New ‘Guidelines on Public Procurement and Open Source Software’
The European Commission’s IDABC recently published a draft of the Guidelines on Public Procurement and Open Source Software. It’s timely as the research behind the project indicated that in a sample of of 3615 software tenders that were published between January and August this year, 36 percent request Microsoft software, 20 percent ask for Oracle, 12 percent mention IBM applications, 11 percent request SAP and 10 percent are asking for applications made by Adobe.
The consensus appears to be that compatibility lock-in is still live and well in the IT world. In a sample undertaken of a thousand government IT organizations, 33 percent said compatibility with previously acquired software is the most important criterion when selecting new applications, resulting in widespread bias in favor of proprietary solutions.
The ability to maintain existing data and business process relationships, by the no-risk upgrade to the latest vendor application, is as old as the industry itself. However, this does impose high costs on IT departments, businesses, governments and ultimately taxpayers.
Open standards have a big role to play here in ensuring that the data and processes in new systems are non-proprietary at least gives new vendors, entrants a fighting chance and reduces the users’ reliance on the original vendors of the software.
The guideline recommends public administrations to list criteria for Open IT standards when they tender software, for example by requiring that the standard is implementable by all potential providers or does not restrict re-use.
The draft is available for comment until November 5th.
A settlement that will shake up bookselling forever?
Well it looks like Google has done it again with its ground-breaking deal. The comparison to iTunes is moot, as Google owns the infrastructure to make this happen in a way that Apple never did, and I would not expect any of the DRM issues to arise either.
Details are a bit sketchy at this point as it’s a 130+ page agreement to be digested. On balance the settlement looks cheap, the upside for publishers and content authors is in the longevity and monetization of the asset, the challenge for booksellers however is profound. End users should benefit from more universal access.
Google has always been about content and this just confirms it. How long can it be before YouTube moves to a similar model? (Oh, and the Android platform is now available too.)
Publishers offer first click free via Google.
Google has launched a new service called First Click Free.
It’s worth a blog because it enables Google to spider content behind a pay wall or subscription service. On a first visit, a Google user can access the piece of content that the (Google) search engine has located, but when the user navigates away from the piece of content it allows the content owner to make a digital offer to the visitor.
This has been a goal for publishers for a while — the benefits of high SEO in your subject domain, without giving the content away for free.
Judging by the comments on the Google post there is a lot of appetite for this service, but some skepticism as to how it may work in practice. Easy spoofing, content theft, and of course the furthering the dominance of Google in this space are some of the issues.
Definitely worth watching though. A smart move by Google, who will no doubt improve and refine the service as time progresses
Corporate Learning Trends 2008 ― free online conference
For those of you, like me, interested in learning trends and, in particular, the impact of Web 2.0 in the learning space, the second annual free online conference: Corporate Learning Trends and Innovations 2008 is taking place November 17-21, 2008.
Last year’s conference had 2,000 people from all over the world participating. This year’s confirmed speakers and topics include:
- Alvaro Fernandez ― Brain Fitness for Peak Health and Performance
- Dave Gray ― Visual Literacy, Learning Innovation
- Kevin Wheeler ― The Future of Talent
- Dave Pollard ― Working Smarter: Improving the personal productivity of knowledge workers.
- Dave Wilkins ― The Amazon Model and Forum Model – the intersection of LMS and Learning 2.0
- Jane Hart ― 25 Free Tools Every Learning Professional Should Have in their Toolbox
- Mark Sylvester ― Social Networking as a Strategic Part of Your Learning Strategy
- Nancy White ― Online Social Architectures ― Networks and Communities
- Robin Good ― Best Online Collaboration Tools for Learning
- Tony Karrer ― Work Literacy ― Implications for Learning Professionals
- Jay Cross, Jane Hart, Harold Jarche, and Clark Quinn ― Learnscape Sandbox
- Marcia Conner and Jon Husband ― ROI of Web Learning
- Allison Anderson ― Corporate Learning Ecology
The conference runs November 17-2008. It’s online. And it’s free. If you want to attend, sign up and follow the conference blog for on-going updates.
What is an AudioMovie?
According to Griffin Ink,it is “an unabridged audio recording of a novel, enhanced by soundtrack, sound effects, and unique actors for each part. This recreates the experience of a theater while remaining true to the
book by leaving the visuals up to the listener’s imagination.”
The press release is great. According to a spokesperson, “The AudioMovie does for audio books what HD has done for the television. It makes the story truly come to life by allowing listeners to experience the emotions with the characters rather than simply being read to by a narrator. It puts you inside the story.”
Wait a minute though: haven’t we come across this concept somewhere before?
Ah, yes … it used to be called a radio drama.
How will digitisation shape the future of publishing?
The annual Frankfurt Book Fair survey reveals online book selling as most important development of the past 60 years — no great surprise.
But interesting from the New Chapter perspective is that 26% of the survey respondents identified ‘knowledge’ and ‘strategy’ — including market research, and understanding and developing new business models — as the largest area where they needed assistance.
There were no comments around convergence or integration, which was interesting as we are definitely seeing cross-media formats, delivery and integration as hot topics for 2009.
Enabling content owners to extract more value from their existing content and to deliver new services — especially at the convergence of the publishing, learning, and socialization tools — is high on our radar at the moment.
“In Rainbows outsells last two Radiohead albums”
OK, not strictly a complete Friday Folly, but I love this headline from the Guardian.
Despite being downloaded free of charge to hard drives and iPods all over the world, In Rainbows has sold more CD copies than their previous two albums. Did anybody buy the last two Radiohead albums? Have you listened to them?
Perhaps the comparison should be against more popular fare, earlier albums, or even the Greatest Hits released by EMI to cash in on the back rights. I am all in favour of boosting digital access, but some perspective is required, methinks.
In defense of piracy?
Digital technology has made it easy to create new works from existing art, but copyright law has yet to catch up …
Lawrence Lessigs new book Remix is adapted in the Wall Street Journal.
The arguments call for a more open approach and subsequent decriminalization of the current reuse or remix aspects of digital culture.
Lessigs suggests:
“We could craft copyright law to encourage a wide range of both professional and amateur creativity, without threatening […] profits. We could reject the notion that Internet culture must oppose profit, or that profit must destroy Internet culture. But real change will be necessary if this is to be our future — changes in law, and changes in us.”
I hadn’t noticed that the internet culture had any opposition to profit, so long as there is a real effort at realistic pricing coupled with real utility. Still I guess the copyright business has to grind on and his argument of decriminalizing the digital youth of today certainly appears to have some legs.
Read it here http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122367645363324303.html
Frankfurt time again
It’s that time of year again — the Frankfurt Book Fair runs from the 15th to the 19th of October. The featured guest-of-honour country this year is Turkey — always controversial in Germany, even without the bizarre ‘competition’.
All eyes are on the ebook space this year, and it will be interesting to see what happens and who wins the public-relations war.
For the XML folks out there the StartWithXML project, an industry wide project to understand and spread the knowledge publishers need to move forward with XML, are providing an update with Mike Shatzkin (Idea Logical), Michael Healy (BISG) and Andrew Savikas (O’Reilly Media) at noon on October 17th in Brillianz Room, Halle 4.2.
If any one is live-blogging the discussion let me know.
Friday follies
As Clyde and I have spent a significant part of the past few years working on legislative systems, process and data I could not resist this post from the Law Library Blog Resources for Teaching Legislative History Using Schoolhouse Rock Videos.
I would love to see the folks at Common Craft update these. (Perhaps they already did?)
Given the challenging legislative schedules in Washington and here in Dublin lately, they may need a version for in times of banking crisis.
Oh and perhaps one or two more on what not to do when you receive a get-out-of-jail card from the legislature.