EP Topic News: 29th August 2002EP Topic News: 29th August 2002
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The European Commission's Information Society Directorate General has announced an "Information Day on the early stages of implementation of the IST programme within FP6" in Luxembourg, 23-24 October 2002.
Discussions regarding the IST successor programme 2002-2006 are approaching completion. The first call for proposals is expected to be launched towards the end of the year. Following the successful FP6 workshop held on 15-16 May 2002, an Information Day is planned for 23-24 October next. The purpose of the Information Day is to provide participants with first-hand information on the likely scope and content of the calls for proposals that will be launched in the first year of operation of the new programme.
The Information Day will consist of two sessions, addressing RTD topics relating to Interface Technologies and Cognitive Systems on day 1, and Knowledge Technologies and Cross-media Digital Content on day 2.
Please note that the above sessions will be open to all interested parties on a 'first-come first-served' basis. This preliminary announcement is being sent to registered participants in the mid-May workshop, to organisations that submitted an expression of interest in response to the call launched in March last, and to coordinators of ongoing IST projects in the above areas.
Please book the above dates in your diary pending the final agenda and invitation, which will be circulated / published on a suitable web site in the second week of September. Early declaration of your intention to participate in this event can be sent to Joseph Kirsch (via the email below) specifying name, affiliation, email address and the Day / RTD topics you are most interested in. The preliminary agenda is as follows:
Interface Technologies and Cognitive Systems - 23 October, 2002
• Welcome and introduction
• IST within FP6, overview and state of play
• New instruments, administrative provisions governing cost-shared projects, call roadmap
• Q&A• Interface Technologies
- Intended scope and focus in 2003
- Partnerships and intended use of new instruments
- Hints and tips for prospective proposers
- Q&A
• Cognitive Systems
- Intended scope and focus in 2003
- Partnerships and intended use of new instruments
- Hints and tips for prospective proposers
- Q&A• Informal discussions
Knowledge Technologies and Cross-media Digital Content - 24 October, 2002
• Welcome and introduction
• IST within FP6, overview and state of play
• New instruments, administrative provisions governing cost-shared projects, call roadmap
• Q&A• Cross-media Digital Content
- Intended scope and focus in 2003
- Partnerships and intended use of new instruments
- Hints and tips for prospective proposers
- Q&A
• Knowledge Technologies
- Intended scope and focus in 2003
- Partnerships and intended use of new instruments
- Hints and tips for prospective proposers
- Q&A
• Informal discussionsEmail: Joseph Kirsch mailto:Joseph.Kirsch@cec.eu.int
The Electornic Journals page on El.pub have been updated. The page provides an ideal starting point to subscribe to electronic information services that span the entire electronic publishing, creative and multimedia arena. Many of those featured are free, to browse the page follow the link below.
ACM SIGecom has published a paper on DRM that compares the current tethered and untethered models and proposes a new hybrid model that mixes online and offline DRM control.
URL: http://www.acm.org/sigs/sigecom/exchanges/
URL: paper http://www.acm.org/sigs/sigecom/exchanges/volume_3_(02)/3.3-Kwok.pdf
VideoWave Movie Creator from Roxio is an enhancement to their Cinematic product which apparently enables users to capture video, create movies, and burn them to CD or DVD. Aimed at the consumer market, the latest version of the software adds:
• VD and VideoCD Authoring and Burning using Roxio burning technology
• Workflow Improvements
• Real Time DV to MPEG-2 Video Capture
• Smart DV Rendering
• General Usability Enhancements
• Integrated Flash TutorialVideoWave Movie Creator costs around 70 Euros will be available from retail outlets or via the Roxio web site.
URL: Roxio http://www.roxio.com
The Apache Cocoon team has announced that they have published a maintainance release of Apache Cocoon focusing on improved performance, robustness and better documentation. Cocoon is an XML framework for implementing XML and XSLT technologies for server applications.
The Royal Institution in London was the venue for the first public conference on "The Musical Brain" which considered the relationship between music and brain function. At the conference, researchers presented the mounting evidence that music is not merely a cultural phenomenon but a biological fact of human life - as demonstrated by infants who are too young for even informal music training, yet distinguish consonance from dissonance and recognize tunes even when their timing or pitch has been altered. Among the potential applications of this new understanding are therapies for brain injury, protocols to alleviate anxiety without medication , methodology to enhance children's learning and development, and more.
Dr. Gail Cardew, Head of Programmes at the Royal Institution, commented on the event, "The Musical Brain brought together people from different communities - scientists, musicians, therapists, teachers and people who simply enjoy music-to discuss science research and its impact on society."
The audio component of The Musical Brain is available online via the link below.
URL: The Musical Brain http://www.rigb.org/musicalbrain
URL: The Royal Institution http://www.rigb.org/
URL: International Foundation for Music Research http://www.music-research.org
'e by Epicor' are a series of enterprise web service applications from Epicor Software Corporation which have been built using Visual Studio .NET and the Microsoft .NET Framework.
RSA Security "intends" to support the proposed OASIS Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML) specification across its product lines. The SAML 1.0 specification, which is an XML framework for exchanging authentication, attribute and authorisation information, is designed to enable secure single sign-on to applications within organisations, as well as across companies. RSA Security "plans to incorporate SAML functionality with RSA ClearTrust Web access management software by the end of the year, and intends to follow with support across other solutions".
URL: RSA Security http://www.rsasecurity.com/
The DocBook Technical Committee (TC) has approved publication of DocBook V4.2 as a Committee Specification, and recommended that it be advanced for publication as an OASIS Standard at the next opportunity. DocBook V4.2 is available as a DTD for both XML and SGML systems and is the official, current version of the DocBook Document Type. DocBook is general purpose XML and SGML document type particularly well suited to books and papers about computer hardware and software (though it is by no means limited to these applications). This latest version is essentially a maintenance release, the next full scale release - DocBook V5.0 - is expected in Spring 2003.
URL: http://www.oasis-open.org/docbook/specs/cs-docbook-docbook-4.2.html
URL: http://www.oasis-open.org/docbook/sgml/4.2/
URL: http://sourceforge.net/tracker//?atid=384107&group_id=21935&func=browse
Connection Software is offering two SOAP interfaces to its SMS gateways for companies who send high volume text messages. The interfaces, SOAP over TCP and SOAP over HTTP, can be used to connect directly to Connection Software's SMS servers. The connection, which takes about half an hour to set up, will send messages out and allow the sender to receive incoming messages as well. Users sign up at Connection Software's web site to get a user name and password that will allow them access to the service. Messages can contain 160 characters and site gives full explanation of the SMS message formats to use. All of the information needed to get started is given in the Document Type Definition, or WSDL, and schema. Both of these are available at Connection Software's web site.
The MPEG-4 Book, edited by Fernando Pereira and Touradj Ebrahimi and published by Prentice Hall PTR, aims to "offer a comprehensive, targeted guide to the MPEG-4 standard - and its use in cutting-edge applications". According to the publicity, the editors, together with a collection of MPEG experts, demonstrate how MPEG-4 addresses tomorrow's multimedia applications more successfully than any previous standard. Specifically the book covers:
• Synthetic and natural audio and video object coding, description and synchronistion
• BIFS-the MPEG-4 language for scene description and interaction
• The extensible MPEG-4 textual format XMT
• Transport and delivery of MPEG-4 content
• MPEG-J: using Java classes within MPEG-4 content
• A complete overview of MPEG-4 Profiles and Levels
• Verification tests
XML.com has published the second part of Fabio Arciniegas' "A Realist's SMIL Manifesto" which attempts to provide a view of the Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language (SMIL) which "caters for its two potential audiences: web developers and multimedia creatives". In the first half of this article, the author introduces the basics of the SMIL technology. In part 2, he brings the focus onto the creative techniques, and shows, with the aid of examples, how SMIL can be used to achieve common narrative devices in multimedia and movies.
The first part of "A Realist's SMIL Manifesto", describes the state of SMIL so far, including liberally illustrated examples of current SMIL concepts and considers how it can realistically be used in video and multimedia deployment today.
URL: part 2 http://www.xml.com/pub/a/2002/07/17/smil.html
URL: part 1 http://www.xml.com/pub/a/2002/05/29/smil.html
Interoperability test suites for 3G mobile services are being developed by the Technical Specification Group for Terminals (TSG-T) of the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP). The test suites provide a common platform against which terminal implementations may be tested to ensure that mobiles from different manufacturers behave consistently. The test suites have been developed using a two-step process:
• the first stage involved a written specification giving a general description of the purpose and method of each test.
• the second stage produced a formal description of each test, written in the test language - Testing and Test Control Notation (TTCN). The TTCN consists of a number of abstract test suites (ATS), each focussed on testing a different layer of the 3GPP protocols and designed to run on commercially available test equipment.A total of over 600 tests have been written by 3GPP members and "represent work across the broadest representation of the telecommunications industry". The latest release of the suites (Version 1.4.0) are available from the 3GPP web site.
URL: 3GPP http://www.3gpp.org
URL: test suites http://www.3gpp.org/ftp/tsg_t/WG1_Test/TSGT1SIG/TTCN_delivery/
The Liberty Alliance Project have made version 1.0 of its specifications public. The Liberty Alliance Project is described as "an alliance of more than 60 technology and consumer organisations formed to develop and deploy open, federated network identification specifications that support all current and emerging network devices in the digital economy".
Version 1.0 of the Alliance's specifications focus on interoperability between systems to enable opt-in account linking and simplified sign-on functionality. This allows users to decide whether to link accounts with various identity providers and makes it easier for both consumers and businesses to take advantage of the growing Web services space. Several member companies have announced plans today to deliver Liberty-enabled products and services, including Communicator Inc., Entrust Inc., NeuStar Inc., Novell Inc., OneName Corporation, RSA Security and Sun Microsystems. The first products are expected to be available by end of 2002. The Liberty Alliance's specifications can be downloaded free of charge via the Liberty Alliance web site.
An interesting news item on the Europemedia news service reports on on a new study from the European Commission which apparently recommends creating a clearinghouse to which administrations could "donate" open source software for reuse.
URL: http://www.europemedia.net/shownews.asp?ArticleID=11403
Broadcastnow is an online service from Broadcast, a UK weekly newspaper for the TV and radio industry. To get the full benefit of Broadcastnow, you need to be a Broadcast subscriber, premium services available exclusively to subscribers include:
• daily online TV and radio industry news;
• the broadcast archive, enabling users to search current and back issues online;
• daily email Mediawatch news service, a round up of daily media stories from Broadcast and other UK national new services.However, certain services are available free to all Broadcastnow users, including an online job search service, headline news service, discussion forum and an industry events diary. Users can sign up for free weekly news and jobs emails.
The August 2002 issue of the e-Culture Newsletter which provides information on R&D in the cultural content and digital heritage sector has been published. The newsletter is available online and is also devlivered by email in .pdf format with links to further sources of information on the web
URL: newsletter http://www.cordis.lu/ist/ka3/digicult/newsletter.htm
URL: home http://www.cordis.lu/ist/ka3/digicult/home.html
The IFRA/WAN/FIPP World Electronic Publishing Conference will take place in Barcelona on 17 and 18 October 2002. IFRA is an international media association (mainly comprising of newspaper publishers) with over 1800 members worldwide. Besides organising exhibitions, providing consulting and publishing magazines, the organisation sponsors the annual "Beyond the Printed Word" conference, now in its tenth year, together with WAN (The World Association of Newspapers) and FIPP (The International Federation of the Periodical Press). Find out more on the conference web site.
The International Group of UK-based CILIP is running a half day seminar on data protection, freedom of information and copyright at their headquarters in London on October 23, 2002. The seminar, is the third in a series, in which experts look at new developments in the law relating to information, mainly (but not exclusively) deriving from European Union sources. The speaker at the afternnon seminar are:
• Ian Bourne (Office of the Information Commissioner) on Data Protection; (will bring the up to date position on data protection from the Information Commission, and probably also interact with the next speaker)
• Stewart Tiltman (Melton Mowbray Borough Council) on Freedom of Information; (will provide an insight into the preparations for freedom of information that are taking place in a 'public authority')
• Sandy Norman (CILIP) on Copyright; (will provide an understanding of the implications of new copyright developments on information and library services).
Paul Sturges (Loughborough University) will Chair the Seminar. The cost will be £50 plus VAT (with concessions for students). Enquiries about bookings to Kathleen Ladizesky, via the links below.
Tel: +44 (0)1974 282411
Email: mailto:ladizesky@yahoo.com
The International DOI Foundation (IDF) reports that:
• it is participating with a range of partners in Interparty, an EC project to design and specify a framework for the unique identification of parties (natural and corporate names) in the intellectual property e-commerce chain. As with other activities (such as the indecsrdd data dictionary now adopted by MPEG-21), this activity is based on the fundamental principles of metadata interoperability introduced by the indecs interoperable data in e-commerce systems) framework, co-funded by IDF, and underlying the DOIs ability to offer interoperable identification using a variety of metadata schemes. A fact sheet about Interparty is available via the link below.
URL: http://www.doi.org/topics/InterpartyFactSheet020530.pdf
• GiantSteps Media Technology Strategies and Content Directions (CDI) have released a white paper "Enterprise Content Integration with the Digital Object Identifier", quantifying the business benefits for information publishers of implementing the Digital Object Identifier (DOI) to facilitate internal content management and to enable faster, more scalable product development. "Now with the advent of Registration Agencies such as Content Directions, who sponsored this white paper, companies can finally take advantage of commercial tools and services to implement and profit from the DOI economically and reliably", said author Bill Rosenblatt.
The white paper is available free of charge via the link below which also provides a live example of the DOI itself in action: "unlike a simple URL, a DOI-based hyperlink link always remains valid, no matter how much time has gone by since the hyperlink was first created, and no matter where the link is disseminated".
URL: International DOI Foundation http://www.doi.org/
The International Conference on Active Media Technology (ICAMT 2003) is scheduled to take place at Chongqing, China on May 29-31, 2003. The conference takes as its starting point Active Media Technology (AMT), a new area of information technology and computer science that emphasises the proactive, seamless roles of interfaces and systems as well as new media in all aspects of digital life. It attempts to pull together the many rapid scientific and technological developments in human-centered, seamless computing environments, interfaces, devices, and systems with applications ranging from business and communication to entertainment and learning.
ICAMT2003 aims to provide an international forum for researchers, from around the world, to exchange their latest research results and to showcase the state of research and development in AMT as well as the latest architectures, prototypes, tools, and fielded systems that demonstrate and enable AMT. The topics of interest include, but are not limited to:
• Active Computer Systems and Interfaces
• Adaptive Web Media
• Agent-Mediated Interaction and Services
• Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems
• Digital City
• Digital Interactivity
• Embodied Intelligent Systems and Agents
• Human-Centered Robotics
• Multi-Agent Communities
• Multi-Modal Processing, Detection, Recognition, and Expression Analysis
• Personalised, Pervasive Systems and Interfaces
• Smart Digital MediaA call for papers, up to a limit of 12 pages, is open until November 15, 2002. Papers should be submitted to the ICAMT 2003 Secretariat via the email below.
Email: paper submissions mailto:icamt2003@yahoo.com
URL: http://www.hqgc.net/icamt2003/index.html
The Complex Systems Network of Excellence (NoE), EXYSTENCE, has been funded by the Future Emerging Technologies unit of the European Commission in order to develop collaboration among European researchers and those in business and industry interested in Complex Systems, from fundamental concepts to applications. An open invitation to join the the Network has been extended to readers of El.pub, either as a user of the web site, or as a full member.
Registration on the web site ensures that you will be on the Network mailing list for announcements of Framework 6 initiatives and calls for proposals. The network's Launch event will take place in Torino, Italy, from November 12 to 13 with the aims of presenting the 6th Framework Programme lines of action in complex systems and providing an opportunity for discussing and preparing for the formation of consortia for future calls for proposals. The provisional programme is available on the web site, along with details of planned topical workshops. Users are also being invited to submit news items for wider dissemination via the web.
URL: EXYSTENCE http://www.complexityscience.org/
Many of the papers presented at the WWW2002 Conference held in Hawaii are available online, linked to the programme pages of the conference site. In addition the call for papers for the WWW2003 Conference scheduled to be held in Budapest in May 2003 has also been published. The Conference Series Organising Committee (IW3C2) have also announced a partnership arrangement with Geek Cruises to organise the first-ever mid-year meeting (November 9-16, 2002) in the Western Caribbean, on board a cruise liner!
URL: WWW2002 Conference http://www2002.org
URL: WWW2003 Conference CFP http://www2003.org
URL: Geek Cruises http://www.geekcruises.com/home/www02_home.html
The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) Washington DC has announced that The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has announced action against Microsoft's Passport identification and authentication system. The FTC's action was prompted by a complaint submitted by EPIC and 14 US consumer groups, alleging that the collection and use of personal information by the company would violate FTC regulations. There is a full appraisal of the complaint and subsequent ruling available on the EPIC site.
URL: EPIC Alert newsletter http://www.epic.org/alert/EPIC_Alert_9.15.html
URL: EPIC http://www.epic.org/
"The School for Scanning: Creating, Managing, and Preserving Digital Assets" is an International Conference scheduled to take place in The Hague, The Netherlands on October 16-18, 2002. Funded in part by The Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR) and the Online Computer Library Center (OCLC), it is co-sponsored by the European Commission on Preservation and Access (ECPA) and the National Library of the Netherlands. The conference will provide information for collections managers who are seeking to create, manage, and preserve digital assets.
Although significant technical content will be presented, this is not a technician-training programme, content will include: envisioning the digital future, quality control and costs, copyright and legal issues, content selection for digitisation, metadata, digital asset management (DAM), standards, digital longevity and preservation, text and image digitisation
Registration information and a detailed agenda can be found at NEDCC's web site.
The 6th Sedona Conference on the convergence of education, entertainment and technology will take place in Dublin on 24-26th October. The theme of this international conference is "The Creative Process - Demystifying Digital Media". The tone of the conference will be high-level knowledge sharing about technology and education with discussion on where creativity comes in to the equation. Conference themes include education without borders, learning to bridge the digital divide, creativity in the digital age. Registration is now open on the conference web site and a number of sponsorship opportunities also exist.
The August 2002 edition of the Library Link Newsletter is available online. The newsletter provides opinion pieces (viewpoints) and articles covering Library Technology, Library Collection & Development Management, and Library Management and Information Services. The the opinion pieces cover: "Developments in Digital Libraries", "Understanding Digital Rights Management", "Budgeting for Information Services".
URL: http://www.emeraldinsight.com/librarylink/
URL: http://www.emeraldinsight.com
Spanish / portuguese language South-American Information Society portal. La Sociedad Digital (r) es una organización civil no gubernamental destinada fundamentalmente a la investigación de la Sociedad de la Información y sus efectos políticos, económicos, comerciales, sociales, culturales y educativos.
Interactive Video Technologies has released an enhanced version of vPublisher, its multimedia presentation publishing software. The software is aimed at users that wish to combine Powerpoint presentations with video and closed caption text, and it now run with Windows 2000 and XP applications.
URL: Interactive Video Technologies http://www.ivtweb.com/
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