EP Topic News: 15th May 2003EP Topic News: 15th May 2003
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A presentation made during the OCLC's Distinguished Seminar Series is available on OCLC Research Web site. Jane Ryland, Membership Consultant for the Internet2 Consortium, discusses the power and potential of Internet2, focusing on new activities currently underway and addressing the aspects of Internet2 of greatest interest to the library community. Presentation slides (PowerPoint) and a digital audio recording (mp3:13.4MB) are now available from the OCLC Research Web site.
URL: Internet2 Consortium http://www.internet2.edu/
URL: presentation abstract http://www.oclc.org/research/dss/ryland.shtm
URL: PowerPoint presentation http://www.oclc.org/research/dss/ryland.ppt
URL: audio recording file (mp3) http://www.oclc.org/research/audio/dss_ryland.mp3
The May 2003 issue of First Monday (volume 8, number 5) is now available online. The table of contents includes:
• "Sustaining Digital Resources: Web-Wise 2003" - selected papers from the Fourth Annual Conference on Libraries and Museums in the Digital World sponsored by the US Institute for Museum and Library Services (IMLS) and Johns Hopkins University, 26-28 February 2003, Washington, D.C.
• "Creating the Digital Future",
• "The International Children's Digital Library: Description and analysis of first use",
• "What is a library anymore, anyway?",
• "Business model issues in the development of digital cultural content".
VREfresh reports that blaxxun technologies GmbH has been re-founded. blaxxun technologies continues the blaxxun interactive product-family and plans to expand the range of offered products. The company has acquired existing installations as well as rights and intellectual properties regarding software, solutions, brands, marks, trademarks, logo-design marks and domains. Dr Wolfgang Salzmann is CEO and Klaus Eberle is COO.
VREfresh (the VR news service published on El.pub) reported the demise of blaxxun in issue #185 of April 2nd, 2002. The company, headquartered in Munich, Germany, was founded in 1995. The blaxxun platform was used to build interactive communities and commercial users included BMW, Canal+, IBM, Intel and Lycos Bertelsmann. blaxxun partnered with hardware and software providers including Computer Associates, Einsteinet, Elsa, Intershop, Oracle, Sun and wapme Systems.
URL: http://www.blaxxun.de
URL: VREfresh News on El.pub base02vt0228.htm
URL: VR Conference agenda28.htm
Humans on the move interface with data all the time: the wrist watch, the telephone and automobile instruments are examples. The scale of adoption of the Personal Digital Assistant (PDA) indicates the demand for data to be available all the time and everywhere. The early adopters of "3D on the move" are playing games: what applications will take us beyond ways of passing time to a mobile generation of the information society - and what compromises, forced by physical dimension and technological capacity, will be acceptable to the nomadic consumer of information? This is the debate for a session at Visions of Virtual Reality & Interactive 3D in European Commission Supported Projects Conference, being organised by the INFORM project (the publishers of El.pub).
URL: conference agenda http://www.elpub.org/agenda28.htm
URL: VREfresh News on El.pub base02vt0228.htm
URL: VR Conference agenda28.htm
SavaJe Technologies, developers of a universal open Java applications platform and operating system for wireless devices, has licensed the ARM Swerve i3D Graphics Client to embed into the SavaJe technology platform. The ARM Swerve i3D Graphics Client, developed by ARM in collaboration with Superscape, generates and manages interactive 3D scenes on wireless handsets. The software solution enables download of compressed 3D applications to ARM core-based wireless devices over 2.5G and 3G cellular networks.
URL: http://www.arm.com
URL: VREfresh News on El.pub base02vt0228.htm
URL: VR Conference agenda28.htm
"Mobile operators that do not learn how to manage content will miss out on significant revenue streams and be relegated to simple bit carriers" - CIT-Online. The company's report deduces: mobile media is no longer an optional extra, it's part of the core service that consumers expect all mobile operators to provide; mobile media is forecast to generate over 30% of ARPU by 2012; simply offering mobile media without a clear market strategy will result in costly mistakes and lost market share; mobile media will only be successful if it is developed as a media package in collaboration with media companies that have existing routes to market. Priced at £1,250, "Mobile Media: Future Markets" can be ordered now for mid-May delivery.
URL: http://www.cit-online.com
URL: VREfresh News on El.pub base02vt0228.htm
URL: VR Conference agenda28.htm
At a meeting held in Cambridge, UK, the OpenGL ES 1.0 Specification was agreed upon by Khronos OpenGL ES Working Group Members and is now ready for final review and ratification by Khronos Promoting Member vote. On track with milestones set a year ago, the public release of the OpenGL ES 1.0 Specification is expected in July, 2003. The availability of this royalty-free, open-standard, 3D-capable graphics API is expected to enable many new classes of content-hungry platforms, each with many millions of potential new users.
In a related statement, Khronos members Texas Instruments and Symbian announced a collaboration to develop a Symbian Multimedia Framework plug-in based on OpenGL ES 1.0 to enable superior graphics handling on TI's OMAP processor family. Also of note, Khronos member Fathammer has integrated the TI Graphics Library into its X-Forge 3D Game Engine SDK, enabling significantly improved performance and superior gameplay on TI OMAP processor-based mobile devices.
URL: http://www.khronos.org
URL: VREfresh News on El.pub base02vt0228.htm
URL: VR Conference agenda28.htm
The 3D Consortium, a not-for-profit initiative of, originally, Itochu, NTT Data, Sanyo, Sharp and Sony, which now has over 80 member companies worldwide. Key to the success of the consortium is recognition of the need for the organisation to be truly global (as are the technologies and their users). The consortium seeks to develop the market for 3D, work towards common data and content formats to facilitate data exchange and interoperability and create opportunities for collaboration. European VR/i3D companies will be attracted by the expanded market with export potential, a multi-continental influence in standards making and opportunities for bi-directional technology exchange. There will be a presentation by the 3D Consortium and a Question & Answer Session at the Visions of Virtual Reality & Interactive 3D in European Commission Supported Projects Conference.
URL: conference agenda http://www.elpub.org/agenda28.htm
URL: press release http://sharp-world.com/corporate/news/030304.html
URL: VREfresh News on El.pub base02vt0228.htm
URL: VR Conference agenda28.htm
The electronic journals and news groups pages on El.pub have been extensively updated over the past few weeks. The aim of the page is to provide links to electronic journals, newsletters and news groups with interests in the development and application of digital content management and interactive electronic publishing. Only journals and newsletters whose contents is available online are listed in this section. Many of the journals, newsletters and lists are available free of charge and often provide email delivery or alerting services, announcing publication along with brief synopses of articles.
Sarissa - OS JavaScript library
Sarissa is described by its developers as:
"an open source JavaScript library that allows advanced client-side (Mozilla+derivatives/IE) XML manipulation, allowing developers to take advantage of proprietary or standard abilities of Moz/IE in a cross-browser manner. Version 0.9b adds the proprietary (MS IE) selectNodes and selectSingleNode methods to Moz (thanks to it's DOM L3 XPath support), to allow basic cross-browser XPath functionality via JS."
The software is available as a free download under a GPL license and feedback is welcomed.
URL: http://sarissa.sourceforge.net/
URL: http://sourceforge.net/projects/sarissa/
Surveillance & Society Journal
Surveillance & Society is an electronic journal, available free online, that began publication in 2002. The journal is a part of a new international initiative to call wider attention to surveillance studies within academia and beyond. The purpose of the journal is to encourage understanding of approaches to surveillance in different academic disciplines, publish innovative and transdisciplinary work on surveillance, promote understanding of surveillance in wider society, and encourage debate and dissent. New issues are posted on the Surveillance & Society Web site as they become available. In the future, the web site is also slated to house a Surveillance Studies Resource Base, including an interactive "Encyclopedia of Surveillance," and a Discussion Forum, which will be based on submitted opinion pieces of up to 2000 words.
Interested parties can submit articles for possible inclusion in Surveillance & Society. All submissions will be fully peer-reviewed to the most rigorous quality standards, and unconventional submissions such as photographic and video work are encouraged.
Unicode Character Database 4.0
The Unicode Consortium has announced a significant update of its widely-used Unicode Character Database. Version 4.0 defines over 96,000 characters for the languages of the world and provides detailed properties and algorithms for computer systems. The current release contains all the information needed to update software to support the latest characters.
As part of this release, key sections of the forthcoming book, "The Unicode Standard, Version 4.0", are being posted online in advance. Simultaneously, all of the annexes to Unicode 4.0 are being made available on the Unicode web site. All online publications of the Unicode Consortium are available at no cost.
"As a significant step towards the digital preservation of world heritage, this new version encodes characters for Linear B and other ancient Mediterranean alphabets. At the same time, it expands support for modern minority languages. This removes a major barrier that has prevented people from using their own languages on computers", reports the Consortium.
The Unicode Standard, Version 4.0 (ISBN 0-321-18578-1) will be published as a book by Addison-Wesley in September of 2003. For more information about Unicode 4.0 or the Unicode Character Database, see the URL below.
The Unicode Consortium is a non-profit organization founded to develop, extend and promote use of the Unicode Standard, which specifies the representation of text in modern software products and standards. The Consortium works very closely with the INCITS L2 committee and with ISO/IEC JTC 1 SC2.
URL: Unicode 4.0 http://www.unicode.org/versions/Unicode4.0.0/
URL: Unicode Consortium http://www.unicode.org/
URL: INCITS L2 committee http://incits.org/incits/tc_home/l2.htm
A report from IDC finds the marketplace for wireless infrastructure and application services (WIAS) is gaining considerable momentum and has significant long-term potential. The report recognises that there remain considerable complexities in the market bought about by the myriad of access devices, wireless protocols, standards bodies, and regulators. Even with these inhibitors, IDC forecasts that the worldwide wireless and application services market will increase from US$ 31.1 billion in 2002 to US$ 68.4 billion in 2007, representing a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 17.1%. The following key findings are presented in the IDC report:
• Approximately 43% of spending on wireless infrastructure and application services originated in the Americas region in 2002. This share will remain fairly consistent and reach 45% in 2007.
• International opportunities will continue to expand, especially in areas with low existing penetration rates, but where rapid economic growth is expected, such as in Latin America, Eastern Europe, and Asia/Pacific. Success in international markets will depend on the ability to overcome not only technological hurdles, but also regulatory, economic, geopolitical, and cultural obstacles.
• Among US industries, communications and media, retail, logistics, and health care will embrace WIAS at the fastest rate and with the largest level of expenditures. Collectively, US industries are expected to spend US$ 25.6 billion by 2007 representing a five-year CAGR of 16.9%.
• As mobile networks grow in both scope and complexity, opportunities will continue to emerge in the area of consulting, integration, and managed services, including the measurement and planning of users' network capacity needs and the design of appropriate networks to meet these needs.The IDC study, "Worldwide and US Wireless Infrastructure and Application Services Forecast and Analysis, 2003-2007: The Catalyst for Business Process Transformation" is available for purchase from IDC.
URL: http://www.idc.com
AgentNews of 4 May, 2003 includes the following news items:
• John Bateman's ontology portal, "a collection of starting points for information on ontologies" with a focus on ontologies for linguistics.
URL: http://www.fb10.uni-bremen.de/anglistik/langpro/webspace/jb/info-pages/ontology/ontology-root.htm
• Semantic Web Services Initiative (SWSI) - a consortium of researchers funded by DARPA and the EU with the goal of developing languages and architectures for semantic web services.
URL: http://www.swsi.org/
• Blogging meets the semantic web - HP Labs in Bristol is experimenting with the use of semantic web markup (RDFS) in a blog.
AgentNews is a free email newsletter which provides the latest information posted on the UMBC's AgentWeb site.
URL: AgentNews 4 May http://agents.umbc.edu/08/06/
URL: AgentWeb http://agents.umbc.edu/
A posting to the XML.dev list which may be of interest to El.pub readers:
"This specification defines the Simple Semantics Resolution (SSR) Module for the RSS 2.0 syndication format. The purpose of SSR is to provide a mechanism by which the semantics of an RSS 2.0 document can be unambiguously resolved to an RDF model. This is done by declaring the RSS 2.0 file as being an RDF representation and provide a mapping between the RSS 2.0 syntax and the RDF model. The mapping is declared using XSLT to give an RSS 1.0-based representation, this RDF/XML serialization providing anchorage to the RDF model.
Put simply: an element is added to the source RSS 2.0 document which declares 'this is RDF, and here is the mapping'. This has absolutely no effect on the interpretation of the document as RSS 2.0 within the bounds of that specification, but enables the contents of RSS 2.0 files to be considered first class material for the Semantic Web".
The developers would like to receive comments from El.pub readers.
URL: http://purl.org/stuff/ssr
URL: practical example of use http://ideagraph.net/xmlns/ssr/modules.htm
An article in The Technology Source (May/June 2003) attempts to compare and contrast online versus face-to-face courses. The article: "Ten Ways Online Education Matches, or Surpasses, Face-to-Face Learning" outlines the ways in which the author believes that online education excels. Areas covered include: student-centered learning, interactive discussions, on-demand interaction and support services, and faculty development and rejuvenation.
The Technology Source (ISSN 1532-0030) is a free, peer-reviewed bimonthly periodical published by the Michigan Virtual University. An archive of all back issues of the publication is also available online.
URL: article http://ts.mivu.org/default.asp?show=article&id=1059
URL: Michigan Virtual University http://www.mivu.org/
URL: The Technology Source http://ts.mivu.org/
In order to investigate ways in which digital learning resources might be developed, shared and reused by teachers and learners around the world (so as to benefit from economies of scale) numerous national and international initiatives have been funded . Behind these initiatives lies a vision of a future in which reusable resources (or "learning objects" as they are called) could comprise a new currency of exchange within a learning economy.
The April 2003 special issue of the "Journal of Interactive Media in Education (JIME)" takes the book, "Reusing Online Resources", as a starting point for invited commentary on such resource sharing. Issues addressed include, how:
• digital resources can be used and reused to support learning within a range of educational models,
• sharing resources will change educational institutions,
• global sharing of resources is possible.Readers are encouraged to participate in online discussions of these issues.
Journal of Interactive Media in Education (JIME) (ISSN:1365-893X) is peer-reviewed and published online by the Knowledge Media Institute, The Open University, UK. Current and back issues are available free online. "Reusing Online Resources: A Sustainable Approach to E-learning", edited by Allison Littlejohn is published by Kogan Page (ISBN 0749439491).
URL: JIME http://www-jime.open.ac.uk/index.html
URL: "Reusing Online Resources" http://www.reusing.info/
The Safer Internet Newsletter is published by the EU Safer Internet programme and is based on information published on the project's web site. The May 2003 issue (Number 25) includes:
• a report from the "Quality labels for web sites - alternative approaches to content rating" workshop chaired by selfregulation.info and held on 27 February in Luxembourg. The workshop included a variety of presentations which explored issues relating to content rating, labelling systems and trustmarks both in order to promote the exchange of experience and to assess the scope for legislation. the report and selected presentations form the workshop are available online.
URL: http://www.saferinternet.org/news/Quality-label-workshop.asp
• a report on the new pan-European age rating system for computer and video games that is to be introduced to help protect children from unsuitable content. Known as PEGI (Pan European Game Information), the new system will eventually replace existing age rating systems currently used in European countries. (See issue Number 25 for further information).
Optimizing Flash for search engines
Macromedia Flash and other non-HTML formats can pose problems for search engines. Search Engine Watch has published an article, "Optimizing Flash for Search Engines" which outlines some of the problems associated with getting Flash-based sites indexed.
URL: http://www.searchenginewatch.com/searchday/article.php/2200921
The Tate Gallery in London have launched a new addition to Tate Online sponsored by BT. Explore Tate Modern provides users with an interactive floor plan of the permanent display galleries at Tate Modern. Upon entering the site online visitors discover that the homepage echoes the vast space of Tate Modern's famous Turbine Hall and that the left wall animates the 3-D plan and displays generic gallery information. Visitors can wander through the virtual galleries, finding detailed information on each of the fifty-five rooms and listen to audio descriptions.
Navigation is kept as simple as possible and has been designed to mirror the layout of Tate Modern where the Tate Collection is displayed in four themed galleries, each comprising a range of rooms either dedicated to individual artists or to ideas or periods within the themes. The four themed galleries comprise: Landscape/Matter/ Environment; Still Life/Object/Real Life; History/ Memory/Society; and The Nude/Action/Body.
Intellectual Property for SMEs
The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) has published an updated version of its CD-ROM entitled "Intellectual Property for Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises (SMEs)". The CD-ROM, free of charge and now available in six languages (Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian, and Spanish) is part of the Organization’s efforts to raise awareness about the role of intellectual property (IP) in leveraging business development and improving competitiveness among the global SME community.
The CD-ROM makes important, user-friendly, intellectual property-related material more readily available to those SMEs that do not have easy access to the Internet. The CD-ROM will also supplement IP resources used for teaching and training business aspects of IP in law, engineering and management courses in a number of countries, worldwide. To obtain a free copy either send an email to the Director of the SMEs Division of WIPO or apply to the WIPO on-line bookshop.
URL: WIPO SME Division http://www.wipo.int/sme
Email: WIPO SME Division mailto:sme@wipo.int
URL: WIPO on-line bookshop http://www.wipo.int/ebookshop
Details of how Bluetooth's SIM Access Profile has the potential to open up a world of possibilities, "that will have users beaming money at the machines they use".
URL: http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/library/wi-simacc/?ca=dnt-417
Ariadne Magazine Number 35, published by UKOLN, at the University of Bath, UK is available online. Articles in this issue include:
• "ePrints UK: Developing a national e-prints archive" in which the author describes the technical work of the ePrints UK project, and outlines the non-technical issues that must be addressed for the project to deliver a national e-prints service.
• "Syndicated content: it's more than just some file formats" - on issues arising from the current enthusiasm for syndicating content to portals or other web sites, with some guidelines for good practice.
• "Access Management, the Key to a Portal" - a report on the experience of the Subject Portals Project.
• "Functionality in Digital Annotation: Imitating and supporting real-world annotation" - which considers both pre-digital and digital concepts of annotation, with a view to how annotation tools might be used in the subject-gateway environment.
• "What features in a Portal?" - which analyses the features found in various types of portal, and includes a comparison with the planned features for the JISC Subject Portals.
• "Free full-text e-journals and EEVL's Engineering E-journal Search Engine" - describes what EEVL has to offer in the area of e-journals.
• "Search Engines: Many movements in mere months" - looks at various developments that have occurred recently in the ever-shifting scene of the search engine.
• "Web Focus: A Standards-Based Culture For Web Site Development" - outlines strategies for choosing appropriate standards for building web sites.
• "DELOS CEE Event: Current trends in Digitisation in Central and Eastern Europe" - reports on the DELOS meeting held in Torun, Poland, 3-4 February 2003.
DOI News is a free public news release from the International Digital Object Identifier (DOI) Foundation (IDF) which is sent out by email on a monthly basis. The May 2003 issue includes news that:
• an informal consortium of three major national libraries: The British Library (UK), Die Deutsche Bibliothek (Germany) and the Koninklijke Bibliotheek (The Netherlands) has joined the International DOI Foundation.
URL: http://www.doi.org/news/030417-Library.html
• the IDF and EDItEUR (the International Group for electronic commerce in the book and serial sectors) have announced the development of a common data dictionary. On completion, a single operational dictionary will be available to support both DOI Application Profiles and the various ONIX messages. This also forms the basis of the DOI metadata system, by which the same benefits can be extended to any other metadata scheme.
URL: http://www.doi.org/news/030415dictionarynews.pdf
• a new edition (3.0) of The DOI Handbook has been released which now fully describes how to create applications providing extensible DOI services through multiple resolution and the DOI metadata system. A ready-to-go mechanism to build applications limited only by the imagination is now in place, with the tools to do far more than simple persistent linking - such as dynamic alerts to the availability of a new version of a document (already demonstrated in Adobe Acrobat using DOIs). The new, shorter, handbook now fully describes tools such as DOI Application Profiles and the indecs Data Dictionary. As much of the metadata work (based on indecs) is not published elsewhere, this is also covered in detail in two appendices. A new glossary and completely rewritten chapters are part of the Handbook release.
The DOI is a system for interoperably identifying and exchanging intellectual property in the digital environment. A DOI assigned to content enhances a content producer's ability to trade electronically. It provides a framework for managing content in any form at any level of granularity, for linking customers with content suppliers, for facilitating electronic commerce, and enabling automated copyright management for all types of media. The International DOI Foundation, a non-profit organisation, manages development, policy and licensing of the DOI to registration agencies and technology providers and advises on usage and development of related services and technologies. The DOI system uses open standards with a standard syntax (ANSI/NISO Z39.84) and is currently used by leading international technology and content organizations.
URL: DOI Foundation http://www.doi.org/
US-company DeLorme has unveiled its Earthmate USB GPS receiver which it claims will work with with USB laptops, Pocket PC and Palm OS handheld computers, and Bluetooth-enabled devices. Available now, the GPS receiver which is smaller than a business card, will gives customers in the US an affordable alternative to fixed in-car navigation systems. The Earthmate GPS with Street Atlas USA software (also developed DeLorme) will sell for US$ 129.95.
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