EP Topic News: 13th March 2003

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INFORM Workshop - "User Needs for Mobile Electronic Information Services"

The INFORM Workshop entitled: "User Needs for Mobile Electronic Information Services" is scheduled to take place in Athens, on 20 March, 2003.

An increasing number of users of innovative electronic information services want to access services with various devices and platforms, via different networks, at any time and from any place. The aim of this workshop is to exchange knowledge about how electronic publishing projects elicited user requirements and to enhance awareness of new techniques and methods for user needs analysis.

The workshop is free of charge for IST project participants and will bring together experts in user-centred product creation and practitioners from projects developing mobile electronic information services.

The event is organised by ACit GmbH and hosted by INTRACOM in association with the European Commission INFORM project (the publishers of El.pub) which is funded by the Interactive Electronic Publishing sector of the IST programme.

The workshop is open to a limited number of up to 50 participants, with places being allocated on a first-come first-served basis.

Workshop Agenda

To register please send the following information by email or fax: Name, Project, Organisation, Address, Email, Phone and Fax.

Email: registrations mailto:workshops@acit.net
Fax: registrations +49 7252 973 771
URL: ACit http://www.acit.net
URL: INTRACOM http://www.intracom.gr
URL: INFORM http://www.elpub.org

Information Retrieval research CFP

A call for papers is open for a special issue of the Information Processing and Management Journal which will be subtitled: "Bayesian Networks and Information Retrieval". As the call states:

"This Special Issue aims at presenting a landmark set of research papers which show the best research in the field on different aspects of the application of Belief Networks to Information Retrieval, not only focused to the classical retrieval, but also dealing with solutions to current subfields as Structured Documents, Cross-Language Information Retrieval or new technologies such as MPEG-7, among others, where intensive research is being carried out."

Suggested topics include, but are not limited to:

• Information Retrieval Models applied to classical document collections.
• Information Retrieval Models for structured document collections based on SGML, XML.
• Cross-language retrieval.
• Document classification, clustering and filtering.
• Web retrieval.
• Applications to hypertext.
• Indexing and summarisation.
• Multimedia information access, as video, audio, image retrieval, also applied to new technologies as MPEG-7 videos.

Submissions, by July 1, 2003 should follow the style stipulated in the Guide for Authors prepared by "Information Processing and Management", but should be submitted in electronic form to guest editor Juan M. Fernández-Luna via the email below.

URL: author guidelines http://www.elsevier.nl/locate/infoproman
Email: Juan M. Fernández-Luna mailto:jmfluna@ujaen.es

O'Reilly supports bloggers

Weblogs are a growing part of O'Reilly Network content, the network boasts more than 80 bloggers who take turns publishing items every day. According to the company weblogs account for more than one-tenth of overall page traffic throughout the O'Reilly Network which includes their domain sites such as ONJava, ONLamp, and Mac DevCenter, plus forums and search results. The site now offers: weblogs.oreilly.com, enabling visitors to view the blogs published during the previous month, along with descriptions about the active contributors, and a topics list to enable users to pinpoint content of particular interest to themselves.

URL: http://weblogs.oreilly.com

China/EU research cooperation

The role of the China-EU S&T Cooperation Promotion Office in Beijing is to:

• trace, understand and analyse the EU science and technology policy as well as the development of the Framework Programme, publishing reports as well as the translations of the relative EU documents.

• disseminate information on the EU policy, Framework Programme and China/EU cooperation progress to Chinese enterprises and research institutions through the Internet, publications and conferences.

• study the EU research programme, and attempt to establish partnerships between organisations in China and EU member states.

• offer consultation and guidance to the Chinese partners wishing to participate in European research programmes and offer similar services to European organisations wishing to identify Chinese partners.

URL: http://www.ceco.org.cn/en/e_ceco_jj.htm

"Research and Innovation" work programme

According to CORDIS Focus, the Commission's Enterprise DG has published its work programme for the "Research and Innovation" thematic area of the Sixth Framework Programme (FP6). This theme comes under the 'Structuring the European Research Area (ERA)' specific programme, which aims to address the key structural weaknesses preventing the maximum economic and social benefits being drawn from European research.

The work programme provides an introduction to the objectives of the research and innovation thematic area, details of the technical content of the thematic area, and information on upcoming calls. The thematic area seeks to promote a more innovation friendly environment throughout the EU, stimulate technological innovation, and encourage the setting up of innovative technology businesses, using the following approaches:

• setting up the basis of a European innovation system by networking players, promoting cooperation, breaking down barriers, and encouraging transnational learning;
• investigate and test new approaches, extract lessons from Community research projects, and promote entrepreneurial innovation;
• offer services that need to be provided on a European scale. (Source: CORDIS)

URL: http://www.cordis.lu/fp6/innovation.htm

SMEs in FP6 call

The European Commission has published a call for proposals (on March 1, 2003) in the area of "stepping up economic and technological intelligence" under the FP6 "Research and Innovation" activity. The call specifically covers the participation of small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs), or SME groupings, in FP6, particularly within the new instruments: integrated projects and networks of excellence. The call focuses on the use of specific instruments to be used by proposed support and coordination actions. The total indicative budget for this call is estimated at between 200,000 and 2 million euro and the deadline for submitting proposal documents is April 29, 2003. (Source: CORDIS)

URL: http://fp6.cordis.lu/fp6/call_details.cfm?CALL_ID=59

DOI News March 2003

DOI News is a public news release from the The International DOI (Digital Object Identifier) Foundation. Available as a free email the latest issue includes:

• DOI tools details of a number of tools to help in using DOIs

URL: http://www.doi.org/tools.html

• "Metadata interoperability: DOI signs metadata agreement" with several other major standards activities (among them GILS, ONIX, MARC21, CERIF, IEEE/LOM and Dublin Core) in committing to assign URI identifiers to all metadata elements it uses, and to support the stability, persistence, and maintenance of the identifiers.

URL: http://www.cores-eu.net/interoperability/

• "DOI develops advanced functionality, common metadata tools" which describes the most recent advances in DOI implementation.

- "DOI applications continue to flourish" which reports that the largest current DOI application, CrossRef (an association of the world's leading 180 scholarly publishers) now has 6.6 million DOIs registered from 6,900 journals, with over 2 million DOI resolutions per month.

URL: http://www.crossref.org

- Content Directions, Inc. have announced agreements with Business & Legal Reports, Inc., to register DOIs for BLR's electronic and print products; with Humana Press to assign DOIs across its entire print and eBooks publishing program; and a strategic alliance with Publishing Dimensions to easily and rapidly aid publishers to assign DOIs to their electronic and content marketed on the Internet.

URL: http://www.contentdirections.com/news.htm

- TSO is demonstrating DOI multiple resolution and interoperability across distributed legislative information sources in the UK Government and Legal and Publishing sectors.

URL: http://www.tso.co.uk

Subscribe to the newsletter via the DOI Foundation web site.

URL: DOI http://www.doi.org/

Copyright and Licensing project

The Copyright and Licensing for Digital Preservation project is being funded by the UKs Arts and Humanities Research Board to investigate whether and how copyright law and current licensing practices affect the provision of long-term access to digital content. The project includes questionnaire surveys and in-depth interviews with a range of stakeholder groups, including rights holders and all library and information service sectors.

The research will explore current licensing arrangements between content creators, publisher and libraries; awareness of digital preservation issues and preservation activities and views on responsibilities for preserving digital information. The project aims to make recommendations for amendments to current legislation, develop model licences for long-term access to digital materials if appropriate and make suggestions on how preservation responsibilities can be carried out.

If you would like more information on the project or to complete an online questionnaire, please visit the project web site.

URL: project http://www.lboro.ac.uk/departments/dis/disresearch/CLDP/index.htm
URL: publisher questionnaire http://www.lboro.ac.uk/departments/dis/disresearch/CLDP/Publishers_Questionnaire.htm

Knowledge@Wharton Newsletter

Knowledge@Wharton, published by the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania has launched a web site in collaboration with Universia.net called Universia Knowledge@Wharton. The new site, which is published in both Spanish and Portuguese, will enable the publishers to deliver their business-related news service to Spanish and Portuguese speakers around the world. Apparently Universia.net is the "largest university web portal with 635 member universities in Spain, Portugal and Latin America".

URL: Universia Knowledge@Wharton http://www.wharton.universia.net/
URL: Knowledge@Wharton http://www.wharton.upenn.edu/

Intellidimension RDF Gateway 1.0

Intellidimension describes its RDF Gateway as "a platform for Semantic Web development, combining the capabilities of an RDF data management system with a full-featured web server". The RDF Gateway is an ASP-like server-side scripting environment with a built-in deductive database providing a platform for developing applications that gather, query, organize, transform, and deliver information. RDFQL, the language of RDF Gateway, is based upon ECMAScript (JavaScript) and includes SQL-like extensions for querying distributed RDF data. A full-featured evaluation version, along with product documentation is available for download from the Intellidimension site.

URL: http://www.intellidimension.com/

EU - citizens and governance research

CORDIS, the European Commission's Research and Development Information Service, is providing a dedicated service for "citizens and governance" research related activities. The projects carried out in this area are intended to mobilise European research in the economic, political and social sciences so as to address the emergence of a knowledge-based society and new forms of relationships between citizens and institutions.

The new service, part of the FP6 portal, offers central access to all related information, including guidance, news and direct links to assist applications for research funding opportunities, for which 225 million euro is earmarked.

URL: http://www.cordis.lu/citizens

Mobile computing studies

The Thinkmobile Newsletter is a free e-zine published by Jupitermedia Corporation is one of many which fall under the Internet.com banner. The electronic news alerter service, published daily and weekly, provides one line summaries of the brief news articles published online concerned with mobile communications, in particular telecoms. Though generally product or commercially oriented the news items also cover studies into the market development of the sector, such as:

• Mobile phone penetration rates are slowing, but the adoption of text messaging is growing rapidly, according to a new study from Upoc, a mobile marketing platform developer.

URL: http://www.thinkmobile.com/Content/Detail.asp?CTID=1&ID=6337

• After a lackluster 2002, the PDA market is poised for growth this year, according to a new study from In-Stat/MDR.

URL: http://www.thinkmobile.com/Content/Detail.asp?CTID=1&ID=6350

• The embedded camera phone market is expected to double from 2002 to 2003, according to a new report from Strategy Analytics.

URL: http://www.thinkmobile.com/Content/Detail.asp?CTID=1&ID=6364

URL: Thinkmobile Newsletter http://www.thinkmobile.com

Safer Internet News March 2003

The March 2003 issue of The Safer Internet News, a free newsletter available online or delivered electronically in Acrobat (.pdf) format has been published by the European Commission's Safer Internet Action Plan. A couple of news items worthy of particular note (more detailed information from the site):

• "New resolution on the follow-up of the Safer Internet Action Plan" details progress on a Commission proposal to extend for a further two years the four-year action plan which ran from 1999-2002, introduce new elements and make several adjustments to the way that the action plan has been implemented so far.

• The Consumers for Internet Safety Awareness (CISA) project has published its final report. One of the key outputs of the CISA project was its policy document on the use of rating systems, web site quality assurance schemes and options for domain names.

The newsletter is published in English, French and German.

URL: http://www.saferinternet.org/

Content cusomisation using RDF

The Internet Content Rating Association (ICRA) is "an international, independent organisation that empowers the public, especially parents, to make informed decisions about electronic media by means of the open and objective labelling of content". ICRA is aiming to develop an RDF (Resource Description Framework) application that:

• supports multiple content classification vocabularies; can be applied to multiple media types such as text, audiovisual materials and multimedia presentations;
• works with multiple device types such as desktop PCs, handheld devices, mobile devices and a wide range of consumer electronics such as MP3 and DVD players;
• supports both embedded and external mark-up, whether produced by the content provider themselves
(first party descriptions) or by others (third party descriptions);
• provides a foundation for multiple customisation and personalisation strategies.

URL: http://www.icra.org/

Semantic Web Services Consortium

The International Joint Semantic Web Services ad hoc Consortium (SWSC) is planning to oversee and aid in the development of standards to "support intelligent web services".

URL: http://swsc.semanticweb.org/

Semantic navigation

Amblit Navigator, described as "the intelligent semantic browser", provides an intelligent mechanism to browse the Internet and manage content, though the ability to link and search notes, documents files and programs. "Through its Semantic Agent, Amblit Navigator understands thousands of English sentences for those preferring natural language interactions".

URL: http://www.amblit.com/products/index.html

WebServices.XML.com

XML.com has launched what it calls a sister site, WebServices.XML.com, to "give more room to the exploration and coverage of web services, and move outside the scope of purely XML-related matters". WebServices.XML.com will examine the infrastructure, application, and fun of web services and aims to seek out innovation and controversy as well as mainstream topics. More information on the site, and to find out how you can be involved, as a reader or contributor, read the introduction on the site. Managing Editor Edd Dumbill provides an introduction to the new site, and guidelines for potential authors. You can sign-up to an update e-zine at the site.

URL: introduction http://webservices.xml.com/pub/a/ws/2003/03/04/index.html
URL: http://webservices.xml.com/

XML.com resources

As XML.com reports, "increasingly, XML developers have found that the first generation of XML processing tools didn't quite suit their needs. SAX-based processing is fast, sure, but tends to become complex to program against. Meanwhile, tree-based manipulation is convenient, but doesn't scale very well in the face of large datasets". They have published an article which introduces Streaming Transformations for XML (STX) - an approach which attempts to merge the stream-based efficiency of SAX with the programming convenience of XSLT.

URL: http://www.xml.com/pub/a/2003/02/26/stx.html

Unstructured Information Management

The "EURASIP Journal on Applied Signal Processing" Special Issue on "Unstructured Information Management from Multimedia Data Sources" has been published and contains the following articles:

• "Robust Techniques for Organizing and Retrieving Spoken Documents",
• "Probabilistic Aspects in Spoken Document Retrieval",
• "A Statistical Approach to Automatic Speech Summarization",
• "Structuring Broadcast Audio for Information Access",
• "Automatic Hierarchical Color Image Classification",
• "Summarizing Audiovisual Contents of a Video Program",
• "Semantic Indexing of Multimedia Content Using Visual, Audio, and Text Cues",
• "A Probabilistic Multimedia Retrieval Model and Its Evaluation",
• "Motion Pattern-Based Video Classification and Retrieval",
• "Search the Audio, Browse the Video-A Generic Paradigm for Video Collections".

Further details concerning the journal which is available on subscription is available from the site below.

URL: http://www.eurasip-jasp.org

Knowledge Management news and views

The February 2003 issue of I3 UPDATE / ENTOVATION International News (Issue No. 70) has been published. Distributed free, this electronic newsletter is published online by Skyrme Associates a UK consultancy which specialises in the use and application of knowledge management techniques. Always thought provoking, the articles provide a range of opinion on both the technical and managerial issues surrounding the implementation of knowledge management in organisations.

URL: http://www.skyrme.com/

Webreference considers blogging

The Webreference Update Newsletter of February 27, 2003 has links to a couple of articles which concentrate on blogging and a pointer to a piece of software that avails itself of the technique.

• CNET interviews Dave Winer, "who now heads up the 'Blogs at Harvard Initiative' to teach students and teachers about blogging".

URL: http://www.scripting.com
URL: http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/
URL: http://news.com.com/2008-1082-985714.html

• "Blog publishers stealing Web limelight" an article on Reuters.com which discusses how blogging has gone mainstream with the potential for changing the nature of journalism.

URL: http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=2293758

• NewsGator which aggregates RSS news feeds into Microsoft Outlook.

URL: http://www.newsgator.com/

URL: http://www.webreference.com/new/

IBM Technology Resources

The IBM developerWorks Newsletter Technology Edition (February 27, 2003) includes:

• "Deep into Voice XML, Part 2" - an online tutorial which builds upon an earlier tutorial on Voice XML by guiding you through the programming phase, readying you for the final segment on design and implementation. Registration, which is free, is required.

URL: http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/education/r-wivoice3.html?ca=dnt-48t

• "Web services security, Part 1" - which introduces various aspects of the Web Services Security Framework and provides step-by-step guidelines on how to write and deploy secure web services applications using HTTP as the transport vehicle. This article explains three methods to secure Web services applications such as, HTTP basic authorization, Secure Socket Layer (SSL) over HTTP (HTTPS), and a hybrid of HTTP basic authorization with HTTPS. The second article in this series will provide an introduction to the WS-Security model and how it can be used it to secure your Web services applications.

URL: http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/library/ws-sec1.html?ca=dnt-48t

• "Design XML schemas using UML" - Unified Modeling Language (UML) is an industry standard that's used in modeling business concepts when building software systems in an object-oriented manner. Recently, XML has gained ground in becoming a key enabler of these systems in terms of transport of information and commands. XML schemas, which are used to define and constrain the nature of XML exchanged, have consequently come into the limelight. This article discusses the use of UML in designing XML schemas and gives a hands-on approach for using the UML framework to create XML vocabularies.

URL: http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/xml/library/x-umlschem/?ca=dnt-48t

The developerWorks Newsletters (Technology and Product versions) are available online, and are also delivered electronically via email free.

URL: http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/?ca=dnt-48t

W3C Tech Plenary slides

The presentations from the W3C Tech Plenary held earlier in March are now available online, along with interesting background papers.

URL: http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/meetings/tech-200303/
URL: some background http://tantek.com/log/2003/03.html

WSDL 1.2 working draft published

The Web Services Description Language (WSDL) 1.2 Working Draft has been published and describes this XML language for describing Web services. This specification defines the core language which can be used to describe Web services based on an abstract model of what the service offers.

URL: http://www.w3.org/TR/2003/WD-wsdl12-20030303/

Books for information professionals

Chandos Publishing have launched a web site aimed at busy information professionals and provides information on our their series of books on information management/librarianship.

URL:http://www.chandospublishing.com

Graphics titles merge

Future Publishing Limited, the publisher of 3D World, has recently bought the rights to the CGI title, and will incorporate the content into 3D World. CGI was aimed at developers working in the UK post production and effects industry. The revamped 3D World will include industry news coverage, behind-the-scenes reports on major films and games, and reviews of the latest hardware and software.

URL: http://www.futurenet.co.uk/promotion/tdwcg

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