EP Topic News: 14th February 2002EP Topic News: 14th February 2002
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Contents
El.pub
Analytic - free subscription
intuitext version 2.0
CEN/ISSS MMI-DC workshop news
UK Mediaphile 2010 - report
European technology fund
Research beyond 2002
Adobe image server
ebXML updates approved
First Monday February 2002
Cimmetry AutoVue 16 ships
The European Library
Web pages and indexing
M/S Speechworks alliance
Open Archival Information list
WWW2002 programme announced
IT Security event online
Wideband speech coding standard
Avalon Project latest releases
Ariadne 30 published
Dublin Core Metadata Initiative news
JASSS Volume 5 published
World of Learning online
Adding voice to Pocket PCs
Interactive advertising news
Online European Marketplace
The latest issue of El.pub Analytic has been published (see note below). Over the next few months Analytic will concentrate on digital content RTD perspectives - looking at different aspects of the industry and areas where RTD is needed to overcome barriers to service deployment. These important, and at times controversial essays, help in defining the current state of electronic publishing, suggesting the role that research and development has in developing its use and application in the emerging information society.
For the convenience of our readers we have introduced an email service, which will deliver the latest issue of El.pub Analytic as soon as it is published, FREE to your desktop in the format of your choice (ASCII text, HTML, MS Word, PDF). To be added to the electronic distribution list sign-up using the simple form on the El.pub web site.
URL: subscribe http://www.elpub.org/
Digital content RTD perspectives: "after the dot.com fall", the latest issue of El.pub Analytic was published on 7 February 2002. The collapse in dot.com finance over the past two years both fuelled, and was fuelled by, the drop in advertising spending. This drop, and a similar fall from related industries affected by the industrial downturn in the US, helped seal the fate of many dot.com publishers and media companies, and their techware suppliers ... more at:
Softwin plans to officially launch version 2.0 of intuitext.com, its free online conversion service at the London Book Fair. Released at Seybold Boston in 2001, intuitext.com is an online conversion tool enabling automated conversion of documents to XML and XML-based formats. According to the company the new version expands the range of accepted input formats, converting from Adobe PDF, QuarkXPress, MS Word or Page Maker. Output formats delivered has also been expanded to include HTML, OEB, MS Reader, Gemstar and other proprietary ebook formats. intuitext version 2.0 will be available from March 10, 2002.
URL: Softwin http://www.softwin.ro
URL: intuitext http://www.intuitext.com
The next meeting of CEN/ISSS Workshop on Metadata for Multimedia Information - Dublin Core (MMI-DC) is scheduled for March 7-8 2002 at CEN premises, Rue de Stassart 36, B-1050 Brussels. Members of the workshop have been requested to make proposals for presentations about their metadata activities or project before February 20 2002. New members are always welcome to join the workshop, contact Leif Andresen who runs the secretariat if you are interested in getting involved.
Email: Leif Andresen mailto:lea@bs.dk
URL: MMI-DC homepage http://www.cenorm.be/isss/Workshop/MMI-DC/
UK Mediaphile 2010 is a report published by media analysts, Screen Digest and co-authored by ABN Amro bank. The report provides insights into the UK markets and consumer usage of leisure software, cinema, DVDs, printed media, radio and TV, providing forecasts to the year 2010. The report claims that by 2010 the UK media market could be worth £84.26 billion with the average person spending 60.2 hours per week consuming media. The report also predicts a "dramatic decline" in consumption of newspapers and books as more consumers switch to electronic media.
According to the report: "in 1985, the total market for all forms of media was £7 billion, of which 48% was spent on the printed form (newspapers, books, magazines); 23% was on electronic hardware and 18% on music, film and software; with 11% being spent on media subscriptions - primarily TV licences. By 2010, those ratios are set to be completely reversed: just 15.8% of all consumer spending on media will be on printed matter; 19.3% on electronic hardware; 14% on music, film and leisure software whilst subscription media (eg. mobile, Internet and pay-TV) will take the lion's share with 50.9% of all spend on media".
URL: Screen Digest http://www.screendigest.com/
URL: ABN Amro http://www.abnamro.com
TechFund Capital Europe is a new European-based risk capital technology fund launched by the US-based technology fund TechFund Capital. The fund will provide private equity capital for early stage core technologies such as telecoms, wireless and optical technologies, networking, storage and multimedia. The Paris-based fund will initially be available to French and German organisations with other European countries added in the future.
Cordis, the European Commission's research and development information service, is publishing an upgraded information service on "Research beyond 2002". The new service will reflect the latest developments on both the European Research Area (ERA) and the 6th Framework Programme (FP6). The current service has been structured in-line with the main priorities and themes under discussion.
Adobe AlterCast is imaging server software developed from its Photoshop and Illustrator technology. AlterCast automates time-intensive image production tasks, with the aim of enabling designers to customise and update images online in realtime. AlterCast runs on major application servers such as Oracle9i Application Server, BEA WebLogic, IBM WebSphere, and iPlanet Application Server, but is only likely to be interest to publishers who are publishing large numbers of images online, such as daily newspapers. A single CPU version will retail at US$ 7,500. A free evaluation version is available for download.
The OASIS ebXML Registry Technical Committee has "approved" the ebXML Registry Services Specification v2.0 and the ebXML Registry Information Model v2.0. Both are updated versions of specifications originally developed under the ebXML Initiative, jointly sponsored by OASIS and the United Nations Centre for Trade Facilitation and Electronic Business (UN/CEFACT). The updated specs. have been submitted to the OASIS for adoption as OASIS Standards during April 2002.
The February 2002 issue of First Monday (volume 7, number 2) is available online and includes the following articles:
- "Continuities and Transformations: Challenges to Capturing Information about the 'Information Society'";
- "Informational Value of Museum Web Sites";
- "Political Privacy and Online Politics: How E-Campaigning Threatens Voter Privacy";
- "Technological and Social Drivers of Change in the Online Music Industry";
- "What the Cultural Sector Can Learn from Enron".
The issue also includes a number of book reviews.
Cimmetry have announced the availability of AutoVue 16. Considered a major release of AutoVue, the latest version becomes a "native, web-based 3D CAD visualisation solution". Other new features and enhancements include:
- new format support, AutoVue now supports the native visualization and markup of 200 formats including: AutoCAD, MicroStation, HPGL, CATIA, Pro/ENGINEER, SolidWorks, Solid Edge, Unigraphics, Inventor, Mechanical Desktop, IGES, STEP, MS Office, TIFF, PDF and Visio.
- integration with popular EDM/PDM and document management systems including Documentum, FileNET, Lotus Notes/Domino, Matrix, Open Text, DOCS, and Windchill.
- EDA support (ODB++, Gencam, and Gerber)
- new markup functionality;
- server-based metafile caching for both 2D and 3D files.
A fully functional evaluation copy is available for download.
URL: press release http://www.cimmetry.com/cimweb.nsf/pages/NewsAV16
URL: http://www.cimmetry.com
The European Library (TEL) - The Gate to Europe's Knowledge: Milestone Conference is scheduled for April 29-30, 2002 in Frankfurt am Main, Germany. The conference is being organised by the TEL project (further details below), and will present initial results from the project.
In addition to print media, which are likely to retain their importance in many areas, networked publications, interactive and multimedia products and services will play an increasingly important role over the next few years. In order to structure the vast flood of information for the benefit of the individual scholar and decision-maker, and ultimately for every private citizen, WWW gateways and portals will need to be created and continuously upgraded. This task requires international cooperation on both technology and content. Nine European national libraries together with the Conference of European National Librarians are constructing the basis for such a portal concept in the project "The European Library" (TEL). "The European Library" (TEL) is an accompanying measure within the framework of the Key Action 3 (Multimedia Content and Tools) of the IST-Programme (Information Societies Technologies) of the EU.
On the basis of the decentralised digital and conventional holdings of the participating national libraries the technical, legal and context platform of a pan-European information server shall be created. In future the users can search all online catalogues of the European national libraries simultaneously with a single inquiry, proceeding from there to access their digital and conventional holdings and services. Definition and clarification of legal issues concerning copyright and licensing as well as a business model play an important role. The results of the first half period are going to be presented at the international conference. External speakers are going to supplement and to comment the TEL presentations in five topics:
- National Libraries and Publishers,
- The business of Digital Libraries,
- Describing and Handling Digital Publications,
- The European Library: Proof of Concept,
- European Information Networks.
Participation is free of charge, and the registration deadline is April 2, 2002. Further information from Regina Weiss or via the web site below.
URL: http://www.europeanlibrary.org/
Email: Regina Weiss mailto:weissr@dbf.ddb.de
Anyone who acts as a web master will be aware of the confusion surrounding the best way to achieve high rankings for web sites on search engines. Search Engine Watch goes as far to say that achieving high rankings has become a "black art". This article explains how to go about "creating pages that present search engine spiders with the information they want". The Search Engine Watch report is a free email-based publication providing solid information on search engine technologies and techniques.
URL: article http://wdvl.internet.com/Location/Search/Spider/
URL: Search Engine Watch http://searchenginewatch.com/
Web developers using Microsoft's .NET speech platform will be able to build speech applications for enterprise and carrier customers incorporating SpeechWorks technology following a technology sharing agreement between the two companies.
URL: http://www.microsoft.com/serviceproviders/news/bringing_speechP115696.asp
The oais-implementers discussion list is intended for individuals and institutions who are actively working with the Open Archival Information (OAIS) Reference Model as a part of an overall effort to model, build, and manage their own digital archive or repository. The list moderator believes that list members will come from a variety of disciplines including (though not restricted to) libraries, archives, space data centers, corporations, universities, and others.
RLG has created this list and its supporting web pages (available via the link below) to facilitate communication and provide information about OAIS reference model implementations, applications, and related standards development. To subscribe to the new list: Send the following message to listmanager@lists2.rlg.org: Subscribe oais-implementers <FirstName LastName>. The welcome message will provide you with further details. If you have any information about this new list, please contact Robin Dale.
Email: Robin Dale mailto:Robin.Dale@notes.rlg.org
URL: http://www.rlg.org/longterm/oais.html
List name: oais-implementers@lists2.rlg.org
The organising committee of WWW2002, the official International W3C web conference, have announced the latest version of the conference programme which includes featured speakers such as Tim Berners-Lee and Richard DeMillo, (VP and CTO of Hewlett-Packard). Full lists of accepted refereed papers, alternate tracks, panels, developers day and pre-conference tutorials and workshops are published on the conference web site. The WWW2002 Conference will be held in Honolulu, Hawaii, USA on 7-11 May 2002.
URL: accepted papers http://www2002.org/refpapers.html
URL: alternate tracks http://www2002.org/altpapers.html
URL: panels http://www2002.org/panels.html
URL: developers day http://www2002.org/devday.html
URL: registration https://www0.hawaii.edu/www2002/regonline/
CMP Europe plans to launch its first "CMP Interactive event", IT Security 2002, online on the 27-28 February 2002. The bi-annual event will run live on the CMP Interactive web site, and according to CMP "visitors to the site will be able to visit stands, speak with exhibitors and pose questions to conference speakers and association members in real time".
URL: CMP Interactive events http://www.cmp-interactive.com
The ITU has approved a new standard for high-quality digital wideband speech encoding which it believes will bring "significant improvements in terms of interoperability, easier implementation, and improved quality, for wideband voice applications and services across a wide range of communication systems and platforms".
Several important applications are envisaged for the standard. These include: Voice over IP (VoIP) and the Internet, third generation mobile communications, PSTN high-quality audio-conferencing and business applications (both in point-to-point and multi-point situations), streaming audio and speech, ISDN wideband telephony, and ISDN video telephony and video-conferencing. The standard, known as Recommendation G.722.2, is also referred to as the Adaptive Multi-Rate Wideband (AMR-WB) codec.
URL: http://www.itu.int/
The Avalon project is Apache's Java Server Framework. It is separated into five sub projects: Framework, Excalibur, LogKit, Cornerstone, and Phoenix. Its purpose is to simplify server side programming for Java based projects. It formalizes several best of breed practices and patterns for server side programming. The project has announced that it has released upgraded versions of:
- Excalibur 4.1 which contains several pre-assembled Avalon Components and utilities to make server side programming easier. There are several pool implementations, Component management implementations, and database management implementations.
- LogKit 1.0.1 which is described as "an easy to use logging toolkit designed for secure performance oriented logging. It's design encourages integration into existing products with minimal impact".
URL: Avalon http://jakarta.apache.org/avalon
URL: Avalon Excalibur 4.1 http://jakarta.apache.org/avalon/excalibur
URL: Excalibur downloads http://jakarta.apache.org/builds/jakarta-avalon/release/excalibur/latest
URL: LogKit 1.0.1 http://jakarta.apache.org/avalon/logkit
URL: LogKit downloads http://jakarta.apache.org/builds/jakarta-avalon/release/logkit/latest
The December 2001 / January 2002 issue of Ariadne (Number 30) has been published online and in the main articles section includes:
- "Reference books on the Web", in which the author explores the range of electronic reference tools available online.
- "Digitization: do we have a strategy?" which suggests that the library sector should find a mechanism to put digitisation high on the agenda.
- "The JISC User Behaviour Monitoring and Evaluation Framework" in which the author introduces this JISC initiative.
- "Content Management Systems: Who needs them?" which explores the content management systems concept and considers the utility of the available tools.
- "Do they need to know?" which considers the issues surrounding web security.
Ariadne's Regular Columns section also includes: a review of developments at the Resource Discovery Network (RDN), and reports on: a recent workshop for subject gateways in Europe, a UK Government workshop on multimedia and image handling, and a digital preservation seminar.
URL: Ariadne 30 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue30
URL: Ariadne http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/
The Dublin Core Metadata Initiative (DCMI) has announced its first Board of Trustees, formed to provide strategic leadership and support to the organization. "The Board of Trustee members come from 6 countries on 4 continents and bring the perspectives of many professional backgrounds. Their counsel will help raise the profile of the Initiative and further its development and sustainability," said Stu Weibel, DCMI's Executive Director. More information about the Board and its Members is available online.
The DCMI is dedicated to promoting the widespread adoption of interoperable metadata standards (Dublin Core) and developing specialised metadata vocabularies for describing resources that enable more intelligent information discovery systems. It is the maintenance agency for the Dublin Core Metadata Element Set standard. OCLC Online Computer Library Center, Inc. is a not-for-profit, global cooperative of libraries, specialising in metadata services. OCLC is DCMI's current host and supports the costs of the DCMI directorate.
URL: trustees http://dublincore.org/about/trustees/
URL: DCMI http://dublincore.org/about/
URL: Dublin Core http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/
URL: OCLC http://www.oclc.org/home/
URL: press release http://dublincore.org/news/communications/pr-200202.shtml
The latest Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation, Volume 5, published online at the end of January has four refereed articles, three contributions to the Forum section, and six book reviews. JASSS is an electronic, refereed journal devoted to the exploration and understanding of social processes by means of computer simulation.
Semantico's (developers of online resources) most recent project is the online version of "The World of Learning". Considered as, "the definitive guide to higher education world-wide" the resource contains over 30,000 universities, colleges, schools of art and music, libraries, learned societies, research institutes, museums and art galleries. The World of Learning, published by Europa Publications has been available in book format for over 50 years. Subscription to the full services is required, though there is a demo version available online.
URL: http://www.worldoflearning.com/views/home.html
URL: Semantico http://www.semantico.com
According to ScanSoft its Dragon PDsay is a new application that adds voice-control and speech capabilities to Microsoft Windows CE-based Pocket PC devices. Announcing the product's release the company claims that "with Dragon PDsay, Pocket PC users can control operating system selections and application interfaces using natural voice commands and can have e-mail, calendar and contact information read aloud automatically".
PDsay works with the standard microphone and speakers built into Pocket PC products. The English version is available as a downloadable purchase for the suggested retail price of £29.99 including VAT.
URL: product download http://www.scansoft.com/PDsay
URL: ScanSoft http://www.scansoft.com
The Active-Ad Newsletter is an extremely handy weekly update to developments in the the area of advertising and interactive media particularly in Europe. Published by Van Dusseldorp & Partners, the newsletter has its origins in a European Commission sponsored project focussing on this area. A selection of just three news items from over fifteen in the original newsletter:
- a review of research carried-out by DoubleClick which shows that in Europe more than half of marketing executives make use of online tools to promote their products - the report showed that the UK is the most advanced European country in terms of online marketing (73 per cent), followed by Spain (66 per cent) and Germany (43 per cent).
- the news that it could be another four years before advertising revenues reach the levels accomplished during the dot.com boom, according to media analysts at Dutch bank ABN Amro.
- The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) has published a free interactive advertising "Jargon Busting" Guide, available for download.
Subscribe to the newsletter via the URL below.
URL: subscribe http://www.vandusseldorp.com/activead/newsletter.asp
URL: newsletter archives http://www.vandusseldorp.com/newsletters
URL: IAB http://www.iabuk.net
The Technology Marketplace Service on the web offers free information on potential opportunities arising from R&D projects funded by the European Commission. The multi-lingual service will offer digests of new and significant scientific research results. In each case the researchers are offering the technology for sale, licence, or other type of exploitation arrangement. The opportunities on offer range from industrial products and processes, through biotechnology and IT, to environmental and energy technologies.
The Technology Marketplace will be updated weekly in five European languages: English, French, German, Italian, Spanish. The service uses as a central resource nearly 55,000 research projects co-financed by the EU and offers an email alerting service which can be defined according to individual users' areas of interest.
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