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NEWS FEATURES
Controversy trails Google Book Search wherever it goes. The latest bout of trouble comes from France. La Martinière Groupe, an international French publisher, filed a suit in early June against both Google, Inc. and Google France on behalf of three of its publishing houses, Le Seuil (France), Delachaux et Niestlé (Switzerland), and Abrams (The United States). La Martinière claims Google has disregarded intellectual property rights and has produced counterfeits of its books on the Book Search site.
To many, the word bibliography sounds about as pleasant as nails on a blackboard, calling to mind unpleasant recollections of last-minute, late-night research reports: After burning the midnight oil completing a scholastic epic, you still face the daunting task of sifting through mountains of research materials, then citing sources—including book title, author, publisher, copyright date, and page numbers. Luckily, there are those hard at work trying to make at least the citation part of this familiar academic drama fade into distant memory.
If you’re reading EContent, no one needs to tell you what an important medium the internet has become for delivering content and reaching consumers across the world. But, according to a June 2006 study conducted on behalf of the Online Publishers Association (OPA) by the Center for Media Design at Ball State University, advertising dollars aren’t keeping up with skyrocketing consumer web demand.
Anticipation grows as the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) prepares for one of its most significant meetings, to be held in Marrakech, Morocco. The meeting will cover aspects of the ongoing heated debate over the September 30, 2006 expiration of the Memorandum of Understanding with the United States. Pressure builds as the international community favors that the authority of ICANN be relinquished to an international organization such as the United Nations for the purpose of adding diverse flavor to the corporation.
The concept of “net neutrality” sounds quite reasonable in theory, but the policy proposals coming from federal legislators and bureaucrats may in reality be quite discriminatory.
FEATURED STORIES
RSS, or Really Simple Syndication, provides an outlet for publishers to distribute their content to a wide audience without worrying about email subscriptions or spam filters. Unfortunately, RSS may well have made it easier for unscrupulous website owners to steal content.
Comparing the costs of different doctors and medical procedures can be a time-consuming affair for consumers but a number of digital initiatives have emerged that will help provide consumers with more information to medical data. Yet more access means more risk for consumers and providers alike.
For companies with thousands of employees, resetting forgotten or compromised passwords and replacing key cards is not only irritating, it is a downright costly and risky proposition. In terms of data security, biometrics offers a solution that makes passwords obsolete and keys a thing of the past. Lose your keys? Never again . . . because you are your keys.
COLUMNS
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FACES OF ECONTENT
“Our profiles are written by real people and are not just boilerplate.”
PRODUCT REVIEWS
Hoover's deserves a round of applause for completing its tenth anniversary on the web. Since its debut as a business portal in 1995, Hoover's has been one of the first sites consulted for business information by thousands of searchers. With the "New Hoover's" recently launched in April 2006, Hoover's expands its range of products and enhances its search functionality, making it an even more valuable product.
CASE STUDIES
Traction and b-spirit.com help SITA foster collaboration and communication between about 100 of its team members and enable them to create a searchable knowledge base.
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