EP Topic News: 7th November 2002EP Topic News: 7th November 2002
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El.pub Analytic No. 11, entitled: "Creative technology - RTD problems and opportunities" has been published and considers why creativity is a key driver in the financial development of a digital content-based economy. View the full article, which can also be downloaded as a Word.doc or Acrobat.pdf, via the link below.
Beginning with a close look at the underlying technologies of web services, including the benefits and limitations of these technologies, "Programming .NET Web Services", from O'Reilly Associates, discusses the unique features of the .NET Framework that make creating web services easier, including the Common Language Runtime (CLR) and the namespaces used in .NET programming. Filled with numerous code examples in both C# and Visual Basic .NET, the book explores some of the more challenging issues of web services development, including the use of proxies, marshalling of complex data types, state management, security, performance tuning, and cross-platform implementation.
The book has been written for programmers who are familiar with the .NET Framework and interested in building industrial-strength web services. Chapter 2, "Creating ASP.NET Web Services", is available free online.
URL: http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/prognetws/
URL: Chapter 2 http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/prognetws/chapter/ch02.html
URL: .NET articles http://www.ondotnet.com/
Xara Menu Maker 1.0 has been released. According to its developers "Menu Maker is a vector graphics template based program that allows you to accomplish a normally difficult task: Create navigation bars with DHTML menus, all with the click of a button. What would normally take hours to complete can now be done in a matter of minutes".
A special issue of The EURASIP Journal on Applied Signal Processing entitled: "Signal Processing for 3D Imaging and Virtual Reality" has been published. Details from the web site below.
Ektron is planning to support the integration of its eWebEditPro and eWebEditPro+XML in Microsoft Content Management Server 2002. According to Ektron, it "is one of a select group of software vendors chosen by Microsoft to extend the functionality of Content Management Server". The company believes that integration of its software will aid in the development of "enterprise content management solutions", particularly those being based on XML.
The Sonaris Newsletter for October/November 2002 has been published online. This handy, free, news service concentrates on digital music developments, providing market news, product announcements and short feature articles.
Simulation for the Social Scientist was published by the Open University Press in 1999, and acted as an introduction to the use of simulation in the social sciences. Since the field is advancing so fast, the original authors, Nigel Gilbert and Klaus G. Troitzschhey, are considering writing a second edition.
They are proposing that the second edition retains the structure of the first, including an introductory chapter, a chapter on simulation as method, and then chapters on System dynamics, Microanalytical models, Queueing models, Multilevel models, Cellular Automata, Multi-agent models, and Neural nets and GAs/GPs. The revised content of these chapters will reflect the work that has been done since they wrote the original versions in 1998.
The authors have written an open letter to readers of El.pub requesting your views about what you think are the most important topics and ideas that are not in the first edition and should be added to the second edition. They would also value suggestions about significant recent simulations that they could describe as examples (each of the chapters will include two or three descriptions of simulation models). All relevant comments and ideas will be appropriately acknowledged in the book. Professor Nigel Gilbert is the editor of the Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation (JASS), to which we often refer in El.pub.
Email: Nigel Gilbert mailto:n.gilbert@soc.surrey.ac.uk
URL: JASS http://www.soc.surrey.ac.uk/JASSS/
URL: Simulation resources http://www.soc.surrey.ac.uk/research/simsoc/
URL: book details http://www.soc.surrey.ac.uk/research/simsoc/sss/
Ross Somerville, Production Manager of the Online Encyclopedia of New Zealand, at the Ministry for Culture & Heritage in New Zealand has requested that we circulate the announcement below to all readers of El.pub. The New Zealand Ministry for Culture and Heritage is preparing and implementing the online Encyclopedia of New Zealand. The objective of the Encyclopedia is to be a comprehensive online guide to the natural environment, history, culture, economics, institutions, peoples and social development of New Zealand. An important feature will be its Maori content, and the Encyclopedia will be available online in both English and Maori language.
The Encyclopedia is a nine-year research, writing and publication project. It will be published progressively online from 2003, and will also be published in print format. It is intended to be the first port of call for reliable information about New Zealand, its land, living things, peoples, culture, history, and identity, and a gateway to the cultural treasures of New Zealand through a multi-media experience. It will make new scholarship accessible and aims to make the most of existing reference works by building on the work done for the online Dictionary of New Zealand Biography and the New Zealand Historical Atlas.
The core content of the Encyclopedia will be 1,000 subject entries, making a total of about 2 million words. Entries will be divided into units of text of up to 500 words, with links to other relevant subjects within the encyclopedia and to resource 'objects' including static images, sounds, moving images, digitised documents, research papers, new graphic material, biographies, interactives, community contributions, and links to recommended web sites. Not all entries will have all these media. The objects will be chosen for their appropriateness to the subject.
The major audiences for the Encyclopedia are expected to be secondary school pupils, New Zealand families, Maori, scholars, and an international audience.
Further information about the project is available on the Ministry's web site.
URL: Dictionary of New Zealand Biography http://www.dnzb.govt.nz
URL: http://www.mch.govt.nz/ref/enz/news.html#roi
URL: NZ Ministry for Culture & Heritage web site http://www.mch.govt.nz
Email: Ross Somerville mailto:ross.somerville@mch.govt.nz
According to an announcement on CORDIS, Israel has requested that its scientific cooperation agreement with the EU is renewed as soon as possible so as to enable the country to participate in the Sixth Framework Programme (FP6) as soon as possible. The appeal was made at the third meeting of the EU-Israel Association Council on 21 October, 2002.
Israel is participating in the Fifth Framework Programme with the EU Member States and Israeli organisations were partners in around 500 projects. Now that FP6 has been adopted, it is necessary to renegotiate the agreement. The Council is therefore examining the Commission's recommendation for a Council decision authorising the Commission to negotiate its renewal. The EU-Israel Association Committee is asking for the negotiation process to be accelerated in order to ensure that Israeli entities are able to participate from the outset of the Framework Programme.
Ericsson has announced strategic partnerships which it is hoping will speed up market take-off for public WLAN (Wireless LANs). Ericsson has chosen Agere and Proxim to jointly develop and supply telecom operators with complete end-to-end solutions for WLAN (Wi-Fi) access, integrating hot spot access with mobile 2G and 3G networks. Local access to high-speed data (called WLAN or Wi-Fi) is an increasingly important service for users of handheld devices like laptops and notebook computers.
Ericsson intends to tailor solutions for different emerging needs of both fixed line and mobile operators, based on open standards. They will include "all necessary components like 802.11b modules, software and SIM technology provided by Agere, 802.11 compliant Access Points for 2,4 and 5 GHz bands provided by Proxim, and IETF/3GPP compliant Authentication Servers provided by Ericsson".
URL: Ericsson http://www.ericsson.com
URL: Proxim Corporation http://www.proxim.com
URL: Agere Systems http://www.agere.com
Enfocus Software, a developer of PDF-related software tools for the publishing industry, has announced the availability of a specially developed PDF profile to support the pass4press initiative. Pass4press is a set of guidelines on how to create a PDF within certain parameters that are acceptable for magazine publishing within the UK. These guidelines were developed for the UK advertising industry by The Periodical Publishers Association (PPA) and are designed to eliminate potential errors in digital workflows caused by incorrect file settings. The PPA-pass4press PDF profile can be downloaded from the Enfocus web site.
URL: Enfocus http://www.enfocus.com
URL: PPA http://www.ppa.co.uk
According to its release notes, the RSS Validator "validates RSS 0.91 through 2.0 XML files". While optimised for RSS 2.0 feeds this open sources validator handles every RSS version.
URL: validator online http://feeds.archive.org/validator/
URL: news list http://feeds.archive.org/validator/news/
URL: resources http://diveintomark.org/archives/2002/10/22.html#rss_validator
According to a news report on News.com, researchers have created a new way to encrypt information in a digital image and extract it later without any distortion or loss of information.
A number of announcements of technology and software developed within IBM include:
• Web Services Description Language (WSDL) Explorer - a web application that displays WSDL files, generates views of operations, allows invocation of operations, and allows viewing of sample message flow. It enables users to compare and contrast web services without going through the time and trouble of importing them into a heavy development tool. WSDL Explorer provides the ability to browse WSDL files, and it offers immediate access to Web service operations.
URL: http://www.alphaWorks.ibm.com/tech/wsdlexplorer?open&l=NT102402,t=awfl
• The IBM MPEG-7 Annotation Tool assists in annotating video sequences with MPEG-7 metadata. Each shot in the video sequence can be annotated with static scene descriptions, key object descriptions, event descriptions, and other lexicon sets. The annotated descriptions are associated with each video shot and are put out and stored as MPEG-7 descriptions in an XML file.
URL: http://www.alphaWorks.ibm.com/tech/videoannex?open&l=NT102402,t=awfl
• IBM's XML for C++ parser (XML4C) is based on Apache's Xerces-C XML parser, which is a validating XML parser written in a portable subset of C++. XML4C integrates the Xerces-C parser with IBM's International Components for Unicode (ICU) and extends the number of encodings supported to over 150. Version 5.0 includes 64-bit binaries distribution, grammar pre-parsing and grammar caching, experimental DOM Level 3, Unix shared library naming convention and support for ICU 2.2.
URL: http://www.alphaWorks.ibm.com/tech/xml4c?open&l=LT102402,t=awfl
• XML Parser for Java is a validating XML parser and processor written in Java; it is a library for parsing and generating XML documents. This parser enables an application to read and write XML data. Version 4.0.5 includes flexible, modular architecture added to the former stability and standards compliance. According to the company, this is a nearly complete rewriting of Version 3.2.1.
URL: http://www.alphaWorks.ibm.com/tech/xml4j?open&l=LT102402,t=awfl
Visual Paradigm for UML (VP-UML) is described as "a complete UML (Unified Modelling Language) software development tool". It supports all UML diagrams for modeling, documenting and constructing object-oriented software systems.
According to Edify, its convergence server, "aims to unify web and [IP-based] telephony architectures". The C-Server, is described as an integral part of the Edify 8 architecture, which allows a single converged application to be presented through standards-based markup languages: as speech through VoiceXML; wireless through WML (Wireless Markup Language); web through HTML; "or on any other channel supported by a markup language".
URL: http://www.edify.com/
URL: news item http://www.tmcnet.com/enews/100902b.htm
• "Finding your way through Web services standards, Part 2" is the second installment in a series of articles which considers the the interrelationships of the web services standards. The author explains how data encodings in SOAP relate to those in other standards.
URL: http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/library/ws-stand2.html?n-ws-10242
• "First look at the WS-I Basic Profile 1.0", learn about the Web services specifications and standards that constitute the Web Services Interoperability Group's Basic Profile 1.0. This overview also discusses aspects of the profile relevant of interest particularly to developers.
URL: http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/library/ws-basicprof.html?n-10242
EPIC Alert (Volume 9.20 published on October 24, 2002) has a report entitled: "Public Protest Over Data Retention Increases in Europe".
As the preamble to the full report states: "The prospect of generalized and systematic surveillance of electronic communications across Europe is raising many pressing questions. Several recent developments in Europe show that the principle of data retention, introduced in the recent EU Directive on Privacy and Electronic Communications (Dir. 2002/58/EC) is facing strong criticism by privacy experts, data protection commissioners, civil liberties groups, and the ISP industry".
The article gives recent examples of the concerns raised by these various groups from across Europe. EPIC Alert is a free e-zine published by the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) in the USA.
URL: http://www.epic.org/alert/EPIC_Alert_9.20.html
URL: EPIC http://www.epic.org/
The Web Developer Bulletin is offering a free white paper entitled: "Web-Enabling Your Legacy Applications" for download. This paper provides an overview of "the top three web-enabling technologies - web-to-host, rejuvenation, and legacy integration". It explains how these technologies work, outlines their pros and cons, and tells which user group is best suited for each. The intention of the white paper is to enable developers to identify their users' requirements, and based on this to help in identifying "the right web-enabling tool for the job". To access the download you will need to register for the Web Developer Bulletin via the link below.
The Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) is a committee of the UK further and higher education funding bodies and is dedicated to helping institutions exploit the opportunities of information and communications technology. JISC has issued an Invitation to Tender for a study which will define the business and market context for a national collections strategy in electronic textbooks for UK further and higher education.
The aim is to produce a broad analysis of the market and of the industry, with the identification of barriers to uptake and ways of overcoming these, particularly with regard to business models and access. The report will shape the acquisitions policy of the Working Group for e-textbooks and the role the Group should adopt in relation to partnership building for the successful take-up of e-textbooks within the academic sector.
An upper limit of UK pounds 50,000 is available to undertake this work. The invitation to tender was issued on 25 October and the deadline for responses is 2 December, 2002. Queries related to this tender document should be addressed to Louise Edwards, JISC Collections Manager, and responses should be emailed to Joanna Harrison.
URL: http://www.jisc.ac.uk/
Email: Louise Edwards mailto:l.edwards@cranfield.ac.uk
Email: Joanna Harrison mailto:j.harrison@jisc.ac.uk
The Scout Report includes a brief review of the Copernic Agent 6.0 Basic, a free "meta" web search engine that:
"has the capability to query over 90 search engines grouped into categories. The application is also completely customisable, and users can keep histories for their search queries and sort the results as well. While the application may be unnecessarily detailed for some more casual web surfers, persons looking for an advanced application will not be disappointed. Copernic Agent 6.0 Basic is compatible with all Windows operating systems". (Source: The Scout Report)
URL: Scout Report http://scout.cs.wisc.edu/report/sr/2002/scout-021025.html
URL: Copernic Agent http://www.copernic.com/desktop/products/agent/download.html
The free "Ezine-Tips" electronic newsletter reports that the Interactive Advertising Bureau has established a new Newsletters Committee to develop advertisement standards and measurements, to promote newsletters as advertising and communication vehicles and to provide "industry education on the value of newsletters through industry case studies, research and best practices." (Source: Ezine-Tips)
URL: news item http://Ezine-Tips.com/articles/revenue/20021025.shtml
URL: IAB announcement http://www.iab.net/comm/newsl_comm.asp
Intelligent Enterprise magazine, in partnership with Borland, IBM, and Microsoft, is sponsoring a webcast on December 3, 2002 (7-8 pm GMT and 11 am - noon, Pacific Time) entitled: "The Future of Software and Databases". A panel of software experts will discuss the future of software and databases in a world that's moving to XML, distributed computing, collaborative Internet applications, web services and ubiquitous personal connectivity (eg. billions of mobile clients). The panel members will discuss the convergence of XML and SQL, object databases, querying documents, parallel architectures and more.
This NetSeminar will include a pre-recorded panel discussion followed by a live question-and answer session. The panel members are: Rick Cattell (Sun Microsystems), Don Chamberlin (IBM Almaden Research), Daniela Florescu (XQRL, Inc.), Jim Gray (Microsoft Research), Jim Melton (Oracle).
Rick Cattell is an author, founder of ODMG and the original Enterprise Java architect. Don Chamberlin is an author and co-inventor of SQL and XQuery. Dana Florescu is co-editor of several W3C specifications, including XQuery. Jim Gray is an author and ACM Turing Award winner. Jim Melton is an author and the editor of the ISO SQL specification. The panel moderator is Ken North, an author, CEO, and XML and Web Services editor for Dr. Dobb's.
Watch for the registration page on the NetSeminar web site.
URL: NetSeminar http://www.netseminar.com
EFFector, is the free electronic newsletter from the US-based Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF). The news items it publishes on its activities provide an invaluable barometer of copyright and related issues in the emerging digital information marketplace.
In the 232nd issue (October, 2002) it reports that "a federal court affirmed the right of the Electronic Frontier Foundation to represent ReplayTV owners in their lawsuit against 28 motion picture and television industry companies". A number of ReplayTV customers are suing the entertainment companies to clarify their rights to record television programs and to skip commercials using digital video recorders (DVRs). Hollywood representatives have publicly stated that skipping commercials is "stealing".
There is a detailed appraisal of the ruling on the EFF's web site.
URL: press release http://www.eff.org/Cases/Newmark_v_Turner/20021015_eff_pr.html
URL: EFF Fair Use FAQ http://www.eff.org/IP/eff_fair_use_faq.html
URL: EFF home page http://www.eff.org/
• The W3C has released XML 1.1 as a Candidate Recommendation, the stage of a specification where testing and trial implementation is invited. XML.com has an article which considers how the XML 1.1 recommendation has been received by development community.
URL: http://www.xml.com/pub/a/2002/10/23/deviant.html
URL: W3C XML 1.1 as a Candidate Recommendation http://www.w3.org/TR/xml11/• Edd Dumbill, the Editor of XML.com has written an article, "Whither Web Services", which takes a view on the changing nature of web services. It takes as its starting point how the hype given to web services by the mainstream technical media which has now given way to scepticism has any foundation. He concludes by suggesting that, "things are just getting started".
The October issue of "I3 UPDATE / ENTOVATION International News" has been published. Focusing on Knowledge Management (KM) and related technologies this issue includes: a report on an innovation conference in Colombia; a summary of response to an article on standards published in the September 2002 issue; and the concluding installment of the "A-Z of KM technologies".
The XML Belux Conference takes place on November 21, 2002 in Belgium. This year's program consists of two parallel tracks. The first track will present the business cases around this years theme: "Applied XML". Track two gives the opportunity to gather information about the newest technologies and features integrated in the XML-products of the different vendors. Conference fees are: XML BeLux members (€ 100) SAI members (€ 185), others (€ 225).
URL: Registration http://www.xmlbelux.be/events/eventform.html
URL: membership registration http://www.xmlbelux.be/memberform.html
A new OASIS technical committee - the OASIS User Interface Markup Language Technical Committee (UIML TC) is hoping to develop a specification for an abstract meta-language that can provide a canonical XML representation of any user interface (UI). The language should be capable of specifying the requirements, design, and implementation of any UI. The committee will use the UIML3 specification created by Virginia Tech's Center for Human Computer Interaction, Harmonia, Inc., and other organizations on uiml.org as a starting point.
The TC differs in scope from other committees and working groups that address concrete UI implementation languages (eg. assembly language, C, C++, CSS, Java, HTML, VoiceXML, WML, XForms, XHTML, XSL-FO). Instead, this TC focuses on an abstract language, UIML, which expresses UIs at a higher level than the concrete languages. "UIML's goal is to subsume in expressive power all concrete languages, and to permit efficient mapping from UIML to any concrete language".
The TC will evaluate UIML3 and other UI initiatives to formulate a plan for creation of a specification, develop the specification, create compliance tests and implementations, and submit the specification to the OASIS membership for approval.
Further information on this topic may be found in the Cover Page article published on XML.com: "XML Markup Languages for User Interface Definition".
URL: UIML3 Specification http://www.uiml.org/specs/docs/uiml30-revised-02-12-02.pdf
URL: Cover Page article http://xml.coverpages.org/userInterfaceXML.html
URL: OASIS http://www.oasis-open.org
New Media Knowledge is a UK-based company that runs a programme of events, courses, research and publications for new media professionals. It has published a brief report by Greg Roach based on a presentation to the TAPS London Writers Festival, which describes the process of turning the X-Files into an interactive game.
| About topic news We publish topic news occasionally with a separate page for each update, ensuring that links to our email alerter service continue to remain current. |
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