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Content Market Monitor V2, Edition 38 (June 2006)

Content Market Monitor (CMM) is a monthly newsletter on content and content-related technologies, started during the EU-funded ACTeN project (Anticipating Content Technology Needs) from 2002 to 2004. ( more... )

Intelligent delivery next frontier in e-Government

The maturity of online public services in the EU keeps improving and they have now reached an overall level of sophistication where full two-way interaction between citizens and governments is the norm. Nearly 50% of services allow the citizen to conduct the whole process on-line, says the latest e-Government survey carried out for the Commission. This in turn leads to better, more efficient and effective service provision. ( more... )

Free Downloading of e-Books

A third of a million books, or 10 times the number found in the average public library, will be available for free downloading via the Internet and World Wide Web beginning July 4, as Project Gutenberg and the World eBook Library act on their dreams of increased world literacy and education. ( more... )

New e-Book Standard Coming Up

Publishers Weekly brings the story that new standards for e-books are being drafted by the International Digital Publishing Forum (IDPF). The new standards will address how e-books are produced and read. At present, there is no common standard used by producers and manufacturers. As a result, customers can’t read a Palm e-book on a Microsoft Reader. ( more... )

iLiad about to Ship

Irex Technologies, the manufacturer of the digital paper reader iLiad has announced shipments for the customers in Europe from the fist week of July. For the US customers orders will be taken from July onwards. ( more... )

Creative Commons License in Microsoft Office

Microsoft and the Creative Commons will release a free tool that will let people attach a Creative Commons copyright license note to Microsoft Office documents. Creative Commons is a non-profit organization that has written licenses that allow content creators to share information while retaining some rights. Microsoft is the first vendor to embed a license-selection option inside its applications. ( more... )

France Softens iTunes Bill

The French National Assembly had voted in March to force Apple Computer Inc. and other companies to make their music players and online stores compatible with rivals, but now some senators agree to weaker measures. Core of the problem is the inexchangability of tunes and music players. ( more... )

RIAA Says Illegal Song-Sharing 'Contained'

About 1.5 billion songs are available for free swapping at any given time on file-sharing networks, a mix of current hits and songs from such artists as the Beatles and Led Zeppelin that have yet to be released to the digital music stores. That number is huge but hasn't grown substantially. Nearly a year after the Supreme Court issued a landmark ruling against online music file-sharing services, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) says unauthorized song swapping has been "contained". ( more... )

British Library to Save Web Content Forever

A new national library that will preserve UK web content forever is being developed by the British Library. The new National Digital Library will store everything from digitised versions of centuries-old manuscripts to digital journals and web archives and will hover up 300 terabytes of data in the next five years. ( more... )

JFK files: Presidential Archives to be Put Online

The entire collection of papers, documents, photographs and audio recordings of former US President John F Kennedy is to be digitised and made available online. The 10-year project to build a new digital library is a joint collaboration between IT vendor EMC, the Kennedy Presidential Library and the US National Archives and Records Administration. ( more... )

Universities Sign on to Microsoft Book-scan Project

The university libraries of The University of California and the University of Toronto have agreed to lend their collections of out-of-copyright material to Microsoft for the book scan project. In concert with the Open Content Alliance, Microsoft will scan and index the materials for use in its Windows Live Book Search. ( more... )

The British Library’s Content Strategy

The British Library (BL) has published a consultation document: “The British Library’s Content Strategy – Meeting the Knowledge Needs of the Nation”. This sets out the Library’s proposals for what information resources should be collected and connected with, in order to meet the needs of UK research, both today and in the future. The consultation is taking place between 25 April and 21 July 2006. ( more... )

Making Digital Content in Europe Accessible

The eContentplus programme focuses on stimulating the development of digital content for services in areas of public interest - geographic information, cultural, scientific and educational content. ( more... )

Vodafone Italia promotes mobile content

Vodafone Italia is heavily promoting mobile content by organising the first edition of the "Vodafone Mobile Film Festival". Mobile phone users are asked to make a short film with take part in the "Rome in 2 minutes" competition. The movie can be sent to Vodafone send it via mobile phone from June 14 to July 23 to the number 346 46 46 446. The film will be given a code name and can be viewed on the site www.isoladelcinema.com. ( more... )

W3C Publishes Mobile Web Best Practice

W3C reached an important milestone toward its mission of making it as easy to use the Web on a mobile device as on a desktop computer. W3C has published Mobile Web Best Practices a Candidate Recommendation, an indication of broad consensus on the technical content of the document. ( more... )

Advice From Established Bloggers

Blogs will make or break business. They have the power to disseminate information and host global conversations on any topic. Every publication from Business Week, Forbes, and the Wall Street Journal to online white papers from Marqui (www.marqui.com/blog) warns businesses that blogging is not an optional endeavour. ( more... )

Nokia Trials Mobile TV in Sweden

Nokia has announced a new commercial DVB-H pilot in Stockholm with Teracom in Sweden. Nokia is supplying the Nokia Mobile Broadcast System 3.0 and Nokia N92 mobile TV devices to the pilot which will last from October to December 2006 and includes 400 consumers. The project is a co-operation between ATG, Boxer, Nokia, Sveriges Radio, Sveriges Television/UR, Telenor and Teracom. ( more... )

Finnish games, more than mobile

The Finnish game industry is often considered to be too dependent on mobility, but this is not the case. Success stories such as Max Payne, FlatOut and Habbo Hotel prove that there is an ample number of alternatives in PC and console games as well. Success in the traditional game market combined with mobile know-how guarantees that the Finnish game industry is also well-positioned to answer the challenge posed by multiplatform games in the future. ( more... )

ContentNext Funding In Context

Bloggers begin to become venture capital candidates. Recently ContentNext, the company of Rafat Ali with imprints as PaidContent, MocoNews and ContentSutra, received its first funding for under 1 million US dollars from Greycroft Partners’ Investment. ( more... )

Digital Newspapers Looking for Orientation

In a recent report Is the writing on the wall?: the future of digital newspapers, the UK consultancy EPS notes that the decline of a major revenue stream, classified advertising, is a severe threat to the newspaper industry if it continues at current levels or worsens. Furthermore the availability of largely free news sources online means that, particularly for younger generations, news consumption habits are shifting away from the print newspaper. ( more... )

Digital Newspapers Looking for Orientation

In a recent report Is the writing on the wall?: the future of digital newspapers, the UK consultancy EPS notes that the decline of a major revenue stream, classified advertising, is a severe threat to the newspaper industry if it continues at current levels or worsens. Furthermore the availability of largely free news sources online means that, particularly for younger generations, news consumption habits are shifting away from the print newspaper. ( more... )

Royal Society Launches Trial ’Open Access’

The Royal Society has launched a trial of an open access' journal service, which will allow people to read new scientific papers free of charge immediately after they are published on the web. The new service offers authors the opportunity to pay a fee to have their paper made freely available on the web immediately if it is accepted for publication by any Royal Society journal. The first paper to be published under the new service has already appeared on the Royal Society's website. ( more... )

Cornerstones protection of EU minors

The Commission believes strongly in industry taking a pro-active role in dealing with the issue of protection of minors when using old and new media. Industry has a great opportunity to show how it can provide parents with the necessary information and tools so that they can decide what content they do not wish their children to be confronted with. ( more... )

Announcement 1: Innovation in Interactive Audiovisual Media

Some of the papers presented at the VociNet workshops are now available in the EUROPRIX & VocINet Book of Innovation in Multimedia. Beside the VocINet proceedings the book presents the winning projects from the EUROPRIX Multimedia Top Talent Award 2005. ( more... )

Announcement 2: Picnic 06

PICNIC ’06 is the new annual Amsterdam event directed toward exhibiting creative applications in the cross-media content and technology sector, especially in the area of entertainment and communication. PICNIC ‘06 will take place from 26 till 30 September in Amsterdam. ( more... )

Announcement 3: t-Government World Europe 2006

t-Government World Europe brings together 30 of Europe’s top public sector experts in the field of technology-enabled government. Representatives of national, regional and local administration across the continent will pool their expertise to provide your future e-government projects with the benefit of their experience. ( more... )