Information Today, Inc. Corporate Site KMWorld CRM Media Streaming Media Faulkner Speech Technology Unisphere/DBTA
PRIVACY/COOKIES POLICY
Other ITI Websites
American Library Directory Boardwalk Empire Database Trends and Applications DestinationCRM Faulkner Information Services Fulltext Sources Online InfoToday Europe KMWorld Literary Market Place Plexus Publishing Smart Customer Service Speech Technology Streaming Media Streaming Media Europe Streaming Media Producer Unisphere Research



 



News & Events > NewsBreaks
Back Index Forward
Threads bluesky LinkedIn FaceBook Instagram RSS Feed
Weekly News Digest

November 17, 2008 — In addition to this week's NewsBreaks article and the monthly NewsLink Spotlight, Information Today, Inc. (ITI) offers Weekly News Digests that feature recent product news and company announcements. Watch for additional coverage to appear in the next print issue of Information Today.

CLICK HERE to view more Weekly News Digest items.

New Technology Review Source for Librarians Launches

The Tech Static is a new technology-related collection development resource for librarians, according to its creator Rachel Singer Gordon. Since 2002, Singer Gordon had been writing Library Journal’s Computer Media review column—but its last installment appeared Oct. 15. Singer Gordon says that no other librarian-targeted publication currently reviews computer books on a regular basis. To fill that gap, she created The Tech Static, a new resource for librarians focusing on reviewing technology-related books.

The Tech Static assists librarians with technology-related collection development. To this end, it contains the following: 

  • Reviews of current computer books 
  • Reviews of technology-related titles targeted at librarians 
  • Collection development articles (weeding, "must-haves," balancing a computer book collection) 
  • Prepublication alerts 
  • Publisher press releases 
  • DVD and ebook reviews 
  • Announcements

The Tech Static is available online at www.thetechstatic.com; readers can also subscribe via RSS or email. The Tech Static is currently seeking writers for technology-related collection development articles. Contact Singer Gordon with any questions or comments at rachel@thetechstatic.com.

Source: Rachel Singer Gordon

New Google Watching Service Launched by ArnoldIT.com

Blogger and technology expert Stephen Arnold has launched a free service (www.arnoldit.com/overflight) that aggregates the headlines from Google’s own blogs. Overflight, "An ArnoldIT.com Intelligence Service," is an RSS aggregation service that aggregates the headlines from Google’s 74 weblogs. The most recent headlines are grouped using the same categories that Google favors. A fee-based service offers more bells and whistles.

Arnold says he is making this service available for the following three reasons:

1. A number of people have discovered that my studies of Google … are two or three years in front of Google. I thought that it would be easier to put up a version of Overflight to show people how open source intelligence can reveal significant information before the high profile media outlets or the big buck, dead tree tech writers reveal a scoop that is to me "old news."
2. I funded a new award at the JBoye 08 conference to acknowledge individuals who are putting actionable intelligence in the hands of European information and technology professionals. At the JBoye 08 conference, I explained that I wanted to "give back" cash, recognition, and tools. I am nearing the end of my career, and I don’t really feel the need to keep the Google Web log collection under cover any longer.
3. Google has spawned an amazing number of news services, stories, and Web log postings. Frankly, I was tired of seeing information that was stale. Many of the stories appear on the Google Web logs and then these are recycled as breaking news. I decided to put the source in front of people so individuals can decide if they want to get Google information that is a bit fresher.

The site is a demonstration project at this time. Although Arnold has used the Overflight system for client engagements, such as the Threats Open Source Intelligence Gateway (www.tosig.com), this is the first public access to the system. Arnold says he plans to leave the service up for at least 6 months. If there is interest in the service, he may make available some additional content processing tools.

Source: ArnoldIT.com

LexisNexis to Integrate Business Contact Info From Jigsaw

Jigsaw (www.jigsaw.com), a provider of business information and data services that leverages user-generated content contributed by its global business-to-business community, announced a licensing agreement with LexisNexis (www.lexisnexis.com) to integrate Jigsaw’s business contact information within certain LexisNexis online services. Under the terms of the agreement, executive name and contact information from Jigsaw is now available at www.lexis.com and http://w3.nexis.com by selecting "Jigsaw" as a source and conducting a search for specific executives in order to obtain additional information about them. This is designed to make it easy for professionals using LexisNexis services to conveniently access on-demand, highly accurate contacts.

Jigsaw claims to provide on-demand access to complete and accurate B2B contact information. Each Jigsaw contact contains name, title, mailing address, corporate email address, and phone number with more than 70% containing a direct dial phone number. Founded in 2004, Jigsaw is located in San Mateo, Calif., and is funded by Austin Ventures, El Dorado Ventures, and Norwest Venture Partners.

LexisNexis is a global provider of content-enabled workflow solutions designed specifically for professionals in the legal, risk management, corporate, government, law enforcement, accounting, and academic markets. A member of Reed Elsevier (www.reedelsevier.com), LexisNexis serves customers in more than 100 countries with 18,000 employees worldwide.

Source: Jigsaw

Major Publishers Adopt PLUS Image Licensing Standards

Three major publishers have called for the adoption of the PLUS (Picture Licensing Universal System) standards by picture archives, photographers, and all other image suppliers. Representatives of McGraw Hill, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, and Pearson each announced that they will adopt the PLUS Picture Licensing Glossary definitions in their contracts, and that they encourage image suppliers to begin embedding PLUS license metadata in all images within 1 year.

The PLUS standards were developed by the PLUS Coalition, an international nonprofit organization dedicated to simplifying and facilitating the communication and management of image rights. In the PLUS Coalition, publishers, picture archives, photographers, illustrators, designers, advertising agencies, museums, libraries, artist representatives, educational institutions, manufacturers, and their associations collaborate toward that shared goal. The PLUS standards allow rights and attribution information to travel within image files in a machine-readable format that provides instant access and universal understanding.

The PLUS Coalition includes participants in 30 countries and receives significant support from Leadership Circle members Adobe, ADBASE, Pentagram, Jupiterimages, Digimarc, Belay Development, Getty Images, IDEAlliance, ImageSpan, Photo District News, IPTC, NAPP, PACA, StockPhotoFinder, Swan Turton, WONGDOODY, and Capture. To learn more about PLUS, visit www.useplus.org.

Source: The PLUS Coalition, Inc.

Content Analyst Integrates dtSearch Engine in Its Text Analytics Platform

Content Analyst Co. (www.contentanalyst.com), a provider of text analysis software for the document management, legal, and intelligence communities, and dtSearch Corp. (www.dtsearch.com), a provider of enterprise and developer text retrieval software, announce the integration of the dtSearch Text Retrieval Engine into version 3.3 of CAAT (Content Analyst Analytical Technology), its text analytics software platform. The new release embeds the dtSearch Engine for Windows/Linux cross-platform native 64-bit, full-text searching. The release also introduces cross-lingual categorization, a SharePoint connector, and other data filtering enhancements.

dtSearch products can index more than a terabyte of data in a single index—as well as create and instantly search an unlimited number of indexes. The software offers more than 2 dozen search options, including Unicode support covering hundreds of international languages. Proprietary file format support provides for highlighting hits in all popular file types. A built-in Spider supports searching of local and remote, public, and secure dynamic and static web data, with WYSIWYG hit-highlighted display of web-ready data. The dtSearch Engine API supports .NET, Java, C++, SQL, etc., including native 64-bit Windows/Linux support.

Content Analyst’s software, which includes patented Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI) technology, provides advanced, conceptual-based search and document analysis for a wide range of customers, from highly-classified intelligence installations to world-class publishers to cutting-edge e-discovery providers. For these customers, CAAT exponentially reduces the time needed to discern relevant information from large volumes of information.

Source: Content Analyst Co.

LIFE’s Photo Archive Available on Google

Time, Inc. (www.timeinc.com) has announced that access to LIFE’s photo archive—more than 10 million images in total—will be available on a new hosted image service from Google. The company says that 97% of the photographs have never been seen by the public. These images can be found when conducting a search on Google.com or on Google Image Search. Users can also search through the LIFE collection directly by visiting http://images.google.com/hosted/life.

The LIFE photo archive featured on Google will be among the largest professional photography collections on the web and one of the largest scanning projects ever undertaken. Millions of images have been scanned and made available on Google Image Search now with all 10 million images to be available in the coming months.

All keywords are translated into 16 different languages. LIFE’s photo archive will be scanned and available on Google Image Search free for personal and research purposes. Copyright and ownership of all images will remain with Time, Inc.

In addition to housing some of the most important images taken by LIFE photographers, the LIFE photo archive also includes the Zapruder film of the Kennedy assassination; the Mansell Collection from London; Dahlstrom glass plates of New York and environs from the 1880s; Hugo Jaeger Nazi-era Germany 1937–1944; DMI red-carpet celebrity shots; Pix, Inc. personalities; and the entire works left to the collection from LIFE photographers Alfred Eisenstaedt, Gjon Mili, and Nina Leen.

Source: Time, Inc.



Send correspondence concerning the Weekly News Digest to NewsBreaks Editor Brandi Scardilli
              Back to top