EP Topic News: 6th February 2003EP Topic News: 6th February 2003
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Due to the proliferation of conference announcements and calls for papers that we have been receiving in recent weeks we have decided to publish a page on El.pub dedicated to events. This events page enables us to highlight those events that may be of particular interest to El.pub readers. It will enable us to provide additional information of use to our readers including:
• calls for papers;
• calls for other forms of active participation such as project presentations or consortium building requests;
• details of European Commission supported Information days;
• project-supported events and concertation meetings.We will continue to publish the more complete chronological lists of events on two additional pages of the site:
• Conferences Europe, 2003 Onwards, see: base05.htm
• Conferences outside Europe, 2003 Onwards, see: connone.htmIn addition we publish a complete list of events run by the INFORM project (the editors of El.pub), along with papers, slides and reports published during or following the event on the "Downloadable studies, event papers and reports" page, see: base08.htm
Weekly additions to the new events page will be highlighted in El.pub Weekly.
URL: Events News and Resources on El.pub events.htm
Ericsson has conducted an IPv6 over 3G UMTS/WCDMA network demonstration as part of the EU-project IPv6 Wireless Internet Initiative (6WINIT). According to the project, the demo signifies an important step towards the vision of mobile users being "Always Best Connected". Three key technologies were brought together to show the usefulness of seamless mobile services: next generation Internet (IPv6), 3G (UMTS/WCDMA) and Multi-Access.
Devised as a medical emergency system, called Guardian Angel, the demo enabled seamless communication between different types of access networks - whatever is the best available in a certain location. For example, in a hospital setting, doctors could observe the patient in the ambulance, check the heart rate and blood pressure, using mobile networks such as GSM/GPRS or UMTS/WCDMA. Once the ambulance reaches the hospital, the system can automatically switch over to an indoor WLAN hot spot. Data flows can use separate network interfaces in parallel. For example, if the WLAN does not have sufficient reliability, vital data transmissions could simultaneously use a GSM/GPRS or UMTS/WCDMA channel.
The demonstration was a joint effort within the 6WINIT project consisting of University Hospital at Tübingen, University of Stuttgart Computing Center, University of Bremen, University College London and Ericsson. It took place at Ericsson's headquarters in Stockholm in the presence of invited EU-officials as part of the Final Review of the EU project.
URL: 6WINIT http://www.6winit.org/
URL: Ericsson press release http://www.ericsson.com/press/20030131-142743.html
The US-based Web Marketing Association (WMA) has launched the WebAward Internet Advertising Competition (IAC) Awards, in an effort to "honour excellence in online advertising and to recognise the individuals and organisations responsible for the best in Internet marketing".
URL: WMA http://www.webaward.org
URL: WebAward http://www.advertisingcompetition.org
EUROGRID, funded by the European Commission through the IST programme in the Fifth Framework Programme, is project that brings together 11 partners from 6 countries with the aim of creating an international network of high performance computing centres. The primary aim of the project is to demonstrate the use of high performance computer Grid networks in four selected scientific areas. Further information is available on the project web site.
CORDIS Focus reports that the European Commission has adopted a programme to promote the use of Information Society Technologies (NICT) to improve e-learning systems. The programme will focus on three themes: combating digital illiteracy, development of the concept of "virtual campuses", facilitation of pan-European digital collaboration between schools. The scheme also aims to promote collaboration and cooperation between those agencies and organisations active in the sector along with EU participation in international projects conducted by institutions such as OECD (Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development). There is further information concerning the Commission's e-learning policies on the Europa site.
URL: http://europa.eu.int/comm/education/elearning/index.html
InFlow is a content management system based on open source software developed by an Italian company who is seeking collaboration in developing the software and bringing it to market. The software is designed to simplify workflows and content management for companies publishing on the web and corporate intranets. the code is available under a General Public Licence (GPL).
Further information via RECITAL - the The Innovation Relay Centre for central Italy. The The Innovation Relay Centre offers its services to enterprises, in particular to SMEs, and also to universities and research centres in order to promote local technology and encourage collaboration in its development via the web site below.
The Secure Digital Music Initiative (SDMI), which began work on a compressed digital music format in 1999, has handed responsibility of its technology to the Digital Media Device Association (DMDA). Some industry commentators are sceptical about the potential for the format to survive given the current dominance of MP3 in the digital music arena. Add to this the commercial push that Microsoft is giving its own proprietary Windows Media, and it is not difficult to appreciate the sceptics' concerns regarding the survival of SDMI.
URL: DMDA http://www.dmda.org
URL: SDMI http://www.sdmi.org
URL: Windows Media http://www.microsoft.com/windowsmedia/
The "on-to-knowledge" project, funded under the IST Programme, and now completed, brought together research and academic institutions along with commercial organisations across Europe. The project's key aim was to research the role that ontology-based tools have in addressing effective delivery of "knowledge management". The results of the project have been published on their site, which also details work carried-out attempting to identify an ontology language standard which could be adopted by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C).
An article in Internetnews.com claims that a number of US newspaper publishers saw growth in their online activities during 2002. The article claims that Knight-Ridder, The Washington Post, and The Wall Street Journal (WSJ.com) all saw modest growth in their online operations both in terms of subscriber numbers and revenues generated. The report notes, however, that online revenues still remain a very small percentage of total revenues at newspaper companies.
URL: http://www.internetnews.com/IAR/article.php/10789_1574571
The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) has published VoiceXML 2.0 as a W3C Candidate Recommendation. VoiceXML provides a standard implementation of the W3C's Speech Interface Framework which has been a work item within the consortium since 1999. VoiceXML 2.0 should enable developers to create audio dialogs that feature synthesised speech, digitized audio, recognition of spoken and DTMF (touch-tone) key input, recording of spoken input, telephony, and mixed-initiative conversations.
URL: W3C Speech Interface Framework http://www.w3.org/TR/voice-intro/
URL: W3C http://www.w3.org/
URL: VoiceXML press release http://www.w3.org/2003/01/voicexml2-pressrelease
URL: VoiceXML Recommendation http://www.w3.org/TR/2003/CR-voicexml20-20030128/
VREfresh Issue 219, (dated 1 February, 2003) includes details of a number of product releases of more general interest to El.pub readers:
ImageModeler 3.5, for Windows
REALVIZ has announced availability of ImageModeler 3.5, for Windows XP/2000. (A Mac OSX version of the application also recently began shipping in December 2002.) Using photographs as an approach to 3D content creation, REALVIZ ImageModeler 3.5 is the result of over a year's work.
URL: http://www.realviz.com/products/im/
Outline3D (v 4.0)
ParallelGraphics has released Outline3D (v 4.0) in conjunction with the launch of a new Italian interior design portal based on Outline3D technology. Outline3D is a 3D design service that enables furniture suppliers, interior designers and real estate firms to present a product range to clients over the Internet and company Intranets. The latest version of Outline 3D introduces a simplified installation procedure, faster interior loading, and improved object manipulation.
URL: http://www.Itacabox.com
URL: http://www.outline3D.com
URL: http://www.parallelgraphics.comCOOL 3D Studio
Ulead Systems has introduced COOL 3D Studio, 3D animation software for video production. Based on Ulead's COOL 3D software for creating 3D animation and text for the web and presentation multimedia, COOL 3D Studio offers additional tools designed for video editing professionals. The software equips video professionals with tools intended to streamline 3D text and graphics work. Features include an independent key-frame timeline for each graphic object, the ability to pad frames before, in the middle, or after a given animation, and the power to import 3D Studio Max and DirectX models. Ulead COOL 3D Studio is available for US$129 for the boxed version, and US$ 119 for the electronic download.
URL: http://www.ulead.com
ModelPress 3D Publishing
Myriad has unveiled ModelPress 3D Publishing system at no charge. ModelPress makes 3D models available to downstream users. It consists of two individually downloadable pieces: a publishing utility, which claims compression rates of 70%-98% of the original model size; and the viewer, which installs as a desktop application, but can also be embedded as an ActiveX control for web delivery and viewing.
Software AG, has announced Tamino XML Server 4.1, the latest version of its data management platform, designed for managing XML documents in their native format. Tamino 4.1 has enhanced support for XML standards: XML Schema, XML namespaces, XML Signatures and XQuery. The software runs on Windows 2000 and XP, with support for various flavours of Unix (Sun Solaris, HP Unix, AIX) and Linux being planned for later in 2003.
URL: http://www.softwareag.com
URL: http://www.softwareag.com/corporat/news/dec2002/Tamino_41.htm
A new version of XMLSPY is available for free trial download and according to its developers includes C# code generation (for "improved Support for building Microsoft .NET applications"), support for Oracle XML DB, a graphical XSL:FO designer, and a Web Service Description Language (WSDL) documentation generator.
UMBC AgentNews v8n2 (21 January, 2003) includes a number of news items likely to be of particular interest to El.pub readers.
• R. Michael Young, an assistant professor of computer science at N.C. State University, is studying ways to build artificial intelligence into games so that users get movie-like stories. With such technology a game could adjust to a player's actions and provide a different experience every time it is played.
URL: http://www.newsobserver.com/business/technology/story/2097632p-2001130c.html
• THERE.COM, a "next-generation metaverse" created by by game developer Will Harvey and Jeffrey Ventrella, a Media Lab alife expert, is open for beta testing.
URL: http://there.com/
UMBC AgentNews is a free e-zine which includes recent news and additions to the AgentWeb site.
URL: AgentWeb http://agents.umbc.edu/
URL: AgentWeb News v8n2 http://agents.umbc.edu/08/02/
I3 UPDATE / ENTOVATION International News is a first rate e-zine circulated free by, knowledge management consultancy, David Skyrme & Associates. The newsletter includes feature articles which analyse trends in the knowledge management domain along with a list of up-coming conferences and seminars. Issue No. 69 dated January 2003, recently published, includes a couple of features:
• the first, "Valuing Trust: Knowledge Leaders Air Their Views", expands on the issue of "trust",
• the second, "Models for Metrics - are yours Mechanical or Mental?", considers measurement methods for intellectual capital.The articles are always well written and thought-provoking. Archives of all previous newsletters are available online - where you can also sign-up to receive the monthly email publication.
XML Distilled have released a beta version of their XML Editor which the company describe thus: "The XMLDistilled editor is a lightning-fast native windows editor with color-syntax highlighting. XMLDE's speedbar allows for easy drag/drop editing of XML documents. The editor has support for 7 built-in vocabularies: Relax NG, W3C XML Schema, XSLT, XHTML-Basic, XHTML-Strict, XHTML-Transitional + Frameset, ASP.Net".
Judge for yourself by downloading the software via the link below.
The Forrest team has released of Apache Forrest 0.3. Forrest is an XML standards-oriented project documentation framework built on Apache Cocoon, providing XSLT stylesheets and schemas, images and other resources. Forrest uses these to render the XML source content into a web site via command-line, robot (see http://forrestbot.cocoondev.org), or a dynamic web application. The developers are encouraging El.pub readers to use the software and provide feedback via the email address below.
URL: Apache Forrest http://xml.apache.org/forrest/
URL: Forrest 0.3 download http://www.apache.org/dyn/closer.cgi/xml/forrest/
Email: feedback mailto:forrest-dev@xml.apache.org
IBM are offering a Web Services Tool Kit for Mobile Devices via its AlphaWorks site which offers IBM alpha technologies for free, 90 day trial download and evaluation. According to the company the tool kit provides "tools and run-time environments that allow development of applications that use web services on small mobile devices. This toolkit's Java Web service run-time environment is supported on PoctketPC, Palm, and BlackBerry. The C Web service run-time environment is supported on the Palm".
URL: http://www.alphaWorks.ibm.com/tech/wstkmd?open&l=NT013003,t=awfl
URL: AlphaWorks licensing programme http://www.alphaWorks.ibm.com/license
In addition IBM DeveloperWorks has published a tutorial on accessing web services from mobile applications and an article which considers WS-I usage scenarios.
• "Deliver Web Services to Mobile Apps" is a tutorial which aims to demonstrate how to access web services using J2ME-enabled mobile devices and the kSOAP library.
URL: http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/education/r-wiwsvs.html?ca=dnt-44
• "First look at WS-I Usage Scenarios" - The Web Services Interoperability Organization (WS-I) released its first public Working Group Draft of the WS-I Usage Scenarios document that defines the technical requirements for using Web services in a profile-conformant manner. This article summarises the details of the Scenarios document for the benefit for developers.
URL: http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/library/ws-iuse/?ca=dnt-44
The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) has established a Web Services Choreography Working Group that intends to work on "developing languages and standards to describe the composition and coordination of web services".
Elsevier is publishing The Web Semantics Journal which covers the following technology areas: the semantic web, knowledge technologies, ontology, agents, databases, semantic grid and peer-to-peer technology, information retrieval, language technology, human-computer interaction, knowledge discovery, web standards. The main application areas that are covered by the journal include: e-business, electronic communities, knowledge management, e-Learning, digital libraries.
URL: http://authors.elsevier.com/JournalDetail.html?PubID=671322&Precis=DESC
The proceedings from the Workshop on Ontologies in Agent Systems held at the Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems Conference in Bologna, Italy, in July 2002, are available online.
URL: http://sunsite.informatik.rwth-aachen.de/Publications/CEUR-WS/Vol-66/
Opera Software have released the final version 7 of their highly regarded web browser for Windows.
ParaTools Version 1 is available for download. Created at Southampton University as an offshoot of the OpCit and EPrints projects, ParaTools is a set of Perl modules for the handling of references. It includes:
• reference parsing modules and templates,
• document parsing modules (experimental)
• OpenURL creation/processing routines
• parsing examples
• web service examplesThe toolkit is available under the GNU Public License. The parsing functionality in ParaTools is
already in use in the ParaCite system, and the project is under active development. Potential applications for the software include: converting reference lists into valid OpenURLs; converting existing metadata into valid OpenURLs; collecting metadata from references to carry out internal searches; extracting reference lists from documents.The developers note that they are very interested in user feedback, and the ParaTools web site provides information on submitting bugs and suggestions, as well as contributing code to the project. A mailing list has been created, subscribe via the link below.
URL: download http://paracite.eprints.org/developers/downloads.html
URL: ParaCite system http://paracite.eprints.org
URL: documentation http://paracite.eprints.org/developers/documentation.html
URL: mailing list http://paracite.eprints.org/developers/maillist.html
Stevan Harnad at the University of Southampton in the UK has circulated a request to readers who have downloaded and have created, or are creating, Eprint Archives using the Eprints.org software. The project is attempting to maintain a growing list of Eprints adopters, but many downloaders have not registered themselves. He is requesting users of the software send him an email with the URL of their Eprints Archive in order that they can be added to the list.
URL: registered users http://software.eprints.org/users.php
URL: sites using Eprint http://software.eprints.org/#sites
Email: Stevan Harnad mailto:harnad@ECS.SOTON.AC.UK
The OASIS UDDI Specification Technical Committee has approved UDDI v2 as a Committee Specification, and now starts a 30 day public review prior to submitting this specification to OASIS members for consideration as an OASIS Standard. The public review ends on 3 March, 2003. Comments are welcome from all interested parties and may be submitted to the UDDI Spec comment list via the link below. The specification documents have been published online and include UDDI Version 2: API Specification, Data Structure Reference, XML Schema, Replication Specification, XML Replication Schema, XML Custody Schema, Operator's Specification, WSDL Service Interface Descriptions, tModels.
URL: V2 Spec. documents http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/uddi-spec/tcspecs.shtml#uddiv2
Email: UDDI Spec comment list mailto:uddi-spec-comment@lists.oasis-open.org
URL: comments archive http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/uddi-spec-comment
Info@UK February 2003 edition is available online. Info@UK - is a guide to major UK Information Society developments and news. The bulletin is compiled by the Information Management Research Institute, University of Northumbria on behalf of the British Council but the publishers believe that its contents may be of wider interest to the developer community, particularly in the UK. You can also subscribe to receive a monthly PDF version of the bulletin which is sent via email, send a message to Richard Archer with the subject header "subscribe".
URL: http://infoatuk.britishcouncil.org
Email: "subscribe" mailto:Richard.archer@unn.ac.uk
THQ Wireless, a subsidiary of the video game publisher, THQ Inc. is developing Java-based games for the O2 Games Arcade. O2’s Games Arcade is available in the UK, Germany, Ireland and the Netherlands, running on the Nokia 3410, the Siemens M50 and a range of Java-enabled devices.
URL: THQ http://www.thq.com
"EURASIP Journal on Applied Signal Processing" has published a special issue on "Multimedia Signal Processing" online. Articles include:
• "Musical Instrument Timbres Classification with Spectral Features",
• "Sinusoidal Analysis-Synthesis of Audio Using Perceptual Criteria",
• "An Acoustic Human-Machine Front-End for Multimedia Applications",
• "Embedding Color Watermarks in Color Images",
• "Retrieval by Local Motion",
• "Comparison of Multiepisode Video Summarisation Algorithms",
• "3D Scan-Based Wavelet Transform and Quality Control for Video Coding",
• "Combined Wavelet Video Coding and Error Control for Internet Streaming and Multicast",
• "Unbalanced Multiple-Description Video Coding with Rate-Distortion Optimization".
| 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 |
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