EP Topic News: 23rd January 2003EP Topic News: 23rd January 2003
| 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. |
El.pub News A free email alerter of the latest news items and associated URLs |
 |
Forward to next week |
Back to previous week |
 |
|
Contents |
IAT 2003, the International Conference on Intelligent Agent Technology sponsored by IEEE Computer Society and Web Intelligence Consortium (WIC) is scheduled to take place in Beijing, China on October 13-17, 2003. IAT 2003 will be jointly held with the 2003 IEEE/WIC International Conference on Web Intelligence. A call for papers is currently open until March 20, 2003. A full list of suggested topics is available on the conference web site and includes: applications; computational models, architecture, and infrastructure; autonomy-oriented computation (AOC) paradigm; learning and self-adapting agents; data and knowledge management agents; distributed intelligence. A selection of conference papers will be published in a special issue of the "International Journal of Web Intelligence and Agent Systems".
URL: IAT 2003 http://www.comp.hkbu.edu.hk/IAT03
URL: WIAS Journal http://wi-consortium.org/journal.html
URL: WI 2003 http://www.comp.hkbu.edu.hk/WI03/
URL: WIC http://wi-consortium.org
Fluxmedia and INRIA have announced the availability of Transmorpher 1.0, a software tool for defining and processing complex transformations of XML documents. It can accept external transformations (eg. XSLT stylesheets) and provide a simple transformation language offering unit transformations (suppression, renaming, regular expression substitutions and query facilities). Transmorpher 1.0 is written in Java 1.3 and takes advantage of external resources (XML parsers, XSLT servers, Regular expression substituters and many other optional components). A graphic user interface, FlowComposer is under development at Fluxmedia. Transmorpher is available to everyone (sources included) under the GPL license (other licenses possible) and is a joint development of the Exmo team of INRIA Rhône-Alpes and Fluxmedia. Its development is being supported by a ODL grant from INRIA.
URL: Transmorpher http://transmorpher.inrialpes.fr
URL: Exmo team http://www.inrialpes.fr/exmo
URL: FlowComposer http://www.fluxmedia.fr/flowcomposer/
URL: Fluxmedia http://www.fluxmedia.fr/
The January 2003 issue of First Monday (volume 8, number 1) is available online. Articles include:
• "The Usability of Open Source Software";
• "The Institutional Design of Open Source Programming: Implications for Addressing Complex Public Policy and Management Problems";
• "Digitizing Old Photographs for the Web".
The ICANNWatch web site has been revamped, whilst the site will continue to provide news and commentary on ICANN the intention is to enable greater interaction between users. Users will need a new password to log-on to the revised site, further details are available from the site.
EUSIDIC Spring Meeting 2003 is subtitled: "Information Policies in a Complex World" and is divided into three sessions exploring themes such as:
• the EU Directive on Copyright,
• digital rights management,
• encryption technology and his applications,
• balancing ownership of content and intellectual property
• access to information for research.The conference, scheduled for Karlsruhe, Germany on 17-18 March 2003, is designed to maximise the opportunity for discussion and debate within and outside the formal sessions. EUSIDIC, the European Association of Information Services serves the international information community by bringing together professionals - users and suppliers - and by providing a forum where they can meet and work together. Member organizations include publishers, online/Internet vendors, learned societies, database producers, information brokers, research services and representatives from a wide range of private and public companies throughout Europe. Further information about the organisation and the conference, are available on the EUSIDIC web site.
ELSPA (The Entertainment & Leisure Software Publishers Association) has announced that UK sales of leisure software and hardware products reached an all time high in 2002 with values reaching £2,074 Million, an increase of 8% up on the previous year. The market was boosted by launches of several major smash hit games. According to ELSPA the biggest growth area last year was in sales of console software boosted by the launches of the new Microsoft’s Xbox and Nintendo’s GameCube consoles. Console software sales increased by 19% compared with PC software, which was down by 5% on 2001 sales. Commenting on these figures, Roger Bennett, Director General of ELSPA said: "The leisure software market is clearly positioned as the fastest growing and most dynamic entertainment media sector globally".
According to ELSPA’s current "Leisure Software Market Report", published by Screen Digest, the UK leisure software market is the third largest country market in the world, after USA and Japan. According to the report "consumers in the UK now spend more on leisure software than on renting videos or cinema visits" ... "with the value of UK exports of leisure software products exceeding both British film and TV". The next market report, which will forecast through to 2006 is due to be published early this year.
ELSPA, through its contract with ChartTrack, collects, collates and disseminates information on retail sales of leisure software products, providing the official leisure software charts.
URL: ELSPA http://www.elspa.com/
URL: ChartTrack http://www.chart-track.co.uk
The January issue of the Euromap Language Technologies monthly newsletter has been published online. The newsletter reports on the latest developments in the field of Human Language Technologies from Europe and covers upcoming events and European Commission research calls.
The Scout Report (January 10, 2003) includes an interesting research item explaining that: "British Pathe, one of the oldest media companies in the world, recently made available its entire 3500-hour film archive, covering news, sport, social history and entertainment from 1896 to 1970." Film clips are available for purchase as both low and high resolution files. Well worth a browse. (Source: The Scout Report)
URL: http://www.britishpathe.com/
URL: The Scout Report http://scout.wisc.edu/report/sr/2003/scout-030110.html
The Extreme Markup Languages 2003 Conference is scheduled to take place in Montréal, Canada on August 4-8, 2003. The event covers:
• markup practice and theory;
• knowledge access and navigation;
• formal languages;
• information philosophy;
• development of markup and knowledge aggregation software; and
• ontologies, taxonomies, and vocabularies.A call is currently open for papers, peer reviewers, posters and tutorials. Further details from the conference web site.
URL: http://www.mulberrytech.com/Extreme
URL: http://www.extrememarkup.com/
Simon St.Laurent, XML developer, author and active member of the XML.dev mailing list has announced he is working on a revised version of his: "Outsider's Guide to the W3C". His initial request to the XML.dev list for feedback sparked a good deal of comment and a first draft - he is requesting more.
Simon has licensed the document under an Attribution-ShareAlike 1.0 license from Creative Commons in the the hope that, "it may prove useful for developers writing other guides to the various specification processes".
URL: Outsider's Guide http://simonstl.com/articles/civilw3c.htm
URL: Simon St.Laurent http://simonstl.com
URL: license http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/1.0
The IPR-Helpdesk has launched an e-mail update service providing: news, events, and notification of new documents on their web site. (The project emphasises that this service is distinct from the IPR-Bulletin, which from our understanding is a notification service of when updates have been made to the IPR-Helpdesk site). Subscription to the service, via the link below, is free with users offered a choice as to email frequency and topics covered: intellectual property rights (IPR), and/or research and technological development.
URL: subscribe http://www.ipr-helpdesk.org/Subscribe.action?len=en
URL: http://www.ipr-helpdesk.org
OASIS and UN/CEFACT will cosponsor ebXML Showcase, a special two-day event at XML Europe 2003, 5-6 May 2003 in London. The organisers are encouraging all organisations that have implemented ebXML to consider taking part in this programme, which offers those working with ebXML to learn about planning for, integrating with, and augmenting ebXML applications.
For developers and users, the ebXML Showcase will provide an international forum to discuss the business problems solved, methods employed, and value received from using the ebXML specifications. The deadline for proposals is 31 January 2003. Abstracts of up to 500 words must be submitted via the online form. If selected for the ebXML Showcase, speakers will need to submit a complete paper marked up in XML, using a DTD (to be provided upon acceptance) designed for conference papers, by 15 March 2003. IDEAlliance will provide authoring tools to help write the papers and presentations.
URL: ebXML Showcase http://www.xmleurope.com/2003/ebxml.asp
URL: XML Europe http://www.xmleurope.com/
The EU project, ICMAITN (IST-2001-38635) is holding its 2nd Workshop on Digital Video Asset Management on February 19, 2003 in Warsaw, Poland. A call for papers and participation details are published on the project's web site. The event is intended to be of benefit to people who are, or intend to be, involved in a digital video asset management project within their organisation and for those working in the multimedia field. Topics will include: digital video asset management systems; digital on-line archives; video library asset management systems - current practice and future technology trends.
Streaming Transformations for XML
Streaming Transformations for XML (STX) is described as "a one-pass transformation language for XML documents that builds on the Simple API for XML (SAX). STX is intended as a high-speed, low memory consumption alternative to XSLT. Since it does not require the construction of an in-memory tree, it is suitable for use in resource constrained scenarios". The aim of this project is to develop and maintain STX language specification.
A new version of the STX 1.0 Working Draft has been made available. The main updates include named groups, processing of siblings, text processing, parameters, namespace nodes, and revised STXPath grammar.
URL: STX http://stx.sourceforge.net/
URL: Working Draft http://stx.sourceforge.net/documents/spec-stx-20030114.htmleXist XML DB 0.9
The eXist project has announced release 0.9 of the eXist Open Source XML DB. According to its developers this release "fixes two of the remaining weak points of eXist, indexing performance and scalability. Storing more than just a few megabytes in a single database collection is no longer a problem; index files consume less disk space, and indexing speed has improved by an order of magnitude. New features include support for user authentication, access control, and basic XInclude on the server".
URL: http://exist-db.org
XMLmind - XML Editor Version 2
XMLmind.com has announced the availability of a "developer license" for the XMLmind XML Editor Version 2. According to the company, "the developer license allows a company developing, marketing, and selling a software product to integrate in this product a custom XML editor based on XXE Professional Edition components. This license also allows such company to bundle XXE as is with their product. Once this license has been purchased, there are no royalties or runtime fees to pay to XMLmind".
The developer's kit, documentation and code samples, can downloaded free of charge from the company's web site.
URL: XML Editor Version 2 http://www.xmlmind.com/xmleditor/
URL: download area http://www.xmlmind.com/xmleditor/download.shtml
ERPANET has announced the launch of two "erpaProducts" and its redesigned web site. ERPANET works to enhance the preservation of cultural and scientific digital objects through raising awareness, providing access to experience, sharing policies and strategies, and improving practices. To achieve this, ERPANET has launched two services available through the web: erpaAssessments and erpaAdvisory.
• erpaAssessments are described as authoritative commentaries (which will be updated regularly) on key articles, monographs, and projects in the field of digital preservation. More detailed than abstracts, these value-added commentaries offer critical insight and contextualise literature within the field. The service offers: review-based gateway to activities; analytic reviews of pivotal published and online literature; and assessment of relevant technical guidelines and standards.
• erpaAdvisory is described as a web-based advisory service open to all those with a stake in the preservation of, and the provision of access to, digital materials. This service: provides the community with access to digital preservation professionals; makes available a resource of authoritative answers to digital preservation questions; and makes accessible examples of best practice. Questions to the advisory service can be asked in English, Italian, French and German.
Registration is required to access both services which are available free of charge.
Microsoft has announced the availability of the final release of its digital media platform: Windows Media 9 Series. The company also announced a new licensing programme for Windows Media Audio and Video 9 Series aimed at device manufacturers and software developers.
• The final versions of Windows Media Player 9 Series, Windows Media Encoder 9 Series and Windows Media 9 Series SDK are available for download from:
URL: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/download/default.asp
• The final version of Windows Media Services 9 Series will be available with the upcoming release of Windows .NET Server 2003. Release Candidate 2 of Windows .NET Server is from:
URL: http://www.microsoft.com/windows.netserver/preview/default.mspx
• Microsoft has implemented "web-based licensing for Windows Media" at:
URL: Windows Media http://www.microsoft.com/windowsmedia/
A group of IT vendors, consisting of Fujitsu, Hitachi, NEC, Oracle, Sonic Software, and Sun Microsystems have published a working draft of the Web Services Reliability (WS-Reliability) specification. WS-Reliability is a specification aimed at developers wishing to build reliable communication between Web services. The spec is apparently based on extensions to the Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP). Following collaboration on the specification draft, the companies "plan to submit WS-Reliability to a standards body on a royalty-free basis".
It should be noted, however, that Microsoft are amongst a number of the higher profile vendors in the web services space who are not involved in promoting the specification. The WS-Reliability specification working draft is available royalty free for download from each of the co-editors' web sites.
URL: Fujitsu http://xml.fujitsu.com/en/about/ws_r.html
URL: Hitachi http://www.hitachi.co.jp/soft/wsrm/
URL: NEC (downloadable .zip file) http://www.nec.co.jp/press/ja/0301/WS-ReliabilityV1.0Public.zip
URL: Oracle http://otn.oracle.com/tech/webservices/htdocs/spec/ws-reliability.html
URL: Sonic Software http://www.sonicsoftware.com/wsreliability
URL: Sun Microsystems http://sunonedev.sun.com/platform/technologies/technologies_mv.html
VIE 2003 - International Conference on Visual Information Engineering is the first in a new series of conferences addressing the converging areas that together make the field of visual information engineering. Scheduled to take place at University of Surrey, Guildford, UK on 7-9 July 2003, the conference brings together researchers, developers, creators, educators, and practitioners in image processing, machine vision, computer graphics and visual communications to share their latest achievements and explore future directions and synergies in these exciting areas. A call for papers is open until 3 February, 2003 and submissions are invited on topics including, but not limited to: visual communication, image interpretation, image and video analysis, storage, retrieval and multimedia, graphics, architectures and implementation, applications
In addition to traditional research papers, the committee also welcomes submissions covering practical systems, commercial solutions and business topics related to visual information engineering, presenting well evaluated applications and studies which clearly show thorough understanding of the
underlying principles.For more information on the conference and the topic areas, and to submit a paper see the conference web site.
The January 2003 issue of D-Lib Magazine has been published online and there are six articles, which include:
• "On Making and Identifying a 'Copy'", by Norman Paskin, International DOI Foundation;
• "Building Safety Systems with Dynamic Disseminations of Multimedia Digital Objects";
• "MOAC - A Report on Integrating Museum and Archive Access in the Online Archive of California";
• "DSpace: An Open Source Dynamic Digital Repository";
• "iVia Open Source Virtual Library System";
• "Open Archives Activities and Experiences in Europe: An Overview by the Open Archives Forum".There are also three conference reports on:
• "Digital Libraries: Advanced Methods and Technologies, Digital Collections", report on RCDL'2002 - the 4th All-Russian Scientific Conference, Dubna, 15 - 17 October 2002
• "ASIST 2002: Report on the Annual Meeting of the American Society for Information Science and Technology", 18 - 21 November 2002, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
• "The Fifth International Conference on Asian Digital Libraries (ICADL 2002)", 11 - 14 December 2002,
SingaporeD-Lib also includes a number of smaller features in D-Lib Magazine’s "In Brief" column, excerpts from recent press releases, and news of upcoming conferences and other items of interest in "Clips and Pointers".
URL: http://www.dlib.org/
A reminder that the International Conference on Cross-media Service Delivery is scheduled to take place on May 30-31, 2003 on the Greek island of Santorini. The conference aims to bring together a cross-disciplinary core of participants to address the technical and business issues of cross-media publishing and service delivery technologies.
The conference seeks to promote discussion and interaction between researchers, technology experts, electronic media publishers, digital content providers, as well as e-business companies, ISPs, network operators, broadcasters, and multimedia equipment and software developers. A complete list of the topics covered is featured on the event web site along with booking details.
In a posting to the XML.dev list, Simon St.Laurent observes that "conversations about XML and hypertext have been scattered for a long time", being discussed periodically in a number of different online fora. He goes on to note that "although hypertext is far from a dominant application of XML, there still seems to be plenty of interest in the subject".
It is with this in mind that an xml-hypertext list is being promoted. "The xml-hypertext@xmlhack.com list is designed to bring these many discussions together into a forum that focuses more squarely on hypertext. xml-hypertext is an unmoderated list, though only subscribers may post".
URL: archives http://lists.usefulinc.com/pipermail/xml-hypertext/
URL: subscribe http://lists.usefulinc.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/xml-hypertext
Email: Simon St.Laurent mailto:simonstl@simonstl.com
The MakeSparksFly web site's next live online debate will address the topic of copyright and music piracy and is entitled: "Music Piracy - Victimless Crime or Outright Theft?" It will take place on the www.makesparksfly.com web site, which focuses on intellectual property, on February 14, 2003 at 14.00hrs GMT.
The forum will be moderated by Ruth Soedentorp, Professor of Intellectual Property Education at Bournemouth University. She will be joined by high level panellists including Anthony Murphy, Director of the Copyright Directorate at the UK's Patent Office, Frances Lowe, Director General of British Music Rights, the organisation that promotes the interests of British Composers, Songwriters and Musicians and Ed Averdieck of OD2, a European digital distributor of music. Participants will include musicians, copyright lawyers, record company executives, entertainment accountants and peer-to-peer network operators.
www.makesparksfly.com is described as an independent online community based web site that is designed to promote awareness and reform of issues surrounding intellectual property rights worldwide through widespread dialogue among interested observers, experts and stakeholders. Registration is free and grants users access to all areas of the site, including: participation in live conferences, posting privileges on discussion forums, personalised online identity with biography, access to events, transcripts and literature, automatic updates on future events.
URL: http://www.makesparksfly.com
URL: registration http://www.makesparksfly.com/forum.cfm?pg=index.php
OASIS is requesting proposals from organisations interested in providing software for and building a registry as described in the RFP referred to below. The purpose of the registry is promote cooperation and collaboration between OASIS technical committees (TCs) and with the committees and working groups of other standards development organisations (SDOs) by sharing information about work being developed.
The multi-level registry will store information about the SDO (including OASIS), its committees, and work, specifications, and glossary entries developed by the committee or SDO. The RFP, which includes a description of the proposed registry, may be found via the link below.
URL: registry RFP http://www.oasis-open.org/documents/registry_rfp.pdf
URL: OASIS http://www.oasis-open.org
We have received an announcement that the eContent Programme has launched its third call for proposals. Proposals for demonstration projects and accompanying measures are being invited under the fixed deadline call with a closing date of 21 March, 2003. Proposals for definition phase projects are being invited under a continuous submission scheme (valid until 28 May 2004). Proposals should fall within the scope of its three action lines:
• improving access to and use of public sector information;
• enhancing content production in a multilingual and multi-cultural environment;
• increasing dynamism in the digital content market.The call text published in the Official Journal, C 320/13, 20 December 2002 as well as the workprogramme 2003-2004 can be downloaded from CORDIS, which also features details of the upcoming national information days to present the CFP (under the events section).
The Commission is organising an Information Day in Luxembourg on 11 February, 2003 an agenda along with registration details are available online. There are a number of other InfoDays scheduled across Europe including one by the UKIShelp project on the afternoon on February 7, 2003 at the DTI Conference Centre in London. Included in the programme will be a briefing on a recent French initiative to help build international collaborative partnerships in the e-Content area. Further information and a registration form can be found on the Events Diary of UKIShelp web site.
URL: eContent Call http://www.cordis.lu/econtent/call201202.htm
URL: Call events http://www.cordis.lu/econtent/events.htm
URL: InfoDay http://www.content-village.org/articles.asp?id=365
URL: eContent Programme http://www.cordis.lu/econtent
URL: UKIShelp http://www.ukishelp.co.uk/framework6/events/
According to Jakob Nielsen: "Development projects should spend 10% of their budget on usability. Following a usability redesign, web sites increase usability by 135% on average; intranets improve slightly less". Read more in Nielsen's Alertbox essay of January 7, 2003 published online.
To meet the growing demand for even greater storage capacity for data, video and audio files, Toshiba America Electronic Components (TAEC) has announced the introduction of its 256MB Secure Digital Memory Card. The card has been developed to "meet the latest needs of applications requiring higher densities of file storage, including new cameras and camcorders that enable streaming of short video clips and PDAs that enable users to view or edit documents transferred from their computers". Toshiba plans to launch a 512MB Card in the second quarter of 2003.
Announcing the launch, Toshiba reported that: "IDC expects worldwide shipments in the memory card market to increase from 52.7 million units in 2002 to 271.2 million units in 2006".
URL: http://chips.toshiba.com/
URL: TAEC http://www.toshiba.com/taec
O'Reilly have published the 3rd Edition of their concise and portable quick reference guide: "Webmaster in a Nutshell". The book is an extremely handy resource that covers a wide range of technologies, including: HTML, CSS, XML, CGI, JavaScript, HTTP, PHP, and Apache.
O'Reilly have also published the third edition "Apache: The Definitive Guide" their reference guide for Apache web server programmers and administrators. Chapter 11, "Security", is available free online.
URL: Webmaster in a Nutshell http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/webmaster3/?CMP=EM13462
URL: Apache Guide http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/apache3/
URL: Apache Security Chapter http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/apache3/chapter/index.html
According to a report published on CORDIS, the European economic area joint committee has concluded an agreement extending scientific cooperation between the EU and three European free trade association (EFTA) states to include the Sixth Framework Programme (FP6). Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein have all secured equal participation status under FP6. Switzerland, the fourth EFTA state is currently involved in separate negotiations with the EU on FP6 participation.
URL: EFTA http://secretariat.efta.int/
URL: CORDIS http://www.cordis.lu/
| 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. |
El.pub News A free email alerter of the latest news items and associated URLs |
|
|
Forward to next week |
Back to previous week |
|
|
File
Downloads - Please note
|
| File downloads from the El.pub site are currently suspended - the links however have not been updated to reflect this. If you would like access to a particular download file - please email webmasters@elpub.org with a suitable request confirming a description of the file you wish to download. |
El.pub - Interactive
Electronic Publishing R & D News and Resources
We welcome feedback
and contributions to the information service, and proposals for subjects for
the news service (mail to: webmasters@elpub.org)
Edited by: Logical Events Limited - electronic marketing, search engine marketing, pay per click advertising, search engine optimisation, website optimisation consultants in London, UK. Visit our website at: www.logicalevents.org
Last up-dated: 16 February 2024
© 2024 Copyright and disclaimer El.pub and www.elpub.org are brand names owned by Logical Events Limited - no unauthorised use of them or the contents of this website is permitted without prior permission.