Information Research Weblog

A little while ago I commented on an article in Guardian Online about hospital information systems - to my surprise, the item was quoted in this week's issue, in the Blog-back feature. Perhaps we should try to get infinite recursion going!

This week, there's another interesting story about the development of Ethiopia's broadband infrastructure. Yes - you read aright - Ethiopia is investing public money in a broadband infrastructure that will put Internet connection within a 'few kilometers' of every one of its 74 million inhabitants.

To put this in context: at present, only 0.1% of inhabitants have access, while the UK (by no means the highest in the world) has 52% of its households connected. However, Ethiopia has a land area of 1,119,683 sq.km., while the UK has only 241,590 sq.km. At present, with its reliance upon the vagaries of the market, there seems to be little chance that anyone in the UK will be within only a few kms. of an Internet connection, while, through public funding, Ethiopia is going to make sure that everyone is.

The difference of course, lies in the imagination employed. Ethiopia may be one of the poorest countries in the world, but the imagination of its politicians is clearly unbounded by economic dogma. Technology provides it with the potential to leapfrog the development process, while Britain and other rich countries are locked into a belief system that lauds the market above other mechanisms - a strategy that will surely lead to economic decline.

News from ZDNet on Yahoo's new head of research - an interesting short article on where things may be going.

Meanwhile, Google is in conflict with Microsoft over hiring the head of Msoft's Chinese research centre.

Since the whole future of searching depends on having the right brains, look out for more of this.

The UK has a long tradition of disasters in the area of government implementations of information technology, costing, to date, several hundred million pounds. The latest grand plan is that for the National Health Service. You only have to describe the NHS to start giggling at the idea that a centrally designed 'one size fits all' system is actually going to work. In 2001, expenditure on the NHS accounted for a hefty 5.96 of the UK's GDP (approximately £60,000,000 - equal to, in other words, the total GDP of quite a number of small countries!) It employs approximately 1.3 milion people in hundreds of GP practices, hospitals and specialised units. And is busy designing a single NHS IT infrastructure for this lot.

No one gives very good odds on a successful implementation.

Guardian Online this week carries an article about a hospital that the NHS can only dream about. Significantly, the hospital is a stand-alone operation so it has been able to implement systems that fit its needs. The NHS, of course, wouldn't want that to happen. It wants the seamless transfer of information throughout the system - ignoring the fact that as long as the data can be interpreted, systems do not need to be fully integrated. I don't offer any odds myself on much learning from previous experience takeing place.

Things continue to happen on the Skype front - now we have vSkype.

With vSkyp software and a Webcam, you can hold videophone conversations with your friends and colleagues, and send and receive video files.

Damn! Now I've got to buy a Webcam!

Managing the Internet

Why am I not surprised that the commission set up by the UN to enquire into managing the Internet has come up not with one solution, but four?

Skype killers

With Skype so successful (at any one time, when I use it, there are more than 2.5 million other people using it) it seems inevitable that there will be competition. Two have recently been launched:

The Gizmo Project

This looks very much like a Skype copycat - even the layout of the interface is broadly similar and In and Out services are provided (i.e., you can call out to land lines and have a land line number that others can use to call in to you). I'm in the process of trying to test this one and will let you know what happens.

VoIPBuster

This one didn't get as far as testing! For several days I tried to register but kept getting a message to the effect that 'an unexpected problem' was preventing registration and 'try again later'. Well, there's only so much I'm prepared to put up with and I gave up on it. Others may have more success. [Just in case things had been resolved, I've just tried again, with the same result.]

Google in the dock

Thanks to Charles Knight for drawing my attention to this one. This is a rather complicated story which hinges upon the Internet Wayback Machine archive and a law case in which old Web pages were proving embarrassing. Mmm. You can shred old documents, but when you've put them in the public arena on the Web, that's a little difficult. It will be interesting to see what the Canadian legislators come up with. Of course, it all relates to corporate greed and misdoings—when things go wrong companies will always try suppression and if they can get the legislators to help them, they're laughing and the rest of us are weeping. But aren't parliamentarians supposed to be the representatives of the people? Ha, ha!

Mobile Phones

I see that the European Commission is getting exercised about international roaming rates of mobile phone companies - not before time. Apparently it can cost, per minute, between 58 cents per minute (Cyprus to Finland with a Finnish phone) and €5.01 (Malta to Poland with a Polish phone).

Of course, high charges and lack of transparency in pricing is just one problem of the phone companies. Another is lousy customer service - largely as a result of the computer-based response systems for handling telephone calls.

Recently, I ditched T-Mobile for just this reason - I was trying to find someone to talk to about their monthly packages, to see if I could find anything cheaper, but after going through about four levels of menus, I was getting nowhere, except mad.

I then got a package from Vodafone - but they sent me a text message while I was on holiday (I didn't have the phone with me, because I don't use international roaming) and, as they did not get a reply, they "unregistered" the SIM card. Then they did not communicate with me in any other way to tell me about the problem - no e-mail message, no call to my home phone, no letter. Today, I got the service restored, but only after three calls to different Vodafone numbers, eventually threatening to abandon the contract and sue them for non-supply of service. Fifteen minutes later the phone was working.

Does anyone have a UK mobile provider they can recommend?

CD lifetimes

Thanks to Charles Knight for a useful link. If you have ever wondered about the probable lifetimes of CDs, the answer appears to lie in the dyes employed. And you can pick up a piece of software that will tell you what dye is used on your CDs.

An interesting short article on public Wi-fi in Portland, Oregon and advocated for New York city.

Very interresting. I think the comparison with cars is obvious. Sometimes I try to hide the fact that I have ("access to") a car to make sure I keep my "right" to take the train, the bus or even my bike. When people come to know that I have a car, they say: "Oh! So you can come anytime!" As for cellular phones, I'd like to keep my freedom not to use my car. But some people seem to think that, since you have access to it, then you want to use it anytime.

For those who do not suffer of francophobia: the entire French version of this article can be found at:

http://www.monde-diplomatique.fr/2005/02/SCHILLER/11911

More news about Google's laboratory experiments - take a look at Google Suggest. Pop a search term in the box and see how various possibilities are suggested in the drop down 'suggestions box'. Note how the contents of the box change rapidly as you input more characters. It's not exactly a thesaurus, more of an alphabetical index, but one that changes automatically as more information is received by the system.

I started to enter the term 'ethnomethodology' and found this list as I got to 'ethnometho-':

ethnomethodology	61,000 results
ethnomethodological	18,100 results
ethnomethodolgy	154 results
ethnomethodology definition	27,700 results
ethnomethology	75 results
ethnomethodology garfinkel	17,500 results
ethnomethodology and garfinkel	17,800 results
ethnomethodological definition	10,300
ethnomethodology garfinkle	430
ethnomethodologist	2,460

So, if I want to know what an ethnomethodologist is and what s/he does, I use the down arrow to move there and click or hit Enter. If, one the other hand, I'm interested in definitions, I have a choice.

This seems to be a pretty slick way of narrowing one's search rather quickly and, according to an item on C|Net, it is the result of using the AJAX technology. As the item points out, this means Asynchronous Javascript + XML, and it has been around a while in various guises, and:

Instead of loading a web page, at the start of the session, the browser loads an Ajax engine — written in JavaScript and usually tucked away in a hidden frame. This engine is responsible for both rendering the interface the user sees and communicating with the server on the user's behalf. The Ajax engine allows the user's interaction with the application to happen asynchronously — independent of communication with the server. So the user is never staring at a blank browser window and an hourglass icon, waiting around for the server to do something.

As Google pushes the envelope, so the competition hots up, with Yahoo releasing Mindset - a search engine with a slider to enable you to sort the output on a scale from 'shopping' to 'research'. It seems to be a trifle crude at present and perhaps they'll introduce more sliders for different characteristics, but it is worth taking a look.

This week's Computer Weekly has more items of interest than usual for me. On the front page is an item about problems with a big merger project involving the clearing house system for the banks. Accenture has been called in to try to sort out the problem, and LCH Clearnet is looking for a new IT director. A box on the page points out that 60% to 70% of similar projects fail to hit budgets and deadlines and up to 40% are total failures. You'd imagine that by now some lessons would have been learnt, wouldn't you.

Also on the front page, a short item about Tony Blair's intention to monitor the government's top twenty IT projects. Amazing—he's running the country, invading Iraq (and possibly, Iran, Syria and North Korea), sticking his finger into every ministerial pie and he still has time to do this! Perhaps he should focus.

Inside, we have an item about the Prudential insurance company's hopes of saving £26 million through an outsourcing deal with Wipro (an outfit in India), while two pages further on we have an article on how Bedfordshire County Council is in trouble with an outsourcing deal! Mmm - are Prudential's hopes optimistic, I wonder?

Also in the news: Google's new 'Mini' - an 'integrated hardware/software search appliance' for searching corporate intranets and Websites, while on another page, another article about the use of desk-top and enterprise search engines.

Next, a questioning item as to the delivery of promises about Java, and a different item on how Java is bringing benefits to British Airways. Did the editors plan these coincidental items, I wonder, or did they just happen to happen?

...and, finally, an item about early adopters of technology.

The Mozilla site recently announced that the latest build of Firefox has a 'new' feature - pages are locally cached so that, when the Back and Forward buttons are hit, the page is delivered instantaneously. Just one small point - Opera has had this feature for ages. And there is some doubt as to when this feature will actually get into a full release - at present it's only available on the versions downloaded from the nightly build. Firefox has had a lot of publicity recently, but I suspect that, had Opera been completely free - and free of ads. - Firefox would have been languishing.

I've never been particularly interested in the various standards battles that have taken place over the years - if you wait long enough someone wins and you can then start buying the gear :-) However, on the wireless Ultra Wide-Band (UWB) front there are a couple of contenders currently slugging it out, the WiMedia Alliance and the UWB Forum. WiMedia Alliance is a combination of two other bodies - WiMedia and the Multiband OFDM Alliance SIG (MBOA-SIG) and has recently announced that Microsoft has become a 'promoter member', while the UWB Forum includes big players such as Motorola, Samsung and Siemens. The goal of both is to set the IEEE standard for UWB but my guess is that industry standards will proliferate here as they do in so many other technical areas.

No, I'm not suggesting that they are related, but just that there is news out about the two of them.

First, Janco Associates Inc. reports that in the business sector, Firefox now has 10% of the browser market. However, the total market share seems to be about half of that and if MSoft gets its act together in launching a new version of IE, the growth may disappear. Still, Firefox has lots of advantages in terms of customising by add-ins and 'themes', so companies may begin to adopt it, suitably customised, as company standard.

The picture from the point of view of Information Research seems to support Janco's data: this is a table of the distribution of hits over the browser used - a snapshot taken today:

1.	Internet Explorer 6.x	80.3 %
2.	Mozilla Firefox 1.x	9.1 %
3.	Internet Explorer 5.x	4.5 %
4.	Netscape 7.x	1.5 %
5.	Mozilla Firefox	1.5 %
6.	Mozilla 1.x	1.5 %
	Unknown	1.5 %
	Total	100.0 %

The news from Skype is interesting - the first announcement passed me by, since Skype appears not to have informed existing users. Skype 'Out' has been available for some time: you can call a land line from your computer - at low cost - and I use this for some international calls. Now, however, you can also have Skype 'In' - that is, you can have up to 10 telephone numbers assigned, for different countries in the world, which will allow residents of those countries to call your Skype number and get through to your VoIP phone at local phone rates. Very handy if your friends and relatives don't use computers: and also very useful if you are abroad, without a computer, and want to call home - you can call your own local number and make the international call at local rates. The service costs, of course, the princely sum of €30 a year!

I'm glad I'm now subscribed to the Information Research Weblog. I was looking forward to receive fresh feed from the weblog in my recently installed Mozilla Thunderbird. It just happened that the last message was about Japan, and -- what a coincidence -- I am presently living in Japan, and I certainly have an opinion on cell phones here, as well as information related issues. What a nice way to start a contribution! :-)

As for previous entries on the subject, I must ask: "What if, in this case, information was just personal feelings?" The original article doesn’t show any scientific basis (and actually doesn't pretend to have any). Molly Wood could have used numbers to add credibility to his article, but she chose to use only personal observation, maybe influenced with previous thoughts she had about the country, and extrapolated her personal views to make us believe this is reality. Since most people have a stereotypical view of Japan it's not difficult to convince them that she's right about what she says.

While I'm talking about my own experience of Japan, I always try to keep in mind that everything I say can be contradicted by any other's experience, since we all have different points of views according to our background, personal opinions, and maybe pure chance.

Let me tell you about cellular phones. Before I came here, I was completely against this annoying, environmental-unfriendly tool. But I have to admit that, since phone lines in Japan are so expensive, and maybe because of social pressure, I was just 'forced' to get my own 'keitai'. My feeling was that everybody needed that tool, and, in the end, I found it very useful. I now use it as my personal agenda, as an English-Japanese dictionary; I use it as a camera too; I even use it as a mirror, sometimes! So I agree on Wood's view on the fact that (almost) everyone in Japan has cellular phones, but people might not use it as often for talking, since we are not allowed to talk in the train.

On the other hand, I completely agree with the fact that our stereotypical 'technologically crazy' Japan is exaggerated. I guess it depends where you are in Japan. I live in the Chiba prefecture, not too far from Tokyo, in a relatively small city. Probably the picture could be different in Tokyo, and even then! It's hard to have an accurate picture, and it’s probably not a good idea trying to resume Japan into one idea. In my first trip to Japan, I was really surprised how much nature is present in this land. This might look cliché, but both worlds are living here, in a strangely peaceful harmony. If it’s probably true that that many 'techno-gadgets' are invented and bought here, probably more than everywhere else, the idea that Japanese are gone crazy with technology is not accurate.

Felix Arseneau

Molly Wood has an interesting little article, Good-bye, computer; hello, world! on the C|Net site. In it she proposes that Google may be developing a strategy of providing Web-based services:

I think Google's going to build a Web-based thin client-type hosted environment-slash-operating system replacement.

...Google has been working with a combination of Web application development technologies that have recently been dubbed Ajax. Ajax, which is short for Asynchronous JavaScript + XML, combines JavaScript, dynamic HTML, and XMLHTTP to, in essence, let you build Web-based applications that run as quickly and seamlessly as local software.

[You'll find more about Ajax on the Adaptive Path site.]

I found this on Peter Cochrane's Website and thought readers of this Weblog might enjoy it.

Hang a banana on a string and put steps under it in a cage containing five apes.
Soon, an ape will start to climb towards the banana.
As he touches the first step, spray all of the apes with cold water.
After a while, another ape makes an attempt with the same result.
This continues through several more attempts.
Pretty soon, when an ape tries to climb, the others apes try to prevent it.

Now, turn off the cold water.
Replace one of the apes with a new one.
The new ape sees the banana and wants to climb the steps.
But all of the other apes attack him.
After another attempt and attack, he knows that if he tries to climb the stairs, he will be assaulted.

Now, remove another of the original apes and replace it with a new one.
The newcomer goes to the steps and is attacked.
The previous newcomer takes part in the punishment with enthusiasm.

Again, replace a third original ape with a new one.
The new one makes it to the steps and is attacked as well.
Two of the four apes that beat him have no idea why they are participating in the beating of the newest ape.

After replacing the fourth and fifth original apes, all the apes, which have been sprayed with cold water, have been replaced.
But no ape will again approaches the stairs.
Why not? Because that's the way they've always done it and that's the way it's always been around here.
And that's how company policy begins...

I was directed to Peter's site because of an article he has written on VoIP. He describes how the use of Skype has reduced his mobile phone bill from $500 a month to $10, and asks how the telecomms companies are going to survive, since most of them have done nothing, although they were aware of the threats. He also asks who is going to maintain the wired infrastructure if the telcos go under—a good question!

UK Online, a broadband supplier, is now offering an 8Mb connection to those whose lines are up to it and where the BT exchange has been 'unbundled'. Unfortunately, my exchange doesn't fit this description - in fact, I'm hoping that the line is good enough for an upgrade to 1Mb, which I'm hoping to get. In any event, I don't think I'd be prepared to pay the £39.99 a month for the privilege, since I'm not in the business of downloading films and video files.

However, it is a welcome sign that 'broadband' in Britain is really beginning to mean broadband, rather than a measly 256Kb connection that some ISPs offer. I suspect, also that more competitive services will come along - at present, my 500Kb connection is £1.00 a month cheaper than UK Online's offer, and the 1Mb connection I'm hoping to get is actually a full £7.00 a month cheaper, which makes me suspect that 8 Mb will be available from others for, say, £35.00 a month?

There's an interesting little discussion going on at ZD-Net about the open source browser, FireFox. One of the staff writers is bidding farewell to Internet Explorer and, as one or two of the discussants ask, "Why's it taken you so long?"

I've been using alternative browsers since Opera first appeared and I now use FireFox most of the time - it's something of a toss-up between these two: Opera has many of the same features as FireFox (and had them earlier) and it does some things better; but I like the way FireFox does tabs better, even though its inability to stop sites from launching windows without the navigation bar is frustrating. Also, unless you aren't bothered by ads, FireFox is free, whereas Opera costs - not a lot, but...

With Opera and FireFox in the market I just don't understand why anyone uses IE any longer, other than for those sites that seem to imagine that nothing else exists.

Weblogs

My thanks to folks, on and off the Weblog, who've written to encourage me to keep the Weblog going—I'll plod on when I know that it has some effect. Carol Cahill kindly says:

Our library probably wouldn't have a wireless Internet connection if my interest hadn't first been piqued by your Weblog. Now we have a four-laptop wireless training lab and patrons can come in and connect with their own computers.

Which I think is rather better than a citation in a journal :-)

"The Chief's" comments on Weblog membership counts is also interesting - as are the usage stats for the Weblog - last year 13,776 hits, this year, so far, 13,588 with those hits distributed over the continents as follows:

1.	North-America	10,780	39.4%
2.	Europe	10,565	38.6%
3.	Asia	2,961	10.8%
4.	Australia	1,735	6.3%
5.	Africa	415	1.5%
6.	South America	277	1.0%
7.	Central America	133	0.5%
	Unknown	498	1.8%

Yahoo! does a Google

News today of Yahoo!'s purchase of an e-mail start-up, by the name of Bloomba (why does the Internet generate so many silly names? Scope for a PhD dissertation here!). I'd never heard of Bloomba before, but it is an e-mail client, rather than a Web-based service. Reviews suggest that its killer feature is its search capacity; it indexes your mail as you receive it, including what's in attachments. Whatever plans Yahoo! has for the system, no one seems to know. The original parent company, Statalabs, says:

What does Yahoo! plan to do with the technology as a result of the acquisition?
At this time we do not have any announcements about the ongoing plans for the technology or the specifics of the transaction.

A case of 'Watch this space' - well, not this one, since I can't guarantee that I'll spot an announcement, but perhaps the Yahoo! site - and while you are there, you might like to take a look at MySearch

I think that Skype is useful if you are a member of a scattered team - as I am, in relation to the group in Leeds that I work with and also in relation to my work in Sweden - it brings down the cost of phoning a long way - I can talk to someone in Sweden for an hour for about 66 pence - which I can't do on the ordinary phone - and if all my contacts get themselves connected, the cost comes down to zero.

Of course, many organizations are now implementing VoIP for internal phone systems, so you may find yourself caught up in it regardless :-)

As for the Weblog - yes, I'll keep it going, in all probability - it just feels a little lonely from time to time :-)

I tried that Skype and even put some money into being able to use it to ring
someone, but tried it once and have never got back to it. Mostly because
I'm used to using all the free methods and only occasionally make the effort
to talk to someone on a phone anyway. Guess I wasted a bit of money, or I
need to get back to using it.

And on the general lack of interest in the IR Weblog, I guess I would be
really disappointed if the IR Weblog disappeared. But I guess it's not
being a proper weblog so I guess I won't fight it. I get enough mail and
info as it is and that's part of why I haven't chased why I'm not getting
more!

See the item in Cordis News

What PC has an interesting article on Europe's failures in the information society area, with Ewan Sutherland pointing to the fact that:

'We don't have data services. We don't have a pan-European service. We are badly behind with 3G. Korea has 11 million broadband lines and the leading operator has 23,000 hotspots. Where is the so called e-Europe in all this?'

Where indeed? My bet is that if all the R&D funds that have gone into so-called 'research' programmes under the various DGs had been invested in delivering broadband to every home, school, office and factory in Europe, we'd be leading the world. Instead of which, the 'market forces' ideology (ignored by Korea!) has been mindlessly followed, with the results set out by Sutherland

A news item from Reuters carries information on broadband developments in Europe, and especially Sweden. The core of the story is about a broadband supplier in Sweden (Bredbandsbolaget), which delivers 10Mb broadband for 399 SKr a month (£29.33 or $52.52) - just about the same price that people in the UK are paying for 0.5 Mb ADSL connection. There's more: Bredbandsbolaget will deliver 24Mb for just 100 SKr more (a total of £36.68 or $65.68). Clearly, 'broadband Britain' has a long way to go!

There's a new report available on the state of the 'alignment' of countries in the European Union in respect of ICT infrastructure.

Produced by INSEAD, the international business school, it suggests that, on a variety of measures, the most advanced countries are (in rank order:

1	Denmark
2	Sweden
3	Netherlands
4	United Kingdom
5	Finland
6	Germany
7	Austria
8	Belgium
9	Ireland
10	Luxembourg

This is an important report and potentially very useful to anyone exploring the concept of the 'information society'.

Broadband again - in Thursday's Guardian Online, Victor Keegan pointed out that while Britain has wonderful, DSL-provided "broadband" running at half a meg, France has announced a programme which will start in Paris and roll out to the rest of the country - but twelve times faster. At 6Mb, customers will be able to have streaming video and Web-delivered films whenever they are prepared to pay for it. Does the government in the UK believe the hype or are they desperate to persuade the citizen to believe it?

Meanwhile, broadband is said to be set to boom in the USA.

Internet and taxes - it seems that the US Senate is determined to encourage Internet growth. It has just voted 93 to 3 to continue the ban on taxing Internet access for another four years. However:

McCain's successful compromise measure includes specific language that attempts to ensure nothing in the bill will affect state and local taxation of voice telecommunications services, VoIP, or other telecom services that are not purchased or used directly to provide Internet access.

Wi-fi in Westminster? - a story in The Register got me interested, but it turns out to be less exciting than it promised. Westminster City Council is to extend its Soho test to cover the whole of Soho - for its own purposes, however, not for general public access. That means wi-fi CCTV cameras instead of the wired kind and other Council applications; eventually.

A kind of Weblog is produced by the "Wi-Fi Guy", who appears to be travelling around the USA, discovering the state of wi-fi connectivity. Now that's what I call a true nerd!

Denmark takes the bacon: according to a survey by IBM and The Economist, Denmark is the leading country for Internet use. The top rankings are:

1. Denmark
2. United Kingdom
3. Sweden
4. Norway
5. Finland
6. USA

George takes an interest: in what you are doing on the Internet. ZDNet reports in FBI wants to watch you type, that that service would love to wiretap the Internet -

The FBI is trying to convince the government to mandate that providers of broadband, Internet telephony, and instant-messaging services build in backdoors for easy wiretapping.

Welcome to the police state!

Do we call it a wireless or a radio?

VoIP for real? I see that AT&T is determined to become the biggest provider of telephony through VoIP - it seems to be making a strong start with services operating in California, New Jersey, New York, Texas and Massachusetts.

Since getting broadband and connecting my computer to the hi-fi system, I've been enjoying Internet Radio - the sound quality is excellent and technical hitches are infrequent. I'm using the RealAudio free media player, rather than the Windows Media Player, since I find the latter rather unfriendly to work with. People complain about the difficulty of finding the free download on the Read Audio site, but you can get a copy quite easily by going to the BBC help page. Not that I've got anything against Real Audio making money by selling the 'professional' version - good luck to them in their battle to survive the Microsoft juggernaut.

My exploration of the Internet airwaves is far from complete, but some favourites are:

• BBC Radio 3 - for its classical concerts and related programmes and for its jazz and 'world music' programmes, like those of Andy Kershaw.
• Hober - continuous music with only the occasional 'station identification' message - usually whispered :-). Comes from Takoma Park, Maryland and sent out by what seems to be a Web design, hosting, etc. firm, for the benefit of those who want something to listen to while they do computer work. Folk, 'world music', etc.
• Grassy Hill Radio - linked from Hober - folk music old and new. Like Hober, continuous music. The big advantage of these stations, apart from the music, is the lack of inane chat that bedevils the usual DJ programme.
• Prairie Home Companion - the famed Garrison Keillor radio programme - wonderful archive of complete shows, nicely split into sections if you want that.

Let me have your recommendations and I'll post them on the log.

An interesting item on wireless in the public library from LIS News.com

...and a longer piece on IT in public libraries from D-Lib Magazine

Turning to the University sector, I picked this up from Seb's Open Research - a couple of courses at Prince Edward Island University are using Weblogs as resource pages and communication. Here's one on 'Networking, knowledge and the digital age'.

And here's an interesting one! I initiated a debate on the JESSE list some time back on the extent to which Web citation was beginning to overtake journal citation as a performance tool. I then found that this had been picked up by a couple of researchers (Vaughan and Shaw, Bibliographic and Web citations: what is the difference? JASIST, 54(14), 2003, 1313-1322) and now ISI is getting together with NEC: Thomson ISI and NEC Team Up to Index Web-based Scholarship

PHILADELPHIA & LONDON & PRINCETON, N.J.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Feb. 25, 2004--Today, Thomson ISI and NEC Laboratories America (NEC) announced their collaboration to create a comprehensive, multidisciplinary citation index for Web-based scholarly resources. The new Web Citation Index(TM) will combine a suite of technologies developed by NEC, including "autonomous citation indexing" tools from NEC's CiteSeer environment, with the capabilities underlying ISI Web of Knowledge(SM). Thomson ISI editors will carefully monitor the quality of this new resource to ensure all indexed material meets the Thomson ISI high-quality standards.

During 2004, Thomson ISI and NEC will operate a pilot of the new resource to receive feedback from the scientific and scholarly community. Full access to the index is projected for early 2005.

When fully operational, the new resource will be a unique content collection within ISI Web of Knowledge. It will complement the Thomson ISI Web of Science®, and provide researchers with a new gateway to discovery -- using citation relationships among Web-based documents, such as pre-prints, proceedings, and "open access" research publications

OK - that's enough for now - I've got to go off to talk with the people at Orange about mobile technologies.

WiMAX is actually an industry consortium, but its name has become shorthand for the standard it is promoting - IEEE 802.16 - for broadband wireless access. It comes to notice today because of trials by the BBC, which Yahoo! News reports as follows:

Four radio-broadband trials being conducted by BT in rural parts of the UK could be the prelude to a full-scale deployment of WiMax in Britain.

These trials involve broadband fixed access, with customers attaching a receiver to their houses, but the telco is very interested in the idea that more advanced versions of WiMax will support high-speed mobile broadband.

Ian Robinson, head of emerging products at BT Retail, said: "If the potential benefits of WiMax, such as voice services and portability, are realised, then there might be a case for rolling out a WiMax service more widely."

Found a long article today in Fortune - not available at its Web site, unless you are a subscriber, unfortunately - but you can read the first page there - about a start-up Internet telephony company called Skype. These are the guys who brought you KaZaa, so peer-to-peer communication is their game and what is telephony other than P2P? However, unlike KaZaa, which was funded out of their savings, Skype has attracted the attention of the venture capitalists who believe that their software for Voice Over Internet Protocol (otherwise known as VOIP) is a winner - to the extent of investing $25 million in the first round, with the second round of funding over-subscribed.

This is serious enough for the Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission to be saying that telecom as we know it is finished:

I knew it was over when I downloaded Skype. When the inventors of KaZaa are distributing for free a little program that you can use to talk to anybody else, and the quality is fantastic... - it's over. The world will change now inevitably.

The key is that phrase, 'the quality is fantastic' - VOIP has been around for some time now, but it's been a hassle and the time delays were dreadful and the quality was poor - with broadband use growing and the quality problem apparently solved... well, I'm now among the more than 7 million who have downloaded it, and I'm looking forward to getting set up to use it.

Coincidentally, this week's Time magazine has an article called 'Back from the dead', devoted to the resurgance of interest in, among other things, VOIP. [Thanks for drawing this one to my attention, Alistair... and thanks, Charles, for the link to the inevitable.] The separate bits of the article are on the Time Europe Web site - and the VOIP bit is here.

It looks as though this could be the next big thing!