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Lead stories:Technical documents go online at Continental AirlinesDate: 1/14/2003, DCLnews exclusive
PDF conversion: how, for whom, and when? Lazar Weisz of Data Conversion Laboratory gives the lowdown on PDF conversion in the third of a series of white papers on the subject. This month he uncovers the mysteries of PDF Searchable Image ... more
Plus:Report from XML 2002Date: 12/18/2002, DCLnews extra Visit XML.com for a report on the recent XML 2002 conference held in Baltimore. Topics covered include: "Microsoft Office 11 embraces XML," "OpenOffice, the XML format for the masses," and "ISO DSDL on the move" ... more Can your recommend industry sites for link exchange? Date: 1/14/2003, DCLnews extra Can you recommend any industry sites that might like to link to DCLab.com? If so, please send an email with details to: mailto:dclnews@dclab.com?subject=IndustryLinks Get your XML/tech articles published in DCLnews Date: 1/14/2002, DCLnews extra
Other News:Internet marks 20th anniversaryDate: 12/30/2002, Information Today
Commenting on the impact of the web, Data Conversion Laboratory president Mark Gross, said: "It's worth noting how the web has changed the course of many businesses, including DCL. Our services at one time were only used when people changed technologies. Today we're an integral part of how information gets disseminated. It's no longer an afterthought, it's a part of the process. Entire industries have been transformed. And while the whole idea that dot.coms will rule the world is no longer in vogue, there are few who would argue that the Internet has not changed the world" ...
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Navy signs XML policy
Navy chief information officer David Wennergren has signed the Navy's Extensible Markup Language policy, setting the standard for how XML will be used within the service. "The Navy Department, like many government and private sector organizations, has increasingly looked to XML technology to meet its data sharing needs," said Wennergren. He also said that it would "improve the war fighter's ability to find, retrieve, [and] process information. The Navy's XML standard, which also applies to the Marine Corps, has already received praise from government XML leaders ...
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Print encyclopedias making comeback
With the advent of CDs and the Internet, print encyclopedias almost went the way of the dodo. But now, they're making a comeback. After a four-year hiatus, Encyclopaedia Britannica, based in Chicago, has almost sold out of the new edition it released last year and is planning a revision sometime this year. Encyclopedia Americana, published by a division of Scholastic Inc., also reports a steady demand for printed sets.
Libraries remain the best customers, but there is still a core of people who want to see a row of trusty reference books on the shelf. A 2002 study of research habits by Outsell Inc., a market research firm based in San Francisco, found that while people will use the Internet for a fast information search, they tend to place more trust in a book. "One significant finding was that print is the preferred format for using content, but not the preferred format for finding it," said Leigh Watson Healy, who conducted the Outsell survey of 3,200 faculty and students from the Digital Library Federation ...
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Tech partnership helps blind access newspapers
A partnership announced in December last year between Knight Ridder, Inc., of San Jose, and the National Federation of the Blind will provide the content of the company's 32 newspapers, plus that of 80 U.S. dailies, to the blind. Rather than waiting for volunteer readers to create audiotapes (as is currently the case), the National Federation of the Blinds' Newsline allows instant access by phone to newspaper content using technology that creates synthetic speech ...
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USAToday.com editorial adopts XML
Editors at USAToday.com are also beginning to work with software tools that scan stories and automatically compose headlines, write summaries of the content, and list 10 keywords for search engines ...
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Ebooks saw record sales during 2002
The ebook revolution failed to happen amidst the hype of a couple of years back. But now, if recent figures are anything to go by, this looks set to change. Adam Rotherberg, director of communications at Simon & Schuster, says the publisher's ebook arm is performing well. "We have seen an increase of nearly 50% in unit sales [year-to-date]." Penguin U.K. is also seeing sales gains. Like electronic publishers in the U.S., Penguin has experienced month-on-month growth since launching its ebook range in September 2001. Part of the reason for the increased ebook sales is the huge popularity of PDAs which, besides their main use as personal organizers, can be used to read ebooks.
Even more promising, the Association of American Publishers (AAP) conducted a study forecasting that ebooks could reach 10% of the consumer publishing segment by 2005. The study also predicted that, with such a market share, ebook revenues could reach as high as $3.8 billion for large publishing houses ...
[http://ebook.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=33&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0]
Researchers use the Internet rather than visit depository libraries in person
Students, teachers, and the general public alike are taking to the web for research, rather than visiting one of the 1,300 depository libraries nationwide that collect U.S. documents from the Government Printing Office (GPO) and preserve them for public use, according to official spokespersons.
Currently, 60% of GPO documents are available online. Many are in HTML and PDF format. But because technology changes so fast, the big problem they face is how to store them for perpetuity. Like many organizations today, the GPO have opted for XML. George Barnum, electronic collection manager for the GPO, said: "What you aim to do is, over time, to keep the information, the content, in spite of the application that it takes to render it ...
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DCLnews Staff
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