User-Focused Strategies for Broadband and Interactive TV in Europe", was the central theme of Van Dusseldorp & Partners’ Third Annual TV Meets the Web Seminar held on May 16-17, 2001. This executive-level seminar focused on the development of strategies geared to increase European users' adoption of broadband content and services across multiple platforms such as the PC, interactive TV and mobile devices.
Several of the PowerPoint presentations delivered by speakers, streamed video of sessions, and a report of the meeting are available online. The report is sponsored by NDS Group a supplier of open conditional access software and interactive systems for the secure delivery of entertainment and information to televisions, set-top boxes, and personal computers. 01/06/01
URL: presentations http://www.tvmeetstheweb.com/may2001/programme.php
URL: video presentations http://www.tvmeetstheweb.com/
URL: meeting report http://www.tvmeetstheweb.com/may2001/report.php
URL: NDS Group http://www.nds.com/
Two Way TV has signed a five year deal with Connect TV, a new interactive platform, to develop a TV games channel in Israel across multiple digital platforms. The new channel, Two Way TV Israel, will give Israelis their first taste of interactive TV games. The channel will launch first on Israel's major digital cable networks, MATAV and Tevel. Subscribers will be able to play on-demand games developed by UK-based interactive entertainment specialist Two Way TV. The launch will also be Two Way TV's second deployment using OpenTV's interactive software technology. Incidentally, it's worth visiting the site for the excellent Flash introduction, which loads in no time at all. 01/06/01
IBM have published a number of resources considering both the architecture and technologies required to establish web services. These include:
- A very brief primer about the technology underlying web services which covers XML, WSDL, UDDI, and SOAP. It explains that developers use web services to create modular, self-describing functions that are formatted in XML, defined in WSDL, and published to the UDDI directory, using SOAP to make remote procedure calls.
URL: http://www.ibm.com/software/news-alert/20010521/wsarc/- An IBM paper provides a high-level overview comparing the development environments and tools in the IBM Web Services Development Environment and Toolkit, and Microsoft Visual Studio .NET.
URL: http://www7.software.ibm.com/vad.nsf/data/document4376/- The announcement of the "IBM Web Services Technologies Newsletter" which is available by subscription and on the web and provides "current news and information about web services technologies and trends.
URL: http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/newsletter/ 01/06/01
The Apache Batik team has announced the release of Batik 1.0 which apparently "supports most of the static SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) features; linking; and a first level of scripting". Since the first beta release in December 2000, many features have been added or completed. Highlighting the particular new features, the team announced:
- Full filter effects support: lighting filters, drop shadows, displacement effects and more.
- Full text support including embedded and external SVG Fonts, international text, vertical text and other fancy text features such as text on a path.
- Full linking support: with SVG and Batik, you can navigate and link images just like you do with HTML pages. This is a powerful tool for building dynamic applications with SVG.
- Full support for structural elements such as internal and external use/defs and switch elements. This is a important feature to organise SVG content efficiently.
- Performance improvements with major work in the rendering engine and the SVG processor engine.
- Improved SVG generator (an API for exporting SVG from Java technology applications) which now offers more control over the output SVG - Improved SVG rasterizer (a tool to convert SVG images to raster formats such as JPEG, PNG or TIFF).
- Multiple contributions, such as format converters (WMF to SVG and True Type Font to SVG Font) or tools to generate SVG charts.
There a a number of additional resources available online, link to them via the URLS below. 01/06/01
URL: On-line demo http://xml.apache.org/batik/batikDemo.html
URL: software download http://xml.apache.org/batik/dist
URL: Batik mailing lists http://xml.apache.org/batik/mailList.html
URL: report problems http://nagoya.betaversion.org/bugzilla/
URL: Batik home page http://xml.apache.org/batik
The dates for the 7th IST (Information Society Technologies) Call for Proposals have been announced as opening on 15 June 2001 and closing on 17 October 2001. Areas of interest include:
- Multimedia Content and Tools (the sector which supports Interactive Electronic Publishing projects - and the sponsors of this site)
- Building e-Business,
- Cross-Programme opportunities,
- General information,
- New Methods of Work and e-Commerce,
- Services for Citizens,
- Technologies Research.
According to the announcement we received: "the likely scope of this Call includes four more Action Lines in Essential technologies and Regional and sectoral pilots in addition to the plan published in the 2001 Workprogramme". A full version of the workprogramme is available via the link below. Information days are planned for the UK on June 13, 2001 and Brussels on June 19, 2001. 01/06/01
URL: Work Programme http://www.cordis.lu/ist/workprogramme.htm
In addition a new Call for Proposals under the TEN-Telecom (Trans European Telecommunications Networks) line is expected in "early June". Ten-Telecom provides support to help bring new services and applications based on communications networks to the European market. It provides financial support at the planning stage or for the initial investment.
The deadline for proposals, for both Generic Services and for Applications, is likely to be early September. The text of this call and the guide for proposers are available on the TEN-Telecom web site. Information days are planned for the UK on June 13, 2001 and Brussels on June 19, 2001. 01/06/01
"Programming XML in Java" is a course that was offered by the Department of Computer Science at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York. John Punin the course tutor has posted the slides from eight lectures from the course online, along with the projects carried out by students using XML and Java. The eight lectures are entitled: Introduction to XML; Creation of XML Documents; Document Type Definitions (DTDs); XML Schema; Simple API for XML (SAX); W3C Document Object Module (DOM); Extensible Style Language Transformations (XSLT); Resource Description Framework (RDF). John is requesting comments. 01/06/01
URL: course notes http://www.cs.rpi.edu/~puninj/XMLJ/classes.html
URL: student projects http://www.cs.rpi.edu/~puninj/XMLJ/projects.html
URL: home http://www.cs.rpi.edu/~puninj/XMLJ/
Email: John Punin mailto:puninj@cs.rpi.edu
SponsorClick's "Sponsorship Matching Engine" is styled as a "multilingual search engine, specifically developed to match corporate sponsors (or their communication agencies) with sponsorship opportunities". According to the company the search and retrieval system can be used by used to select sponsorship packages by using "any combination of up to 98 criteria including: budget, geography, media coverage, time frame, audience profile, descriptive values, and even associated advertising campaign". The database currently includes around 2,800 sponsorship packages covering a wide range of categories including sports, culture, charity, education, media and trade fairs as well as scientific prizes, fashion shows and environmental projects. An interesting application of search and retrieval and web-based publishing. 01/06/01
Following its success on CD-ROM, the Geoatlas international vector collection (Maps available as vector graphics), from French company Graphi-Ogre, comprising World, America, Africa, Europe and Oceania, is now available online. For a price of 100 euros, users receive a "country pack" comprising three files: a physical map, an administrative/road map and a simplified map.
The 196 nations listed by the UNO can be downloaded, along with the 50 American states, planispheres, globes, continents and flags. Alongside the maps, a number of additional services are available, including file updates, technical support, links to the best European sites offering free access to images on the web. 01/06/01
Usability guru, Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox (May 27, 2001) provides a survey of 1,078 user experience professionals and concludes that "usability specialists make more money than designers and writers in the same field. In all three areas, salaries are highest in the US, lower in Canada and Asia, and much lower in Europe and Australia". Find out more via the link below. 01/06/01
mediadome is to launch its browser-enabling solutions for the interactive gaming industry. mediadome will work with its first customer, CNET Networks, to develop a downloadable "media rich super browser" for PC and video game enthusiasts on CNET's GameSpot web site. mediadome creates customer branded "super browsers" using its patent-pending visual bookmarking technologies to integrate multiple existing web pages into a single viewpoint, with each web page identifiable and accessible with the full functionality of a standard web browser.
Says Vince Broady, Vice President, Consumer, CNET Networks: "The GameSpot 'super browser' enhanced by mediadome is apt to be a 'must have' download for our users, as it has the potential to fundamentally change the way they interact with our content and services." mediadome expects to stimulate revenue opportunities for CNET Networks by creating high-value real estate for advertisers and partners. According to Nielson/Netratings, GameSpot attracts 2.7 million gaming enthusiasts each month. 30/05/01
Dr. Dobb's Technetcast has released two programs about XML, SOAP, and Web Services recorded at XML DevCon Spring 2001:
- "SOAP Programming with Java: A Foundation for Web Services and UDDI" is a tutorial, from Andrew Hately of IBM which explains SOAP programming with Java, its relationship to Web services and UDDI, and SOAP projects such as TSpaces. (MP3 Audio, 1:22)
URL: http://technetcast.ddj.com/tnc_play_stream.html?stream_id=553- an interview with Bob Sutor, IBM Director of eBusiness Standards Strategy in which he discusses XML in the enterprise, e-business initiatives (ebXML, UDDI), SOAP, WSDL and Web Services (video, 23 minutes).
URL: http://technetcast.ddj.com/tnc_play_stream.html?stream_id=547 30/05/01
The handy email-based AgentNews reports on an article concerning research at Xerox PARC which considers how people search the web. The pointer notes research indicates that: "The same theories that describe how animals behave while sniffing for prey also can predict how people ferret out information in the jungle of cyberspace, researchers say. Foraging theories, developed by ecologists decades ago, are now being applied to Internet usage in an attempt to understand how web sites can be made more intuitive and less like a maze". 30/05/01
URL: AgentWeb http://agents.umbc.edu/
URL: http://news.excite.com/news/ap/010515/00/web-usability
EPIC Alert, the email information service, published by the US-based Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) has run an article on a new report by Statewatch, a London-based civil liberties research group, which says that the Council of the European Union is preparing to back police agency proposals to require the retention of all telephone calls, e-mails, faxes, and Internet activity for up to seven years. The proposal seeks a review of existing EU laws on data protection and privacy to meet the demands of law enforcement agencies for access to all telecommunications content and traffic data.
The report is based upon documents obtained by Statewatch reflecting the deliberations of the Council's Working Party on Police Cooperation. According to the note, previous efforts to grant sweeping investigative powers to European law enforcement agencies have been defeated due to objections from the EU Data Protection Commissioners and public opposition. The European Commission's Justice and Home Affairs Council was apparently scheduled to debate the most recent data retention proposal on May 28. Details of the Statewatch report on surveillance of telecommunications in Europe are available online, as is the most recent guide, "Data Protection in the European Union". 30/05/01
URL: Statewatch report http://www.statewatch.org/soseurope.htm
URL: Data Protection in the EU http://www.europa.eu.int/comm/internal_market/en/media/dataprot/news/guide_en.pdf
URL: EPIC Alert http://www.epic.org/alert/EPIC_Alert_8.09.html
URL: EPIC http://www.epic.org/
The Dublin Core Metadata Initiative has a Proposed Recommendation for XML Encoding of Simple Dublin Core Metadata. 30/05/01
This month's edition of IP-Wire (the news service from the European Commission sponsored IPR Help Desk) highlights the growing controversy in the US over whether the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) is legitimately serving the interests of digital copyright holders, or being used to restrict "fair use" and the civil liberty of free speech; issues brought to the fore in two recent court cases. The site also provides a wealth of current information on intellectual property right issues. 30/05/01
More than 100,000 gamers purchased the Logitech GT Force for PlayStation2 during its first week of sales in Japan. The wheel went on sale simultaneously with release of Gran Turismo 3 A-spec on April 28. The Logitech GT Force wheel will go on sale in Europe and North America this summer with the release of Gran Turismo 3 A-spec. Logitech force feedback products use Logitech-proprietary technologies, as well as certain TouchSense technologies licensed from Immersion Corporation. 30/05/01
URL: news release http://www.logitech.com/cf/about/pressRelease.cfm/1284
URL: http://www.logitech.com/
VREfresh, (the El.pub news service focused on VR), reports that Intel has received USA Patent No 6229542 for:
"Managing windows in a graphical user interface by receiving a signal indicating a gesture from a user, capturing pixels of a window, applying the captured pixels as a texture to a display object in a three dimensional window, and animating the display object to a first location in the three dimensional window corresponding to the window, when the gesture indicates deactivating the window. Further actions include moving the display object to a second location in the three dimensional window, displaying the window over the display object, and hiding the display object, when the gesture indicates activating the window". 30/05/01
URL: base02vt.htm
VREfresh also includes a report that ClockWise Technologies has received patent approval from the USA Patent Office for its 3D desktop platform for operating systems. The Win3D interface transforms the standard Microsoft Windows desktop into a 3D environment and presents "an entirely new dimension to the capabilities of simultaneously accessing and working between multiple applications and the Internet". 30/05/01
URL: http://www.clockwise3d.com/
URL: base02vt.htm
The full programme of the successful International Summer School on the Digital Library courses is now available on the web. The lecturers, all renowned speakers, have confirmed their participation. Their biographies can also be found on the course websites.
- Course 1: The Management of Change, Tilburg, 30 July - 3 August, 2001
URL: http://www.ticer.nl/summer01/course1/- Course 2: Digital Libraries and the Changing World of Education, Tilburg, 5-10 August, 2001
URL: http://www.ticer.nl/summer01/course2/- Course 3: Electronic Publishing: Libraries as Buyers, Facilitators, or Producers, Florence, 7-12 October, 2001
URL: http://www.ticer.nl/summer01/course3/
For each course, there is a maximum of 45 participants. At this moment, there are only a few places available, details from the course web sites above. 30/05/01
The online Encyclopedia of Computer Security is launching its new Active FAQ - a free service through which visitors can ask experts about information security. According to the company emailed responses to queries, from a range of security experts, are returned within a few hours. You can also subscribe to a weekly digest of questions and answers. 30/05/01
URL: http://www.itsecurity.com/asktecs/asktecs.htm
URL: Encyclopedia of Computer Security http://www.itsecurity.com/
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