BPN 1361 eReader war coming up in the USA

So far Amazon.com was dominating the US eReader and eBook market, overruling Sony who was the first player on the US market. But now it gets competition from Barnes & Noble. And in the wings Hearst is still waiting. Only Sony is present in the European market.

The book chain Barnes & Nobles (B&N) returns to eBooks. From 2001 till 2003 it was offering eBooks, but it stopped trading them due to a lack lustre market. The book chain will now return with a vengeance. The eBook shop will serve the whole eBook market. It has a portfolio with 700.000 eBooks, of which half a million public domain titles. However it promises 1,25 million eBooks titles by next year. It will keep the books down to 9,99 US dollar. B&N will serve the whole spectre of eBook readers. Barnes and Nobles will have its own exclusive ultra thin 8.5 x 11 inch wireless eReader, to be produced by Plastic Logic, exclusively for B&N. The book chain will also exclusively deliver books to Plastic Logic. And it has already eReader software for the iPhone, iPOD, Blackberry’s and smart phones. Also PCs and Mac computers can download the B&N books. The books will be delivered in the ePUB format, setting it aside of Amazon and Sony; the books can not be printed. The eBook portfolio includes DRM-free books from Fictionwise’s catalogue. Designed with the book reader in mind, B&N eReader client software provides an easy-to- use interface to access the B&N Bookstore and to manage their personal eBook libraries. It features powerful tools to optimize the reading experience, including the ability to modify type size and font and annotate and bookmark text, as well as an innovative auto-scroll feature enabling users hands free reading. In addition, users can shift from reading their eBook from a smartphone while commuting to a notebook PC or eReader device at bedtime.

The B&N re-entry will be a shock to Amazon. The company has been a long reseller of eBooks. Since 2007 it has launched the Kindle and sold 500.000 units of the Kindle eReader. This eReader has now three versions, which can hold 1.500 eBooks. Amazon has 275,000 titles are available in the Kindle format. Recently, Amazon’s CEO Bezos claimed that for every three print copies it also sells one Kindle e-book. The total sales of Amazon of eBooks, eReaders and devices will reach 1.2 billion US dollar by 2010.

The re-entry of B&N is not a surprise. In March 2009 B&N acquired eBook seller Fictionwise for $15.7 million in cash. Fictionwise, which runs a trio of sites, Fictionwise, eReader and eBookwise, operates as a standalone business unit under founders Scott and Steve Pendergrast. First-time users of the eReader will have the opportunity to download free eBooks, including titles such as Merriam-Webster’s Pocket Dictionary, Sense and Sensibility, Little Women, Last of the Mohicans, Pride and Prejudice, and Dracula.

The re-entry of B&N will have an impact on the US eBook scene. B&N is a big print book player in the US and the UK and its contact with publishers is more symbiotic than that of Amazon and Sony. B&N promises a larger portfolio of eBooks than Amazon en Sony; despite the half a million public domain titles from Google, it will have 750.000 titles by next year. And as B&N will officially start its bookshop in September of this year, it will be ahead of the publisher Hearst, which is supposed to launch a large display eReader in the fall. There will be a real competition in the US market by the Christmas season.

So far B&N has announced to limit its eBook market to the US, leaving Europe aside like Amazon and most likely Hearst. So far only Sony is active in the UK and some larger European countries. A host of eReaders from several European countries are trying to gain local market. A fight is said to be brewing in Germany between Vodafone and T-Telecom as well as txtr. Also in France some eReader designers are fighting for a piece of the market. In the Netherlands BeBook is fighting Irex eReaders.

Blog Posting Number: 1361

Tags: eReader, eBook

BPN 1360 Silence, please; history in the making

It feels like a monastery at home. Silence all over the place. No telephones ringing. Discipline in working hours. I am working on my book, a project of almost 10 years. It is a book (mind you) on the history of new media (what a contradiction in terminis) in The Netherlands. It has been a project ever since 2000. In that year the Dutch new media industry had been commercial for 20 years. In the newsletter Telecombrief (now extinct due to the publishers’ negligence) I published a series with 24 instalments: four introductory instalments and for every one. I did not produce a small book of it, as the instalments were only 400 words long; not exactly the space to describe developments. Over the years I stayed with the idea for the jubilee year 2005, produced a series of postings 25 Years Online in the Netherlands: A Compact History in 25 Instalments and worked on a book, spanning 25 years. Due to other business in the company this idea was never realised. And I am glad.

Writing a history book is not easy. Finding an editorial formula for it is difficult, as it easily becomes a compilation of events (and then, and then). Besides there are no real examples to which I can compare. I guess it was in 2008, when I met Sindy de Vries, a script writer for Dutch TV; we got to talk about the book and without knowing the full story she recommended to look for drama. This took some time to sink in. How the hell could you dramatise the history of new media in The Netherlands? But it changed my scope. I started to see the Dutch fight between CD-ROM and CD-I; the rest of the world against Philips and Sony. It brought confused the Dutch general publishers and even the Dutch government officials, who offered grants for CD-I learning projects and not for CD-ROM multimedia projects. And there were more situations coming up.

The real discovery for me was the discovery of the break of 1997. On January 1, 1997 the Netherlands went fully internet. Consumer internet had been introduced since 1994 and business internet started in the Netherlands in 1992. So in less than five to three years the first phase of new media industry disappeared, almost over night. Why? This is the quest of the book. So now the book spand the time between 1967 and 1997, covering the first phase of new media in the Netherlands or the rise and the fall of the first phase of new media.

So after the introduction, I first dive into the stone age of online. This feels fantastic, reading about the database retrieval companies like Dialog, SDC, BRS and NewsNet. Especially the real pioneers of the online industry Dialog and SDC with resp. Roger Summit (ill. left) and Carlos Cuadra (ill. right). I have met them both in person at Online Conferences in London and New York; while I got my introduction to online from Carlos Cuadra himself, when he was invited by a VNU company. I also trace the Stone Age in the Netherlands. From that point onwards I go chapter by chapter through the developments of various technologies the Netherlands has been through from ASCII to teletext and videotext, e-mail and BBS to CD media. And I have collected economic data on the industry.

Now I am writing chapter by chapter. The manuscript should be ready September 1, 2009. Of course, the manuscript is not enough for a book. I will have to do also picture research. I hope that it will not take as long as writing the book itself. Of course the manuscript has to be indexed, a literature list composed and a timeline set up. One artefact is ready: the cover, made by my Italian friend Chiara Boeri. She produced it last year and probably thought that it would never be used.

The book, written in Dutch (sorry), should be on the market in 2010. And no, the book will not be translated as it only concerns the Dutch situation. You have to live in the country to understand the situation. But I promise to write a summary of the book in English, when I am done.

And now I go back to writing. I first play The Dissection and Reconstruction of Music from the Past as Performed by the Inmates of Lalo Schifrin's Demented Ensemble as a Tribute to the Memory of the Marquis de Sade (what a title!); it is an old time favourite since 1969. And yes, I will go back to the sacred silence after that great music.


BTW If you have Dutch new media artefacts or photographs from the period 1967 till 1997 please let me know. For the time being I only need photographs.

Blog Posting Number: 1360

Tags: new media

BPN 1359 Elsevier Launches BrainNavigator

The science publisher Elsevier has launched the official version of BrainNavigator, a neuroscience research tool developed in collaboration with the Allen Institute for Brain Science and under the editorship of Professor George Paxinos and Charles Watson, Prince of Wales Medical Research Institute, Sydney. At the Society for Neuroscience's Neuroscience 2008 tradeshow last November, the prototype version of the rodent brain version was unveiled. In a press release the publisher names the BrainNavigator the new GPS system for the brain, helping to visualise brain structures. This version includes complete information for the rat brain and the mouse brain, and ongoing releases of other species are planned.

BrainNavigator is an online, interactive, 3D software tool that maps brain images and anatomy, helping researchers, especially neuroscientists, save time and improve the quality of their daily research. BrainNavigator helps locate the position of structures within the brain, similar to a GPS system, making visualization and understanding of the brain easier.



The BrainNavigator is a typical example of publishers innovating resources and marketing methods. Traditionally, researchers used print atlases to help them identify structures, for example when viewing brain tissue under a microscope. Now, with BrainNavigator, which combines atlas maps in one easy-to-navigate web-based system, researchers can view detailed images of each brain section. Brain images are no longer only shown as flat maps but also as objects with depth. A particular advance is the facility to create virtual sections from the 3D brain model at very high detail and quality to mimic the real situation in the biological tissue in the laboratory.

The BrainNavigator is not the first resource for brain representation, published by Elsevier Science. In 1993 Elsevier started a CD-I and CD-ROM series under the name of Interactive Anatomy, produced by Tom Zoutewelle Media Productions. The first instalment was part of the Neck and Skull and specifically on Paranasal Sinuses & Anterior Skull Base. The resource contained a series of computer tomographic images. I remember the slice images of the anterior brain. In order to see them again I would have to go to my disc museum. I remember that the disk was originally produced as a CD-I disk. But as the CD-I was hardly sold elsewhere in the world, the producer pressed a CD-ROM disk in order not to disappoint scientists outside the Netherlands. Since we have left the era of Frozen Bandwidth, the online BrainNavigator is a more appropriate medium.

Elsevier is also putting new marketing methods to the resource. Offering both free and subscription-based content, all users will be able to browse images and structures. Paid subscribers will enjoy using high resolution images, adjustable virtual slicing and having the ability to annotate and save their work and share it with their colleagues globally, among other features. Details regarding BrainNavigator's functionality can be found at www.brainnav.com/info.

Blog Post Number: 1359

Tags: science publishing

BPN 1358 Dead media publishers want assistance

A number of European publishers of newspapers and magazines have requested the European Commission for stricter copyright laws in order to develop an online earning model. The publishers say that re-use of material by websites and news aggregators undermines a business model for internet. And as advertisements are decreasing, publishers look for methods to earn on content. the 'Hamburg Declaration' was introduced on 8 June and has so far been adopted by 149 German publishers.



In Germany it has been suggested to have neighbouring rights for textual content, like for the re-use of songs. The publishers want to have a stricter regime on copyright legislation. They work on the technical system ACAP (Automated Content Access Protocol) with which they want to force news aggregators to use this protocol.

This is just one of the signals that European publishers are having problems to survive. With an annually decreasing number of subscribers and the revenue decrease of ads in this economic recession, the revenues of the publishers are getting lower year by year. In the meantime they do not compensate the decrease with income from internet.

The problem is of course not limited to Europe only. Also in the States newspapers and magazines publishers feel the decrease and have no compensation from internet. As I recently wrote, only newspapers in India seem to be able to expand as more people start reading and are offered newspapers in more local languages.

In the meantime publishers complain and look for subsidies, grants and extra charges, saying that the newspaper scene should remain pluriform. This is strange by asking subsidies and grants, they become dependent of the government and not free to comment.

Recently a former Dutch minister, mr Brinkman, presented a report on the Dutch newspaper market. The report contains a series of obligatory phrases about the freedom of journalism and then constitutes that the revenues of the newspaper publishers are going down in such a fast way that they need to be assisted financially. Like in a magic show the commission chairman conjures up a white bunny: every internet user should pay a surcharge for the newspaper industry.

You can imagine the reactions to this proposal: an internet levy for dead media. At once the whole report, which was well documented and provided with sharp analyses, was forgotten. Intellectuals turned up their nose, while others started to express curses and abuse. And of course, the Dutch publishers have the same global problems and their own problems. They have never invested in innovation, except for the metal of their presses. When internet came around the publishers did not really experiment with for example an own national aggregator service; they left it to others. They increasingly started to depend on news wire services, having for 60 percent the same news items as other print papers and internet services. Regional newspapers have become less local and have not concentrated on social networks. Glossy weekly magazines were set up for 10 million euro in a time that the money should have used as internet green shoot. Internet services for ad acquisition were set up by new players like Google. And when the editorial and advertisement staffs set up experiments and networks, they were called back by board members, saying that internet was like teletext and not a serious medium. They spilled a lot of money by partnering hedge funds and buying rights to movie libraries. And now people that use internet should be paying a surcharge for lack of initiative on the part of publishers.

Should a surcharge be set on the use of internet. Of course not; that is really ridiculous. Should publishers get assistance in order to turn around their business. Not really. They should only get funds matching their own project money and only after that projects have been evaluated for innovation by internet and content experts. There are enough ideas to be incorporated by newspapers companies: cross media, social networks, not customised , but personal mobile services and crime maps, for example. Oh, and recommending eReaders as an innovation will not save the forests and newspaper world. Publishers should start seriously confront themselves with the digital future and phase out their print products over the next five years: the year 2015 should be the year print went out of fashion for newspapers.

Blog Posting Number: 1358

Tags: newspaper

BPN 1357 Germany heats up for eReader battle

The German magazine Wirtschafts Woche brings the item that Vodafone is developing an eBook reader. The article does not have any hard facts about the developer and the type of eBook reader, except that it is a large screen (DIN-A4) for newspapers. Vodafone is presently in the test phase.

To some bloggers the news came as a surprise, but Vodafone has been involved in eReader experiments in Germany as far back as 2004. The project was named Papyrus and involved a project on electronic newspapers and DVB-H. News items were transmitted with DVB-H, the standard for mobile interactive broadcast. In 2004 the first trial was held in Berlin with 200 users. But Vodafone researched also other carriers for DVB-H as carrier for electronic newspapers like an eReader.

Vodafone did not choose for the e-readers like iLiad and STAReBOOK as Les Echos did. It started working together with Benq, a joint venture of Siemens, in developing the electronic tabloid newspaper. But Benq sunk in 2006 and so did that part of the project. In 2007 the consortium, in which Bertelsmann participated, then investigated other digital paper producers like Plastic Logic (which still has not been launched in 2009). More details on the project Papyrus can be gained from a lecture by Mr Geissler in 2007). In 2008 Vodafone Group R&D commissioned the Linz lab-atelier to come up with an interaction concept for their eInk-Newspaper Project Papyrus and demonstrated it at the Ars Electronica.

So the question is now whether Vodafone is still with Siemens or Plastic Logic. But of course Vodafone can also cooperate with developers who have a small display at present. Like Samsung, which has an A5 eReader named Papyrus. Or like the small German developer txtr which will launch an eReader of eInk Vizplex 6" display at 600x800 pixels in the fall of 2009 for the general consumer market. Of course of interest would be to know who will deliver the newspapers and books. Given the early project association with Bertelsmann, it would be striaght forward to make an alliance with that publisher.

It is interesting to see that there is a battle developing in Germany. T-Mobile has indicated last year that it is developing an eReader for newspapers. Now Vodafone is said to launch an eReader in the fall right at the time, when the small German developer will present its eReader with a 6” display.

Even more interesting it is to see that this fight heats up at a time when Amazon leaves a gap in the European ereader market with the absence of a European version of Kindle. Amazon has difficulkties to get in the European market and especially European telecom market as it will have to negotiate in all 27 countries with telecom companies. The European telecom market is one big fragmented industry. With T-Telecom picking up the iPhone and Android gadgets, it would be logical that Amazon woulkd negotiate with T-Telecom. But then the question still is whether T-Telecom is willing to pay the price Amazon asks.

Blog Posting Number: 1357

Tags: eBook, eReader, DVB-H

BPN 1356 2 mln+ eBooks for summer for free

You do not know what to do with your summer time? Start reading eBooks. From July 4 till August 4 more than 2 million eBooks are available online and for free through World eBook Fair program! This year the fourth edition will be held of the World eBook Fair.

By giving access to a number of eBook collections people linked to internet can download more than 2 million eBooks for free. The collections available come from the Project Gutenberg, the World Public Library, Digital Pulp Publishing, the Internet Archive and another 100 eBook libraries. Besides public domain books, also modern and commercial eBooks are on offer for free. On an office day more than 1.000 eBooks are produced for eBook Libraries.

100,000 eBooks in het Project Gutenberg
500,000 eBooks on de World Public Library
1,385,000 eBooks in het Internet Archive
250,000 eBooks van eBooks About Everything
17,000 eBooks IMSLP's Music eLibrary
=========
2,252,000 total

eReader or mobile phone reader
MichaeL Hart, the pioneer of eBooks since 1970, makes an interesting comment on the World Book Fair site. He observes that : “In addition to presenting twice as many books, we are also trying to reach 10x as much of the population by including a number of programs a person can use to read these eBooks on LIKE phones, MP3 players, PDA's, iPods, etc. Think about it this way: There aren't even a million Kindles or Sony's, but there are now ~4 1/2 billion cell phones-- which means the possibility of reading readers via cell phones is larger than any other media. The cell phone is the wave of the future, not, I repeat, NOT the Kindle or Sony approach, for they are only targeting millions, and I should like very much to reach billions of people.

More eBooks In More Languages
The eBooks on offer are mainly in the English language, but other languages are also served like the Top Six list such as: English, Chinese, German, French, Spanish and Urdu. Worldwide there are 250 languages with over a million speakers. With the collection of 2.5 million eBooks the World eBook Fair is trying to reach readers in over half of these. I checked the number of books available from the World eBook Fair in my mother tongue Dutch; the search on the site delivered 42 eBooks in the Dutch language. When I made a search with the local eBook distributor eBook.nl, I found 790 eBooks in the Dutch language listed.

Blog Posting Number: 1356

Tags: eBook, ereader

Not-for-profit announcement EUROPRIX Multimedia Awards submission extended

Due to the large amount of enthusiastic requests from young digital media whiz-kids across Europe, you still have the opportunity to enter the continent's premier multimedia awards! But get on the a move now! If you want to associate yourself with the best of the best in European multimedia, you have until July 31, 2009 to enter! Free registration for first-time participants!

All you have to do is to click on http://www.blogger.com/www.europrix.org, complete the registration process and you could fulfil all your hopes and dreams of recognition and success.

The digital media scene is increasingly competitive. Companies are begging for new ideas, fresh content and sparkling technical innovations. Get to the head of the pack by entering the EUROPRIX Multimedia Awards.

Nominees will receive a host of benefits, including:
+ An all-expenses-paid trip to the EUROPRIX Multimedia Festival in Graz,
Austria in November 2009
+ Presentation of their project in the EUROPRIX yearbook
+ Unique networking and promotion opportunities throughout Europe
+ Cutting-edge software packages


Take the chance to submit your project for free to the EUROPRIX Awards at:
http://www.blogger.com/www.europrix.org


ICNM-International Center for New Media
Moosstrasse 43a, A-5020 Salzburg
http://www.icnm.net/ - office@europrix.org T +43.662.630.408-0 F
+43.662.630.408-22

Not-for-profit announcement The 3rd Nokia Ubimedia MindTrek Awards Competition is ON

Call for participation in the 3rd Nokia Ubimedia MindTrek Awards Competition, September 30th – October 2nd, 2009, Tampere, Finland

Award Sum: 7.000 Euros
Competition deadline: August 7th Award


The purpose of the competition is to encourage makers of digital media to generate ideas and develop new and innovative ubimedia products & services. The entries are expected to take a stand on the following questions, for example:

* How does ubiquitous computing affect media environments?
* What are intelligent media environments like?
* What will the location- and context-aware media services of the future be like?

A few other examples are:
* Pervasive and ubiquitous games
* Ambient installations
* Artistic works related to ubiquitous media and computation
* Business models
* Ambient and ubiquitous media technology
* Ubiquitous and ambient media services, devices, and environments
* Context aware, sensing, and interfaces for ubiquitous computation
* Ergonomics, human-computer interaction designs, and product prototypes
* Software, hardware and middleware framework demonstrations
* Ambient television
* etc.

The total award sum for the Nokia Ubimedia MindTrek Award is 7 000€.
The sum can be awarded to one entry, divided between several entries or not awarded at all if the award criteria set by the jury are not fulfilled.

All ubimedia, ubiquitous, pervasive, or ambient products or product and service concepts which have been finalized during the previous year after 1st January 2008 are eligible to take part in the competition.

Competition deadline is August 7th, 2009. How to participate?
Please check out the website for rules, entry forms, jury formation and actual information.

Further Information:
Nokia Ubimedia MindTrek Awards Competition: ubiaward (AT) mindtrek.org
Or in urgent matters the competition chairs:
Artur Lugmayr, artur.lugmayr (AT) tut.fi, Tel.: +358 40 821 0558
Cai Melakoski, cai.melakoski (AT) tamk.fi, Tel.: +358 50 555 6581
Kirsi Lindfors, kirsi.lindfors (AT) hermia.fi, Tel.: +358 40 820 4608

Not-for-profit announcement EUROPRIX: last call for submissions

EUROPRIX Multimedia Awards, the European contest for young digital media designers: less than 2 weeks to go - participation is free for the first time participants!

There's no more time to waste! Use this opportunity and register your project until June 30, 2009! http://www.europrix.org/

It will bring you international recognition, exposure, business opportunities, peer support networks and fantastic opportunities await those who take the chance. Find out how good you really are and have your work judged by an international jury of multimedia experts.

The 9 Categories:
- Online / Web Projects
- Offline Projects / Interactive DVD
- Mobile Applications
- Games
- Interactive Computer Graphics
- Interactive Installations
- Interactive TV
- Content Tools & Interface Design
- Digital Video & Animations
- Special Award for the project with the best business potential.

Nominees will receive a host of benefits, including:
+ An all-expenses-paid trip to the EUROPRIX Multimedia
Festival in Graz, Austria in November 2009
+ Presentation of their project in the EUROPRIX yearbook
+ Unique networking and promotion opportunities throughout Europe
+ Cutting-edge software packages

Enter your project to the EUROPRIX Multimedia Awards, Europe's premier competition for young professionals and students. The EUROPRIX honours outstanding digital media works and offers additionally a special award for the project with the best business potential.

Take the chance to submit your project for free to the EUROPRIX Awards at: http://www.europrix.org

BPN 1355 FTMH - UPC lowers internet tariffs

Since Monday UPC in the Netherlands has lowered its internet tariffs drastically. Since it completed its Fiberpower (fibre to the corner) and offers speeds up to 120Mbps, UPC is technically ready to compete with KPN and other ISPs in the fibre networks. The only real difference is that UPC for the time being will compete with FttH networks, while UPC has fibre networks to the corner. The last mile will be a coax link. Another technical difference is that the FttH fibre networks connect subscribers one-to-one to the network, while UPC links a series of subscribers to the head station; with more subscribers on the line the speed will slow down.

Now UPC starts to compete in the market by lowering the tariffs. The new internet subscriptions have six flavours. The cheapest one with a download speed of 5Mbps and an upload speed of 0,5 Mbps will cost 18 euro. For the fastest speed of 120Mbps download speed and 10Mbps a subscriber will pay 70 euro. The other four intermediary speeds are:
- 25Mbps (down)/1,5Mbps (up): 25 euro;
- 30Mbps (down)/3Mbps (up): 30 euro;
- 60Mbps (down)/6Mbps: 40 euro;
- 90Mbps (down)/6Mbps: 50 euro.


UPC starts the marketing campaign by inviting subscribers to change throughout its area. Yesterday I received an offer to pay the same money for a triple play subscription, while the internet speed was raised from 10Mbps to 30Mbps. For 46 euro I would receive 30Mbps, digital TV with DVR with a standard package of radio and TV as well as an unlimited telephony package; mind you the comparable KPN offer would cost me 65 euro. The offer of UPC is good for two weeks.

It is a first shot in the competition to come. There are already areas with fibre coverage. But soon large areas like in Amsterdam, Rotterdam and Almere will be operational. In Almere for example no less than 75.000 homes will have been passed in the fibre network by the end of 2009. A majority of these households still have a subscription to UPC cable, because of the television distribution; only a minority have a triple play subscription. KPN so far is the only provider which can offer a triple play subscription on fibre. Other ISPs have indicated to follow, but have not published their offer and are not canvassing. But also KPN starts to mingle into the fight as it now has a 6 months offer of its silver package of 80 euro (50Mbps download; 5 Mbps upload; > 70 TV-channels; unlimited telephony; free installation) for the price of a bronze package of 65 euro (30Mbps download; 3 Mbps upload; > 50 TV-channels; unlimited telephony; free installation). But this is only a temporary offer with no sight on the price going up or staying the same as the offer.

The Netherlands will go into the holiday mode soon, roughly within two weeks. After the holiday in September the real fight will engage. I guess that the offers will get better by that time. So I will not even consider the UPC offer yet. But it is nice to see that the old cable monopolist is fighting against the incumbent telco. It means competition and lower prices.

Blog Posting Number: 1355

Tags: cable, fibre

BPN 1354 Pirate Party in EU Parliament

The European elections are over and the results known. Of the 375 million voters only 36 percent showed up. Traditional parties as Christians, socialists and liberals all went down by a lack to have a real program or a real campaigning candidate. Many an extremist party got a seat. One thing is clear: Barosso will remain as chairperson of the European Commission as his Christian party is still the largest one in the European Parliament. That will be another four years of weak government.

Interesting is the entrance of a representative of the Swedish Pirate Party in the European Parliament. The party, which was founded in 2006 by Rudy Falkvinge, won 7.4 percent of the votes and picked up one seat of the 18 available to the Swedes. The party will send Stockholm-born deputy chairman and computer developer Christian Engström, 49 to Brussels to take his seat as an MEP in the autumn. Mr Engstrom does thank his seat also partly to the high-profile copyright case against the Pirate Bay file-sharing site last April. The Bay has asked for a re-trial because of alleged bias from the trial judge.

The party has in its mision three goals: to “fundamentally reform copyright law, get rid of the patent system, and ensure that citizens’ rights to privacy are respected”. In practice this means all non-commercial copying of files and software to be legal, P2P file-sharing to be stimulated and the life of artistic copyright to be no more than five years, a far cry from the EU parliament’s proposed extension from 50 to 70 years. With its demands the party is quite extreme from other parties and governments in Europe. In France a three-strikes policy is to be introduced. In the UK such a policy is not unlikely, but technical measures such as broadband throtting remains also possible.

The Pirate Party is not just a one day fly. It has come up fast in three years and has affiliates in 22 countries (Argentina, Australia, Austria, Brazil, Canada, Denmark, Finland, germany, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Peru, Poland, Romania, Serbia, South Africa, Spain, Switzerland, United Kingdom and United States). In this election the European affiliates did not help much as the elections are organised according to country and not for the European Union as a whole. But in future the the party might grow in other European countries. The victory of one seta in the EU Parliament will undoubted ly be a sign for the national Swedish elections. Last time the party stumbled over a threshold of 4 percent. In the EU electrions they easily went over it with 7.4 percent. In the national elections next year the party should be able to grab more than one seat.

Blog Posting Number: 1354

Tags: copyright, patent, privacy

BNP 1353 A changing e-Book world (2)

It is not only e-readers, where you see changes. Also in the distribution of e-books things are moving. Google will soon offer a program for publishers to offer the digital versions of their books. But also the e-book veteran, the Project Gutenberg, will increase its offer.

Google has a long standing tradition with publishers. In 2004 it launched its book search service, in which copyrighted books could be read online. Google was heavily attacked by authors and publishers. Yet it made 1,5 copyright free books available in the public domain through its site. Google is launching a download service in which publishers can set their own price on the book; this in contrast to Amazon, which offers books in Mobipocket format and optionally on its own e-reader Kindle.
Details about the service still have to be published. No word on the format, except for the guarantee that a book must be readable on an e-reader, on PC or a mobile phone. It is rumoured that the e-books will be transformed to HTML. There is also no word on whether Google will have its own e-reader produced (with android software).
Also the veteran of the electronic book, the Project Gutenberg, is shifting gear and making eyes to mobile phones. The first goal of Project Gutenberg was simply to reach totals of estimated audiences of 1.5% of the world population, or the total of 100 million people. With the advent of mobile phone access the project management is now setting its goal at 15 percent of the world population or 1 billion. Given that there are approximately 4.5 billion mobile phones now in service around the world that means that the project with its offer could reach just over one-fifth of all mobile phone users to accomplish this goal.

Given the estimated 4.5 billion mobile phones for which eBooks could be made, presuming they can all display plain eBooks, and the extremely slow rise in Kindle sales as compared to the iPod, iPhone, Blackberry Curve, and all the others, Project Gutenberg could reach more readers than Kindle and Sony combined. This attempt to reach these mobile phones has to include books in many more languages than English.

This means that Project Gutenberg will have to be more multi-lingual, if Project Gutenberg is to reach anyone beyond the number of people comfortable enough with English to read the eBooks on the mobile phones. There are already well over a thousand book titles in French, followed by lesser numbers in German and the other more popular languages, but not nearly enough to really offer a library in these languages.

Project Gutenberg especially aims at the smart phones and iPhones in particular. With iTunes as a shop it has a software and content distributor in one. Various iPhone applications for eBooks have appeared in the iTunes appl shop such as Plucker, the defacto mobile eBook reader format for Project Gutenberg, houses over 20,000 free eBooks. Another eText reader for the iPhone is Eucalyptus.

Blog Posting Number: 1353

tags: e-books, content

BPN 1352 A changing e-reader world (1)

Something is changing in the e-reader scene. Plastic Logic e-book reader has now 3G. And even more newsworthy is the acquisition of E-Ink by PVI. What is going on in this world?

The news of Plastic Logic is not really breaking news. But after Kindle and the iLiad using 3G, it will mean that the business e-readers are going to compete on a plain level. The question will be of course whether Plastic Logic will make a special deal with a telecom provider like Kindle did with Sprint. The deal with Sprint has limited Kindle geographically to the States. Whether Plastic Logic will make an exclusive bundled deal with a telecom operator is not known. With such a deal you win some customers, but also loose some. It is like with the iPhone and T-Telecom. They have a worldwide deal for a half year exclusivity. And of course they sell the iPhone to Apple tifosi, but not to other people who do not like T-Telecom (yes T-Telecom there are people who do not like the bundled deals; it means no competition).

But the fact that Plastic Logis is going to have 3G, means that there will be competition in the market. iLiad was the first one with a telecom facility, followed by Kindle. Then iRex Technologies came back with the iRex 1000 series, of which the model 1000SW is equipped with a large screen and wireless. The Kindle is equipped with 3G and now Plastic Logic will be part of the competition with a large screen and 3G. So mark 2010 for the launch of Plastic Logic.

Really breaking news is the agreement of Prime View International (PVI) to acquire E Ink. PVI is a Taiwanees leading small and medium display provider and the world’s highest volume supplier of ePaper display modules. The production company is acquiring the laboratory company of digital paper. So research and production will now be in the hand of PVI.

I am wondering whether this is smart. In the first place the acquisition sum of 215 million US dollar is not impressive for an innovative company and certainly not for a market which will grow to over 20 million e-readers units by 2012. Secondly, PVI has now the research facility and the e-reader production facility in one hand, which will hinder the diversification of the product development. PVI and E-Ink worked already close for some years. PVI acquired the ePaper business of Philips Electronics and partnered with E Ink to provide displays for electronic books including the SONY Reader and the Amazon Kindle 2 and Kindle DX.

Yet in the past twelve months E-Ink customers have announced many exciting digital paper devices. Oprah Winfrey endorsed Amazon’s Kindle on live television calling it “her favorite gadget”. Subsequently Amazon’s Kindle 2 has proven highly popular and the Kindle DX enters the eTextbook and eNewspaper space with a large 9.7” screen. SONY launched a new PRS-700 Reader with integrated touch screen. Chinese astronauts brought the Hanwan N510 eBook into outer space on a recent Shenzhou 7 mission. PVI, Epson, LG Display, PolymerVision, Hewlett-Packard and Plastic Logic demonstrated flexible active matrix displays using E Ink Vizplex imaging film. E Ink Corporation teamed with Esquire Magazine and Ford Corporation on the first ePaper animated magazine cover. In May 2009, Verizon announced the Samsung Alias 2 cellphone, with a changeable keypad made with E Ink Vizplex imaging film.

Blog Posting Number: 1352

Tags: e-reader

BPN 1351 European Elections start in Holland

Today the European elections start in the Netherlands and the UK. In the Netherlands 13 million people can vote; they do not have to vote like in Belgium. The Netherlands is not famous for a record showing of voters. Fourty percent of 13 million is already a lot. It is interesting to see tomorrow morning what the percentage will be. (As we are not using voting machines any longer, as they can be tampered with theoretically, we are again centuries back to the red pencil!).

I have voted already early in the morning. The party choice was not easy. On the one hand we have the Europe haters, who will join the European parliament to frustrate any European initiative. They basically want to collect votes against the present Dutch cabinet, which is pretty weak. On the other hand we have the traditional parties of Christians, socialists and liberals. New parties this time around, are the parties not rooted in the Dutch political system, but parties which profile themselves as European parties such as Newropeans and Libertas. Those parties are not represented in all 27 countries, but in a few countries only. The Newropeans for example are represented in Germany and France. Interestingly enough they also have linked up with the Pirate Party from Sweden, a political party based on intellectual property. The Newropeans agree with the principles of the Pirate Party: disagreement with the present copyright rules, against DRM technologies and elimination of blank media tax.

My vote is clear. I am in favour of Europe and will not vote on the parties which want to frustrate any European initiative. I am not favouring the new European parties as they have hardly presented and promoted themselves. In the Netherlands, only Mr Reinder Rustema was active promoting the Newropeans and as Obama did he did it on internet. He teaches media at Amsterdam University and has indicated to agree with the principles of the Pirate Party. I have resorted to a social liberal party.

After voting, I have set myself to some administrative chores: filling out the financial forms and timesheets of the project Scienar, subsidised by the European Commission. The main objective of Scienar is to stimulate the creativity of artists by means of the creation of innovative scientific scenarios, based on scientific models. In particular, the project intends to create an environment, constituted by three scientific scenarios, concerning: the theory of relativity, symetries and geometry. The project has just opened its website.

Blog Posting Number: 1351

Tags: media policy

BPN 1350 Back to the future (2): AOL Time Warner

The AOL and Time Warner separation of last week is no real news after eight years. But when the merger was announced everyone saw advantages. So did I. In fact I went back into my writing of 2001 and I must say, that I went with the stream and pointed to advantages of the two companies: the content factory and the advertisement hold. When the merger was announced in 2000, I was writing a white paper with Professor Paul Rutten for the Dutch research institute TNO. The white paper was intended to start canvassing publishers for assignments. We saw the movement towards content factories and pointed to this merger, to the Walt Disney and Pixar merger as well as the merger of Telefonica and Van der Ende Entertainment, which has been undone also in the past years.

When all the talk about mergers came up, it looked good. The landscape would be rearranged dramatically. AOL was a veteran online consumer company, which would bring along its host of subscribers, while Time Warner was an analogue publisher of radio, television and print, which possessed a large copyright library. Both companies had a lot to offer to each other. In fact it could form its own complete integrated content cycle from market research to content development, multi-platform marketing and distribution. This was expressed in the fabulous merger sum of $147 billion.

But it all turned out differently. AOL lost many of its dial up subscribers to broadband services. It once had 26,7 million subscribers and at the point of separation has 6,3 million subscribers left. Also the process of digitising analogue content has proven to be more difficult than expected. Technically it has not been a problem, but organisationally and marketingwise it has been. Publishing companies are famous for forming islands in an organisation, which are defended for content and copyright. So, exchanging and marketing content for the digital market has never worked in AOL Time Warner.

What is going to become of the demerger of AOL and Time Warner. The press release says “The separation will be another critical step in the reshaping of Time Warner that we started at the beginning of last year, enabling us to focus to an even greater degree on our core content businesses. The separation will also provide both companies with greater operational and strategic flexibility. We believe AOL will then have a better opportunity to achieve its full potential as a leading independent Internet company.”
“After the proposed separation is complete, AOL will compete as a standalone company – focused on growing its Web brands and services, which currently reach more than 107 million domestic unique visitors a month, as well as its advertising business, which operates the leading online display network that reaches more than 91% of the domestic online audience. AOL will also continue to operate one of the largest Internet access subscription services in the U.S.”

The press release is very optimistic and of course both parties have to be with an AOL stock market offering in the near future. But to me it sounds like Time Warner is happy to be able to continue like they did before the merger in 2001. In the meantime AOL is depicted as the best online service in the US world, which, of course, it is not. Even Google was glad to get rid of its 5 percent stock holding it had in AOL.

Will the stock market be interested in buying AOL stock? Or would AOL be better off by being bought by a company. Google has excluded itself already by selling the 5 percent interest in shares. Is AOL then prey for Yahoo or even Microsoft? Yahoo could use the company to shape it up and start a world expansion program. And Microsoft could use AOL is a testing service for its new products.

Blog Posting Number: 1350

Tags: content,
content factory

BPN 1349 Back to the future (1): Atari

These are strange times: the French video game publisher Infogrames will rebrand the company as Atari and the veteran online company AOL and book and magazine publisher Times Warner look like they will disassociate. This is going back to the future of the nineties: the Atari era was over and content factories were the forecasted money spinners.

It is strange to see the French video game publisher Infogrames going back to the name of Atari. Of course the holding company of Infogrames is Atari. But Atari was ‘old hat’ by the mid nineties.

Infogrames has a long history as games developer and publisher. It was started in 1983 by the French whiz kid Bruno Bonnell together with Christophe Sapet and Thomas Schmider and grew by acquisitions from 1996 to 2002. In 1997 it acquired Philips Media and its CD-I game heritage and sold out the stock Philips had built up in expectation of the world success of CD-I, that never came.

And by 2002 the company published the game Enter the Matrix, based on the movies of the Matrix. It was also the time that Infogrames holding company, IESA bought Atari and branded it Atari Interactive.

In 2009 Infogrames is making another business turn and is branded Atari. What a move! Will it work? To start with the last question: going back to such a classic name will that work at all. We have a comparable situation with Commodore. Some years ago the name of Commodore was bought by computer builder Tulip, who started to build modern variations of the famous Commodore 64 to be linked up to TV and including a joystick. It did not appeal and in 2004 the brand was sold to Yeahronimo, an online music shop, and used for music devices. These devices flopped in the market as did the online music shop. The only thing visible of Commodore at present is the logo on the facade of an office at Baarn, next to highway A1 in The Netherlands. The owners saw more of judges than of consumers over the years, fighting in court bankruptcies.

What will be the fate of Infogrames as Atari. Will they become the new jaguar under the game consoles or will Infogrames continue to sell games, but now under the brand Atari. Changing the brand name looks like a trade trick for a company in bad weather. Atari was the name for the excellent hardware, which was bundled with games. As Infogrames is not selling game consoles, it will use the name Atari for selling games. This coupled with the historical lack of name recognition of the present game generation, it looks like the newly branded company Atari will even faster meet its fate: bankruptcy.

Blog Posting Number: 1349

Tags: games

Photoblog of Bahrain

These are views from the hotel in the Seef area, a fast rising area of offices and malls.

I had an informal dinner with some members of the board of the Bahrain Internet Society. They in cooperation with the Women's rights association had just received a grant from the government to set up an ICT/Internet training course for women

The night of the dinner at the Raddison Diplomat. All jurors received a gift and a certificate.

BPN 1348 The scope of eGovernment

I am back from Bahrain. It was not because of the sand storm on Thursday, but the assignment to chair the 2009 eGovernment Excellence Award jury was completed. The jury reached a final winners list on Wednesday evening.

The jury deliberations were over, but the Bahraini have a nice tradition of thanking the jury members. An official dinner was arranged on Thursday evening. All the jury members, the staff and the officials of the eGovernment Agency were present. The dinner was presided over by sheik Ahmed Bin Ateyat Allah Al Khalifa, the minister of Cabinet Affairs. Once the sheik had arrived, a few speeches were made. I was asked by the eGovernment Agency to say some words (see photograph). Of course, thanks were in order for organising the jury event as part of the eGovernment Contest. After that a ceremony, which looked like graduation day, was started up. Everyone was called up to come forward and receive a certificate and a gift in red velvet (red and white are the colours of the flag of the Kingdom of Bahrain).

Looking back at the second edition, it certainly was different from last year. The electronic jury system was different and the jury members worked remotely. So contrary to last year I did not see the jurors often. In fact I saw them at the opening session and on decision day. I received telephone calls and messages with questions at the office of the eGovernment Agency or at the hotel. It led to a morning message and a daily wrap up message.

There was some joking about my presence in Bahrain. Last year I stayed here three weeks. This year I have stayed there two weeks. So a prediction was made jokingly saying that next year it would be just one week or worse Skype.

It was also interesting to have an Omani lady and two Saudi officials in the jury. As they are preparing eGovernment contest in their respective countries, they got an experience through participation in the jury from the inside out. The Saudi plan to have a national contest in November, while the Omani lady has been charged with the organisation of a national contest as well as a GCC (consortium of Gulf countries) contest. Both have asked to assist them in starting up the contest. Besides at the end of the dinner, Bahraini officials asked whether I was available for the third issue, which solicited the remark, that I only need an apartment in Bahrain and a jallabah.

During the dinner we got into a discussion about the scope of eGovernment. Was it just a cost reduction exercise using the citizen as a data typist or was it to make government more accountable and transparent? Of course all elements are involved. And it is not only the scope but also the state of art of eGovernment. Governments which have just adapted eGovernment are less mature than the governments using a portal with a lot of information and eServices, thus letting citizens browse for information and have him/her do payments online from their home at their own convenience. Of course, it also saves on people handling manual transactions. Transparency of course comes when one can check public spending as well as the voting behaviour in connection with payments. Of course the US and many EU countries have a certain degree of transparency. One of the beautiful examples of creating transparency is the US site Money and Politics by Maplight, which was a winner in the 2007 World Summit Award edition.

Blogp Posting Number: 1348

Tags: eGovernment

BPN 1347 World Summit Award Gala RESCHEDULED

The World Summit Award Gala has been rescheduled to September 4th 2009. The venue will be in Monterrey, Mexico. The Gala was scheduled for June 12th in Monterrey, Mexico, but was rescheduled due to the Mexican flu.

Thanks to the generous invitation of the WSA Mexican partner under the leadership of Mr. Ramon Alberto Garza of Indigomedia, WSA will hold its Gala events to promote the world's best e-Content in the City of Monterrey.

This will be the forth time that WSA will select, showcase and celebrate the most outstanding local e-Content and innovative internet applications.

The four day celebrations in Mexico will provide a unique opportunity to meet and connect with WSA winners, ICT experts, business leaders, multimedia producers and creatives as well as government and business leaders who will be giving their recognition to the showcased best practice examples. In addition, the World Summit Youth Award (WSYA) will focus on the use of the Internet and mobile applications to put the UN’s Millennium Development Goals into Action.

Blog Posting Number: 1347

Tags: econtent, multimedia contest

BPN 1346 Bahrain eGov Jury half way

It is weekend in Bahrain. Today is the second day of the weekend and it is very quiet on the roads, as far as I can see from my hotel room. After breakfast I took some pictures from the 10th floor, where the swimming pool is. Yesterday I took a dip and stayed on the sun deck and I might do so again after the lunch outside the hotel with a friend.

We are now half way with the jury deliberations. The jury members are busy evaluating all the entries. In the past week, I have gone through all the entries and made sure that they qualify for the contest. The rules have been tightened since last year. This has been done to avoid winners of last year in the same category, as the contest is more a demonstration of applications than a competitive contest. In total 100 entries have been registered, but after cleaning up the list of entries there were 63 entries left. However evaluating all these 63 entries is no small task.

The jury will decide on the list of winners by May 13, with an option to continue on May 14. Winners of the current edition of the awards will be announced at the Award ceremony at the eve of the start of the eGov Forum in Manama on 25.05.2009. This year there will also be a catalogue of the winners with a summary of the entry and the jury judgment.

Blog Posting Number: 1346

Tags: e-Government