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The Portable Document Format (PDF) is a popular format to publish formatted text and documents. There are several different versions of it, some qualifying as an Open Standard, some certified by ISO and some encumbered by software patents. You might want to promote the versions that are Open Standards, because Open Standards guarantee interoperability, competition and choice

1.1: Purpose and Scope In order for electronic-book technology to achieve widespread success in the marketplace, Reading Systems need to have convenient access to a large number and variety of titles. The Open Publication Structure (OPS) Specification describes a standard for representing the content of electronic publications. Specifically: * The specification is intended to give content providers (e.g. publishers, authors, and others who have content to be displayed) and publication tool providers, minimal and common guidelines that ensure fidelity, accuracy, accessibility, and adequate presentation of electronic content over various Reading Systems. * The specification seeks to reflect established content format standards. * The goal of this specification is to define a standard means of content description for use by purveyors of electronic books (publishers, agents, authors et al.) allowing such content to be provided to multiple Reading Systems and to insure maximum presentational equivalence across Reading Systems.

"A complete version of the work and all supplemental materials, including a copy of the permission as stated above, in an appropriate standard electronic format is deposited (and thus published) in at least one online repository using suitable technical standards (such as the Open Archive definitions) that is supported and maintained by an academic institution, scholarly society, government agency, or other well-established organization that seeks to enable open access, unrestricted distribution, inter operability, and long-term archiving. "

Amazon's new world-beating gadget isn't the savior of the e-book, genre. It's a proprietary, market-protecting anomaly in a world of increasingly open standards and accessible media. Shame on you, Amazon. (...) The thing that e-books need, I'm convinced, is PDF. Secure, reflowable, customizable PDF. The reader devices need to be easy on the eyes, lightweight, and allow users to shunt any PDF to it, whether it's a specially formatted e-book or not. If I am paying $300+ for essentially a document storage device on steroids, I need to be able to put my own junk on it, too. (...)You might be lining your own pockets and making a few sales, Mr. Bezos, but you're also promoting confusion in the marketplace and causing division in the e-book space at a time when everyone else is pushing for convergence and open standards. Thanks for nothing.

Web standards are sustained by conversation, and Blue Beanie Day is a chance to start some.

"You have all heard about the more popular open source content management systems such as Joomla and Drupal. However, there are many more open source content management systems out there that are more than capable of accommodating the needs of your website. In fact, some of the less popular CMSs actually provide features that cannot be found in the standard CMS. Not all CMS live up to their developer's hype though, so we've compiled a comprehensive list of the top 20 open source content management systems."

When I envision my Aspire One and my daughter's iPhone side by side, I can't help but see a continuum, an evolutionary chain. In this chain, the computer gradually evolves into a web interface device, or WID 10dollar_laptop(pronounced "wide"), which integrates web and standard phone capabilities. My laptop is at the juncture of that shift, and further up the line is the iPhone.

Items Implemented * All links are keyboard accessible. * Simple, consistent layout and navigation. * Works with or without JavaScript. * Large default text size and high color contrast. * Looks great in high or low resolution. * Forms are marked up for optimal accessibility. * Code is semantic, light, and adheres to best practices in Web Standards.

We preserve the best of the old - books by leading experts that are rigorously reviewed and developed to the highest standards. Then we flip it all on its head. Our books are free online. ...

CamStudio is able to record all screen and audio activity on your computer and create industry-standard AVI video files and using its built-in SWF Producer can turn those AVIs into lean, mean, bandwidth-friendly Streaming Flash videos (SWFs)

Chances are that if you're a network operator you know the IP address 4.2.2.2. It's an easy to type and easy to remember address, which since 1998 has been a "beefy" DNS service responding to the public Internet. Since you need DNS before you can use anything other than IP addresses on the Internet, it can come in handy for testing or initial configuration. Before Google started doing public DNS service on 8.8.8.8, and because 4.2.2.2 is typically pretty fast, many people have used it as their standard DNS server. Since the most basic test of Internet connectivity you can do is to ping an IP address (with DNS disabled), a "ping -n 4.2.2.2" can tell you if your networking problem is at a higher level or a lower level right away. Is this just an accident, or was this a deliberate choice? Was it intentionally set up as a public DNS service, or an accident. I've wondered this for years. But just recently I was investigating a networking oddness reported by Kyle who uses this, and I decided to try to dig deep and find out the story behind whatI imagine is one of the most famous IP addresses on the public Internet.

"As presently drafted, the Proposed Settlement does not meet the legal standards this Court must apply," the DOJ said in a 32-page filing (click for PDF) with the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. "This Court should reject the Proposed Settlement in its current form and encourage the parties to continue negotiations to modify it so as to comply with Rule 23 (a federal law governing class-action settlements) and the copyright and antitrust laws."

I have the court documents for you in the i4i v. Microsoft case, the judgment, the permanent injunction, and the memorandum and order, which explains the legal reasoning in support of the order. I also got for you the original complaint by i4i, Microsoft's answer with counterclaim, and i4i's reply to the counterclaim, so you can understand what it was all about. The law firm that won has put out a press release. Microsoft, of course, will appeal. It has 60 days to do so. You probably think I am delighted. I am not. I hate software patents. And this is precisely why. It is karmic that this happened to Microsoft, who bullies Linux with patent threats and just got an XML patent of its own on August 4th that could, presumably, be used against the entire market. How stupid do we have to be to grant patents on software? On software *standards*? This is what happens. Now do you see it?

Utimaco LIMS distinguishes itself among competitive solutions by its comprehensive multivendor support. It integrates seamlessly with more than 200 different network nodes (switches, routers, gateways, application servers) by all leading infrastructure vendors. Utimaco LIMS enables realtime monitoring of telephony, fax, SMS, MMS, e-mail, VoIP, Push-to-Talk and other IP-based communication services. The modular architecture of LIMS facilitates cost-efficient LI solutions for small operators and is scalable for surveillance networks with several thousand concurrent intercepts. Utimaco LIMS mediates and delivers data in accordance with international LI standards by ETSI, 3GPP, ANSI/ATIS and Cablelabs. The highest security requirements are implemented in LIMS to protect all private data from eavesdropping and manipulation.

I'm working on a story to actually assess the state of development among big-name textbook publishers and will have more soon on that. For right now, though, it's quite clear that we have a very long ways to go. While a lack of content is a major issue, perhaps a bigger issue is the lack of standards via which the content can be disseminated. Obviously, DRM is a serious problem for textbooks. Copyright aside, though, there are currently around 30 formats in which e-books are published. If you're Pearson, into which basket will you be throwing all of your eggs? Frankly, there is only one that I see that makes a lot of sense right now. EPUB, developed by the International Digital Publishing Forum, is open, XML-based, and can grow as our needs increase. Even this format, though, needs traction with major publishers.

Tue, 08/04/2009 - 14:06 - marc The native format for Stanza is ePub, which is the Open eBook standard from the International Digital Publishing Forum (http://www.idpf.org/). ePub is supported in Stanza Desktop, iPhone, and iPod Touch, as well as in Adobe Digital Editions and the next generation of e-ink readers like the Sony Reader (PRS-505).

Unless Amazon embraces open standards, the Kindle's lead will become a very short story.