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[News] [Rival] Microsoft Literature 'Partners' Live and Learn...

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Update: Microsoft burns the digital books

,----[ Quote ]
| Microsoft has pulled the plug on its Live Search Books service and its 
| associated book digitisation projects with organisations such as the British 
| Library.  
`----

http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/200868/update-microsoft-burns-the-digital-books.html

Publishers surprised by Microsoft move

,----[ Quote ]
| Microsoft's shock decision to wind down its Live Search Books programme has 
| left a host of UK publishers in the lurch, with many having signed up to the 
| programme at the London Book Fair in April.  
| 
| [...]
| 
| Publishers spoken to by The Bookseller said they had previously been unaware 
| of any plans from Microsoft to withdraw from Live Search Books, with 
| Microsoft presenting the programme at both the London Book Fair in 
| April--when it launched in the UK--and the Independent Publishers Guild 
| conference in March.    
`----

http://www.thebookseller.com/news/59619-publishers-surprised-by-microsoft-move.html


Recent:

Good bye, British Library

,----[ Quote ]
| This is an image from the good old days. Microsoft's Jean Paoli hands over
| the OOXML specification to Jan van den Beld, the general secretary of ECMA.
| And you find Adam Farquhar from the British Library, the bearded person on
| the right. The British Library was instrumental to legitimizing the whole
| ECMA and ISO OOXML standardisation process as an 'independent' participant in
| the committee work. ECMA did a brilliant job to mature the specification text
| to get it ISO fast-tracked. Or as the ISO BRM convenor and recent consultant
| for the British Library Alex Brown reflects1:
|
|     Ecma made the road very rocky though, by initially producing a text that
|     was so lousy with faults.
`----

http://www.noooxml.org/forum/t-61777/good-bye-british-library


Ecma - a case study for vendor capture

,----[ Quote ]
| A small network of people of ECMA International dominated the whole ISO
| process around OOXML while technical experts of national ISO members were
| impeded by committee stuffing, rules bending and political intervention and
| the general restrictions of the revamped ISO/IEC fast-track process.  
|
| [...]
|
| On the right you find a picture of Jan van den Beld, back then general
| secretary of ECMA international who received the 2000 pages from Microsoft
| represented by its employee Jean Paoli (center). Jean Paoli is probably best
| known for taking the Microsoft credit for the standardization of XML. The
| other person with the beard is Adam Farquhar from the British Library, chair
| of ECMA TC 45. You also find the picture on the right in Adam Farquhar's May
| 07 presentation which advocates for OOXML.      
`----

http://www.noooxml.org/ecma-and-vendor-capture


,----[ Quote ]
| And the company Griffin Brown, of which the BRM convenor Alex Brown is the
| director, sent out a press release 13 March 08 celebrating the 10th
| anniversary of XML:  
|
| "Recent moves by Microsoft to standardise its Office products around XML file
| formats merely confirms that most valuable business data in the future will
| be stored in XML. … Alex Brown is convenor of the ISO/IEC DIS 29500 Ballot
| Resolution Process, and has recently been elected to the panel to advise the
| British Library on how to handle digital submission of journal articles."    
|
| [PJ: A bit of background on the British Library here, but the short version
| is that it uses Microsoft, was a co-sponsor of having Ecma put what is now
| OOXML on the fast track, and says today it is "pleased".] - No OOXML  
`----

http://www.groklaw.net/newsitems.php


British Library books go digital

,----[ Quote ]
| Digitised publications will be accessible in two ways -initially through
| Microsoft's Live Search Books and then via the Library's website.
`----

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7018210.stm


Britain: E-Mail Time Capsule in Works

,----[ Quote ]
| Now the British Library is appealing to ordinary Britons for their
| e-mails, saying it wants to create a snapshot of British life in 2007.
|
| [...]
|
| The e-mails will be collated and indexed by Microsoft Corp., which
| has previously partnered with the library to digitize books from
| its archive, and they will be available to researchers before
| the year's end.
`----

http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/070503/britain_e_mail_archive.html?.v=1


Vista and British Library put da Vinci online

,----[ Quote ]
| Microsoft and the British Library have digitised two of Leonardo da
| Vincis' notebooks.
|
| [...]
|
| The British Library has created an updated version of its application
| called "Turning the Pages" which allows people to browse parts of
| its 150 million piece collection via a web browser. We heard how
| this works better using Vista.
`----

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/01/30/vinci_notebooks_vista/


Publish And Perish

,----[ Quote ]
| Alexander Rose, the executive director of the futurist Long Now
| Foundation, worries about the impermanence of digital information.
| "If you save that computer for 100 years, will the electrical plugs
| look the same?" he asks. "The Mac or the PC--will they be around?
| If they are, what about the software? " So far there's no business
| case for digital preservation--in fact, for software makers like
| Microsoft, planned obsolescence is the plan.
|
| "The reality is that it's in companies' interest that software should
| become obsolete and that you should have to buy every upgrade,"
| Rose says. We could be on the cusp of a turning point, though, in the
| way businesses and their customers think about digital preservation.
| "Things will start to change when people start losing all of their personal
| photos," Rose said.
`----

http://www.forbes.com/2006/11/30/books-information-preservation-tech-media_cx_ee_books06_1201acid.html?partner=yahootix
http://tinyurl.com/yyjqoh


British Library calls for digital copyright action

,----[ Quote ]
| In a manifesto released on Monday at the Labor Party Conference
| in Manchester, the United Kingdom's national library warned that the
| country's traditional copyright law needs to be extended to fully
| recognize digital content.
|
| "Unless there is a serious updating of copyright law to recognize
| the changing technological environment, the law becomes an ass,"
| Lynne Brindley, chief executive of the British Library, told ZDNet
| UK.
`----

http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9588_22-6119043.html
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