EP Topic News: 19th June 2003EP Topic News: 19th June 2003
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Analytic 14 - "Looking back - 7 years of El.pub (part 1)"
The June 2003 issue of El.pub Analytic (number 14 in the series) has been published and is entitled: "Looking back - 7 years of El.pub (part 1)". The paper reviews how the information and entertainment services that make up digital content creation and publishing have developed over the past seven years.
The new Data Protection and Privacy Workshop aims to use the standardisation process to help business in Europe to comply with the Data Protection Directive and relevant national legislation. This is to be done by facilitating harmonisation of practice, developing the understanding and predictability of detailed or sectoral practices, contributing to resolving IT technical compliance issues, and encouraging consistency of assessment and oversight.
The new EU Workshop on Data Protection and Privacy, scheduled for Brussels on 3 July, will implement various recommendations of the report of the Initiative for Privacy Standardization in Europe (IPSE). The IPSE aimed to analyse the current status of privacy protection efforts and determine whether standardization actions in the broadest sense could benefit the processes and implementation of the European Data Protection Directive 95/46/EC. The report - prepared by an IPSE Project Team and approved by the IPSE Steering Group - looked at the background and a broad representative sample of the current work in progress on data protection.
The report is available online from the CEN/ISSS web-site. The meeting agenda and online registration form is available via the link below.
An article on the Webreference site explores effective methods of exporting/importing 3D models from one application to the other, including tips for obtaining good results.
Java web services developer pack
Java Web Services Developer Pack (Java WSDP) is a free integrated toolkit from Sun Microsystems that aims to enable Java developers to build, test and deploy XML applications, web services, and web applications based on Java.
URL: article http://www.webservices.org/index.php/article/view/1038/
URL: Java WSDP http://java.sun.com/webservices/webservicespack.html
Search engine technology, and in particular the business models being followed by web search engine companies such as Google are in constant flux. A very simple way of keeping up-to-date with the developments is to subscribe to the email newsletter, "The Search Engine Report". The free newsletter includes news, views and assessments of the latest in the search engine arena. There is also a paid-for service for those that need more detailed information. A selection of news items that caught our eye in the June edition to whet your apetite for more:
• "Search Engine Saturation Check" - enter your URL and learn how many pages are listed with various search
engines.URL: http://www.marketleap.com/siteindex/
• "Search Engine Flash Viewer" - details of a tool that purports to show you how search engines interact with Flash files, and reports on what HTML they are able to see.
URL: http://www.searchguild.com/seflash.html
• "Maximum Google" and article in PC World which has 25 tips on using Google.
URL: http://www.idg.net/ic_1314900_9677_1-5042.html
• "Attract Visitors With Multimedia Search" - an article in NetMechanic which covers multimedia search engines and provides links to using meta data for Flash and Windows Media files.
The Search Engine Report is a monthly newsletter, subscribe via the URL below.
URL: Search Engine Report http://searchenginewatch.com/
URL: subscribe http://searchenginewatch.com/sereport/
Safer Internet Newsletter June
The June 2003 edition of the Safer Internet Newsletter is available online. The newsletter is published by the EU's EU Safer Internet programme. Among the news items that may be of particular interest to El.pub readers:
• Selfregulation.info - a three-year research project carried out by the Programme in Comparative Media Law and Policy at Oxford University (PCMLP), funded by the European Commission under the Internet Action Plan. It aims to investigate self-regulatory codes of conduct across national, EU and international boundaries covering a wide range of media from the Internet, film, video (games) and (digital) television to mobile communications. A review of the current situation across Europe is avaiable on the project's web site.
URL: http://www.selfregulation.info/iapcoda/0304xx-selfregulation-review.htm
• in mid-June 2003, the European Commission will issue a call for proposals for trustmarks. By offering initial 50% financing, the Commission is hoping to further stimulate their development. The goal is to increase the effect of trustmarks and thus increase consumer confidence and to eventually make the Internet a safer place for consumers, especially for children. Initiatives that integrate existing trustmarks, new initiatives that combine the different specific objectives for site labelling, or plans that in any other way increase the effectiveness of trustmarks, will be preferred, especially proposals that focus on bringing together existing initiatives or create alliances, as the Commission does not seek to create more trustmarks but to concentrate on more clarity for consumers, for whom brand recognition plays a very significant role. Guidelines to put together a proposal for a trustmark initiative are available on the Selfregulation.info web site.
URL: http://www.saferinternet.org/downloads/SelfRegulation.doc
The Safer Internet Newsletter is available free of charge and is delivered electronically, in PDF format, Subscribe via the programme's web site.
IBM offers alpha technologies for free, 90 day trial download and evaluation via its alphaWorks web site. Latest software available includes:
• Web Performance Tools - a set of applications that allow stress-testing of a web server, a web site, and/or a web application. The two current applications are stress and record. Stress is a high-performance, simple, threaded HTTP engine that is capable of simulating hundreds or even thousands of HTTP clients. Record is a simple eavesdropping proxy that will record a user's session against a web server for later playback in stress.
URL: http://www.alphaworks.ibm.com/awlr.nsf/cl?readform&n=wptools&ca-fllt-060503
• XML Schema Quality Checker - a program which takes as input an XML Schema written in the W3C XML schema language and diagnoses improper uses of the schema language. Where the appropriate action to correct the schema is not obvious, the diagnostic message may include a suggestion about how to make the fix. The tool can also be run in batch mode to quality check multiple XML schemas in a single run.
URL: http://www.alphaworks.ibm.com/awlr.nsf/cl?readform&n=xmlsqc&ca-fllt-060503
Under alphaWorks' commercial licenses, developers can take advantage of IBM technologies before they hit the market without revoking the 90-day trial period. All technologies are licensed as-is, unsupported, and non-warranted. Customers will receive updates and the benefit of early adopter feedback that influences the development of these alpha technologies. For more information on the licensing programme visit the alphaWorks web site.
URL: commercial licenses http://www.alphaWorks.ibm.com/license
URL: alphaWorks http://www.alphaWorks.ibm.com
"Grid computing: Conceptual flyover for developers" is an article from IBM which focuses on the "next big thing" - Grid computing. The article considers Grid computing concepts in relation to known quantities for developers, such as object-oriented programming, XML, and web services. Also included is a reading list of white papers, articles, and resources about Grid computing.
URL: http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/library/gr-fly.html?ca=awfl-grflyover
IBM has also published, "A practical introduction to OptimalGrid". Downloadable from IBM alphaWorks, OptimalGrid is a research prototype from the IBM Almaden Research center. OptimalGrid is middleware that aims to simplify creating and managing large-scale, connected, parallel grid applications. According to the release notes: "It optimises performance and includes autonomic grid functionality. OptimalGrid is designed to bring the immense potential of Grid computing easily within reach of developers who aren't grid infrastructure experts. Read what it can do, and then install and play with it".
URL: article http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/library/gr-opgrid/?ca=dnt-422
URL: software download http://www.alphaworks.ibm.com/tech/optimalgrid?open&ca=dnt-422
URL: tutorial for use http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/edu/gr-dw-gr-opgrd-i.html?ca=dnt-422
At its annual meeting, the International Press Telecommunications Council (IPTC) voted to move ahead with review and approval of ProgramGuideML, to exchange television programme and channel information using XML.
OASIS and RosettaNet are to work together via a "standards alliance" in order to to streamline web services development by working closely together on specifications such as ebXML and the Universal Business Language (UBL). This article in Internet News outlines the moves.
URL: article http://www.internetnews.com/dev-news/article.php/2216641
URL: OASIS http://www.oasis-open.org/
URL: RosettaNet http://www.rosettanet.org/
ContentGuard and Objectlab have announced that they have collaborated to enhance the open source project, OpenIPMP, with support for a standard rights expression language, MPEG-REL. By making available source code for MPEG-REL interpretation and generation tools within the OpenIPMP framework, both companies hope to promote and drive the adoption of interoperable standards for Digital Rights Management (DRM). The OpenIPMP project provides a reference platform to demonstrate cutting-edge standards-based DRM technology. The MPEG-REL, is based on ContentGuard's XrML (eXtensible rights Markup Language). The companies believe that, "widespread adoption of MPEG-REL will allow seamless distribution of digital works between the diverse range of parties involved in digital content creation, distribution and consumption".
Sponsored by Objectlab, the OpenIPMP project is committed to an open process, aiding in the evaluation of experimental standards (MPEG, ISMA, and others), the design of new specifications, and in producing openly available Rights Management reference software.
ObjectLab is also an associate partner of an EU project called MOSES which has considerable expertise in this area. Visit the links below for further information.
URL: OpenIPMP http://www.openipmp.com
URL: MOSES http://www.crl.co.uk/projects/moses
URL: MOSES OpenSDRM architecture http://opensdrm.no-ip.org
URL: Objectlab http://objectlab.com/
Machine Perception on a Chip CFP
EURASIP Journal on Applied Signal Processing is proposing to publish a special issue on "Machine Perception on a Chip". A call for papers is open - from the call preamble:
"With the emergence of the "System-on-a-Chip" technology, perception systems have found a natural technological fit where a heterogeneous system-both in function and technology-can be implemented in a single chip. Although "perception on a chip" is not a reality, yet, several research groups have been working towards this goal.
The focus of the proposed special issue is to bring to the research and development community the latest research results and efforts at different levels: technologies, design paradigms, system integration, software-hardware codesign, high level architectures, sensors technologies."
Topics of interest include: smart sensing, image understanding, recognition, configurable and FPGA-based perception architecture, intelligent architecture, network of sensors, sensor fusion, Internet imaging, motion and stereo vision, active vision, emerging technologies. The CFP closes on September 15, 2003.
URL: EURASIP JASP http://www.eurasip-jasp.org/
Version 49 of the Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography is now available. This selective bibliography presents over 1,900 articles, books, and other printed and electronic sources that are useful in understanding scholarly electronic publishing efforts on the Internet.
URL: HTML http://info.lib.uh.edu/sepb/sepb.html
URL: PDF http://info.lib.uh.edu/sepb/sepb.pdf
This Club of Amsterdam Newsletter focuses on "Re-Inventing Democracies for the Future". It includes articles and links as well as information about events run by the group. The latest newsletter includes articles entitled:
• "Democracy and New Technology"
• "Democracy in Crisis - What is to be Done?"
• "e-Government and the European Union and Local eGovernment"
• "European Integration as Regional Variant of Globalization"
• "Mass media and democracy crisis"The Club of Amsterdam styles itself as an international think tank charged with: "Shaping Your Future in the Knowledge Society" - how we want to live, communicate with each other and what tools and cities we need, how we want to commute and how culture or industries should develop.
It is hosting a meeting entitled: "Re-Inventing Democracies for the Future" on June 25, 2003 in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. The meeting is aimed at all those involved in governmental policies, interested in E-Government or interested in direct democracy. Further information concerning the programme and the role of The Club of Amsterdam are available via the links below.
The newsletter is delivered free by email, subscribe on the web site.
URL: http://www.clubofamsterdam.com
URL: meeting info http://www.clubofamsterdam.com/ticketcorner.html
FISTERA is a thematic network (within the IST Programme of DG Information Society) whose main goal is the identification of emerging trends in Information Society Technologies. The first reports identifying such trends, and published by the project, are now available for download.
Another task of FISTERA is to "map" the European actor space in IST using the equivalent of national Foresight studies. The project is looking for participants to help in these studies and as an initial step is requesting readers of El.pub to outline their expertise in this field and to tell them who - in your opinion - is important in European IST research. This is being done using a brief on-line questionnaire.
If you wish to take part in the study please contact Mar Añaños or Bernhard Dachs via the email below.
URL: questionnaire http://fistera.arcs.ac.at/questionnaire.asp
URL: FISTERA http://fistera.jrc.es
Email: mailto:fistera@arcs.ac.at
A new version of oXygen XML Editor is available for download and evaluation. Additions to Version 2.0.2 include: support for RelaxNG, support for TEI documents and the possibility to import HTML documents as XHTML. It is available for free evaluation for 30 days and costs US$ 74 (US$ 48 for academic use) thereafter. oXygen runs on any platform supporting Java 1.3 or later including Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, Solaris.
URL: http://www.oxygenxml.com
URL: download http://www.oxygenxml.com/download.html
Semantic web for heritage resources
The European Commission's Cultural Heritage Sector has published "DigiCULT Thematic Issue 3", entitled: "Towards a Semantic Web for Heritage Resources". This issue includes contributions in which various experts in the field attempt to untangle the theory of how the semantic web applies to the heritage sector. Available in PDF format (both low and high resolution versions - though both fairly hefty) Issue 3 includes:
• Towards a Semantic Web for Heritage Resources
• Semantic Web Terms and Reading List: A-X
• Cultural Heritage Semantic Web Example & Primer
• 2 Interviews with practitionersThe sector also publishes Technology Watch Briefings, the first draft of the latest briefing: "The XML Family of Technologies" is online and comments on its contents are being encouraged.
URL: DigiCULT Thematic Issue 3 Low-Res (1.4 MB) http://data.digicult.info/download/ti3_low.pdf
URL: DigiCULT Thematic Issue 3 High-Res (3.4 MB) http://data.digicult.info/download/ti3_high.pdf
URL: Technology Watch Briefings http://www.digicult.info/pages/publications.php
ELENA - European e-learning project
According to CORDIS, ELENA, an Information Society Technologies (IST) project, funded under the European Commission's Fifth Framework Programme (FP5) has "moved one step closer to making a reality of an interoperable smart space for learning in Europe". The project's aim is to develop an educational service network, consisting of learning assessment tools, learning management systems, educational (meta)repositories and live delivery systems such as video conferencing systems. The project has already developed a peer-to-peer network (P2P), providing the infrastructure to a brokerage service for the exchange and distribution of learning resources among educators and trainers. Users are being invited to:
• test the network guidelines from the project's website;
• and provide feedback and contributions on the project's specifications and prototypes.Further information via the project's web site.
Radiocommunication Conference highlights
Highlights from the first week of the International Telecommunication Union's World Radiocommunication Conference 2003 are available online.
The June 2003 issue of First Monday (volume 8, number 6) is now available online. Among the articles published in this issue:
• "Social network caught in the Web"
• "Analyzing the taxonomy of Internet business models using graphs"
• "The dead poets society: The copyright term and the public domain"
• "Toward a model of information policy analysis: Speech as an illustrative example"
• "Business models of news Web sites: A survey of empirical trends and expert opinion"
The International Journal of Simulation and Process Modelling (IJSPM) is publishing a special issue on: "Modelling and Simulating Business Processes for e-Business". A call for papers is open until 15 October 2003. The purpose of this special issue is to publish original work reflecting the current state of the art of process modelling for e-business. Relevant topics include:
• Modelling of intra-organizational e-business processes
• Integration of front and back office e-business processes
• Modelling of multi-channel process integration efforts
• Modelling and simulation of Web service processes
• Modelling and simulation of virtual and extended organizations
• Design and analysis of collaborative e-business processes
• Modelling exercises as a result of Rosetta Net and BPMI.org efforts
• Design and analysis of e-procurement processes
• Design and analysis of e-government processes
• Methodologies, techniques and tools for e-business process modelling
• Requirements for modelling e-business processes
• Role of modelling and simulation in evaluating the impact of e-businessSubmitted papers should not have been previously published and manuscripts should be sent as an email attachment in PDF or Word format to the guest editor (Nuno Melão, Assistant Professor Catholic University of Portugal).
URL: manuscript guidelines http://www.inderscience.com/editorialnotes.html
Email: Nuno Melão mailto:nmelao@crb.ucp.pt
The June 2003 issue of D-Lib Magazine is available online, and includes the following articles:
• "Visualizing Keyword Distribution Across Multidisciplinary C-Space"
• Google Meets eBay: What Academic Librarians Can Learn from Alternative Information Providers"
• "Trends in Use of Electronic Journals in Higher Education in the UK • Views of Academic Staff and Students"
• "DOI: A 2003 Progress Report"
• "Understanding the International Audiences for Digital Cultural Content"URL: http://www.dlib.org/
The European Commission has published the second call of the IST priority under the Sixth Framework Programme's (FP6) Information Society Technologies activity. This is one of the areas covered by the "integrating and strengthening the European research area" specific programme. The area's covered by this call are:
• advanced displays (area 2.3.2.1 of the work programme);
• optical, opto-electronic, photonic functional components (area 2.3.2.2 of the work programme);
• open development platforms for software and services (area 2.3.2.3 of the work programme);
• cognitive systems (area 2.3.2.4 of the work programme);
• embedded systems (area 2.3.2.5 of the work programme);
• applications and services for the mobile user and worker (area 2.3.2.6 of the work programme);
• cross-media content for leisure and entertainment (area 2.3.2.7 of the work programme);
• GRID-based Systems and solving complex problems (area 2.3.2.8 of the work programme);
• improving risk management (area 2.3.2.9 of the work programme);
• eInclusion
• research networking test beds (area 2.3.5 of the work programme);
• general accompanying actions (area 2.3.6 of the work programme).In specifying the instruments to be used in these areas, the call requests the use of integrated projects, networks of excellence, specific targeted research projects, coordinated actions and specific support actions. Proposers are advised to consult the full call text at the address below in order to find out the particular instruments requested for each area.
The total indicative budget for this call is 525 million euro. The deadline for submitting proposal documents is 15 October 2003. (Source: Cordis)
URL: call text online http://fp6.cordis.lu/fp6/call_details.cfm?CALL_ID=74
Document Reference : Official Journal of the European Communities - OJ No C141/11 of 17.06.2003, p.25
Managing digital content - economics
The Journal of Digital Information (JoDI) has published a special issue on "Economic Factors of Managing Digital Content and Establishing Digital Libraries" (Volume 4, issue 2, June 2003). From the special issue editorial:
"This special issue is an eclectic mix of articles covering much of the lifecycle and value chain of digital content and digital libraries, reflecting the pervasive nature of economics - influencing every decision, technology, implementation and evaluation made of digital resources and libraries." The issue includes the following papers:
• "Building a Business Plan for DSpace, MIT Libraries Digital Institutional Repository"
• "Counting the Costs of Digital Preservation: Is Repository Storage Affordable?"
• "Strategic Positioning Options for Scientific Libraries in Markets of Scientific and Technical Information - the Economic Impact of Digitization"
• "Emerging Tools for Evaluating Digital Library Services: Conceptual Adaptations of LibQUAL+ and CAPM"
• "Scholarly Associations and the Economic Viability of Open Access Publishing"JoDI is an electronic journal published only via the Web and is currently free to users thanks to support from the British Computer Society and Oxford University Press.
Online advertising reconsidered
A column by Steve Outing posted on The Editor & Publisher site considers the latest generation of online advertising, how it is much more sophisticated than its predecessors, and its potential to turn around ailing online businesses. Twenty previous "Stop The Presses" columns, which are well worth a read, are available on the site.
URL: column http://www.editorandpublisher.com/editorandpublisher/features_columns/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1910312
URL: previous columns http://www.editorandpublisher.com/editorandpublisher/features_columns/stop_archive.jsp
Elsevier upgrades web authoring
Systems integrator, Rubus, has created a web content management system for publishing house Elsevier, allowing distributed business authors within Elsevier to enter and edit static content on the company's web site. Based on Documentum 4i WebPublisher, the company claim that the system "allows business users with limited technical knowledge to author and edit content using flexible online templates. These pages are then rendered in a variety of formats depending on the usage within the site. The output is also integrated with WebSphere Portal, which controls the site display".
URL: Rubus http://www.rubus.com
URL: Documentum http://www.documentum.com/
The W3C Web Services Description Working Group has released three Working Drafts of the Web Services Description Language (WSDL) Version 1.2. Further information from the W3C site.
URL: W3C http://www.w3.org/
URL: WSDL http://www.w3.org/TR/2003/WD-wsdl12-20030611/
The W3C has been hosting a semantic web tour in various European cities during June 2003. Presentations from the London event will be available on the UK and Ireland Office web site, via the link below. Ora Lassila, a Research Fellow, at the Nokia research Centre in the USA gave a presentation entitled: "Towards the Semantic Web". Ora's slides provide a concise explanation on the W3Cs vision (represented as stepping stones) towards the semantic web and its potential for the development of interoperable web services. There is much to query, agree and disagree with and ultimately hotly debate in relation to the W3C's vision. This presentation, in particular, provides an excellent starting point if you wish to consider the issues and implications of where the disciplines and related technologies inherent in the semantic web are currently, and where they have the potential to end up in the future.
URL: W3C UK and Ireland Office http://www.w3c.rl.ac.uk
| 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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