BPN 1190 Dutch bank online massively

In Europe the Dutch are in the forefront of internet banking, according to a recent survey by Forrester. No less than 68 per cent of the inhabitants process their bank matters online. Nowehere in Europe this percentage is that high; as such internet banking is an aboslute success in The Netherlands.

And thi is only the beginning as interbanking still will become more popular. It will almost become an automatic habit for young people, while the elderly people also use internet more frequently. Within five years th number of Dutch that will process thei bankin matters through internet will rise with 1,5 million people. By 2013 more thn 81 per cent will use internet banking.

The success of online banking can partly be explained by the experience the Dutch have with internet. Besides the banks are stimulating internetbanking intensively, as it saves them a lot of data entry work, paper handling and contact work. This eventually leads to less bank personnel and branch offices. It also leds to more customised offers for the clients.

The Dutch had already experience with electronic banking in the pre-internet era. In 1986 the Dutch Postbank, now part of ING, started an experiment on Viditel with a small group of people. This became later the banking service Girotel. In 1987 I changed over to Girotel and have been banking electronically ever since and I have never seen a local banking branche from the inside. Girotel became a success as it recognised that the clients had become data entry typists and asked a modest fee for the service.

Later on the Rabobank started experimenting. By the seventies the major banks were into electronic banking, but usually started with bussiness as first clients.But with the increase of the PC in the eighties more banks started to involve the clients, offering them local PC programmes. The switch to internet banking was only a small step for people used to electronic banking. But as internet yielded many new PC users, internet banking became popular. In the end it has also worked to the advantage of the clients. The money transfer has become real time with transfer internally, while the money transfers between banks has been shortened.

Blog Post Number: 1190

Tags: electronic banking

BPN 1189 Dutch still satisfied with analogue TV

Presently I am exploring digital television. Having bought a wide screen television and having a wide screen PC, I accepted a package from UPC consisting of a faster internet connection up to 10Mb, unlimited use of the phone and digital television. In the digital television offer are a lot of channels, which I have never seen and for which I hardly have time to view them. Sometimes the picture is better than analogue television; but on the other hand there is always a channel, which does not have the proper pixel order and broken sound fragments. I am I impressed? No, not really. Looking at the cheaper Digitenne (DVB-T) of the incumbent telecom operator KPN, it looks like there is not much difference except the monthly fee. Besides, by October 2009 the apartment will be connected with Fiber to the Home (FTTH) and a new choice of a provider will have to be made. So far the incumbent telecom operator KPN is one of the parties offering three packages of triple play.

Just when I am exploring digital television, I got to read the results of a survey by KPMG and TNS NIPO on analogue and digital television among 1.100 Dutch respondents. The good news is that 60 per cent of the respondents are familiar with digital television. The bad news is that one in four Dutch households has moved to digital television. So our household is one of them, but it also means that there are three households which are still watching analogue television as they are not convinced of the advantages of digital television. Another practical objection for switching to digital television is that you get one media player and will have to buy another media set for any other television in the house.

The Dutch television consumer is happy with the quality of the pictures delivered and sees no reason to call the service desk of cable companies like UPC or Ziggo or run to the service shops to book the digital television immediately. Besides the satisfaction with the analogue view of the television, the price is too high and the extra advantages are not clear.

Of course the price factor is holding people back. UPC has attempted to get every subscriber on digital television by offering them a media player, regardless whether they asked for it or not. That campaign went down the drain. Now they have composed three marketing packages with offers you can not refuse. Still people are holding back and do not see the necessity not the extra pay. Of course they can also switch to KPN and pay roughly 7 euro for digital television instead of the 15 euro for UPC’s analogue television.

As digital television should be the portal to movies and Music services on demand, it also means that the operators are still not reaping the maximum benefits of digital television. Yet the Dutch will pay just 3 euro for films and movies. Just 11 per cent is willing to pay more to get an ad-free channel.

It is clear that the television operators are going to have a hard time to sell their digital service. People do not want to have the technical hassle, despite all the promise of the operators that it will be easy to connect. Most people know that FTTH is near and they will wait for that. Then they will have to make a principal choice of technology (FTTH or cable) and of operator.

Blog Posting Number: 1189

Tags: digital television, FTTH

BPN 1188 Europe to become battlefield e-reader

Kindle is rumoured to launch a European Kindle at the International Book Fair in Frankfurt in October 2008. Deutsche Telekom researches digital newspaper. Sony open for other formats and starts distributing e-readers in the UK. Cybook works with SFR on wireless e-reader. iRex technologies distributes iLiad without wireless through Borders in the UK.

This is just an inventory of actions to come in the field of e-readers in Europe. Despite the fragmentation in languages, it looks like Europe has become a new battlefield for e-readers. The real battle in the UK will begin in September in the UK between the Sony-Waterstone combination and the iLiad-Borders combination, both combinations of hardware manufacturers and book distributors. However before this battle starts another battle is brewing in Germany. Kindle is said to launch the Kindle in October, while Deutsche Telekom is about to launch an e-Paper service. The leaking of the news suggests that a combination of Amazon with Kindle and Deutsche Telekom is in the making.

But these are not the only moves on the European continent. Another move comes from Sony. One is a real important one. Sony is leaving its regional subsidiaries free to formulate a local strategy for introducing the Sony e-reader. It has not formulated an all-over European strategy to attack a particular market. The regional subsidiaries are not obliged to develop the consumer markets in language areas which hardly have any e-books in the local language. If they want to develop the market, they can so; but they can also develop the educational market and the technical/business market. It is not the first time that Sony attacks the European market with an e-reader. In 1993 Sony canvassed Europe with the first Sony e-reader Sony EB (se photograph). In the UK, France and Germany there was some interest from consumers, but in 2005 when there was an economic downturn the campaign was stopped. One thing Sony did well was to organise publishers, software integrators and distributors in committees sponsored by Sony; the objective of the committees was to develop an offer of e-book for the e-reader and to set up a common market campaign. But as it looks now, Sony will not be the promoter on behalf of the e-book industry.

For the general market there also two moves coming up. Although details are lacking iRex Technologies is said to work on a new model, which should be launched in December. And Kindle is working on a 10 inch screen device for the B2B and educational market.

Of course at the same time of this e-reader battle, the UMPCs are coming on the market with price tags from 99 US dollars and giving e-readers a run for their money.

In short we have some fascinating times ahead not only in Europe, but also on the general e-reader market.

Blog Posting Number: 1188

Tags: e-reader, e-blog, e-Paper

BPN 1187 EU annoyance with the digital library for Europe

The European Commission is not happy with the contributions of the EU countries and the speed of the formation of the European digital library, Europeana. The digital library is supposed be launched on November 28, 2008, but the museums, libraries and digital preservation institutes are slow in bringing their digital collections online. Europeana should be a milestone for the European Union, showing Europe's cultural diversity in books, music, paintings, photographs, and films open to all citizens at the click of a mouse via one portal. (The access ticket is taken from the presentation Europeana in the European context and strategy by Marius Snyders, EU Digital Content and Cognitive Systems Directorate).

In a Communication the Commission called on Member States to raise digitisation capacities to make their collections available for Europe's citizens and to team up with the private sector. The Commission's assessment also shows that in many cases there is a gap between the objects which have been digitised and their online accessibility. For example, only one in four German museums that have digitised material offer online access to it and only 1 per cent of the material digitised by Polish archives is online.

However, further efforts by the EU Member States are needed, said the Commission in a new Communication on making available digital versions of works from cultural institutions all over Europe. Digitisation of cultural works can give Europeans access to material from museums, libraries and archives abroad without having to travel or turn hundreds of pages to find a piece of information. Europe's libraries alone contain more than 2.5 billion books, but only about 1 per cent of archival material is available in digital form. The Commission therefore called on Member States to do more to make digitised works available online for Europeans to browse them digitally, for study, work or leisure. The Commission itself will provide some120 million euro in 2009-2010 for improving online access to Europe's cultural heritage.

The Commission confirmed its commitment to help Member States bring their valuable cultural content online. In 2009-2010 no less than an extra 69 million euro from the EU's research programme will go to digitisation activities and the development of digital libraries. In the same period, Europe's Competitiveness and Innovation Programme will allocate about 50 million euro to improve access to Europe's cultural content. However, the total cost of digitising five million books in Europe's libraries is already estimated at approximately 225 million euro, not including objects like manuscripts or paintings. Realising the vision of a European Digital Library (Europeana) needs substantial investment from national institutions, but at present most countries only provide small scale, fragmented funding for digitisation. The countries are advised to address the following priorities:
- More funding needs to be allocated to digitisation, along with plans for how much material will be digitised.
- Most countries still lack methods, technologies and experience for the preservation of digital material, vital so that content remains accessible to future generations.
- Common standards need to be implemented to make different information sources and databases compatible for and usable by the European Digital Library (Europeana).
- Resolution of copyright issues, above all legal solutions to the problem of orphan works - works whose right holders cannot be found to consent to digitisation (IP/07/508).

Visitors to digital libraries can digitally discover copies of the famous Gutenberg bible – the first real book ever printed – at the British Library's website, the voices of Maria Callas or Jacques Brel at the French Institut National de l'Audiovisuel, or Da Vinci's masterpiece the Mona Lisa at the Louvre - without a ticket. The Dutch museum Mauritshuis has put paintings of the painter Vermeer on internet, while the French National Library is showing the poems of Baudelaire.

The EC however has also praise for some Member States, which have taken exemplary steps to accelerate digitisation of cultural collections. Slovenia adopted a Public-Private Partnership Act in 2007, providing new opportunities for private promotion of digitisation projects in public institutions. Slovakia has rehabilitated an old military complex as a large-scale digitisation facility using page turning robots. Finland, Slovakia and Lithuania used European Structural Funds to secure extra funding for digitisation.

Blog Posting Number: 1187

Tags: digital preservation, e-culture, museum, library

BPN 1186 Dutch newspapers are rearranging the landscape again

It is summer time, but the Dutch newspaper publishers PCM and Wegener are talking about rearranging their common assets and about swapping titles. PCM wants to buy the minority share of 37 per cent in AD from Wegener, while Wegener wants to buy the free local newspapers of PCM.

The news that Wegener wants to sell its minority share in AD (the former Het Algemene Dagblad) is surprising. Until 2005 AD was a lost leader within PCM. But AD has picked up and had a circulation of 468.000 copies and was profitable last year. The newspaper merged at that time with the paid regional dailies of PCM and Wegener, leading to a national edition with seven regional editions. In the title PCM owns 63 per cent of the share, while Wegener has a minority of 37 per cent of the share; yet both have an equal say of 50 per cent in the venture. The 37 per cent of shares is valued at 20 million euro. Surprisingly PCM wanted to buy all the shares in 2006, but Wegener kept them, despite the difficult management of a daily newspaper by two newspaper companies, as insiders have indicated.

AD has an illustrious history of editorial items such as the annual green herring test. With a summer of sports events ahead such as the European Soccer Championship, the Tour de France and the Olympic Games it announced a trial of a sport daily. Although the results have been encouraging, a continuation has been called off.

At the same time both companies talk about swapping the free local media of PCM to Wegener. PCM has 27 free local editions with a circulation of 1 million copies in the delta between Amsterdam, Rotterdam and Utrecht. Wegener being a major regional publisher would like to expand its local free newspaper market. In this way ad sales people are able to sell package deals for their local paid media, but also their local free media.

PCM will be able to pay the AD minority share package from the revenues of the sale of ThiemeMeulenhoff to NDC/VBK for which it will receive 170 million euro.

The move by Wegener is unexpected as the new owner of Wegener, Mecom, said last year, that the company was committed to its minority share. But after a year things have changed: a profit demand of 15 to 20 per cent by the holding Mecom and the new management at Wegener. In the background also plays Mecom’s financial state of art and strategy. Presently the company is involved in the sales of its Norwegian daughter Edda Media, the former Orkla Media.

The talks are still in an early stage and are dependent on some conditions such as transaction documentation and the green light of the monopoly watchdog. PCM and Wegener hope to complete the deal before the end of the year.

Blog Posting Number: 1186

Tags: newspapers

BPN 1185 Correction on bloggers' registry

On July 20, I wrote about a proposal of a member of the European Parliament (MEP) to start a webloggers’ register. As weblogs represent an important new contribution to media pluralism, there is a need to clarify their status, and to create legal safeguards for use in the event of lawsuits as well as to establish a right to reply, says a recent own initiative report drafted by Estonian Socialist Marianne Mikko (see photograph). Own initiative reports are drafted by individual MEPs and are not proposals for EU laws. The report was later adopted by Parliament's Culture Committee, but with amendments, which affected some of the positions in the draft report. The EU department Information Society corrected an earlier report.

The report - adopted by MEPs on the Culture Committee on 3 June - also says there is "considerable risk" that the private media's pursuit of profit could compromise its ability to act as a watchdog for democracy. It goes on to suggest "implies a need to establish legal safeguards providing for the assignment of liability in the event of lawsuits, and establishing the right to reply".

"The cases of unrestricted ownership concentration or of scarce content pluralism in the media are endangering cultural diversity and freedom of expression not only within national markets but also at European level. We need therefore strong European commitment to overcome those challenges especially in view of the new technologies and services in the media sector", said Committee chair Greek Socialist Katarina Batzeli (PES).

Weblogs and other new on-line media pose new challenges, say MEPs. The growth of commercial media outlets for user-generated content, such as photos and videos, used without paying a fee, raises problems of ethics and privacy, and puts journalists and other media professionals under pressure, they say.

The report "on concentration and pluralism in the media in the European Union" - drafted by Estonian Socialist Marianne Mikko - also warns against the concentration of the media in the hands of a few companies because the media is vital to safeguarding democracy. "The media remains a powerful tool, which should not be treated solely in economic terms," she said. The report calls for social and legal guarantees to journalists and editors. It will be put to the vote in the full plenary in the future.

Ms Mikko told us "the blogosphere has so far been a haven of good intentions and relatively honest dealing. However, with blogs becoming commonplace, less principled people will want to use them".

Asked if she considered bloggers to be "a threat", she said "we do not see bloggers as a threat. They are in position, however, to considerably pollute cyberspace. We already have too much spam, misinformation and malicious intent in cyberspace". She added, "I think the public is still very trusting towards blogs, it is still seen as sincere. And it should remain sincere. For that we need a quality mark, a disclosure of who is really writing and why".

Belgian MEP Ivo Belet (who acted as an advisor on the report for the Industry committee) said "weblogs and user generated content contribute in a lively and fresh way to a colourful and many-sided media landscape. They should not be restrained". The centre right EPP-ED member did concede however that some legal issues such as privacy and the right of reply need to be addressed.

German Liberal Jorgo Chatzimarkakis acted as advisor for the Economic and Monetary committee. He told us that "bloggers cannot automatically be considered a threat, but imagine pressure groups, professional interests or any other groups using blogs to pass on their message. Blogs are powerful tools, they can represent an advance form of lobbyism, which in turn can be seen as a threat". He said "any blogger representing or expressing more than their personal view should be affected by this report."

Blog Posting Number: 1185

Tags: blogs, bloggers, registration

BPN 1184 Copyright Law on Digital Preservation

A consortium of institutes from Australia, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and the United States have prepared a report International Study on the Impact of Copyright Law on Digital Preservation reviewing copyright and related laws and the impact of those laws on digital preservation of copyrighted works. The report addresses proposals for legislative reform and efforts to develop non-legislative solutions to the challenges that copyright law presents for digital preservation. The institutes who contributed to the report are Library of Congress, National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program (NDIIPP), US; Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC), UK; Open Access to Knowledge (OAK) Law Project, QUT Law Faculty, Australia; and SURFfoundation, Netherlands. This authoritative report was compiled in the framework of the National Digital Information and Infrastructure Preservation Program.

© Metopes of Selinunte

The report notes that digital works are ephemeral, and unless preservation efforts are begun soon after they are created, they will be lost to future generations. Its authors found that although copyright and related laws are not the only obstacle to digital preservation, there is no question that those laws present significant challenges.

Recommendations are provided for legislative reform and other solutions to ensure that libraries, archives and other preservation institutions can manage copyrighted digital information in a manner consistent with national and international laws. Specific recommendations include structuring national copyright laws to provide exceptions for preservation institutions to proactively preserve at risk copyrighted material in digital form, subject to measures appropriate to protect the legitimate interests of right holders.

According to the report, copyright laws should permit preservation institutions to preserve copyrighted works in accordance with international best practices for digital preservation, including making copies for administrative and technical purposes; migrating works into different formats in response to technological developments and changing standards; and maintaining redundant copies among preservation institutions and legally authorized third party preservation repositories to protect against catastrophic loss.

The report further recommends that copyright exceptions for digital preservation should not be conditioned on the category (such as literature or music) or format (such as compact disc or website) of the work.

The Dutch contribution to the report takes inventory of current digital preservation efforts in the Netherlands. It also looks at the way in which the Netherlands regulates the preservation of and access to digital materials: through agreements between cultural institutions and entitled parties, which ensure that 20th-century works will remain publicly available. Higher education institutions in the Netherlands, collaborating within SURF, have indicated that they want clarity about preserving and providing access to cultural resources.

The recommendations for reforming Dutch legislation also focus on works from collections in museums, archives and libraries. These works need to be digitized for preservation. A secure network would have to ensure access to these digitized works.

For the Netherlands, the report is particularly important in view of the leading international position which the National Library of the Netherlands has achieved with its e-depository. The Library is often quoted as ‘an example of good practice’.

The importance of the report is underlined by Dr. Wim van Drimmelen, Director of the National Library. In an article in the Dutch newspaper ‘NRC Handelsblad’ of 17 April 2008, the National Library argued for removing the legal obstacles to digitizing 20th-century library collections. In addition, Van Drimmelen argues that clear regulation and legislation in this area is also of paramount importance for new, digitally born documents since their accessibility is under greater threat than that of traditional information carriers.

Blog Posting Number: 1184

Tags: copyright, digital preservation

BPN 1183 You can’t miss the Olympic Games

It is 08-08-08; today the Olympic Games start. 1388 days ago I was in Beijing and saw the first stadiums for the Olympic Games arise as well as the many construction works near the airport. Now the three week circus starts and I am glad I am not in Beijing, given all the crowds. Yet, I would love to see whether the waitresses of one of the restaurants I visited has made it to welcome the guests in English.

However I will have to watch the Games from Almere (The Netherlands). But I have a choice. Of course I can watch the games on television. Just a week ago I upgraded my UPC subscription to digital television. I installed it and so far I am impressed by some broadcasts and all the extra information. Yet I can imagine why people stick to analogue. So far I have not taken a HD package.

But outside the regular broadcasts, the NOS, the Dutch public broadcast organisation will offer broadcasts through 13 channels. The official channel Nederland 1 will offer all the highlights of a day. On the website the user determines himself which of the 28 Olympic sports he/she will look at on one of the 12 channels. There will also be summaries, highlights, statistics scores and on-demand content 24/7. Also special feeds and special widgets will be transmitted to record the performances of the Dutch sports people.

Central to the site and the channels is an electronic program guide (EPG). The EPG can be personalised according to the user’s preferences. From the schedule the user can click through to the live video channel.

However the user does not have to stay at home. Through NOS Mobile the user can also pick up the 13 channels. As the games in Beijing are between 3:00 AM and 4:00 PM, people can watch the games with a proper UMTS mobile telephone or a wifi connection at night, during the morning rush hour, during work or holiday. The content is free; the mobile telephone connection has to be paid for.

The NOS has acquired all the rights needed to broadcast the Olympic Games, ranging from television to radio, internet to mobile, live and on-demand.

It is remarkable that the media (television, newspapers and internet) are involving social networks. The NOS has feeds and widgets for Twitter and the Dutch social network Hyves. The daily De Telegraaf has created a Hyve with Hyves as a central place for news and background stories of the Olympic Games. De Telegraaf will blog from the press centre as well from the Holland Heineken House (see movie).



One thing is sure: if you do not want to miss anything of the Olympic Games, you need television, a computer and a mobile.

Blog Posting Number 1183

Tags: television, internet, mobile,
television, mobile

BPN 1182 Looking forward to a new (Reed) Elsevier

On Monday I wrote a posting on Reed Elsevier and I mentioned its forthcoming sale of Reed Elsevier Business division. This would make the slimmed down Reed Elsevier (or will it just be Elsevier again) a one-segment publishing company: scientific, technical and especially medical information (STM). Thinking about it I saw some similarities between the company histories of those two companies, which started out from The Netherlands and started there internationalisation and specialisation strategies in the eighties.

In the eighties The Dutch publishing company VNU started its internationalisation program. It bought publishing companies in Europe and the US and grew and grew. It sold its printing plants, followed by the sale of the newspapers and later on the book division, than bought and five years later sold its fast money maker, the directory division. In the meantime the strategy was to become a digital data company with more than 50 percent of revenues from databases. It started to specialise in marketing data company as those companies are less dependent on advertising revenues. And it collected a host of those companies with Nielsen as a pearl in the crown. From that point onwards it was no longer a publisher, but rather a data intelligence company. When the board wanted to buy the Kohi Noor diamond in the crown, IMS the shareholders, specifically venture capitalist started to revolt. In the end the board had to give up the acquisition and carve up the company into Nielsen and VNU Media (which sold most of its subsidiaries outside The Netherlands; it aims to become an digital publisher and is well on its way to become one).

For the former Elsevier the change into an STM company is the fourth step of the company to become a one-segment publisher. Elsevier began as a conglomerate of print plants and consumer, business and scientific publishers and over the years it sold off the division by division. The print plants were the first to go in the eighties. After that the newspapers in the consumer section had to go, followed by the consumer book publishers. The business division which got a big impulse when Elsevier merged with Reed, is now up for sale. So by the end of the year Reed Elsevier will be solely a STM publisher and might be re-named Elsevier or Elsevier Science again. Elsevier will be a full fledged science publisher with mighty databases like Science Direct. Of course the new company will be faced with all kind of new initiatives in the academic publishing world: open access and the public library of science.

The history of the two companies which were both Dutch by origin contains many similarities. They followed the same internationalisation policy and had the same strategy towards revenues from digital publishing (except Reed Elsevier and especially the scientific division was more aggressive than VNU). Now the new Reed Elsevier (or the future Elsevier or Elsevier Science) has also the intention to become a one-segment company, be it not an data intelligence company. Projecting into the future for the new Reed Elsevier (or the future Elsevier or Elsevier Science), the question can be posed, what the strategy will be of the new Reed Elsevier. Is the scientific publisher moving towards a break-up like VNU or will the company find fresh grounds in its one segment of publishing? Or will it also move out of publishing and more in the direction of running research organisations or other directions?

I wonder what the Elsevier Science people think about the new direction. Comments are welcome.

Blog Posting Number: 1182

Tags: scientific publishing, academic publishing, STM

BPN 1181 Watch out for the Google Street View car

If you are living in Holland or are visiting the Low Countries, watch out: the ET-like Google Street View car is in Holland! Stay inside; if you have to go out, cover your face with a mask or even better, dress up in a burka. Otherwise, you might be the laughing stock for the years to come or worse your marriage might end as you were not able to explain why you were in the same suspicious place as that strange ET car of Google Street View. Can you imagine, telling at a party that your marriage of 30 years was wrecked by a Google car!

At least the people in Amsterdam and Rotterdam might be safe by the end of this month. Since May the Google Street View cars are driving around in those cities and are recording street by street, so that anyone with internet can see in what street you live or are supposed to live. Instead of having a panoramic view, you can get a view as if you were driving through the street or do virtual walks from the train station to your house.

Street View was launched in the USA in the Spring of 2007 and started with the cities of San Francisco, New York City, Denver, Miami and Las Vegas and is now operational in Australia, Asia and Europe. The programme was already active in France; there was even a Street VIew programme for the Tour de France (even after the Tour you can relive the full edition). More recently the programme was started in the UK, where a weblogger had a talk with one of the drivers. And now Holland is being recorded. (Just search on Goggle for Google Street View car and you will see a line up of various camera devices; the one on the picture comes from the UK).

Infringement on privacy came up as a problem when the programme was introduced. A couple in Pittsburgh claims damages of 25.000 US dollars as the Google car shot photographs or part of a movie of the road in front of their house. This, while a notice board indicated that it was a private road. Google reacted rather indifferent by saying that in this modern world there is nothing like absolute privacy. But the company seems to have learned as it did go into discussion with British privacy groups and was able to reassure them with some measures. It also contacted the privacy watchdog of the European Commission and several European countries. The company reassures people that will not be recognisable and is now developing software to make faces and number plates fuzzy and unreadable. Whoever recognises him- or herself can lodge a complaint and demand the image to be removed.

It is not the first time that street film cars are touring around the Netherlands to record streets, the houses, offices, factories and parks. The first time this was happening was in 1989, when a transporter was used in Rotterdam to collect images of streets. It was a project by the former Dutch telecom monopoly PTT in cooperation with the CD-ROM producer CD-Europe. I am not completely sure anymore, but I suspect that the early navigation adapter Tele-Atlas was also involved. (BTW Not one complaint about privacy at that time!). Since 1992 the Dutch company Cyclomedia executes this type of work and has now 34 cars on the road to record the streets, one by one, for government and private companies.

Blog Posting Number: 1181

Tags: navigation, virtual walks, privacy

BPN 1180 Telcos seriously look at e-Papers

Der Spiegel, the sister publication of the German newspaper Bild, published a story on Deutsche Telecom being interested in digital newspapers. However the story was rather vague as the spokes person told the reporter that the telecom company did not have a content agreement with a newspaper nor did the spokesperson say anything on the e-reader(s) to be used. The story should be taken serious as Deutsche Telecom is picking up experience from its US sister network Verizon which is working together with Amazon’s e-reader Kindle, of which more than 240.000 have been sold already.

But the announced project does not really be on its way yet or does not want to tell too much about it. But in the fall the telco wants to start a pilot by handing out e-readers to some thousands of clients. The project is called News4Me and it is known that the telco tinkers on producing a personalised electronic newspaper. The site of Deutsche Telecom says: The News4Me project aims to create an individual electronic newspaper. Subscriptions are possible to complete issues or to individual sections from differing newspapers, which will then be transmitted to mobile devices. The contents and the layout adapt constantly to the way that you read. In future, wherever you are, you will benefit from easy access to current news and information which correspond to your personal interests.

So Deutsche Telecom or T-labs still have to agree on cooperations with newspaper companies. What DT wants looks like Google News. This asks for a lot of conversions from the various newspaper formats. Of course it has been demonstrated by Google and can be done for an e-reader.

The e-reader is still subject to speculation. However researchers of T-Labs have spoken about the specifications in June to Innovations Report and talked about an a screen almost as large a newspaper page, flexible and not an LCD screen with backlit facilities. The researchers referred to the product of the Dutch company Polymer Vision, the Readius (see photograph), with a rollable screen. They would also like to equip the e-reader with broadcast facilities, by which I think they mean video and audio.

It is interesting to see Deutsche Telecom going into e-papers as a telecom company and not having the support yet of the German newspaper industry. It is almost unbelievable as the international newspaper research institute IFRA is in Darmstadt and has been conducting an e-paper project for some years. Some US companies now benefit from the project by offering their newspaper to the public through Kindle. Besides IFRA recently performed a focus group test of e-reader with black and white screens provided by irex Technologies and Sony, but also colour screens, provided by Bridgestone.

But all these details aside: DT is the second telecom multinational going into a pilot of e-papers. Earlier this year France Telecom through its Orange Labs started the project Read & Go, the first 3G-connected mobile newspaper kiosk with the newspapers Le Monde, Le Parisien, Les Echos, L’Equipe and Télérama. Orange has specifically developed Wifi/3G coupled connectivity with a dedicated distribution platform, user interface and browsing capability. The Read&Go device has a storage capacity of 1 Gb – more than 200 newspapers – and also contains a e-library of thirty or so books (literature, strip cartoons, children's and practical publications, etc.) provided by Feedbooks, Médiatoon (Dargaud, Dupuis, Lombard et Kana) and Mango editions. The project will have 150 test persons. So far an iLiad has been used in the marketing utterances.

The move of the telecom companies France Telecom and Deutsche Telekom is interesting as the pilots are not just undertaken by newspapers and equipment manufacturers only like the projects of NRC Handelsblad in The Netherlands and Les Echos in France

Blog Posting: 1180

Tags: newspaper, e-paper, e-reader

BPN 1179 Elsevier: fine-tuning the last link

Reed Elsevier is much in the news during the last weeks. The financial results of 2007 have been reported, while the results of the second quarter of 2008 were published last week. Reed Elsevier senses strong business momentum and financial performance. It has a restructuring programme going which is on track to deliver further margin improvement. The sale of its education division Harcourt Education is fully completed; net proceeds of €2.7bn returned to shareholders.

Of course there are two very important changes coming up. Crispin Davis, the CEO, will leave Reed Elsevier beginning of next year. No new person has been presented yet (question will be, whether this will be a woman). And another item on the list is the divestment of Reed Business Information, which is in progress. Reed Business Information no longer belongs to the core business and will be sold as a division. This will present some name problems. Will the company continue a Reed Elsevier or return back to the company name Elsevier or Elsevier Science. In the Netherlands Reed Elsevier still has a magazine named Elsevier; changing its name will murder the magazine.

So the multinational will turn into a one-segment publisher, namely a publisher of scientific information. It is the fourth step of the company to become a one-segment publisher. Elsevier began as a conglomerate of print plants and consumer, business and scientific publishers and over the years it sold off the division. The print plants were the first to go in the eighties. After that the newspapers in the consumer section had to go, followed by the book publishers. The business division which got a big impulse when Elsevier merged with Reed, is now up for sale. So by the end of the year Reed Elsevier will be solely a STM (Scientific, Technical, Medical) publisher and might be named Elsevier Science again. Elsevier will be a full fledged science publisher with mighty databases like Science Direct. Of course the new company will be faced with all kind of new initiatives in the academic publishing world: open access and the public library of science.

In the meantime Elsevier, the publisher of scientific, technical and medical information products and services, builds out its cashing machine by making it easier readers and subscribers to its more than 2,800 online journals to purchase article reprints for a variety of uses. Elsevier is partnering with Copyright Clearance Center to use CCC's Rightslink(R) service, the world's leading online platform for marketing and monetizing the rights to content.

The new reprint-ordering capability, available now, follows Elsevier's initial adoption of Rightslink in 2007 to handle copyright permissions for Elsevier's journals. Rightslink is an online e-commerce service that allows content users to instantly license content and order reprints online. The most widely used web-based licensing application, Rightslink is in use on more than 11,000 journals, magazines and newspapers, as well as thousands of books online. Major publishers uses the services from Rightslink such as Dow Jones, The New York Times Company, Springer, Taylor & Francis, O'Reilly Media, Time Inc., Oxford University Press, Nature Publishing Group, The University of Chicago Press, Blackwell Publishing and USA Today. Rightslink lets the Elsevier journal readers efficiently order reprints directly from ScienceDirect content pages online, providing a fast and easy transaction. It is also integrated into the print-and-delivery business process.

ScienceDirect and Elsevier's Health Sciences platforms deliver more than 9 million articles online from more than 2,500 peer-reviewed journals published in 24 fields of science, technology and medicine. More than 1 billion articles have been downloaded from the ScienceDirect and Health Sciences platforms by scientists, teachers and researchers.

Blog Posting Number: 1179

Tags: scientific publishing, academic publishing, STM

BPN 1178 Searching is still not cool

Whoever thinks that the search fight is over and Google has won, is wrong. Google is a marketing machine with a fast search engine, but excessive and dispensable results. On the marketing side it will be hard to win the fight, but in the field of search results lot can be won. Now a new entrant has presented itself: Cuil with a rather snoring blurb: rather than rely on superficial popularity metrics like Google does, Cuil searches for and ranks pages based on their content and relevance.

It is clear that Cuil is in its beta phase; no advertisements, just a search machine and results. I had a look at it and did my own benchmarking with my name, the name of the blog and the name of our company. I compared the results of Cuil with the results of Google. I started with my own name Jak Boumans and was presented with the following results: 1827 results from Cuil and 7690 results from Google. Cuil offers fewer entries. Yet also Cuil has duplicate results and non-relevant results from either Jak or Boumans. When the duplicates are removed the number of relevant results could be diminished with 40 per cent. Cuil attempts to illustrate every entry with photographs and this leads to hilarious results. An old photograph - not taken by me and one I would have destroyed - is often used in connection with bibliographic data. But after 10 pages with results, a photograph does not work anymore. I also tested the name of this blog: Buziaulane. Google generated 5090 search results and Cuil 2143. Looking though the results in Cuil, the results concentrate on the name of the site and the occurrences in other blogs and on other sites. Multimedia assets are less abundant and in fact soberly applied. The last part of the benchmark took the company title and compared these: 1,3 million search results in Google and 4,7 million search results in Cuil. Funny part is that Cuil does not recognise the name as a company name, but as a method of reporting with electronic media. When I add the legal company form, VOF, there is only one result of an activity of the company; when the legal name is punctuated as it should, there is no result at all. So not even the chamber of commerce directories have been culled by Cuil. When I refine the term with the present and former company base, I get completely different results. When I add Almere to Electronic Media Reporting the search engine comes up with some results of the blog. When I added Utrecht, the first company base, there are more diverse results.

Am I impressed by Cuil? I loved Cuil in the first two benchmarks of my name and my blog’s name. But the results of the company are really bad, especially as the company names in The Netherlands are registered by the Chamber of Commerce. The addition of the multimedia assets is too much ad random, leading to portrait photographs next to for example the method of reporting with electronic media.

I recently also looked at Exalead. Putting this search engine through the same benchmark test, I got the following results:
Term/Exalead/Cuil/Google
- Jak Boumans: 672 results/1827/7690
- Buziaulane: 1578 results/2143/5090
- Electronic Media Reporting: 908,367 results /4,706.000/1,300.000

The retrievability of words and composed terms is still very inexact. The addition of multimedia assets is not an added value. So I guess that Google will stay alive for the time being.

Blog Posting Number: 1179

Tags: search engine

BPN 1177 Amazon buys Abebooks and dabbles now in two social networks

Abebooks was in the news yesterday. Amazon is going to buy the Canadian online marketplace for used, rare and out-of-print books. I remember that Abebooks was a winner in 2003 of the World Summit Award 2003 in the category e-business. (The WSA has a good nose for quality candidates!). The laudation for Abebooks read at that time: Abebooks.com is the world’s largest online marketplace for used, rare, and out-of-print books. It connects those who buy books with those who sell books and covers the entire cycle of an online transaction, from registration to logistics. Abebooks.com has unique features, including a matching system that helps users find unavailable books, direct bookseller contact and a free bookstore inventory management system. The site also includes literary features and community fora where booklovers have lively literary based discussions. Abebooks has an unparalleled selection including collectibles, comics and reading copies of bestsellers.

Amazon.com has reached an agreement to acquire AbeBooks,. Its site has over 110 million books listed for sale by 13,500 independent booksellers from around the world. It will continue to function as a stand-alone operation based in Victoria, British Columbia. AbeBooks will maintain all of its websites
But reading the news, I discovered some new thing about book and books collectors. While we have the friends’sites like Facebook and the Dutch Hyves and the professional network sites like Linkedin, Xing and Plaxo, there are also social network for booklovers. Abe books owes a 40 percent minority share in LibraryThing, which keeps track of books and finds other like-minded book lovers. Amazon has also invested in a similar service called Shelfari. So, what is Amazon going to with these two services? Basically the question is of course: has it any influence on those two companies and can it take any action such buying the majority stakes and merging the services?

Here is the reaction by the owner of LibraryThing: I congratulate Amazon on a shrewd acquisition. Abebooks is a great company, full of wonderful people. I have no inside info, but I can foresee Amazon's extraordinary technical infrastructure giving Abe a big lift. … The majority of LibraryThing is in my hands. Abebooks holds a minority of the shares, with certain notable but limited rights. This situation does not change when Amazon acquires Abebooks. Amazon will not get access to your data. The LibraryThing/Abebooks terms are specific. Abe gets only anonymized and aggregate data, like recommendations, and they can only use it on Abebooks sites (eg., Abebooks.com, Abebooks.de). Nothing has changed here. Abebooks customers won't see much a difference. The name will survive and the Abebooks.com site will continue. Both employees and management will remain in Canada. LibraryThing remains LibraryThing. We will continue to uphold and advance LibraryThing values, including open data, strict privacy rules and support for libraries and independent bookstores.

I did not see any comment on the site of Shelfari. This social site, online since 2006, introduces readers to our global community of book lovers and encourages them to share their literary inclinations and passions with peers, friends, and total strangers (for now). Shelfari was the first social media site focused on books, and will continue to innovate as it brings together the world's readers. Our mission is to enhance the experience of reading by connecting readers in meaningful conversations about the published word.

But both sites, LibraryThing and Shelfari are interesting. Their members can build virtual bookshelves to express themselves to their friends and to the world and discover books that are popular in their trusted circles of friends. It is also like a virtal book debating club where members can influence peers by rating and discussing books online and learn from people with similar reading tastes. They can also interact with with and learn from authors.

(BTW Have a look at the exciting, remodelled site of the World Summit Award, ready for the WSA 2009 edition. The site was produced by the board member Anya Sverdlov and her ACTIS team.)

Blog Posting Number: 1177

Tags: social networks, books

BPN 1176 Twenty years in telecom networks

Recently, I received an interesting book on the history of SURFnet, the Dutch university network organisation (thanks Mariska!). The book is a commemorative book on the 20 anniversary of the organisations; it was also the commemorative book for the departing CEO Boudewijn Nederkoorn, one of the founding fathers of SURFnet.

The book is interesting as it presents contemporary online history. SURFnet was the result of university computer centres banning together to set up a network between the Dutch universities, to link the network to the European academic networks and to connect to the international academic networks. While setting up a network infrastructure, the SURFnet people got caught up in the internet roll-out. As they had the Dutch PTT (now KPN) as a shareholder, they got involved in the OSI X-25 vs. the TCP/IP discussion and decided already in an early stage that OSI-25was not the road to take, much to the chagrin of the PTT.

In the meantime the organisation has become a prominent network organisation in the Netherlands and outside. It now delivers an infrastructure for universities and colleges, libraries and school services. It also takes care of the international connections, for example with the Grid network Géant. By now it has developed six generations of networks and is drawing the seventh generation. The networks are so successful that even the old-time partner bought SURFnet5 for it commercial operation. Internationally it has optical light paths to speed up international secure services.

SURFnet has been a catalyser in the Dutch development of internet. It picked up internet from the beginning and was one of the first academic organisations to have it commercialised by private companies, while the Dutch incumbent KPN did not yet believe in internet. SURFnet was also one of the first organisations to establish Fibre To The Dormitory (FTTD) at jealous making speeds to normal consumers; it was also one of the first organisations transporting internet over the cable in dormitories.

The book, written by Verhoog & Warmerdam, a bureau for company history and genealogy, reads like a techno adventure book. However it wrongly establishes the impression that the network scene in pre-internet era was almost void and empty. From 1977 he Netherlands was already experimenting with online. The publisher Kluwer, now part of Wolters Kluwer, started to build up a legal online database. By 1980 a first consumer and SME service based on videotex, Viditel, came online. E-mail and online retrieval services were already handled by a national Datanet-1 as well as the European network Diane*Euronet (photograph taken in 1980, the network being demonstrated by the EC official Franco Mastroddi). The impression that hardly any network activities did exist in the early eighties or even before is based on the fact that the ASCII database world did not talk with the videotex world, which was looked at as the Volkswagen of the online world. Yes and there was already e-mail; in fact I have been empowered by e-mail since 1980, amongst others through the American service The Source and the hardly used videotext e-mail service of Viditel. All these services were searching for a market with confusion as a result. So when SURFnet started to set up another network, more confusion was added. But all this was over on January 1, 1997, when Videotex Nederland stopped its service and TCP/IP became a unifying factor in the network world.

Blog Posting Number: 1176

Tags: network, OSI X-25, TCP/IP, videotex

Monthly stats blog Buziaulane

Blog: Buziaulane is a daily blog in English
Period: 1-7-2008 till 31-7-2008

Stats
Pageviews: 1415 (June 1192)
Visits: 1089 (June 949)
Unique Visitors: 971 (June 830)
Countries: 63 (June 70)

Pageviews from the following countries
Rank/country/percentage
1. The Netherlands (32,79%)
2. USA (24,95%)
3. UK (7,84%)
4. Germany (3,32%)
5. France (2,54%)
6. India (2,47%)
7. Canada (2,26%)
8. Australia (1,70%)
9. Rest (1,63%)
10. Thailand (1,48%)
11. Spain (1,20%)
12. South Korea (1,20%)
13. Belgium (1,13%)
14. Poland (0,92%)
15. Italy (0,78%)

Most visited pages
1. other (54,28%)
2. http://buziaulane.blogspot.com/ (15,62%)
3. rest (2,76%)
4. http://buziaulane.blogspot.com/2006/12/tta-2006-games.html (1,41%)
5. ...buziaulane.blogspot.com/2006/07/serious-games-for-seniors.html (1,27%)
6. ...uziaulane.blogspot.com/2005/10/memorial-day-for-mata-hari.html (1,06%)
7. http://buziaulane.blogspot.com/2006/03/new-p2p-software.html (0,92%)
8. http://buziaulane.blogspot.com/2006_08_03_archive.html (0,85%)
9. ...logspot.com/2006/01/at-last-portable-electronic-newspaper.html (0,78%)
10. ...e.blogspot.com/2006/12/iliad-and-de-tijd-enewspaper-close.html (0,78%)

Links
Google Pagerank: 4
Google Indexed Pages: 3510 (June 3390)
Yahoo links: 4407 (June 4204)

Stats generated by Onestat , ClustrMaps and Directshop

BPN 1175 FTTH taking off

Last night a smart helpdesk lady of UPC seduced me into a subscription to a faster connection up to 10Mbps and a digital television subscription (yes I was charmed out of my pants). This morning the speed was already up to 9766 Kbps downloading and 1450 Kbps uploading. A comfortable speed. So far, I always said that I would wait to October 2009, when our apartment in Almere is up for a fibre to the home connection (FTTH). KPN is already selling three bundles of three speeds: 30, 50 and 60 Mbps for downloading at respectively 65, 80 and 110 euro a month, including telephone, internet and television. So I guess by 2010 stats of the Netherlands will be quite different in the ranking of semi-annual continent survey of the FTTH Council. In the latest survey it takes the 12th ranking.

With continued regional growth in fibre to the home (FTTH) market penetration, Asia consolidated its position as the global leader in the march toward next-generation broadband while the United States and Europe also continued to experience robust growth in FTTH, according to an updated global ranking issued today by the FTTH Councils of Asia-Pacific, Europe and North America.The ranking, updated twice a year, tracks the level of FTTH market penetration in economies where more than one percent of households are connected directly into high speed fibre networks. In all, 14 economies met this threshold.In Asia, FTTH has overtaken DSL in South Korea and will soon do the same in Japan. The Asia-Pac region is witnessing the end of a hundred years of telecom history as copper loops are quickly being replaced by optical fibre access networks. South Korea, Hong Kong, Japan and Taiwan now occupy the top four positions in the ranking, and the Asian region now accounts for more than 27 million of the world's estimated 32 million FTTH connections. South Korea now has nearly 37 percent of its households connected to fibre, with Hong Kong at 27 percent, Japan at 24 percent and Taiwan at 7.7 percent. And while the People's Republic of China ranked 11th in terms of market penetration, growth in the number of connections to 7.5 million means that China is now second only to Japan in the number of households with FTTH.

In Europe, large FTTH projects are now underway in France and Germany, as well as deployments in other EU countries such as Greece and Portugal. The fact that seven European countries made the global ranking, and that several rank among the top FTTH countries in the world, is a clear indication that Europe is moving forward with the adoption of next-generation broadband. However, this positive picture does not yet represent the entire continent. For this reason the FTTH Council Europe will continue to educate investors and other stakeholders and to promote accelerated deployment of FTTH networks in all European countries. Four Scandinavian countries (Sweden, Norway, Iceland and Denmark) and Slovenia occupied the fifth through ninth positions in the ranking, with market penetration ranging from 7.5 percent to 3.2 percent. The Netherlands and Italy were in the 12th and 13th positions, each with market penetration of 1.4 percent. In all, European countries reported 1.4 million FTTH connections.

North America, and particularly the United States, has crossed the chasm and is now moving decisively toward fibre to the home as the broadband platform of choice. Aggressive FTTH deployment in the U.S. has created a lot of buzz about this exciting technology, and the word of mouth from early FTTH subscribers is driving growth and fuelling further deployments. The United States is third among the world's economies in the total number of FTTH households at 3.3 million, and is in 10th position in the global ranking with 2.9 percent market penetration. The U.S. continues to experience the highest rate of growth of any economy in terms of FTTH subscribers - doubling the number of connections year over year. This is due largely to an aggressive FTTH deployment by market leader Verizon, Inc. and ongoing FTTH build out by more than 600 smaller providers across the country.

Blog Posting Number: 1175

Tags: broadband, FTTH

BPN 1174 FT: working on the holy grail

Pearson, the UK holding company of the Financial Times Group, published it quarterly figures this week. The press release said on the Financial Times Group, that it made 17 per cent on 2007 sales and 25 per cent of operating profit. “The FT Group is on track to achieve continued profit growth this year. FT Publishing has shown sustained growth in subscription, circulation and advertising revenues (up 2%) in the first half. Future advertising revenues remain difficult to predict, but we continue to expect to increase profit at FT Publishing even without any growth in advertising revenue”.

But there is a more interesting trend to be discovered in the figures: there are more online registered users than readers of the print edition. In figures: the daily circulation of the print edition remains constant on 450.000 copies, while more than half a million users have registered for access to the site. Online registered users are not equal to online subscribers, of which there are 100.00 subscribers.

So where does FT pick up its profit online. The number of subscribers is hardly enough to present a profit. Yet the online registered users are the money makers for FT as they are the collateral for the advertisers. Online subscriptions and online advertisement yield 63 per cent of the turn-over of the FT Group. In 2000 online subscriptions and online advertisement accounted only for 20 per cent.

The rise of the registered online user came after a change in policy by the FT at the end of last year. The visitors of the site are now allowed to read four stories a month for free and have access to the three-year archive. To read six or more stories with a limit of 30 stories per month, visitors will have to register themselves and log in; they have access to the five-year archive. An annual standard online subscription will cost the subscriber 119 euro and a premium one 319 euro. Pearson did not present figures about the non-registered consultation and the number of page views.

Yet it is clear that FT has found a way to make a profit from online. Of course, FT is a global, need-to-know newspaper for the financial world and a global, nice-to-know paper for an even wider group of users. Marketing wise the company has now a nice pond of fish to start upselling subscriptions to various products. In the meantime, the registered online user is a perfect audience for advertisers.

The online strategy can not just be transposed on the local newspaper of Almere or any other place. There is a certain algorithm in the numbers of FT: 500.000 registered users and 100.000 online subscribers. Projecting these figures to both sides, there are most likely 5 million people who occasionally visit the FT site in a year, while there are only 10.000 premium subscribers. FT hopes to increase its profit margin in the online business over the rest of 2008.

Blog Posting Number: 1174

Tags: online newspaper, newspaper

BPN 1173 ACAP: a friendly negotiation tool

Yesterday I wrote about the fact that many text providers such as journalists, are taking measure against illegal copying and piracy. This I think is a rather negative approach and an approach after the publication. I have often criticised publishers for taking measures afterwards and not taking preventive actions or even starting projects with other publishers. So they often end up in court with a series of court cases, not relevant to jurisprudence, and with a lot of antipathy from the audience.

But things are also changing. ACAP (Automated Content Access Protocol) is officially introduced and is in The Netherlands going to be used by the association of Dutch publishers NUV. The good thing about ACAP is that it is a product which puts content owners in control of their content. It is basically a tool for the publisher to tell search engine operators what they can index and link.

ACAP takes care of the entry to the websites of publishers and especially the discriminate access of crawlers and spiders. It offers four choices: follow, index, present and preserve. The command follow directs the crawlers or spiders to linked pages; with index command they are allowed to make a copy; with the command present the links are taken out of the index, while with the preserve command the crawlers and spiders get to see when an item is not available any more.



ACAP is devised by publishers in collaboration with search engines after an intensive year-long pilot in 2006-2007 and set to control the dissemination, use, and protection of copyright-protected content on the worldwide web. ACAP is destined to become the universal permissions protocol on the internet, an open, non-proprietary standard through which content owners can communicate permissions for access and use to online intermediaries.In the first instance, ACAP provides a framework that will allow any publisher, large or small, to express access and use policies in a language that search engines' robot "spiders" can be taught to understand. ACAP’s scope is now being extended to other business relationships and other media types including music and the audiovisual sectors. Technical work is ongoing to improve and finesse ACAP V.1.

With the ACAP tool in hand, the publisher can decide on his business model and offer access or not. They can make a difference in paid and free services and services for subscribers and occasional visitors.

Blog Posting Number: 1173

Tags: search engine

BPN 1172 The old, analogue world is back

Last month the news wire organisation Asociated Press (AP) demanded from the owner of the Drudge Retort, that he would correct seven contributions as they contained more than 39 words of a quote from the AP service. The blog community started to comment on this measure. They hated the fact that AP demanded corrections in blogs and the fact that AP thought that a quote of 39 words from an article is enough fair use. The whole discussion blew over, but I guess only for the time being.

There is an analogy with the music business. Many people download music illegally and a ten per cent upload the music illegally. After many fights it looks now that the ten per cent of uploaders will get a letter from their ISP, telling them to stop uploading or face being cut off. So also with the official press and the bloggers. When bloggers copy full articles or a excessive long quote, AP wanted to tell the bloggers what is fair use and what is not. The old, analogue world is coming back!

The Dutch journalists trade union NVJ is now also preparing a mechanism of control. It will start a service for member-journalists. The service intends to chase website owners and bloggers who copy articles from the member-journalists with or without their name and without permission. The service has already been dubbed in many blogs as a plagiarism and a anti-plagiarism service at the same time. The objective of the service appears to cover copying without permission, but mentioning the name of the author; copying the article without permission and without the name of the author.

The software which is going to be used bears the name of Ephorus and is the product of a Utrecht based SME company. It looks like the NVJ is piloting the service in practice. It looks like the college and university software which tells the teachers that the presented material is from internet or particular books. In the case of the journalist, he/she uploads an article and the robot will travel around the Dutch language web to find the website owners and perpetrating web loggers, which copied the article. I wonder whether also parts of the article will be recognised. After that, a train of administration can be expected of sending letters and invoices.

In the Netherlands there are already companies writing web site owners and bloggers about the illegal copying. And they are not very much loved. On the one hand it is naturally that web site owners and web loggers will be annoyed telling them that they are illegally copying. On the other hand it is by the aggressive way of the handling. One of the companies is Cozzmoss; on their site they claim that they act on behalf of authors. (It looks almost like a collecting society, except that they are commercial and acting in a legally grey terrain). A web site owner or a web logger directly receive an invoice; there is no correspondence telling them that they have copied articles illegally. And the invoice is three times the original fee. This legal stupidity still dates from the early days of internet, when the NVJ started a court case, asking the judge to attribute 300 per cent for every re-use claim. Presently the NVJ uses a fee of 20 per cent per copying with a minimum.

So far the claims of Cozzmoss and other companies have not been fought in court. It is about time that a judge let his light shine on the claims which can be made on the ground of illegal copying and about the height of the fee. In the meantime a bureau Stichting Copyright & Nieuwe Media (Foundation for Copyright and New media) has been founded in The Netherlands; it will have a helpdesk for amateur authors/bloggerswho will have legal problems. It will also promote Creative Commons.

Blog Posting Number: 1170

Tags: pircy, copying, anti-plagiarism, plagiarismillegal copying, piracy, anti-plagiarism, anti-plagiarism

BPN 1171 2/3 TV time "Made in Europe"

More than 63 per cent of Europe's television broadcasters' programming time is devoted to European works and over 36 per cent to works by independent European producers. These new figures come from the European Commission's eighth report on effectiveness of EU rules on the promotion of European works, which covers the period 2005-2006. This report which is published every two years is based on information provided by the EU Member States and monitors the promotion of European works on European TV screens under the 'Television without Frontiers' Directive. For the first time, broadcasters in the new EU-10 Member States are fully analysed in this report, and the report shows that they show today as much European content as those in the EU-15.

The figures show the impact of Articles 4 and 5 of the "Television without Frontiers" Directive, which aim at promoting the broadcasting of European works, including those created by producers who are independent from the broadcasters. The European Commission proposed these measures in 1989 to bring the benefits of the single market to television viewers (in the form of greater choice) and to broadcasters and producers (a bigger audience for European programmes).

The new report on the implementation of these provisions in the 25 EU Member States, adopted by the Commission, shows that the EU-wide average broadcasting time for European works has increased from 63.52 per cent in 2005 to 65.05 per cent in 2006. The Commission report also shows that in the medium term (2003-2006), the broadcasting of European works has stabilised at above 63per cent. Average transmission times varied between 47.31 per cent in Slovenia and 81.14 per cent in Denmark in 2005 and between 45.44 per cent in Sweden and 81.07 per cent in Poland in 2006. These shares were comparable with those recorded for the previous reporting period 2003-2004 (IP/06/1115).

The average share of independent producers’ works broadcast by all European channels in all Member States rose from 36.44 per cent in 2005 to 37.59 per cent in 2006. This is well above the 10per cent set by the "Television without Frontiers" Directive. This also means that in the medium term (2003-2006), the EU-wide broadcasting of European works by independent producers improved by 6.2 percentage points.

For recent European works by independent producers, that is to say works broadcast within five years of their production, transmission time in 2005-2006 was constantly above 25per cent. This confirms the positive trend in the scheduling of recent works, which increased by 2.59 percentage points over 2003-2006.

Blog Posting Number: 1171

Tags: telvision

BPN 1170 MAX ACKE SPAMS

Recently I received an e-mail from Max Acke with the subject line Radio+Art+Education. The e-mail asks the recipient to visit his Dutch language site on radio, art and education. I do not know the man nor have I ever met him. As I do not like to receive e-mails out of the blue sky, I requested the sender to remove me from the e-mail list, saying that I consider his e-mail as spam.

I received a response to my e-mail from the sender (who claims to have a legal degree in international politics), saying that he did not exploit an e-mail list, but had a robot working for him which grazes sites for e-mail addresses in the Belgian (be) and Dutch (.nl) country domains of people hopefully speaking Flemish or Dutch. Once the robot has a package of 40 e-mail addresses, it sends off the batch with a standard e-mail text, promoting his sites.

The sender does not see the e-mail as spam. He defends his actions, by saying that he even does not know where the e-mails will go to. And if I do not want to receive the emails, I should (mind you) take action by using the possibilities of the e-mail browser. Put the filter on the address and all the problems are over, is his advice.

For the rest the sender thinks that he has a real world hit with his site and informs me that many Dutch and Belgian internet users have sent him thank-you notes. In other words, I should use my filter and keep my mouth shut. In passing he tells that this is the last time he will respond to my e-mails (he must a peevish old man, being disturbed in his hobby).

I could have rested the case, activated the filter, kept my mouth shut and use this blogging space for more sensible subjects. Daily I receive some 400 spams, ranging from Viagra and Cialis advertisments to photographs of Angelina Jolie (whoever she is). So I am used to it. But I think that MAX ACKE SPAMS. He collects 40 addresses at a time and attaches e-mail messages to them. The fact that he is not using an e-mail list, but a robot to collect the addresses is immaterial. He solicits addresses from people from the net, who did not ask for his e-mails. That the subject is cultural and not Viagra is also immaterial and that many people have sent him thank-you notes, does not change the fact that he performs spamming actions.

Blog Posting Number: 1170

Tags: spam

BPN 1169 e-Book lands in the UK in September

Well, it is finally happening in the UK: the large-scale introduction of e-readers and e-books. The bookstore chain Waterstone and Sony are taking pre-launch orders for the e-reader of 199 pounds (232 euro) to be launched in September. Will the combination of a bookstore and a consumer electronics giant make an impression on the UK market? Does the combination fulfil the conditions for the iPod syndrome: innovative hardware, a large portfolio, easy access to a fast download service, a reasonable price and does the combination have an innovative image.

Hardware: Sony will sell the 2006 model PRS 505 e-reader, which weighs 260 grams, can hold 160 e–books, has a battery life of 6.800 page turns. It sells in the US for 299 dollars. The model has the dimensions of a printed paperback. The action of Waterstone and Sony is a pre-emptive strike to grab market share. Book distributor Borders has announced to introduce the non-wireless iLiad of 399 pounds (465 euro). And the Kindle of Amazon still hangs above the market; the Kindle costs in the States 359 dollars, which would make it the cheapest e-reader for 155 pounds (210 euro).

Portfolio: Waterstone and Sony have not announced which portfolio they use. The buyers will receive a free CD with 100 classic e-books. Recently trade publishers have been falling over themselves to get in on the e-book act. Penguin, Random House Macmillan, HarperCollins and even Harlequin have all made announcements. I had expected that Penguin would have been in on the deal with its 5.000 e-books. But of course the problem will be the publishing format. Penguin is using the .epub format, a format already adopted by Hachette Group USA. HarperCollins is expected to go the same route. And Sony has announced that it will support the .epub format (Sony writes the format as .ePub); that is quite a change from a closed format Sony has used since the launch of its first e-redaer in 1991. Borders and the iLiad adhere to the Mobipocket format. Amazon and Kindle list more than 40.000 titles.

Download service: Sony has already a download service in operation. Thousands of eBookscan be downloaded at Waterstones.com/eBooks from early September 2008 onwards.

A reasonable price: for the iPod the price per song was important and turned out to be reasonable in the end; in fact downloaders started to realise that they could legally download against a reasonable price. In the e-book sector illegal downloading is less a problem as in music. Yet if there is not a price difference between the printed copy and the e-book, it will not really work.

Innovative image: Apple is the promoter of the innovative products iPod and iPhone. Waterstone and Sony is not the most exciting combination; the combination Waterstone, Sony and Penguin would have made a super combination. The team Borders and iRex Technologies is not a real winner either. Amazon is of course a winner, but the UK publishing industry does not want to hand itself over to the Moloch, which could create a monopoly on e-books.

Blog Posting Number: 1169

Tags: e-reader, e-book