VNU history (3)

In the first instalment in this mini series there was talk about the American VNU encyclopedia adventure of the Academic American Encyclopedia (AAE). In the Netherlands VNU had set up a general encyclopedia in the Dutch language. It was supposed to become the Dutch Encyclopedia Brittannica, but nicer. The special artwork of UK company Mitchell Beazley made it nicer indeed; see the illustration of the article on phantasy.

In its inexperience VNU thought that it could export the concept of the encyclopedia to the States. The artwork did not have to be changed and of course some portions of the text should be localised. The encyclopedia was produced with a lot of extra editorial work and launched in 1975. The AAE even won approval of the American Library Association. But the sales were slow.

The management of the AAE was rather progressive. The text had been photo-typeset. In 1980 the company had a laser disc produced with the text and illustrations of the encyclopedia. It was shown on the Frankfurt Book Fair in that year. Earlier that year the text had been brought online with The Source, one of the first online consumer services in the world, which was later on acquired by CompuServe.

By 1982 the AAE was sold to Grolier Co. The company kept up the record performance of the reference work in new media, for in 1985 Grolier launched the AAE on the next new medium: CD-ROM.

Tags: encyclopedia, VNU

CD-ROM
encyclopedia, CD-ROM, The Source, Grolier, VNU

When will search engines change?

The other day I had a telephone call with a former colleague from the time that we were selling electronic publishing solutions (Interleaf and CD-ROMs) in the second half of the eighties. We got talking about search engines as he had been selling BASIS systems from Batelle/Information Dimensions for CAP Gemini. Of course the name Google was mentioned. He thinks it is a disaster. That is what I also think. The information noise you get with that search engine. Just try the German craze Blondinewitz, jokes about blondines. Google has 134.000 references at the moment of writing, not counting the 471 misspellings (Blondinewitz). Where is de de-duplicator facility?

Search engines were developed for the first time in the sixties in order to access text databases with summaries of scientific articles. Commercial computer host organisations such as Mead Data Central (now LexisNexis), SDC and Dialog had their own software. You needed a course in order to be able to search and avoid information noise. But those search engines could be rather precise as you could search with Boolean operators such as AND, OR and NOT and had special tools such as proximity and adjacent search. Other search engines were STAIRS of IBM and BASIS from Batelle. These search engines differed amongst each other in handling the amount of files, the speed and the search facilities.

Yesterday I read that the Norway company FAST Search & Transfer ASA producing the search engine FAST, is up for sale. FAST was developed in the early eighties and was famous for its speed and its flexibility in applications. And it looks like people are discovering that. But with enthusiasm comes also the financial ratrace; for the time being FAST has bought its parent company Opticom. This wstory will be continued.

In connection with search engines I read also about a new concept: ambient findability. We can find anyone or anything from anywhere at anytime. At the heart of this brave new world is a library, or rather a multitude of libraries, that help us find what we need, whether the objects sought (and the libraries themselves) are physical, digital, or in between.

It would not surprise me when in 2006 we see some competitors of the Google search engine will come on the market.

Tags: search engine

Talking about search engines. Today the announcement of the 11th Search Engine Meeting in Boston Ma. arrived in the letterbox, together with an anouncement of Stephen Arnold's PDF book The Google Legacy, including a free chapter on Google Technology. Infonortics' boss Harry Collier is still going strong I reckon.

Telecom trends for 2006 and beyond

While I am working on the december 2005 newsletter Content Market Monitor and on an article with content trends, I saw this article by my friend Paul Budde pass. Interesting observations.


This report starts by looking ahead into 2006, providing some of the more obvious predictions, but, perhaps more importantly; it then looks at the longer-term, underlying trends that are driving these developments. By highlighting and briefly analysing these trends companies can strategically position themselves for the ongoing telecoms boom that we expect to continue for at least the next three years, and most probably four years. The report covers the Internet economy, the ongoing developments in video-based broadband, and the new business models and industry structures that are required. NGNs and VoIP, mobility, wireless broadband, content and mobile data are discussed.

Short-term developments
We are always a bit cautious when making predictions, as we have seen far too many forecasts by colleague researchers that have been a long way off the mark.

At BuddeComm we prefer scenario forecasting and/or pattern identification. We use scenario forecasting in some of our hard data predictions, but this report will concentrate on spotting the trends and sorting them into patterns. This will help you to make your own ‘predictions’ for your own scenarios.

There are a number of short-term observations and predictions which are reasonable easy to make, so let’s deal with them first:

- Traditional voice calls will decline by a further 10%, but this will be compensated for by other revenues from the PSTN
- Based on current price offers broadband will reach 250 million subscribers by the end of the New Year,
- Mobile growth in developed mobile markets will continue at a rate of around 5%; however in the developed world 25% is estimated for the New Year
- Mobile prices caps will become more competitive, and this will lead to a small increase in mobile substitution (people giving up their fixed phone)
- Mobile data/content will add another $1billion to its business in 2006, an indicator of the wireless broadband potential of WiMAX
- WiMAX will start to make an impact towards the end of 2006 and will be giving the mobile companies a run for their money
- Incumbents are going to launch their first activities in the WiMAX market before the end of 2006
- WiMAX demand will be driven by the IT devices industry
- Incumbents will continue to play games with the regulator, and will be successful in frustrating issues such as mobile roaming, mobile termination rates, LLU and operational separation.
- Consumer Authorities will get more complaints in 2006 than they received in 2005 – so much for the telco’s promises of good customer service
- VoIP will slowly become slightly more prominent in triple play models – or perhaps initially double play models – over broadband
- The first glimpses of IPTV can be seen from 2006 onwards; this, however, will be driven by end-users not by entertainment providers
- More Governments will come up with firmer plans to force media reforms. The various media barons have been put on notice.
- Government subsidies are going to further empower alternative infrastructure players in the municipality and utilities markets.

My New Year’s wish for our industries is that we build on our highly innovative people and companies and assist them in increasing their entrepreneurial talents.

I also would like to see more of our people and companies broaden their views. The Internet economy is global, not local, and most of us still lack a global drive. Our future is bright and we have huge untapped potential right in front of us.

Medium-term developments
- From now on it will not be the regulators that will lead the way in the telecoms and broadcasting industries – it will be the Internet economy, led by companies such as Google, eBay, Skype, Amazon, Yahoo, MSN, News Limited.
- By the end of 2006 close to 2 million companies will rely on e-revenues for more than 50% of their revenue.
- The Internet economy will bypass telco and broadcast bottlenecks through Ethernet VPNs, All Area Networks (AANs) and Dedicated Internets linked to neutral data centres, and some will be wirelessly extended to end-users.
- Video communications will be as big as the change from radio to TV – there will be 60 million video-based broadband users by the end of 2006 (2MB/s plus services).
- Tele-presence allows us to redefine space, time and knowledge – over 1 million tele-presence websites by the end of 2006 (for family, friends and communities, as well as for virtual office purposes).
- Senior management will become involved in tele-presence and blogs, and will drive the Internet economy from the front line, bypassing IT hierarchies.
- Newspapers need to become video-based; broadcasters need to become interactive; and telcos need to deliver an NGN that will grow from DSL to FttH.
- IPTV has nothing to do with TV and everything with niche video markets.
Home media centres are still two years away.
- The mobile market needs to transform itself from voice optimised to broadband (data) optimised – changeover timeframe 2008-2010.
- Broadband mobility is still a largely untapped market, which will grow to well over a trillion dollar by 2015.
- Industry players will first have to deconstruct and then reconstruct, through new mergers and acquisitions aligned along the lines of infrastructure, content and distribution/packaging/marketing.
- The Chinese economy will continue to dominate what happens with the global economy and this will also be reflected in our telecoms industry.

My prediction: a golden future ahead of us
For the first time in my 25 years of involvement in this industry I am not afraid of the incumbent’s ability to prevent all of these exciting new developments. If they don’t come to the party it will be them who get hurt. This is not to say that we should not stay vigilant. The incumbents will try to do everything to be the bottleneck to the Internet economy and it is very important that governments realise this.

There are now sufficient alternatives to bypass the incumbent, and, while they will continue to frustrate and delay our moves towards the Internet economy, they will be unable to halt the final result. In the meantime, the others who are working towards the Internet economy will become stronger by the day, and the incumbents will become weaker.

However, what this disruptive behaviour does achieve is to delay our economic growth in the Internet economy, which in turn delays the social benefits that the converged market will bring to its customers. This is contrary to the will of the people, who, through their government, have set clear rules and regulations under which incumbents are obliged to make its multi-billion dollar annual profits.

Do I like this? No. I would like to see a strong innovative telcos leading us towards the Internet economy. I have been, and still am, advocating that we should give the incumbents infrastructure provider government money for the various economically unviable infrastructure projects, provided they use them to build open networks. Driven by technological advances, these open networks will happen anyway.

So, telcos, why not cooperate, rather than persevere with your rearguard battle, which you are losing?

Paul Budde

This is the 250th posting of Buziaulane, which was started on May 1st, 2005.

Dutch newspapers on the decline?

Dutch newspapers have been on the decline for years. Every year they loose a few percentages of readers. This process has set in at the beginning of the nineties. It has been aggravated by the grey wave (I am 61 since two days); the baby boomers are becoming babysitters. In 1995 I wrote a Dutch language article saying that by 2005 Dutch newspapers would start disappearing due to internet. (I was working for the newspaper company Wegener at that time). So far it did not happen, but newspaper publishers are still loosing ground.

Newspapers in the Netherlands are a different business from the States or the UK. Newspapers in the Netherlands have subscribers; they are hardly sold in the streets. And the Netherlands does not have a tradition of Sunday papers, despite the launch of the Telegraaf on Sunday; so the printed Saturday newspapers are very heavy. There are two free broadsheets: Metro and Spits.

Yesterday was the quarterly stats day on which the latest circulation figures were published. This time they were anxiously awaited as in September seven regional newspapers of the PCM and Wegener corporations would show their figures. The folding of these seven companies into the existing AD was made to prevent further loss of subscribers by the newspapers individually. Had they stop the loss? From the headlines it is not clear. The Dutch financial daily calls it a success; other media believe AD Combination lost. If you add up the subscriptions of the seven separate newspapers at the start of the new newspaper in September 2005, they had 585.000.000 subscribers; yesterday Wegener published the figure of 555.000 subscribers at the end of the year. A loss of 30.000 subscribers in a little bit more than a quarter. But both publishers say that the subscriptions are stabilising.

But the Dutch newspapers have suffered an overall loss of four per cent in paid circulation (3,8 million copies). In the free broadsheet (657.609 copies) there was an increase of 14 per cent.

What directions can the Dutch newspapers go?

Free broadsheets are mainly read by young people. They like to read the bulleted stories of the newswire in 20 minutes. They do not like the background stories from journalists and freelancers; they seek their own opinion makers on internet. For a publisher the advertisement space of a free broadsheet is limited. This option is not a growth scenario.

PCM the largest newspaper corporation in the Netherlands said that it was attracting new payments thanks to new subscription formats. De Volkskrant has now 10.000 subscribers to the electronic version; NRC-Handelsblad 4.000 subscribers. Also the other newspapers have introduced e-papers. But this growth is very slow. Another invention was the weekend subscription (during the week the e-paper and on Saturday the heavy printed paper).

Diversification is another direction for Dutch newspapers. But they experience many limitations here as they are not (yet) allowed to buy TV and radio stations. So the diversification is still in internet, which does not deliver any returns yet. But de Volkskrant has focussed on the single market and produces printed newspapers and Christmas single dinners.

The Dutch newspapers still have a time window to find new sources of income. How big this window is, I am not sure. Ten years ago I said that the time window was closing in 2005; now I would say that there is no time window anymore by 2010. By that time the newspaper companies should be media companies on the penalty of extinction.

Tags: newspaper

VNU history (2)

Not mentioned in the book VNU: Van Harlem naar Manhattan; Veertig jaar VNU: 1965-2005 is neither the short lived life of the company VNU Multimedia.

In the early nineties VNU companies in the Netherlands were experimenting with CD-ROM. First with text CD-ROMs. This was no fun for the company. Without permission of the authors, a publisher had a CD-ROM produced with articles of the professional computer magazines and weeklies; he got into quite some trouble legally.

The entry into commercial multimedia was more graciously. The magazine division started to examine the market for CD-ROM productions and saw infotainment opportunities for supplements to their magazines. The educational division, named Malmberg, understood from its experience with Spinnaker floppies, that CD-ROM was going to be an addition to their portfolio of books, magazines and methods. Together the divisions started up the VNU Multimedia company, which was based in Nieuwegein, a town under Utrecht.

The company started straight away with products for the consumer and education market. It bought a localisation license from Dorling & Kindersley, a book publisher known from its well-illustrated books. Together with Microsoft the company had set up a division which produced fabulous multimedia CD-ROMs like How does it work? The company also produced educational CD-ROMs. It is interesting to see that VNU Multimedia did not get itself involved in the Philips CD sibling CD-Interactive.

By 1995 it was clear that the multimedia CD-ROM market would not be an interesting one. Although bookshops in the Netherlands started to sell them, lifting the multimedia publications above the porno productions sold through the petrol stations, there was no real volume for profit. Silently VNU Multimedia checked out.
In the meantime the magazine division has been sold to the Finnish publisher Sanoma and Malmberg has been sold to British venture capitalists.

Tags: vnu, cd-rom, multimedia

VNU history (1)

During the Xmas recess I had taken along the commemorative book on the 40 years jubilee of VNU. Earlier I wrote about the beautifully laid-out and illustrated book. During the recess I had time to read it.

As I have been an employee of VNU twice, I recognised many facts. In 1970 I was the first editor to be accepted in the not yet existing editorial team of a new reference department of a VNU subsidiary. (The Dutch language encyclopaedia was the example of the Academic American Encyclopedia by the VNU subsidiary Arete, bought by Grolier in 1983). From mid-1979 till 1986 I was a VNU employee in the Business Press Group.

It is interesting to see the selection of developments and incidents the authors of the book made. Perhaps more interesting are the facts which are not mentioned. I am not implying that the authors purposely left developments out in order to hide misers; in fact the authors do not mince about with their opinion. About the Dutch and American encyclopedia projects they clearly state that they both were not a success and blocked a lot of capital for a long time. But in the field of new media I noticed two developments, which did not make the book: VNU Database Publishing International (this blog) and VNU Multimedia (next blog)

In the book you will not find the first VNU company dealing with databases. The first database company, mentioned in the book, is Disclosure, in which VNU got a minority share of 33 per cent in 1982. Not mentioned is VNU Database Publishing International, abbreviated to DPI. The company was launched officially on January 1, 1980. On January 2, 1980 a full page advertisement was published in the financial daily Het Financieele Dagblad and some national newspapers, telling about the new company and soliciting personnel. The company was directed by Jay Curry, the father of ipodguru Adam Curry.

The company was supposed to be a greenhouse, a kind of laboratory, where experience would be gained with technology and database products. One of the business units exploited videotext technology through consultancy, seminars and assignments for the production studio. Another unit started up a technology exchange database.

But the company had problems starting up a company, mastering new technology and developing new products, all in one go. It is the classic management problem in the publishing industry. If you start up a new company, there are no products and subscribers; if you put a technology unit into an existing company, you have a better chance as there are already products and subscribers.

Two years later it was clear that VNU database Publishing International would not make it as a company with products and services as well as customers neither as an international accelerator, as it only was limited to the Netherlands. By 1983 the few activities left were merged into existing companies and the first attempt of VNU entering the database field had failed. The next steps were taken in the States. After Disclosure a 55 per cent share in Interactive Market Systems (IMS), a marketing company with 300 databases. One year later a 50 per cent share was taken in the market research company Claritas.

Now the publisher VNU has turned into an information provider in a period of almost 20 years. Now the company is hanging onto its existence as IMS Health was a road too far.

Tags: vnu

Rolling into 2006

Lounging at Nieuwpoort, a sleepy town on the Belgian shore, the crossing from 2005 to 2006 is more a matter of fact than a big celebration. There are fireworks for half an hour, and then the town goes to sleep again, while the national television channel will carry on with the New Year’s show.

25 Years ago the Dutch television had a primer with the cross-over. I must say that it had not stuck in my memory, but I was recently reminded of it by a commemorative DVD from the Paralax company. This company started in 1980. It existed of a group creative people, led by moviemaker, inventor and artist Samuel Meyering. As moviemaker he belonged to the rebellious group of the 1,2,3, film group, which included the later Holywood director Jan de Bont. Samuel Meyering invented the Rolykit for storage. And he produced very early on computer-generated art prints.

For the crossing from 1980 to 1981 Paralax had developed a balls clock. It was a clock showing the time in digital character, built up by balls. When you would see it today you would probably laugh, but at that time it was impressive. The clock had been built on an Apple IIe. The routine was part of a multimedia software program, which was later on called Book1. Linking up the PC to the television camera for showing proved to be a problem. So the computer was eventually put into a dark room in front of a camera. In this way the countdown could be followed on television.

I wish you all a Happy New Year!

Merry Christmas

Every year I look out for the Xmas e-mails and electronic cards. This year brought me all kind s of best wishes. A newsletter of the Instructors' Network was pimped up with Santa's hat (Thanks Robert Wierbizski).


Marcelo Sant'Iago, my Latin American friend, sent me the following story:
Some time ago a man punished his 5-year-old daughter for wasting a roll of expensive gold wrapping paper. Money was tight and he became even more upset when the child pasted the gold paper so as to decorate a box to put under the Christmas tree.

Nevertheless, the little girl brought the gift box to her father the next morning and said, "This is for you, Daddy." The father was embarrassed by his earlier over reaction, but his anger flared again. When he found the box was empty.
He spoke to her in a harsh manner, "Don't you know, young lady, when you give someone a present there's supposed to be something inside the package?" The little girl looked up at him with tears in her eyes and said, "Oh,Daddy, it's not empty. I blew kisses into it until it was full."

The father was crushed. He fell on his knees and put his arms around this little girl, and he begged her to forgive him for his unnecessary anger. An accident took the life of the child only a short time later and it is told that the father kept that gold box by his bed for all the years of his life. And whenever he was discouraged or faced difficult problems he would open the box and take out an imaginary kiss and remember the love of the child who had put it there.

In a very real sense, each of us as human beings have been given a golden box filled with unconditional love and kisses from our children,family and friends. There is no more precious possession anyone could hold.

Isn't that very touching. And there were many cards, some of them I put in a collage below.

For those who read Dutch, they should have a look at the site of the Mediawerkplaats. You get an invitation to pick your own avatar: Bush, Merkel and some Dutch VIPs. With my education in theology I took of course Pope Benedict XVI. You can add a favourite saying to it and send it in. You can click on the arrows and you will find my name with the message: I think I am happy with the many e-mails I get. It means that I have friends and enemies, who think about me!

I WISH YOU ALL A MERRY CHRISTMAS AND A HAPPY NEW YEAR
(I will be off till December 31, 2005)

Social impact games

In several blogs I have given my opinion about games. But the gaming industry is not a monolithic entity. There are console games and mobile games, single and multiplayer games, but also arcade games and serious games. On Wednesday the Dutch financial newspaper FD published an article with the heading: the Netherlands champion in serious games.

The article is interesting as it draws attention to established companies developing serious games such as Ra.NJ, V-step and IJsfontein. Ra.JN has produced Pool Paradise, which was a winner in the category of E-learning of the EUROPRIX.nl. IJsfontein has also been nominated and a winner in the EUROPRIX.nl. In the article Media Republic is also mentioned; they recently sold their commercial games arm to Sony, but still produce serious games. V-step developed a game to train firemen for disasters in the Amsterdam Arena soccer- and entertainment stadium. Also new companies are mentioned like OntdekNet, which has developed computer characters to take children through a learning track.

En passant, the article mentions that the Dutch creative industry comprises 220.000 employees. I wonder about this statement. Is this figure covering the digital creative industry, the former multimedia industry or new media sector. If this is the figure of the entire creative industry, the interviewee Mr Jurriaan van Rijswijk should look for better figures.

The article also mentions that the Dutch games market is good for 700 million euro. Spokespeople in the article estimate that social impact gaming is larger than entertainment games.

Developing serious games is cheaper than developing entertainment games. Prices range from 10.000 to 100.000 euro. As such there is more of a chance that Dutch companies can specialise in this sector.

In the meantime the Taskforce Innovation in the Utrecht region has taken up serious/social impact gaming as an innovation cluster. Utrecht University and the Hogeschool voor de Kunsten Utrecht (HKU) have started the Centre for Advanced Gaming and Simulation. At the HKU you can specialise in Game Design & Development. In this module a decision game for the Dutch railways was developed by students; their product was nominated for the EUROPRIX.nl.

Tags: serious games, social impact games

Dutch banks are moving (slowly)

Dutch banks are moving, slowly. Internet banking has been introduced for PCs. Mobile banking has been introduced, but has not yet caught on. Next item on the list is Internet banking for TV. With the cable operator rolling out 2 million settop boxes, The Dutch Rabobank makes TV banking a reality.

TV banking is not new. Microsoft knows everything about it as it did experiment with TV banking in Portugal in the project TVCabo from 2001. Before this project left the laboratory phase, TV banking was tried out and the user reactions surveyed. This user survey was very interesting as it proved that people were doing their money business in front of a television.

I hardly can imagine that a family is going to sit on the couch and is going through the statements and payments. Of course educationally it might be interesting; on the other hand you would not like to show your kids the red figures.

Interesting is the development of the Rabobank of CommunityTV. This is a local TV platform for the bank, but also for an insurance company and other companies. Rabobank will use this platform for video communication between the user and the bank. Users can request video contact with one of the consultants of the bank by webcam or teleportation, a new kind of video conferencing (teleportation is being trialled by the other Dutch bank ABN AMRO).

I have been e-banking for a long time. In fact it has been almost 20 years that I stood in a queu in order to pick up some money. Soon I will be able to talk to the bankmanager. That will be a shock for him: people will not come to him, but he will have to link up with them.

Tags: electronic banking, TV banking, teleportation videoconferencing

Market entry digital paper funded

This week the Dutch financial daily FD publishes an article on a management buy-out from a Philips spin-off dealing with digital paper. It is funny to see that paper speaks of an investment in electronic newspapers, while the article deals with electronic newspapers, e-books and e-manuals. A kind of professional deformation, I guess.

Philips has developed digital paper on the basis of E-Ink technology. It has started up a production factory for digital paper, named Polymer Vision. Another spin-off I-Rex Technologies is the application company. The company develops applications for the business market; the company names hospitals, education and publishers. (Funny again, as Philips is focussing on medical applications the spin-off is looking that way also). It has developed the I-Rex Reader, a reading tablet. But you can also make annotations on it. I-Rex has developed a system, which automatically change the information in pages; so there is no scrolling, but turning leaves.

Now ABN AMRO Capital and Main Capital are investing in the company I-Rex Technologies. The companies believe in the development of digital paper, especially as carrier of technical documentation. Yes here is the example again: manuals for Boeing as a replacement for the kilometre long row of manuals (I have used this example in 1986 for the use of CD-ROM!). Philips is not a shareholder, but does receive a royalty.

I-Rex has in the meantime a few thousand readers in the market for pilot projects. Close to the Netherlands the Belgian business newspaper De Tijd, a pioneer in new media, experiments with the distribution of news. Further away the Chinese are interested in the readers as the Chinese language is complex and the writing is time-consuming. The sale of the reader will start in April 2006; it will cost a couple of hundred euro.

Tags: digital paper

Big internet powerline project

The Texas-based utility TXU Electric Delivery, US sixth large electric transmission and distribution company and a subsidiary of TXU Corp., and CURRENT Communications Group, LLC have announced an agreement to transform TXU’s power distribution network into the nation’s first broadband-enabled ‘smart’ electric grid.

The CURRENT Broadband Power Line network will offer to Texas consumers broadband and wireless services, including the triple play of voice, television and high speed access delivered across the existing electric infrastructure into outlets in the home or business. Additional value-added services are planned, including service bundles that integrate both wired and wireless communications services. CURRENT will provide BPL network equipment and will also design, build, and operate the network, providing broadband services to 2 million consumers and businesses on both a retail and wholesale basis.

This project is one of the largest power internet projects in the world. In Germany power internet is distributed by in German cities like Mainz and Mannheim. In the Netherlands the Dutch electricity company NUON has performed a trial with 500 households but has stopped the development. Power Internet has also been trialled in the UK. The latest announcement came last August from Belgium, where the company Telenet will install powerline internet.

UK Universities on ScienceDirect database

The UK Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) and Elsevier, part of the Reed Elsevier Group, have announced the conclusion of a new agreement as part of NESLi2, the national electronic journals initiative for the higher education and research communities in the United Kingdom.

The new two-year agreement, which begins in January 2006, provides the framework under which the UK's universities and research communities will have electronic access to Elsevier's scientific, technical and medical journals through the ScienceDirect database. The journals include many of the most highly ranked and important journals in their respective fields.

The agreement is based on the NESLi2 Licence for Journals which ensures a consistent approach to access and use of these journals to allow teachers, learners and researchers to use them to their fullest potential in support of their activities.

It is interesting to see that see that Elsevier has digitised all their journals and mounted them in the ScienceDirect database. As the journals are digital now, a single university can negotiate the terms of a contract, but negotiations by a national institution are even better. It will boil down to a bulk price and definitely not to ppa (pay per article) price.

Tags: scientific publishing

Beijing Multimedia Conference has started

Today the Multimedia Entertainment China Conference starts in Beijing. The conference will feature global industry visionaries, including Dr Michael B. Johnson who runs the moving pictures group at Pixar and Nicholas Negroponte, founder of the MIT Media Lab, among others. My Finnish friend Irina Blomqvist is one of the delegates. The Conference has been organised by CIMC Ltd and the Beijing Multimedia Industry Association (BMIA).

CIMC Ltd is a company based in Bejing and run by Mr Eldon Hylton (right) and his personal assistant Li Wang (left). When I was in Beijing in October 2004 she showed me around the forbidden city and the historical square of Heavenly Peace, where these days kites are being sold. The conference will be webcasted I am told on the Sohu website.

At the conference Nicolas Negroponte will speak on his baby, the 100 dollar laptop, which is being produced for the One laptop per Child campaign. In the past week the manufacturer of the 100 dollar computer has been named. It will be the Taiwanese manufacturer Quanta. So far Quanta was known for manufacturing parts for computer assemblers like Dell and Hewlett Packard. Quanta will be able to influence the design of the 100 dollar computer.

The first 5 to 15 million computers will be forwarded to China, Brazil, India, Argentina, Egypt, Nigeria and Thailand. They will be bought by the government or government agencies. Their colour will be frog green; the colour is selected in such a way that the computer always can be recognised as a computer belonging to the One Laptop per Child campaign and will not be stolen for commercial sale.

(When I was surfing for more information on this campaign I noticed that Alan Kay is on the board of the OLpC, the godfather of the laptops as he created the Dynabook, which defined the basics of the laptop and tablet computer, and is also considered by some as the architect of the modern windowing graphical user interface (GUI). In August 1972 he wrote the article A Personal computer for children of all ages.)

Tags: One Laptop per Child

Pimping up shopping windows

This week a reference to a window display showed up in a Dutch blog. The clothing chain C&A has a special shopping window at the Berliner Kurfürstendamm these days. It is an interesting marketing ploy. C&A co-operates with the German paper Bild, which normally present a girl on the first page. Now the Page1 Girl (Seite*1 Girl) is a scantily clad lady appearing in a film showing the Dessous underwear clothing line. But additionally a webcam is registering the reactions of the on-lookers and webcasting the reactions.

Personally I still like better the Interactive Window Display, first realised for Levi stores in London, Berlin, Paris, Barcelona and Lisbon by the Dane Lars Christiansen. Imagine, you are walking by a shopping window and suddenly someone is waving to you from a screen. You stop, start interacting with this person and talk to him via your mobile. The person, however, is not real but a video projection which shows a model in real size of the viewer. Hundreds of video sequences are used to make the model appear alive. If a viewer passes a movement sensor, a video sequence is played getting the viewers’ attention by using voice sound, gestures or signs. The virtual model is answering and asking viewers what they would like to get. The options may be: press 1 for music, press 2 for clothes or similar ones.

The Interactive Window Display was nominated in the category Cross media of the EUROPRIX Top talent Award in 2003. Lars now runs his own company TV Animation in Copenhagen.

If you want to see the movie of the interactive window display go to the Europrix site, select the category cross media, hit Interactive Window Display and play the video.

Tags: window display

Golden oldies

Some 43 days ago, I wrote about the music download service of the music department of the Rotterdam public library. All 3 million members of the Dutch public libraries were invited to start downloading more than 35.000 music pieces (songs and albums) for free on www.muziekweb.nl. They can listen to classical music and jazz with Windows Media Audio. The collection has been expanded with the labels ECM, Pentatone and Dox. The rights have been coordinated by BUMA/STEMRA the collecting body and the national Library body. A DRM company has taken care of the technology. The music distributors see the downloads as teasers for the sale.

Now some statistics have been published. In less than one and a half month 100.000 music pieces were downloaded. Roughly 3.000 people use the service. I was curious to see the segments in the user population. The majority of the downloaders are library members of 60 years and older. Golden oldies for the oldies.

Tags: downloading music

Spaink wins from Scientology Church

Today the Dutch High Court has upheld a lower court's ruling in favour of the Dutch writer Karin Spaink and ISPs and against the Scientology Church: freedom of speech prevails above copyright. In other words, infringement of copyright can not be used in order to block freedom of speech. The High Court did not expound on the lower court ruling and avoided an closer examination of principles. This ruling ends a 10 years old legal battle.

The case concerns the writings of L. Ron Hubbard, the founder of Scientology. Parts of the writings, published and unpublished fragments, have been put online by Karin Spaink in order to expose Scientology. The church body claims the copyright to the writings and has taken the position that Spaink and the ISPs have infringed the copyright and acted illegally. The Church is famous for persecuting everyone publishing official and unofficial material of and about their founder. As in every church, the disciples like to polish up the image of their founder. Disagreeable documents – in the case of Hubbard there are a few - are preferably kept under lock. But some became public in the Fisherman affidavit when the Scientology Church pursued a strayed disciple.

In a district court there was a ruling in 1999 deciding that Spaink had not infringed on the copyright of Scientology. In consequence the ISPs only act illegally when they know about the infringement by their users.

In a higher court the judge decided that Spaink infringed on the copyright of Scientology, but that freedom of speech justified this breach. So the claims against Spaink and the ISPs were not awarded.

Both parties did not agree with this judgement and went before the Dutch High Court. In his conclusion of March 18, 2005 the Solicitor General advised the High Court to reject the objections of the Scientology Church. Just before the official ruling the Scientology Church withdrew the case. Spaink and the ISPs protested this move as a clear ruling about freedom of speech above infringement of copyright. The Dutch High Court was advised not to abandon the case and rule on the case.

(There will be a victory party by the ISP defendant XS4ALL on 28 December 2005 at the Final Victory Festival)

Tags: scientology

Telcos will and should not dominate content

My Dutch-Australian friend Paul Budde is driving home a point: “Telcos are arrogant on content industry", he says. "The telcos talk like they can dictate what happens with content in the triple play networks (fixed lines and mobile networks).

One of the reasons why the mobile content industry is hardly able to exploit its potential can be blamed on the primitive business model of the telcos with regard to the content providers. The content providers are being forced to relinquish almost 50 per cent of their revenues for the use of the mobile network; it should be less than 10 per cent).

The concept of broadband portals, where telecom companies want to monopolise certain content in exclusive models, is one of the examples of their dismissive and despicable attitude towards the more successful business models, which have been in use by the content providers for many a decennium (radio, TV, press, games, music, video etc.) The same disapproving attitude they convey towards clients who want to use access to content without paying twice (once for access and one more time for content).

Eventually the telcos will have to limit themselves to the distribution of services and naturally to the activities regarding the networks they use to do so.

Some observations:
- IPTV will be delivered by internet service providers and not by telcos;
- Tele-presence will be the application of the future;
- Triple play is an access product;
- Triple play means access to all kind of content and services;
- Content providers will fight back;
- The industry still does not deliver proper services to clients;
- Will internet service providers acquire telcos?”

Paul takes on a lot of content questions. But his basic observation that telcos are arrogant in having clients pay twice for content, is an interesting, but not a new situation. During the Stone Age days of online, light-years before the World Wide Web, the information providers - content providers these days - were forced to be happy with a small percentage. The host – ISP these days – took the lion’s share from revenues. Especially syndicators built up a comfortable margin in this way.

I still remember that the Dutch financial daily Het Financieele Dagblad started its database service and sold it directly to Dutch clients and through syndicators to foreign users. The revenues from the syndicators were minimal. Till a new manager made his way, stopped the agreements and demanded a higher percentage. And he got it. Eventually he ended up with more than 80 per cent. And this is the way it should be.

Of course there have also been other business models. The French minitel system demanded only administration costs from the content providers. So did the Dutch videotext service Viditel (5 per cent). And presently the i-mode service demands a small percentage: the Japanese service asks for 9 per cent, while the European i-mode services demand 14 per cent. These per centages leave a substantial part of the revenues for the information provider and make him more eager to explore more services.

It is clear that the content providers should be more demanding on telcos and rather hold back on offering their services if not properly rewarded. Telcos should start to valuate content properly.

Tags: content

Telcos and content

In my mail I found an observation of Fred Kappetijn, one of the directors of content provider Mobillion, on the role of content in telecoms

"When discussing the roles of the different players in the field of electronic media in general, and the new TV services in particular, I think it is important to make a distinction between the roles of:

- the content owner (intellectual property right holder)
- the content producer (Hollywood, sports clubs, news media, etc)
- the content organiser/packager (TV stations, ISPs)
- the content distributor (telecom).

It is very clear that the telecom operators want to extend their business by playing the role of content organiser. They realise they have to organise, package, market and sell the television type of content to be sure that they will have a nice return on investment in the broadband networks.

I don''t see telecom operators moving into the role of content owner or content producer. It has been several years since telcos in Europe, the USA and Australia wanted to buy media companies. I don''t expect a similar strategy at the moment.

Publishing and broadcasting are totally different businesses from running telecommunication networks. Different periods for return on investments and different business cultures (rational technology people versus emotional content people) make it almost impossible to merge or to conduct both activities properly. The failed merger of AOL and Time Warner is a good and dramatic example of this wisdom".

Source: http://www.budde.com.au

Tags: content

World Broadband Market Grows with almost 10 per cent

According to the latest edition of the World Broadband report from Telecompaper, the number of broadband subscribers in the third quarter soared to over 187.8 million with more than 15.6 million new subscribers since the second quarter of 2005.

* Asia-Pacific region, with more than 71 million subscribers is still the largest broadband market South Korea has the higher penetration per 100 inhabitants with 24.50, but others are closing in. The Netherlands comes second with a penetration of 23.50, followed by Denmark with 22.23 percent.
* There are seven countries with more than 50 percent penetration per household, including Hong Kong, South Korea, Israel, Taiwan, Netherlands, Singapore and Denmark
* Europe added 5.48 million broadband subscribers, almost the same as added in the Asia-Pacific region (5.55 million) 187.8 million broadband subscribers at the end of Q3 2005

In terms of net subscriber gain at the end of third quarter of 2005, the number of broadband subscribers soared to over 187.8 million with more than 15.6 million new subscribers since the second quarter of 2005. Asia-Pacific, with 5.55 million, followed by Europe, has been the biggest regions in terms of nominal subscriber gain followed by the Americas and Middle East- Africa. At the same time the region has registered the lowest relative quarterly gain compared to the other regions. Europe, with 5.48 million net gains or 10.5 percent quarterly growth, is the second largest broadband market in the world. Europe is followed by the Americas with 4.39 million net gain and 8.44 percent quarterly growth.

Countries included in our research are as follows:
Europe: Austria, Belarus, Belgium, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Macedonia, Malta, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, United Kingdom, Ukraine;
Middle East - Africa: Algeria, Egypt, Iran, Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Syria, Tunisia, UAE;
Asia-Pacific: Australia, Cambodia, China, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, New Zealand, Pakistan, Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Taiwan, Thailand;
the Americas: Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Peru, United States, Venezuela.

Source: www.telecompaper.nl

Tags: broadband

Reading Matter

Last week there was again news about digital paper. At the 12th International Display Workshop the company Plastic Logic announced that it has developed the world's largest flexible organic active matrix display. The display consists of a flexible, high resolution, printed active-matrix backplane driving an electronic paper frontplane from US-based E Ink Corporation.



The displays are 10" diagonal SVGA (600 by 800) with 100ppi resolution and 4 levels of greyscale. The thickness of the display when laminated with E Ink Imaging Film™ is less than 0.4mm. The backplane substrate is made from low temperature PET supplied by DuPont Teijin Films which is more flexible and easier to handle than alternatives such as thin glass or steel foil.E Ink Imaging Film is an electrophoretic display material that looks like printed ink-on-paper and has been designed for use in paper-like electronic displays. Like paper, the material can be flexed and rolled. The film only consumes battery power while the image is updated.The displays were fabricated using Plastic Logic's new 350mm by 350mm Prototype Line and its proprietary printed electronics process that is scalable for large area, high volume and low cost. Plastic Logic will partner with manufacturers to bring the process to mass production.

Platic Logic's digital paper is also based on E-Ink technology. The announcement shows that the screens are getting larger, up to 10” diagonally. So far the screen size in production with Philips has been much smaller, but good enough for the Sony Librié screen of 15 cm diagonally.

Looking at the photograph of Plastic Logic the digital paper is still showing a page in black/white, as the press release says in four grey scales. In the meantime E-Ink has already produced a coloured screen in their laboratory.



Digital paper on the basis of other technologies have been produced by Fujitsu and Siemens.

Tags: digital paper; ebook

Dutch bits

In the past week a lot of things happened in the Dutch telecom, publishing and broadcasting sectors.

Government sells shares in KPN
Dutch government has sold 8 per cent of shares in KPN. Government still has 8 per cent, but will sell these before the end of the year. It gave up its golden share and veto right by which it could control decisions. The sale immediately sparked speculations about acquisition by equity companies or telecom companies as Telefonica or T-Mobile.

KPN acquires Nozema
The incumbent telecommunication KPN is allowed to buy Nozema for 75 million euro. Nozema was the infrastructure company for broadcasting. It possesses masts and controls the airwaves, but it was really interesting for KPN because of its digital broadcast company Digitenne. The sale has been opposed by some parties in the parliament and by the cable companies. KPN plays on all infrastructures except cable. The company recently started its own IPTV.

KPN introduces VoIP quietly
KPN has started VoIP, but has not announced it publicly. Subscribers to the telephone net, which is managed by KPN, can make a postcode check and take out a subscription. KPN has already competition from Tiscali and Wanadoo.

TV in Dutch train
The Dutch railway company, the RTL broadcast company and the telco KPN introduce NStv, laptop-tv in the train. Owners of a laptop will have to buy a card and a subscription. KPN will also deliver ADSL in the trains in the future.

Guerrilla to Sony
The Dutch game producer Guerrilla has been sold to Sony. The Dutch company with 95 employees, famous for its PSP game Killzone, was part of Media Republic and has been founded by Lost Boys. The company will stay in the Netherlands.

Media Republic not to Talpa
Media Republic was talking to the Dutch commercial broadcast company Talpa for a complete acquisition by Talpa. The talks have been cancelled after the sale of Guerrilla. The company works for Vodafone and Telfort and hopes to go international, amongst other with Eckky, a buddy in MSN. After the sale of Guerilla, Media Republic works with 45 employees.

VNU’s blues
It looks like my former employer VNU, which made the switch from publishing company to an information company, might be broken up in 2006. After abandoning the merger with IMS Health, two consortia of private equity companies are interested in buying VNU and breaking it up in a publishing part and an information division.

A Dutch Harry Potter

On December 7, 2005 the Dutch langauge movie De Griezelbus (The Horror Bus) had its first showing in The Netherlands. It is our own local version of Harry Potter. The Horror Bus is the title of a highly successful series of books for youngsters, written by Paul van Loon. The Horror Bus has become a real cross media project. The books have been transformed into a musical, which got a lot of publicity. Religious groups demanded the performance to be cancelled as the theme was occult, without taste and immoral. The same objections made by some religious groups against Harry Potter books and movies. Now there is a movie, produced by the Hilversum-based BosBros. And a game is under development with the Amsterdam-based multimedia company IJsfontein.

This cross media policy is becoming common. Earlier two cross media projects were undertaken. A famous children book Puk van de Petteflet (Puk and his Tow Truck) by Annie M.G. Schmidt was turned into a movie and accompanied by a CD-ROM, also produced by IJsfontein. (It was a category winner in the 2005 edition of the Europrix.nl.)

IJsfontein is often a part of the cross media project team. The company produced SketchStudio as part of the Klokhuis television program. Youngsters can use Sketch Studio to produce their own multimedia show. Before SketchStudio went online in November 2004, the website of the television show had 30.000 unique visitors a month. After the launch the visitors’ figures climbed to 95.000 registered visits. These visitors produced 400.000 sketches. The kids select a piece of scenery, from jungle to kitchen, and play with requisites like cakes, furniture. They direct persons, let them walk, dance, fall in love, quarrel and can give them voices. When the sketches are ready, they can be sent to the site.

RIP Anneloes Jenneskens

Anneloes (in white) during the pre-selection round of the EUROPRIX.nl

Today I found out that Anneloes Jenneskens has passed away on November 25, 2005. Anneloes was a member of the jury of the 2005 edition of the EUROPRIX.nl. The EUROPRIX.nl organisation and the jury knew that she was ill at the time of the public jury. Before that she had partaken in the pre-selection of the nominees. She was critical, but would present her judgement with humour. On the day of the public jury and the awards ceremony she was ill and we missed her and her humour.
Anneloes leaves a partner and son behind.

The EUROPRIX.nl foundation likes to thank Anneloes for her input.

EU: 30 mln euro for AV search engines

Through my Finnish friend Cai, I got some preliminary information of a EU call for proposals. It looks like the call will be published on December 20, 2005. As far as I can see, this call is rather unexpected. I have not seen any mention of it yet, nor has any information about it been published. But the information comes from a good source.

Programme : IST
Budget : 140 million euro
Publication date: 20.12.2005
Closing date : 25.4.2006

Area and instruments
- Advanced Robotics, 37M€, STREP, CA, SSA
- Ambient Assisted Living AAL for Ageing Society, 40 M€, IP, STREP, CA, SSA
- Search Engines for Audio-Visual Content, 30 M€, IP, STREP, CA
- Accompanying actions in support of participation in Community ICT Research, 3 M€, CA, SSA
- International Co-operation on Digital TV Broadcasting and Interactive Applications, Target Latin America, 5 M€, STREP, CA, SSA
- International Co-operation on Digital TV Broadcasting / Mobile Convergence, Target China, 5 M€, STREP, CA, SSA
- International Co-operation on GRID Technologies, Target China, 5 M€, STREP, CA, SSA
- International Co-operation for eGovernment and eParticipation, Target Western Balkans, 5 M€, STREP CA, SSA
- Early warning systems for geo-physical hazards, Target Mediterranean countries, Indonesia, Thailand, India,Sri-Lanka, Japan, USA, Canada, New Zealand, 5 M€, STREP, CA, SSA
- International Co-operation Coordination Actions or Specific Support Actions, 5 M€, STREP, CA, SSA

This is the URL of the IST programme; but as said, you will not find this prelimenary information there:
http://www.cordis.lu/ist/workprogramme/fp6_workprogramme.htm

The call is an interesting one with regards to two points. There is asearch engine for audio-visual content stimulation of no less than 30 million euro. Is this a hidden attack on the Googles and Yahoos of this world? Secondly there is money for an early warning system for tsunamis.

Keep an eye on the IST site and you might have found yourself a Xmas job with writing a proposal.

iMMovator Café (2): Northern Wing

Preceding the iMMovator Cross Media Network Café discussion on making money with cross media, a former colleague of mine at TNO, spoke. Paul Rutten is presently professor at the Erasmus University in Rotterdam, lector at the Junior college INHolland in Diemen and consultant creative industry at TNO in Delft. He dealt with a subject I looked into some years ago: the distribution of creative companies, in my case multimedia companies. I got onto this subject in 1997 during a multimedia workshop with Peter Leisink, now professor at the School of Governance of the Utrecht University, and Allan Scott, who wrote in that year the paper Patterns of Employment in Southern California’s Multimedia and Digital Effects Industry. In 2004 Allan Scott wrote the book On Hollywood: The Place, The Industry.

In 1999/2000 I got a chance to see how the multimedia companies in the Netherlands were distributed regionally, when I was involved in a survey of GOC with Peter Leisink and Jos Teunen (GOC), which was published as Multimedia: De Pioniersfase voorbij (Multimedia: Beyond the Pioneers’ Phase). We had the statistics translated into maps. From the mapping it was clear that there is a corridor from Haarlem, Amsterdam, Hilversum and Utrecht. I called it at that time the Amsterdam Multimedia Corridor (see map).


Paul Rutten took a closer look at what he called the Northern Wing, which appeared to correspond to the Amsterdam Multimedia Corridor. Northern Wing sounds less sexy than the Amsterdam Multimedia Corridor, but it indicates that there is also a Southern Wing. He took more distance by looking at the creative industry as linked with ict. (I personally think that the term digital creative industry fits better).

With INHolland he is looking into the opportunities for innovation in this area. Eventually this research should be translated into policy for the provinces and cities in the area. He produced some statistics:
- 34 per cent of all jobs are in the creative industry and ICT;
- 77 per cent of these jobs are the 10 largest Dutch cities;
- 32 per cent of these jobs are located in Amsterdam.
The growth in jobs in the creative industry and ICT in the Northern Wing is remarkable. In ICT there is an annual growth of jobs of 2,4 per cent for the whole country, but 3,8 per cent in the Northern Wing. Also a growth of jobs up to 3,8 per cent in the creative industry can be found the Nothern wing over against 3,5 for the whole country. Amsterdam was the fastest growing city in terms of jobs in the creative industry and ICT. Haarlemmermeer, the city around Schiphol Airport, is also a fast grower; this is probably due to the HQ of the magazine publisher Sanoma. Zaandam does hardly grow as far as the creative industry and ICT are concerened.

He also ranked the cities in the Northern Wing:
1. Amsterdam
2. Utrecht
3. Hilversum
4. Amersfoort
5. Haarlemmermeer
6. Haarlem
7. Almere
8. Nieuwegein
9. Amstelveen
10. Zaanstad

In this list Amsterdam, Utrecht and Hilversum are also the real content cities.

The maps are part of the report Multimedia: De Pioniersfase Voorbij (Multimedia: Beyond The Pioneers'Phase) written by Dr Peter Leisink, Drs Jos Teunen en Jak Boumans BA, MDiv. and published by GOC. The adaptations are based on the data by Paul Rutten.