T&F Informa announces the proposed acquisition of IIR Holdings
T&F Informa website, June 1
T&F Informa plc (“T&F Informa”), the international specialist
information provider, announces the proposed acquisition of IIR Holdings Limited
(“IIR”) for cash consideration of US$1.4 billion (£768 million). IIR organises
events including conferences, seminars and exhibitions and provides performance analysis,
diagnostics and customised training services to corporates and governments.
EC ponders Microsoft proposal
Times Online, June 1
The European Commission is scrutinising a
proposal from Microsoft over a competition ruling after the software giant submitted a
response shortly before a midnight deadline expired.
eBay
to buy Shopping.com for $620 million
CNet News.com, June 1
The acquisition brings the Web's biggest comparison shopping engine under the hood of
the largest auction site at a time when eBay has been struggling to maintain its growth in
the face of increasing competition from Yahoo, Google and others.
British Library launches new
research resource
British Library Press Release, June 1
Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) and independent researchers are to benefit
from a versatile new pay-as-you-go service launched today by the British Library. BRITISH
LIBRARY DIRECT provides, for the first time, access to a fully searchable database of
article titles from the top 20,000 international research journals. These records go back
five years and currently number around nine million – with 150,000 new entries added
each month.
The 100
Best Products of 2005
PC World, June 1
Powerful computers, handy services, tiny utilities, mammoth HDTVs--PC World's top picks
include all these and a whole lot more.
McAfee confirms Wireless Security buy
CNET News.com, June 3
McAfee has confirmed its purchase of Wireless Security, a maker of Wi-Fi protection
products for consumers and small businesses. The $20m buy paves the
way for Wireless Security's technology to be bundled with McAfee's core products.
A Cauldron
Bubbles: PubChem and the American Chemical Society
Information Today, June 6
A freely accessible public database of chemical information, produced by a division of
the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH), is at the centre of a controversy over
publicly subsidised data competing with commercial information providers. The American
Chemical Society (ACS), said to be the largest scientific society in the world, has voiced
strenuous objections to the creation and availability of PubChem.
Library
of Congress Publishes a Proposal for a World Digital Library
Office of The Librarian, June 7
Recognising that the Congress's library is a world resource with more than 60 percent
of their print holdings in languages other than English, they have launched bilingual
digitisation projects to blend primary documents from their collections with those from
the national libraries of six other countries.
Scirus Launches Repository Search
Service
Scirus press release, June 7
Elsevier today announced that its free science-specific
search engine, Scirus, has launched Scirus Repository Search, a new service developed to
support institutional repositories. T-Space, the University of Toronto’s
institutional repository, is Scirus“ first collaboration. Scirus has added T-Space to its
index and is also providing additional search capabilities on the T-Space website at no
cost.
Thomson
Corporation wants to expand in Europe
Times Online, June 9
Thomson, the Canadian publishing group, wants to expand in Europe by acquiring legal
publishers in competition with Reed Elsevier and taking share from Reuters in the
financial information market. Thomson generated only 18 per cent of its $8 billion (£4.4
billion) revenues from outside North America last year.
German
publishers get themselves in a bit of a tizz over Google Print.
Guardian Unlimited June 9
Google has been acquiring the rights to digitise the back catalogues of most of the
world's major book publishers. Once scanned, the digitised text is entered into a huge
database - called Google Print - allowing users to search not just the internet but also
hundreds of thousands of printed books, too.
ProQuest serves NewsRx
to libraries
ProQuest Press Release, June 10
ProQuest Information and Learning has been chosen by NewsRx to be the primary online
distributor of its acclaimed health periodicals for academic librarians, the companies
jointly announced. NewsRx is publisher of such important works as Cancer Weekly, Vaccine
Weekly, and Women's Health Weekly.
Reed Elsevier
Completes $700 Million Two Tranche Global Bond
Press release, June 14
On 14 June, Reed Elsevier announced the completion of a $700 million two tranche global
bond through its wholly owned US subsidiary, Reed Elsevier Capital Inc. Reed
Elsevier will use the proceeds from the offering to refinance short term borrowings.
A copy of the prospectus relating to the offering was filed with the SEC on 9 June
2005, and is available on the Reed Elsevier website at: http://www.reedelsevier.com/index.cfm?articleid=173
John
Wiley & Sons, Inc. Reports Record Revenue, EPS and Cash Flow for Fiscal Year 2005
BusinessWire, June 15
John Wiley & Sons, Inc.has announced that revenue, earnings per diluted share
and cash flow reached record levels in fiscal year 2005. Full-year revenue of $974 million
increased 6%, or 4% excluding foreign currency effects.
Arbortext's
CEO Recipient of Ernst & Young Award
BusinessWire, June 15
Arbortext,a provider of enterprise publishing software, announced that Raymond
Schiavone, its President and CEO, received the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year
Award 2005 for the Central Great Lakes Area in the Technology and Life Sciences Division.
BT Launches
Hybrid Phone
Red Herring, June 15
BT Group, the U.K.'s largest carrier, launched its hybrid fixed-line
and mobile phone service along with a much-anticipated partial price list.
Yahoo Acquires
Dialpad
Red Herring, June 16
Yahoo is buying
longtime VoIP provider Dialpad, enabling the web giant to offer VoIP connections from
Yahoo Messenger users to people with regular phones, Dialpad executives said Wednesday.
Trojan software WARNING: NISCC Briefing 08/2005
Issued June 16
The UK's key computer systems are being targeted by Trojan
software apparently originating from the Far East, according to the National
Infrastructure Security Coordination Centre (NISCC). An NISCC bulletin
lists 76 Trojan programs that have been detected.
Survival
Strategies for Academic Publishing
The Chronicle of Higher Education, June 17
Growth rates of university presses have fallen to the lowest levels in
many years, returns from booksellers have reached unprecedented heights, and some
university presses have been faced with the prospect of imminent closure. Why do academic
publishers find themselves in such difficult circumstances, and what, if anything, can
they do about them?
Google unveils
mobile search engine
vnunet.com, June 17
Google has launched a new search engine specifically for UK mobile phone users. It
seeks out pages written in extensible HTML (XHTML) which are optimised for mobile internet
users with pages designed to be viewed on a phone screen.
Broadband
about to overtake dial-up
Computing, June 20
The number of UK internet users with an always-on connection is approaching 50 per cent
for the first time, according to the latest figures
from the Office of National
Statistics (ONS).
Google to open its Wallet
Infoconomy, June 20
Google, the world's most used search engine, is planning to
introduce an online payment system to rival PayPal, according to reports.
Both the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times cite unnamed
sources familiar with the plans, claiming that the search engine giant will launch Google
Wallet by the end of 2005.
Thomson ResearchSoft Releases EndNote 9 for Windows
Press Release, June 21
Thomson ResearchSoft (www.researchsoft.com), a business of The Thomson Corporation,
ships an upgrade to EndNote®—the bibliographic management software used by millions
of researchers, librarians and students worldwide. EndNote is well known for introducing
useful features such as the ability to search online bibliographic databases, organize
references and images, and create instant bibliographies.
Hummingbird Announces Agreement
to Acquire RedDot Solutions
Press release, June 21
Hummingbird has announced the acquisition of RedDot™ Solutions AG, a privately
held provider of content management software, headquartered in Oldenburg Germany and New
York. With over 1,300 clients globally, RedDot Solutions delivers simple to install and
easy to use content management solutions to mid-size enterprises.
Publishers
Raise Concerns About Google Print Project
ECT News Network, June 22
Google has agreed to meet with representatives of the publishing industry to hear their
concerns, but is apparently moving forward with the Google Print project in the meantime.
The entirety of Google Library, as the project is known, was expected to take as long as
10 years to complete. The Association of American Publishers (AAP) has reportedly written
to Google asking the company to voluntarily agree to a six-month moratorium on efforts to
scan, digitise and post books from major libraries around the world, including Harvard
University and the New York Public Library.
Blackwell
Publishing journals boost profits
Information World Review, June 22
Acquisitions help drive up journal sales and profits as
publisher moves forward with open access experiment. Blackwell Publishing grew
sales by 10% to £191m last year, helping to push profits up 27% to a record £31.7m,
despite the impact of the weak US dollar.
Island Republic of Mauritius to
become first “unwired” nation
Gizmag, June 22
The tiny South West Indian Ocean island of Mauritius will later this year become the first
country in the world to deploy a complete nation-wide high speed wireless network and in
so doing will attempt to lure a greater share of the World’s cyber business to its
idyllic tropical location.
Major
achievements for ScienceDirect and Scopus
Press release, June 22
Two of Elsevier’s leading online products, ScienceDirect and Scopus, have scored
major achievements and recognition from the science and technology communities. On
22 June, ScienceDirect announced that seven million articles are now available in its
electronic collection. In March, the University of Manchester became the first UK
customer to sign up for Scopus, Elsevier’s full text-linking abstract and indexing
(A&I) scientific database.
Elsevier's
ScienceDirect Passes 7 Million-Article Mark
Elsevier Press Release, June 23
Elsevier (www.elsevier.com) announced today that
7 million articles are now available on its premier full-text electronic platform,
ScienceDirect (www.sciencedirect.com). Now in
its seventh year of operation since launching in 1999, Elsevier has always been committed
to investing in technologies that keep ScienceDirect at the forefront of scientific,
technical and medical (STM) publishing.
Future of Online Scientific and Medical Publishing
SciScoop, June 23
In an
electronic journals study of more than 1,900 scientific and medical researchers, The
Science Advisory Board found that researchers assign greater value to online journals that
directly aid in their career advancement.
"Researchers are attracted to the "prestige-factor" of a
particular journal, which is assessed both by its impact factor and reputation,"
observes Tamara Zemlo, Ph.D., MPH, Executive Director of The Science Advisory Board.
Thousands already using NHS data spine
ComputerActive,
June 24
In excess of 30,000 health service staff, including some 3,500 GPs, are now using the
NHS care records data spine being developed under the £6bn Connecting for Health (CfH)
programme.
AA causes fury by publishing its first-ever map of speed cameras
The Independent, June 26
A controversial decision by the AA to publish its first map of speed traps has provoked
a storm of protest from safety experts, who accuse the organisation of encouraging
motorists to break the law. Thousands of camera locations are included in the
association's 2006 Road Atlas.
 Click to see
details at Amazon
British Library:
Novelty searches, company profiles and market analyses
British Library press release, June 27
One of the biggest challenges facing aspiring entrepreneurs and innovators is the
need to seek out and manage the information they need to develop and fully exploit their
ideas. Often, such information can be overwhelming or difficult to navigate: the resources
offered by the internet might offer breadth of coverage, but this is no substitute for
depth of detail and relevance.
A portfolio of services launched today by the British Library combine the
Library’s unrivalled business collections – including 600 online databases and
50 million patent records – with the expertise of its information specialists,
offering a fast and reliable response to a range of business and innovation enquiries. The
new services include product novelty research, market analysis and mailing list supply.
New
publishing house promises to unlock the web’s creative talent
The Friday Project press release, June 28
Paul Carr and Clare Christian have announced the launch of The Friday Project
– a completely new breed of publishing house. The company will specialise in turning
the Internet’s best-known brands into the world’s finest books.
Key investors in the company include former Random Century and Orion CEO Anthony
Cheetham, who will also serve as a non-executive Director. An important strategic
partnership has been formed with Pan Macmillan who will provide sales representation and
distribution services.
100 million go online
in China
Times Online, June 28
The number of internet users in China has risen above 100 million for the first
time, according to reports in the country's state media. Only the US now has more web
surfers as young and old Chinese take to the internet in record numbers.
OECD
Broadband Statistics, June 2005
OECD
The number of broadband subscriptions throughout the OECD continued to increase in the
first half of 2005 from 119 million to 137 million. Broadband penetration in the OECD grew
by 15% in the first half of the year to 11.8 subscribers per 100 inhabitants. Britain is
thirteenth in the league table with 13.5 broadband subscribers per 100 inhabitants. (South
Korea is highest with 25.5)
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