Archives 2002:
November
2002
August 2002
June/July 2002
May 2002
April
2002
March 2002
January 2002
November 2002
Internet and American Youth,
early adopters and heavy users (november
2002)
The Pew Internet and American Life Project, a think
tank devoted to understanding Internet usage in the
U.S., published a study demonstrating the pervasiveness
of Internet in the lives of young American students.
86% of US university students have gone online (compared
to 59% of the general population) and 72% check their
emails at least once daily. Most of them own their computer
(85%). They browse for fun, download music files fervently
and are regular users of Instant Messaging. Interestingly,
these students consider the Internet a functional tool
that has enhanced their university educational experience
as they use the medium to 'communicate with professors
and classmates, do research, and to access library materials.'
At times, they find the Internet and email more efficient
tools to interact with professors. And finally, students
find that the Internet has changed their campus social
lives as well by allowing them to 'encounter new social
situations and gain new social skills.' Because just
as they use the Internet to add to their to the formal
parts of their education, they go online to 'enhance'
their social lives. (Source : The Internet Goes to College
- How Students Are Living in the Future by Using Today's
Technology, The Pew Internet and American Life Project,
www.pewinternet.org,
September 15, 2002)
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Intellectual Property and Development
(november
2002)
An independent report published in September 2002 by
the now disbanded Commission
on Intellectual Property Rights argues that
the application of Intellectual Property Rights to developing
countries will be detrimental to their social and economic
development. This Commission was set up by the British
government in order to consider, among other issues,
how national Intellectual Property Rights could be best
designed to benefit developing countries. The published
report concluded that 'higher IP standards should not
be pressed on developing countries without a serious
and objective assessment of their development impact'.
The Commission laid down proposals and recommendations
developed and developing countries can adopt and implement
to ease the application of IPRs in different fields
of activity (health, agriculture, traditional knowledge,
software and Internet), and it is asking such organizations
as WTO and WIPO to act in a balanced way between the
interests of those asking for more or less IPRs. The
Commission was chaired by Professor John Barton from
Stanford University with other commissioners originating
from Argentina, India and the UK. (Source : www.iprcommission.org)
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Get this chip off my shoulder!
(november 2002)
If you thought that producing the miniature-size chips
in PCs or cell phones meant little utilization of material,
energy or water, think again. A recent study funded
by the Fulbright Foundation looked at the production
process of a 32MB dynamic RAM chip and noted that producing
said chip required '3.5 pounds of fossil fuels, almost
a quarter pound of chemicals, about 70 pounds of water
and 1.5 pounds of gases.' Compared to the materials
and energy needed to build a car, the chip stands out
as the study evaluates the ratio of the 'manufacturing
phase's fossil fuel and chemical inputs to the weight
of the final product is about 2-to-1 for a car, but
630-to-1 for a microchip'. Entropy, or the amount of
disorder in a system, explains this difference. Microchips
and other high-tech products are considered extremely
low-entropy but they are produced using high-entropy
starting materials requiring large amounts of energy
to be transformed into low-entropy materials. This is
food for thought for an industry always looking to upgrade
all types of technological gadgets and also for the
up and coming mega issue of how to recycle high-tech
products that are being discarded in landfills worldwide.
(Source: http://news.com.com)
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Alleluia (november
2002)
I'll take a Bach motet cellular ring-tone anytime over
any of those ring'a'ding tunes you hear these days in
the streets. And thank God for the Dutch Roman Catholic
Church for heeding my call for an uplifting musical
and mobile experience. You can now go to their site
www.catholictunes.nl
and download 15 religious 'evergreens' taken from well-known
church music, including a few Ave Maria, Salve Regina
and other Veni Sancte Spiriti. According to this organization,
the new ring-tones provide 'an opportunity for a moment
of inspiration and contemplation every time the cell
phone rings.' Even though the Church does not think
that the tunes will bring in more converts, it believes
they can contribute to a 'contemporary and self-aware
presentation of the Catholic identity'. Downloading
an 'evergreen' ring-tone comes at a cost, be it minimal,
1.15 Euro and the proceeds are used for charitable causes,
namely the Bishops Fund for Special Needs. (Source :
AFP, September 4, 2002)
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August 2002
How do you recycle a cell phone
and make money while at it? (august
2002)
If you are Seth Heine, it is possible. The Atlanta resident
has come up with a simple yet genial idea: gather as
many used cell phones as possible, sort them, refurbish
them and sell them again for a fraction of the original
price (20 dollars and two dollars profit) to wireless
companies in Latin and Central America. According to
the Cellular
Telecommunications Industry Association (CTIA),
137 million US residents have mobile services and on
average switch to a new cell phone every 18 months.
The increasing use of second-hand cell phones in Africa,
Latin America and parts of Asia is a worry to the likes
of Nokia who do not want to be left out of this market
despite the low margins. Nokia is considering producing
cell phones more accessible to countries with low standards
of living but it will be a long shot before they match
Heine's 20 dollars selling price, even if the cell phone
has been used once already. (Business Week, July 25,2002)
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Pirating software is not intrinsically
bad if it is for… educational purposes
(august 2002)
The Malaysian government came to this conclusion and
is considering implementing a radical plan to allow
school children and teachers to use pirated software
on school grounds. According to the Minister of Trade
and Consumer Affairs, Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin, the
use of software, be it pirated, can increase computer
literacy in schoolchildren. Software manufacturers,
however, argue that it is simply the state reneging
on its promise to install 'clean' software and trying
to cut costs by all means. (Source: vnunet, 29-07-2002)
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Small and Medium Businesses
(SMEs) in Australia are happily embracing online business
according to a survey published by Pacific Access in
July 2002 (august
2002)
The survey found 56 per cent of SMEs have already recovered
their financial investment in online business while
the proportion that believed e-commerce fulfilled their
expectations have grown substantially to 68 per cent
from 2001. This is happening as SMEs computer ownership
is stabilizing at 90 per cent and expenditure on software
and hardware is falling. We will not be surprised to
learn that the most important use of the internet by
these companies was for email with 94 per cent saying
they connected for this reason, and it was the only
application that they considered essential. The second
most important use was for reference information and
information about products or services for purchase.
(SMH.com: July 30, 2002)
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But not really in the Philippines…
(august 2002)
Where a similar survey conducted by Digital
Philippines Foundation and funded by The
Asia Foundation came to less positive conclusions. Even
though computer ownership was high among SMEs (90%),
Internet connection is relatively low (70%) with 85%
of them using a slow dial-up connection. The study noted
that SMEs use information and communications technology
(ICT) mainly for communication and research, and seldom
for e-commerce. Most importantly, it was recommended
that the country develop a nationwide database of small
and medium enterprise (SMEs) and embark on a broad and
sweeping awareness campaign on e-commerce to speed up
the adoption of ICT and e-commerce among SMEs. (ItnetCentral,
July 31, 2002)
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June/July 2002
How Many Internet Users are
there in the World? (june/july
2002)
According to a recent eMarketer survey, 446 million
people worldwide were using the Web in one form or another
by the end of 2001. Close to a third (134 million) of
those users originate from North America, approximately
a third (140 million) from Europe and a final third
(146 million) from the Asia/Pacific region. Only 22
million (4%) people are connected in South America and
a paltry five million Africans can surf the Net (1,2%).
Anticipating future Internet growth, eMarketer analysts
argue for an absolute increase to 530 million users
for the current year and 623 million users for 2003,
still less than 10% of the world population at best.
www.emarketer.com
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Things are not getting any
better on the Digital Divide Front
(june/july 2002)
According to U.N. Secretary-General, Kofi Annan, "The
digital divide still yawns as widely as ever, with billions
of people still unconnected to a global society which,
on its side, is more and more wired." This quote
taken from a very recent U.N. organized conference speech
confirms that despite many efforts and initiatives these
past years to come up with realistic solutions, the
divide is here to stay. Governments and private corporations
such as HP, Microsoft or Bertelsmann, along with multilateral
organizations and numerous NGOs, have indeed banded
together to set up programs to funnel financial and
human resources toward bridging the divide (U.N. ICT
Task Force, G8 DOT Force, World Bank InfoDev Program,
the WEF Digital Divide Task Force, etc.) but the results
are hard to see. HP and Microsoft have decided recently
to up the ante and give 20% of the their charity budgets
to the United Nations program promoting Internet and
phone development in poor countries. Unfortunately,
these initiatives appear like band-aid solutions considering
the monumental needs confronted by people in the developing
world. The divide however does not exist only in the
telecommunications side of information technology but
on the digital content side of it as well and that is
why we are gathering in Montreux to see how the multimedia
industry can provide answers to this issue (October
8-11).
Source: www.theworkcircuit.com/news/OEG20020621S0035
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3D and Farming (june/july
2002)
Members of a 3D online research lab associated with
the International Potato Center (CIP in Spanish) are
collaborating with www.ActiveWorlds.com to develop online
3-D environments and create the world's first virtual
crop fields. An internet connection and the free ActiveWorlds
Internet browser, is all that is needed by researchers
to meet together within a shared 3-D environment online
such as a potato farm in the Andes or a mango grove
in Burma. Dr. Roberto Quiroz, CIP's head of natural
resource management in Lima, Peru, argues that the technology
allows for the display of 3D useful virtual environmental
scenarios : "We can model a farm, for instance,
and then you're seeing that farm. Then we can apply
an erosion model and show how rainfall will impact the
farm in 20 or 25 years." This lab along with ten
other ones are funded in most part by Future Harvest
Group. Other participants in the program include the
United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization; several
international agricultural research centers and universities
in Europe, the U.S. and developing countries.
(Source: Glen McDonald, www.technologyReview.com,
April 2, 2002)
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Music Piracy is Hitting the
Roof worldwide (june/july 2002)
And 2001 has not been easy for the music industry. Sales
of pirated music grew by nearly 50% (1,9 billion duplicated
units), according to the International Federation of
Phonographic industry (IFPI)
which accuses the CD-R format for this state of affairs.
Well not really the format but certainly its use of
it. IFPI considers those behind music piracy as a well
organized network capable of taking advantage of various
countries' lax copyright protection and enforcement
capabilities. IFPI Chairman, Jay Berman, states that
``piracy on a global basis is for the most part a highly
organized activity. It takes a high level of sophistication
to produce a disc at a plant in Malaysia and to find
that disc in Brazil.'' Can the solution to this issue
come from technology itself (unique CD-R tracking code
for example) or from the national authorities' new take
on fighting piracy is still a matter of debate. For
the time being, the music industry does not want to
shoot the messenger by focusing mostly on the CD-R but
wants to do more to make life difficult to those involved
in duplicating digital content. (Source: Reuters, June
11, 2002)
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Software Quality, an Oxymoron?
(june/july 2002)
The issue of ensuring software quality and security
is finally entering the public debate and various public
and private sector organizations are taking the bull
by the horns to address it. One of them, Pittsburgh-based
Carnegie Mellon University, announced in May 2002 the
creation of the Sustainable Computing Consortium, an
organization whose purpose is to establish specifications
and standards for software quality as well as facilitate
the recognition process between sellers and buyers of
what is good or bad software. The Consortium backers
consist of major corporate IT and software developers
and users among whom Microsoft, Oracle, NASA and Raytheon.
Another notable characteristic of the Consortium consist
of the people who will take part of this initiative
since software engineers, public policy experts, economists
and lawyers have been invited to join its ranks. Ultimately,
the Consortium wants to provide solutions to a wide
array of software applications be they around the desktop
publishing environment or in database management. Another
computer programming flaw the Consortium wants to tackle
is buffer overflow.
(Source: Neil Irwin, Washington Post, May 17, 2002 and
www.sustainablecomputing.org)
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Korea/Japan FIFA World Cup
2002 (june/july 2002)
They call it the World Cup of surprises but not to certain
English computers which managed to choose Senegal over
France in the Cup opening game when everybody else thought
that the game would be a walk in the park for the 'bleus'.
Kendra Mayfield reports in Wired that Henry Stott, a
mathematician at the University of Warwick, developed
the Glover Automated Results Indicator (GARI), a statistical
model designed to predict the odds of every individual
match in the 2002 World Cup. Stott's model rates teams
on two dimensions: "strength," which quantifies
how teams measure up against each other, and "patchiness,"
which charts a team's unpredictability. It is especially
the patchiness dimension that did France in, including
the absence of their star player, Zinedine Zidane and
having to deal with a funny streak of bad luck (6 transversal
bars) during first-round games. Unfortunately for GARI,
it chose Argentina as the probable World Cup finalist
and winner. We know of course where they are as we write
these lines. (Source: Wired, June 8, 2002)
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May 2002
Can you marry the Arts, Science
and Technology? (may 2002)
They are certainly trying in Ottawa where the Canada
Council for the Arts and the National
Research Council signed an agreement, April
15, to promote the interaction between the three above-mentioned
domains of activity. The signing coincided with the
550th anniversary of Leonardo Da Vinci's birth whose
life embodied the sought after convergence of Art and
Science. The collaborative program, to start Fall 2002,
will bring together leading artists as researchers into
the NRC laboratories across Canada and allow them to
create and think through the convergent potentialities
such partnerships allow. The program is delivered with
a fairly modest budget equally shared between the two
organizations and a research grant in the amount of
CAD$75,000 per year is awarded per artist for a two-year
period. The chosen applicant joins a specific research
environment using space and technical and research resources
provided by NRC. (Source: www.canadacouncil.ca)
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Times are changing!
(may 2002)
The expression applies if you take at face value a study
conducted by Penn State University's School of Information
Technology on surfers Web interest. Using the Excite
directory, the study found that over the past years,
sex and entertainment are slowly being replaced by more
'practical' or lofty subjects. If in 1997 one in six
Excite Web queries was about sex, in 2001 only one in
12 searches was exactly about that. The new areas of
interest include e-commerce, travel, ticket-booking
services, corporate sites and… human sexuality.
(Source: VNUNet.com,
March 2002)
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Me too, says the US Government
(may 2002)
Not to be left out, the US Federal Government is making
a strong effort to present useful and user-friendly
sites to its constituents. According to an Internet
usage study by the Pew Internet and American Life Project,
68 million adults Americans have surfed, in 2001, federal
public service sites for multiple reasons whether to
download tax forms or make reservations. In 2000, a
sizable 40 million people had already done so, confirming
Internet's popularity as a source of information and
administrative transaction. According to Pew, American
surfers use their new access to government in wide-ranging
ways, "finding information to further their civic,
professional, and personal lives while some use government
Web sites to apply for benefits, engage public officials,
and complete transactions such as filing taxes".
Even more interesting is the use of the Internet in
the public policy arena since 42 million Americans have
used government Web sites to research public policy
issues while 13 million of them have participated in
online lobbying campaigns. (Source: www.pewinternet.org/reports)
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April 2002
Amman welcomes a new Arab Media
Association (april 2002)
The International Federation of Multimedia Associations
was well represented at the "New
Media and change in the Arab World"
Conference held in Amman (Jordan) and FIAM President
Hervé
Fischer's conference was very much appreciated.
Over a hundred media representatives from 22 countries
discussed and debated the influence of new media and
the pressure it is exerting on the need for freedom
of expression in Arab countries. "It was a great
success, argued Ramzi Khoury, former Editor of Albawaba
and organiser of the conference. It was the highest
ever representation of independent media in the history
of the Arab World." The event also lead to the
creation of a new Pan-Arab Media Association which will
advocate all the issues pertaining to the development
of new media in the Arab countries. "The Pan-Arab
Media Organization is already preliminarily organized
and has asked Jordan to host its headquarters",
said Khoury. "The organization will represent all
types of media and will be the most important project
for Arab media, quite needed at these times of crises
for the people, governments and media organizations
in the Arab World".
"We will be members of FIAM for sure", he
added, "and would very much like to come to Montreux
this fall!".
FIAM Director General, André G. Côté,
also met with Bilal Albuzeid, Marketing Director at
Int@j,
the Information technology Association of Jordan, to
seek their membership and represent the national Multimedia
and IT sector of Jordan in the Federation and at the
Montreux Summit.
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International Telecommunications
Union (ITU)
(april 2002)
The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) has
given cable a strong push by announcing Wednesday April
3rd, IPCABLECOM, an initiative geared toward integrating
seamlessly and efficiently Internet Protocol standards
in the delivery of multimedia services such interactive
games, electronic commerce and streaming media applications
(voice and video conferencing). The potential for exponential
growth in the delivery of such services will soon be
a reality and more importantly cable networks have to
anticipate the demand. The 17 recommendations to IPCABLECOM
meet specifications defined by cable operators and vendors
in North America, Europe, and Asia and detail the interconnection
requirements required to ease product implementation
and deployment. These fundamental requirements range
from quality of service to security interfaces. For
more information on this initiative, see www.itu.int/newsroom
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Digital divide in Africa
(april 2002)
Ghana’s capital, Accra, was host to ICANN's
latest get-together in mid-March and the statistics
spewing out of there do not yet paint a bright picture
of the evolution of Internet in the continent. According
to NUA Internet surveys, Africa still lags far behind
in terms of Internet usage with only 4 million users
out 513 million worldwide. And of the four million users,
half of them live in South Africa. The major reason
explaining this weakness : the simple inexistence of
telephony and electrical infrastructure in large swaths
of the continent which is home to only 2% of all fixed
telephone lines. The other major issue is living standards
: considering their purchasing power, Africans, in general,
cannot yet afford a basic PC priced on average at 1000
dollars US. (Source : Yahoo.fr, March 16, 2002)
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Who is using the Internet
(april 2002)
According to Nielsen/NetRatings, close to 500 million
people worldwide have Internet access at home, a 5%
increase since 2000, with North America showing the
greatest number of Net surfers but the slowest growth
rate of all. It is estimated now that 8% of the world’s
population of nearly 6.2 billion people have Internet
access. While the U.S. and Canada's Internet access
count increased by 6.1 million people to reach 191.7
million - or 39 percent of the global total - North
America's 3.2 percent growth rate is behind all other
areas of the world. In the Europe/Middle East/Africa
region, Internet connectedness grew by 4.9 percent to
134.7 million. Asia-Pacific showed a 5.5 percent gain
to 110.1 million and Latin America increased 3.5 percent
to 20.7 million and the world's remaining countries
recorded 14-percent growth. (Source : newsbytes, March
6, 2002)
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And for what purpose?
(april 2002)
According to a new study on Internet use in the United
States, by the Pew
Internet and American Life Project,
Americans are increasingly using the new medium for
serious and functional purposes, that is “as Internet
users gain experience online, they increasingly turn
to the Internet to perform work-related tasks, to make
purchases and do other financial transactions, to write
emails with weighty and urgent content, and to seek
information that is important to their everyday lives.”
This has lead Pew to conclude that the status of the
Internet is shifting from being the “dazzling
new thing to being a purposeful tool that Americans
use to help them with some of life's important tasks”.
Not surprisingly, the most popular application is email
with more than 50 million people addicted to it.
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March 2002
FIAM participates in RIMA 2002
(march 2002)
RIMA, the International Conference on Educational Multimedia,
will take place in Quebec City from the 18th to the
21st of March and FIAM will participate in some of the
workshops. RIMA is a forum for debate and discussion
focusing on the development of multimedia learning (onsite
and distance learning) and educational products.
The event is also an opportunity for recognizing excellence
in educational multimedia technologies at the national
and international levels. The conference will focus
on three major themes :
- commercialization of e-learning products
- education and training for the user and
- issues of research and development.
Twenty four workshops will look at these issues in
more details. Several international key speakers have
been invited among whom Brenda Laurel from Purple Moon,
Pierre Moeglin from the soon to be created French Maison
des sciences de l'homme, French philosopher Pierre Lévy,
founder of La Cité des sciences et de l'industrie
de la Villette in Paris and Walter Stewart from Silicon
Graphics.
Organizers are expecting a wide participation from as
far as Cameroon, Finland, Uruguay and Hungary. For those
of you interested in participating, be informed that
RIMA is offering a 500 C$ reimbursement per participant
for groups of four coming from outside the province
of Quebec. For more information please see www.rima2000.org.
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Global Digital Opportunity
Initiative comes to life (march
2002)
US-based Markle Foundation and the United Nations Development
Program (UNDP) announced early this month, during the
World Economic Forum, a long sought initiative called
the Global Digital Opportunity Initiative (GDOI) aimed
at bridging the Digital Divide between North and South
: information technology (IT) teams will be travelling
to specifically chosen developing nations for the purpose
of advising them on how to implement programs and policies
aimed at increasing access to and usage of digital technologies.
Behind this idea is International Partners Group, a
mix of private and public sector companies and organizations
such as Cisco, Hewlett-Packard, Sun Microsystems, Grameen
Bank, Egypt White and Case, Media Lab Asia, ITU, UC
Berkeley (CITRIS), the International Development Research
Centre and the Harvard Centre for International Development.
These IT teams will be working in approximately twelve
chosen countries (the first three being Mozambique,
Tanzania and Bolivia) and will provide technological
and policy assistance and advice in such areas as healthcare,
education and electronic commerce. The initial budget
to implement the first leg of GDOI will be about twelve
million dollars. For more information on the initiative
see www.markle.org/news/_news_pressrelease_020502.stm.
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How to marry Internet and electricity
(march 2002)
The French government and other players have been quite
critical of how slow Internet penetration and broadband
has affected access and usage among the population at
large. As a partial answer to this going concern, French
authorities have decided, in an attempt to bridge the
so-called Territorial Digital Divide within France,
to use the 100,000 km national electrical network as
a means to deliver high-speed Internet to those who
want it. RTE, the manager of the national electrical
network and a former subsidiary of state-owned Electricité
de France, was chosen as the company in charge of delivering
this service. 2,000 kilometres of optical fibre are
already in place for RTE use and to meet the lofty objectives
of the government, up to 20,000 km are to be installed
on the existing electrical poles. RTE, which says that
it will provide the service for free (only the use of
its own resources will be charged to the users), considers
the investment to be a better deal than having to dig
and bury optical cable. The additional layout should
cost 400 million Euros approximately and will deliver
broadband Internet, within a five kilometre radius,
to all cities above 7,000 inhabitants and to half of
those between 5,000 and 7,000 inhabitants. The 'last
mile' however will be provided by the local municipalities
who will have to invest in their own optical fibre infrastructure.
Source : www.lemonde.fr/article/0,5987,3234--261600-,00.html.
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Internet penetration in the
Middle East (march 2002)
Amman-based research and consultancy agency Arab Advisors
Group (AAG) released a study comforting the fact that
Internet usage in the Middle East is rising rapidly.
Analyzing data from 8 Middle Eastern countries (Egypt,
Jordan, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Morocco, Oman
and the UAE), AAG's report shows that the increase in
usage is both a function of Internet bandwidth and subscribers.
According to AAG analyst Shahin Shahin, the increase
in total bandwidth (1,195 Gbps, 154% increase between
2000 and 2001) in relation to subscribers (1,08 million,
47% increase between 2002 and 2001) is unevenly distributed
among the 8 countries but indicative of the upward trend.
In the UAE, Oman, Saudi Arabia and Egypt, that ratio
more than doubled as bandwidth increased twice as much
as the number of subscribers. For more information,
please see www.arabadvisors.com.
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Music Online still has a long
way to go (march 2002)
It will take some time before you manage to download,
in a convenient and economic fashion, your favourite
music using online services Press Play or Music Net,
two online b2c music sites introduced late last year
by the Entertainment Majors (Warner Music, and BMG for
Music Net and Universal and Sony Music for Press Play).
This argument has become a leitmotiv during the last
MIDEM in Cannes (January 19-24, 2002). Acquiring Napster
and MP3.com for 60 and 372 million dollars U.S. has
not been much of an investment for both BMG and Vivendi
and revenues lost due to music piracy from the likes
of peer to peer sites such as Kazaa and Morpheus amounted
to over five billion dollars U.S. for each of the past
two years.
IFPI, the International Federation representing the
recording industry worldwide values music sale losses
to 5% in the United States, 8% in Asia and a whopping
20% in Latin America. Only France and the U.K. saw,
in the contrary, a rise in music sold in stores and
through Internet. Analysts are arguing that the Majors
are spending too much time creating roadblocks to piracy
instead of finding innovative ways of enticing online
buyers to the enormous music catalogues they hold in
their vaults.
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Internationalizing Domain Names
(march 2002)
The International Telecommunications Union (ITU) and
the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO)
are getting ready to tackle the complex issues related
to multilingual domain names. They have organized a
symposium in December 2001, in collaboration with the
Multilingual Internet Names Consortium (MINC), for the
purpose of sifting through the legal and technical issues
related to extending the domain name system to alphabet
characters other than that of the English language.
The trend toward this internationalization is obvious
: by 2003, ITU and WIPO estimate that 2/3 of Internet
users will be non-Anglophones and yet domain names on
the Internet are, for the time being, created with a
limited set of Latin characters frequently used in English.
Roberto Blois, Deputy Secretary General to ITU has argued
recently that 'people speaking Arabic, Chinese, Korean,
Japanese, Tamil, Thai and other non Latin languages
are disadvantaged'. Both organizations are looking for
solutions which increase access to resources offered
by the Web. Introducing new characters to the issue
of domain names requires that close attention be paid
in such areas as intellectual property protection, the
development of an adequate multilingual domain names
administrative infrastructure, competition, access to
markets and conflict resolution in addition to other
cultural and social issues. For more information see
www.itu.int/newsroom/press_releases/2001/np03-fr.html.
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January
2002
E-books, one page at a time
(january 2002)
According to Wired Online, the electronic book industry
is not in as bad a shape as it seems. While Random House
and AOL had to close their e-publishing businesses,
other companies such as Fictionwise,
Booklocker and Hardshell
are doing quite well. Overall in North America, close
to 200.000 e-books were sold through Internet. Here
are some of the most downloaded titles on a publisher
by publisher basis. The top five Palm fiction titles
were King's Dreamcatcher; Timeline by Michael Crichton;
Riding the Bullet by King; The Talisman by King and
Peter Straub; and Black House by King and Straub. Included
among the top 10 on the non-fiction list: Useless Sexual
Trivia by Shane Mooney, No. 6; 52 Saturday Nights by
Joan Elizabeth Lloyd, No. 8; Now and Forever, Let's
Make Love also by Lloyd, No. 9; and The Vagina Monologues
by Eve Ensler, at No. 10. Robot Dreams, by Isaac Asimov,
topped the list for Fictionwise as best-selling e-book
of 2001. In France, the online e-book site Numilog
rated the following titles as its bestsellers : Les
infortunes de la vertu by Sade, 300 QCM pour tester
votre culture générale by Catsaros, Occupe-toi
d'Amélie by Feydeau, Clovis by Theis and Réussir
son projet professionnel by Beauchesne et Riberolles.
If you are interested in knowing what can be downloaded
on your PDA for a good subway read, check the following
websites : in French www.ebooksfrance.com
and www.numilog.com,
in Spanish www.libronauta.com,
www.librosenred.com,
and www.elaleph.com,
in German www.didi.com,
in Swedish www.adlibris.se,
and in Chinese www.dheritage.com
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What's in a domain name anyway?
(january 2002)
A lot if you are Verisign
who spent $45 million (U.S.) to acquire .TV Corporation
International, a company holding exclusive domain name
registration rights for Tuvalu Islands, an eight-island
(and nation) situated in South Pacific. Verisign owns
and manages .org, .net and .com domain names but will
have to relinquish those rights by 2002 for .org and
by 2006 for .net. Acquiring .
TV should help the bottom line in the long run since
some .TV names are expected to fetch the half million
$U.S. mark. Colombia has decided to follow the same
route as it has decided to put its .CO on the block.
The University of Los Andes which manages the .CO name
has asked Consulting firm Arthur Andersen to lead the
sale. The Latin American country hopes somebody will
recognize the value of the .CO suffix since the .com
domain name is becoming quite saturated. The Los Andes
university is requesting a $20.000 (U.S.) non reimbursable
deposit from applicants and royalties, on a going forward
basis, on every newly registered .CO name. (Zdnet.fr
and Yahoo Multimedia)
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Brazil and the Volkscomputer
(january 2002)
The search for the really, really inexpensive computer
is gathering steam. After Japan (Morphy) and India (Simputer),
it is Brazil's turn to come up with a computer for the
masses. Dubbed Volkscomputer by its Brazilian university
inventors, the machine includes a monitor and costs
no more than $250 (U.S.). The original idea came from
the Brazilian government in its attempt to bridge the
digital divide and offer low-income individuals and
families an affordable technological alternative. Despite
the recent decrease in the prices of hardware, acquiring
a PC in most developing countries is still a dream for
the vast majority of people. Most PCs retail for prices
averaging $700 to $1000 dollars (U.S.) while low-income
annual wages range from $100 to $300 (U.S.) in most
cases. The Volkscomputer, whose main purpose is to connect
to the Internet, runs on Linux open-source software.
Not to be outdone, another Brazilian company, computer
manufacturer Metron, is also offering a personal computer,
a printer and software at prices in the $600 (U.S.)
range. In this case, the company is attempting to grab
market share from their main competitor, Compaq, through
the sale of cheaper computers and service (the installation
is free). Interesting statistic : 70% of computers sold
in Brazil are produced in the so-called grey market
(NY Times and Globe & Mail).
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Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises
(SME) need strong Information and Communication Technology
(ICT) boost (january 2002)
This was, in a nutshell, European Enterprise and Information
Society commissioner Erkki Liikanen's argument at a
recent European Parliament SME Inter-group gathering.
According to the Commissioner, SMEs account for an overwhelming
majority of Europe's enterprises and employ a majority
of workers in addition to being a source of technological
innovation and wealth. The Commission has implemented
policies and introduced several programs to help SMEs
address the ICT challenge such as the eEurope
action plan and the GoDigital
initiative. Critics still hold that European SMEs (whether
in France, Italy or Spain) are still laggards when it
comes to joining the Internet and ICT bandwagon. The
Commissioner is therefore calling for the introduction
of new measures to simplify the regulatory process and
announced measures to increase transparency and consultation
with a wide array of players representing SMEs, unions,
ICT industry and other professional organizations. (Europemedia)
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Have we joined the DVD era?
(january 2002)
Yes, according to the latest analysis and studies which
confirm people's infatuation with the new format. Market
research firm NDP Intelect confirmed in November 2001
that, for the first time in the U.S., sales of DVD players
had outstripped VHS players. From a modest 800.000 units
sold in 1998, the numbers skyrocketed to an estimated
13 million in 2001. The trend is identical in Europe
where sales of DVD players and software have increased
exponentially. Appropriate pricing and product availability
seem to be the clincher. Compared with 1998, DVD players
cost four times less ($150 U.S. versus $600 U.S.) and
content providers have finally started inundating the
market with releases people are interested in buying,
especially in the home movie area. DVD software allows
for interactive features and extra film footage and
is the perfect format for home entertainment. Not everyone
though is convinced that all is rosy in the land of
the DVD : recordable DVD players are still expensive,
VHS technology still has a few years to go as people
will not easily part with their large collection of
Disney movies, DVD standards (DVD-RW,DVD-R, DVD-RAM,
etc.) are too confusing for the average consumer and
finally, broadband could stop DVD in its tracks. This
latest threat could be the most damaging in the long
run for the DVD industry as broadband (when it is fully
deployed on most continents) will allow consumers to
cheaply download movies from the Internet. In the meantime,
things are rolling. (BBC
online)
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