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In Jerusalem, Israeli vice prime minister, Shimon Peres, opened the twenty-third Jerusalem International Book Fair (JIBF) with astonishing statistic such as "Two-thirds of Jerusalemites read at least a book a week. And every second person dreams of becoming an author." So, it's no wonder writing is one of the hottest topics on the minds of the masses, and the JIBF is one of the hottest places to work on a book deal.

In this City of Wisdom where writing poetry and prose is the lofty pastime of one-fifth of the population, a dreamy air of literacy disseminates over the crowds where publishers, editors, and writers have a unique opportunity to meet notable alumni of the literary world and network with agents and fellows from forty countries. The JIPB has been held every two years since 1963, and by the end of this year's fair an immediate discussion of the experience ensued, establishing a "friendly global network" of literary types all planning book projects and exchanging publishing marketplace ideas.

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Where Will You Be When Your Storage Space Runs Out?

The size of the digital universe will increase from 161 exabytes in 2006, to 988 exabytes in 2010-that's six fold in, er. . . exactly four years. If that doesn't worry you, consider this: IDC Information and Data is predicting the amount of information created and replicated will surpass our storage capacity some time in 2007.

In a recent whitepaper, IDC accredits most of the exponential growth of digital information to an "image explosion," claiming that of the 988 exabytes, one quarter of them will be from camera and camcorder images. And though 70% of this digital information will be created by private consumers, 85% of the security, privacy and storage of the information will be the responsibility of organizations-large and small, public and private. The good news is that, up to 95% of the digital universe is "unstructured data" that can become easier to deal with as more structure, metadata, and access systems are applied.

The cheapness and expanding performance of digital devices like cellular phones, cameras, digital surveillance, and even voice over internet phones is creating greater availability of digital devices to a greater number of users, which in turn creates more sharing more storing-you can see where the "exponential" comes in. And of course, what kind of modern, global quandary would we have if Wal-Mart were not at least somewhat culpable. Their data alone, along with replicated data to other organizations, could already be at one percent of the entire digital universe.

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DITA.XML.ORG and DITA Map: Two sources for DITA information

If you've heard all the talk about the Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA) and how it can help content-heavy organizations move to XML, but still don't know what all the fuss is about? We've provided links to some useful online DITA resources.

www.DITA.XML.ORG - the official online community gathering place and information resource for the DITA standard. You'll find all types of useful materials here, including news, case studies, user groups, forums, blogs, and links to software vendors that offer support for DITA and to consultants and trainers that specialize in helping organizations make the move to DITA.

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www.DITAmap.com - an online portal that attempts to capture, categorize, and make available information about all aspects of DITA. The folks at DITAmap spend their time culling the internet, looking for resources of use to those interested in the popular XML authoring standard. Articles, tools, presentations, and a handy event calendar make this a one-stop shop for DITA enthusiasts and novices alike.

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DITA Technical Committee (TC) - the official home of the technical folks who define and maintain the DITA standard. The members of the DITA TC promote the use of the architecture for creating standard information types and domain-specific markup vocabularies.

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ASIDES

The Games Doctors Play

The next time you need laparoscopic surgery pick a doctor with well-defined Dorsal Interossei. Or more easily, just ask him or her for their score on Super Monkey Ball. Dorsal Interossei are muscles of the hand that help control fine motor skills used in both gaming and surgical technique, and a recent study shows that doctors with high gaming skills had better laparoscopic surgical skills.

The physicians in the study who had played games at least three hours a week at some point in their lives made fewer errors performed faster, and scored better in the test of surgical skills than the surgeons who had never played video games before.

Hoping little Johnny has what it takes to be a top surgeon? Before you unlock the Xbox, the survey also urges parents to use caution. Spending more than an hour a day is not going to improve a child's chances of getting into medical school. But reading the chapter on Dorsal Interossei and Flexors Digitorium Profundus might.

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Heavenly Bodies Age with Grace

News about the Hubble Telescope has been a bit of a solar tempest of emotion lately. First federal budget constraints eliminate funding for the old dear (she's 16 now). Then NASA announces that Hubble won't survive if much needed repairs aren't done by 2008. Then a revised evaluation suggests she could survive through 2010 and beyond, and funding for a repair mission was approved. Now the Shuttle Atlantis is scheduled to do those repairs on her next mission. The launch is set for sometime in May 2007, but NASA is under the gun to repair hail damage to the shuttle caused by a freak storm last month. Though this repair will probably be her last, the latest fruits of Hubble's labor have NASA gushing over a new movie star.

It seems Hubble has found a kindred spirit in another aging beauty, Saturn-4.599 billion years her senior. Saturn is the star of three new NASA movies, and the camera loves her more than ever. One time-lapse movie shows four of her thirty (yet known) icy moons Mimas, Enceladus, Dione, and Tethys, rounding Saturn when the planet's rings were tilted nearly edge-on toward the Sun, an occurrence that only happens once every 15 years. Another, based on Hubble images taken over a 9½ hour span, captures Saturn's speedy 10 hour rotation and her voluminous Southern hemisphere. Hey, 4.6 billion is the new 30.

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