Borders teams up with Amazon
Yahoo! News, October 27
Borders Group, operator of Borders and Books etc. retail chains,
has launched its first online store for the British market through an alliance with Amazon.co.uk.
Wikipedia
has became one of the internet's most inspiring success stories
Guardian Unlimited, October 26
In less than four years, Wikipedia (a free online encyclopedia
that anyone can contribute to and anyone can edit) has grown to have more than 1 million
entries written in 100 languages from Albanian to Zulu.
A working group of search engine marketing
professionals in the UK has come together to plan the formulation of a UK based trade
association. The proposed Search Marketing Association UK (SMA-UK) will provide a platform
to inform and educate the marketplace of the benefits of search marketing in the overall
marketing mix, as well is giving its members an industry voice.
Microsoft has set a firmer date for the release of its desktop
search software, after Google launched a test version of its rival program for scouring a
PC's hard drive.
Yahoo Acquires Stata Labs
StatsLabs Press release, October
Yahoo has purchased another email start-up, Stata Labs. The acquisition
follows Yahoo's July purchase of Oddpost,
a provider of web based email. Stata Labs' Bloomba product is a desktop email client built
around search from the ground-up. Raymie Stata, founder of Stata Labs, was one part of the
original development team from AltaVista.
The press release announcing the
acquisition says that Bloomba is no longer available, and Yahoo has no plans to make the
product available. The two acquisitions suggest that Yahoo may be planning a Gmail
workalike to replace Yahoo Mail sometime down the road.
Most
researchers feel they have good access to scientific publications ITnews,October
22
International research amongst 4,000 scientific and medical research
authors from 97 countries conducted by the Centre for Information Behaviour and the
Evaluation of Research (CIBER) at City University in London has shown that most
researchers around the globe feel they have good or excellent access to the scientific and
medical journals they need.
Identify
file-sharers, judge tells UK ISPs
The Register, October 14
The English High Court gave UK ISPs just 14 days to disclose the names
and addresses of individuals the music industry claims have offered "massive"
numbers of songs on P2P networks without permission.
Google
unveils desktop search
CNet News.com, October 14
Google has unveiled its first-generation desktop application for
searching through personal files and Web history stored locally on a PC, a move that could
shake up the landscape of Internet search and raise privacy hackles.
The Mountain View, California.-based company, has created Google Desktop
Search, a thin-client application that lets people retrieve e-mail, Microsoft Office
documents, AOL chat logs and a history of Web pages previously viewed, all via a Web
browser.
Thomson Tax & Accounting Acquires Gear Up, Inc.
Thomson RIA Press release, October 14
Thomson Tax & Accounting (TTA), a part of The Thomson Corporation
(NYSE: TOC; TSX: TOC), announced the acquisition of Gear Up (gearup.com), an accredited provider of training and
Continuing Professional Education (CPE) for tax and accounting practitioners.
Waterstone's
MD to step down
Retail Bulletin, October 13
HMV Group has announced that David Gilbert, managing director of its
Waterstone's book retail group, has resigned from his position due to ill health.
Warning of major NHS IT overspend
BBC News, October 12
The final cost of modernising NHS computer systems could rise to
between £18.6bn and £31bn - three to five times the declared figure - it is reported.
The inflated sum would eat into already overstretched trusts' budgets, the magazine
Computer Weekly says.
Online advertising to pass £500m in 2004 as adspend grows 76%
Brand Republic, October 11
UK Online advertising has crossed the line to take more than 3% of total
UK adspend in the first half of the year, with marketers investing £266.8m in the medium.
The figure is up 76% on the same period last year, and means that £468.8m was spent on
online advertising for the 12 months ending June 30 2004. On releasing the figures today,
the Interactive Advertising Bureau said it was confident that total online adspend for
2004 would cross the half-billion mark for the first time.
Ofcom chair warns advertisers to keep up with the
times
Royal Television Society, October 11
The RTS Fleming Memorial Lecture 2004, Television and the
Digital Future, was given by Ofcom Chairman David Currie. Advertisers must develop new
ways of reaching consumers if they are to survive in the digital age, according to Ofcom
chairman David Currie. Speaking at a Royal Television Society event, Currie warned that
the growth of mutli-channel television, personal video recorders and high-speed broadband
would change the way advertisers do business.
Google Print, the new search engine that allows consumers to search the
content of books online, could help touch off an important shift in the balance of power
between companies that produce books and those that sell them, publishing executives said.
Google announced the introduction of the service at the Frankfurt Book Fair.
The new service would allow users of Google's main search engine to
search simultaneously billions of Web pages and the texts of hundreds of thousands of
books for information on a given subject.
Thomson sells magazines
Canadian Press, October 8
The Thomson Corp. is selling Thomson Media - a group of specialist print
publications including American Banker and Accounting Today - to Investcorp for
$350-million (U.S.).
The sale extends the evolution of Thomson - once Canada's largest
newspaper publisher and owner of the Times of London - into an all-electronic purveyor of
information to financial, legal, scientific and other professionals.
New Study
sheds light on journals publishing
Oxford Journals Press release, October 7
A new report published by LISU, based at Loughborough University, offers some valuable
insights into scholarly journals pricing over the last decade. Amongst the findings are
average price increases by publisher ranging from 27% to 94% over the period 2000-2004,
and biomedical journal prices per page ranging from £0.31 (approx. $0.55) to £0.98
(approx. $1.75) in 2004 (average by publisher).
BBC links
to rival sites
Dot Journalism, October 7
BBC News Online has
introduced an automated system to display context-specific links to external news sites.
Produced by Moreover Technologies, the system allows readers to compare BBC coverage with
that of other news organisations.
Yahoo Unveils Personal Search
NewsFactor, October 6
Yahoo
has announced the launch of advanced navigation tools aimed at helping users to find,
manage and share results. My Yahoo Search Beta will be available to the company's
registered users. Currently, 20 million people are signed up with My Yahoo, and the
company notes that it has nearly 150 million active registered users overall.
Google
Tests Book Search
NewsFactor, October 6
Google is
testing out a new search product that will help publishers get their books listed in a
search results page. The new search tool (called Google Print) matches queries with
the content inside a book. If there is a match, Google will show links to that particular
book in the search-results page. If a user wants additional information, clicking on
"Buy this Book" will link directly to a bookstore.
UNESCO Workshop on
Future of e-Books
UNESCO New Delhi, October 4
A UNESCO workshop picturing the potential of e-Books was
recently hosted in Bangalore, India. Participants from Asia and Europe identified the
issues and complexities involved in e-book projects delineating the role of e-Books in
education, research and libraries from the perspective of the publishers, distributors and
users.
Swets
Financial Crisis Eased by New Capital
Information Today, Inc., October 4
Librarians and publishers alike were dismayed to read about financial
troubles for Swets in a report published in the Dutch financial paper Het
Financieele Dagblad. Under the alarming headline, “Swets at Brink of Ruin After
Accounting Fault,” the article described accounting problems in the firm and stated
that the company no longer met the credit conditions of its bank.
U.S.
researchers share 2004 Nobel Prize
Seattle Post-Intelligencer, October 4
American researchers Dr. Richard Axel and Linda B. Buck shared the 2004
Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine Monday for their work on the sense of smell -
showing how, for example, a person can smell a lilac in the spring and recall it in the
winter.
Worldpay
struck by online attack
BBC News, October 4
The internet payment system Worldpay was under attack from
unknown hackers, disrupting thousands of online retailers around the world. Worldpay's
payment and administration networks were flooded with computer-generated requests which
clog its system and slow transactions
Staff
revolt at WH Smith
This is Money.com, October 3
WH Smith shopworkers have inundated chief executive Kate Swann with
complaints about her decision to slash staff discounts.According to insiders, Swann's move
to halve the discounts from 25% to 12.5% to reduce costs has sparked an unprecedented
backlash in the company.
Bestselling drug axed
over fears that it increases heart attack risk
Times Online, October 1
A bestselling drug taken by 400,000 people in the UK has been withdrawn
from sale after evidence that it almost doubles the risk of heart attacks and sudden
death. Vioxx, made by Merck & Co, was one of the most heavily-promoted prescription
drugs for patients with arthritis
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