Archive for August, 2006
I just bought myself a USB DVB-T device (eyeTV from elgato systems for OS X). My motivation is that we are organising the “Medientag Salzburg” on 17 October 2006 and that the region of Salzburg will start with DVB-T(errestrial) on 26 October 2006.
See also the following links:
The device (and the corresponding software) worked extremly well, I could watch ORF 1 and 2 (with the regional identities “Salzburg” and “Upper Austria”) and ATV. That was in the afternoon. Now (at 20:30 in the evening) it does not seem to work any more (“no signal”)… Anyway, it’s almost two months before the official start.
August 31st, 2006
Austria will hold elections for parliament on 1st Oct. 2006 – I had a look at the official web pages of the political parties in order to check how prominent research and innovation (with a focus on ICT – information and communication technologies) are presented.
- Österreichische Volkspartei, www.oevp.at: Offers podcasting services, RSS feeds – the site is rather overloaded with pictures, clickable menus, etc.; at http://www.oevp.at/zukunft/artikel.aspx?where=15552 there are “guidelines towards a positive information society” (Austria should get into the Top 3 in Europe in ICT). There is no (at least no obvious) search function.
- Sozialdemokratische Partei Österreichs, www.spoe.at: among the 22 themes presented, I had a look at “education” which argues for more funding for universities (BTW: this in IMHO _is_ definitely necessary after the cuttings over the last decade). There is an RSS news feed. This site is not as overloaded as that of ÖVP. A search with “Forschung” results in few entries, most prominently Karl Blecha’s CV is mentioned.
- Freiheitliche Partei Österreichs, www.fpoe.at: some entries to research when using (and finding first!) the search facility. It is mentioned that research – in particular by universities – is a necessary part of prosperity. Overall however, research is not the core message …
- Die Grünen, www.gruene.at: nice idea is to have the whole transcript of the interview with Prof. van der Bellen (25.8.2006) at ORF available online; IT is mentioned as a theme (one of a whole lot – 30 perhaps). A search for “Forschung” retrieves articles on “Excellence and universities” by Mr. Grünewald (amongst others). Clearly pro research.
- Die Freiheitlichen, Liste Westenthaler, Bündnis Zukunft Österreichs, www.bzoe.at: a very down to earth programm with 10 points, see http://www.bzoe.at/wkpage/10_punkte.pdf, on page 8 it says on the last line “more F&E” (while in general, economic growth should be accomplished with cuts in administration and improvements of processes). No search facility on this site.
- Kommunistische Partei Österreichs, www.kpoe.at: I did the search for “Forschung” here as well, and interestingly, found an argument that research could be a bad thing as it tends to support the big businesses (http://www.kpoe.at/progdisk/forum/23.html). It seems that research is not the core issue of KPÖ …
- Bündnis neutrales, freies Österreich, www.nfoe.at: very basic web site, the only occurrence of “Forschung” is with respect to “Meinungsforschung” …
- Liste Dr. Martin, www.hpmartin.net: a terribly overloaded/blinky site (IMHO). A search for “Forschung” basically reveals a list of 10-points mentioned in an open letter to Mr. Barroso (2006-02-14); the message is that the commission’s spending for research should be doubled from 11 to 22 Euro per citizen/year. Research is definitely not the main theme in this campaign …
So overall, research and ICT only seem to get some coverage in the ÖVP and Die Grünen sites/programmes.
For themes and parties in general, check also www.wahlkabine.at.
August 30th, 2006
A recent article by Filippo Menczer referenced in technology review discussed the issue of googlearchy – which means that search engines are an unfair technology as they prefer popular (= highly interlinked) sites.
The testbed used two extreme models of browsing: one set of people with search engines, the other one without. Interestingly, the results were not that different, i.e., popular pages were not generally ranked higher than others.
The explanation is that people tend to use more search terms these days (than they used to do a few years ago, there is simply too much content). This means that at some point they also get to the lower-linked pages – and find them.
There is some discussion about the data used (2003) which does not fully cover the trend towards a social web. Anyway, interesting to read.
August 29th, 2006
There are several working groups within the Alpbach technology forum. I participated in one on “Technology Transfer: the Motor for Developing Locations” (Arbeitskreis 2). Erich KNY was the main organiser of the working group.
Participants were:
- Erich GORNIK from ARC Seibersdorf
- Gernot GRIMM from the Federal Ministry for Transport, Innovation and Technology, Vienna
- Werner HOFFMANN, Chairman of the Board, Contrast Management-Consulting GmbH, Vienna
- Wolfgang PÖHL consultant for ITG-Salzburg
- Franz STAUDACHER from Westcam Projektmanagement GmbH, Mils
- Helmut SCHÜHSLER from TVM Capital GmbH, Munich
- Sylvia ROHR from Steinbeis-Stiftung für Wirtschaftsförderung, Stuttgart
- Doris AGNETER from tecnet capital GmbH, St. Pölten
- Otto PROHASKA OttoConsulting, LLC, USA
An excellent workshop, I liked most the value-chain-like introduction by Erich Gornik; and, Sylvia Rohr from Steinbeis had very dense but excellent slides on the issues of tech-transfer (btw: Steinbeis has zero basic financing, that is impressive).
August 27th, 2006
These days I am participating at the European Forum Alpach.
Forschung Austria is organising the 3rd Workshop on “Applied Research for a New Europe”, this year’s theme is “Mobility of Human Resources: Challenges, Opportunities and Initiatives”. The workshop is held with many partners from the Central European and Balkan States.
The core issues discussed include the need for more/high quality researchers and all issues related to his (education, brain power Austria, etc.).
Forschung Austria also presented the gender booklet 2005. The core message(s) are: existing trends are confirmed, i.e., there are more women working in R&D organisations (i.e., the percentage is “better” – still 30% is defined as an ambitious objective to be reached); however, in leading positions it is still men who build the (vast) majority.
August 23rd, 2006
I came across a link on Austria’s EU Presidency and research and innovation: http://cordis.europa.eu/austria/innovation_landscapes_en.html describes Austrian R&D and Innovation Policy.
The part on non University-research is described well, i.e., in an objective manner. And the whole set of pages is a symbol of many (political) efforts of the current government towards achieving the 3% Lisbon objective.
August 20th, 2006
ACM Technews in its current issue refers to an article by Charles Babcock in InformationWeek about the 12 greatest software programs – and 5 others that did not make it on the list.
The twelve pieces of software are:
- Unix
- IBM’s System R
- Gene-sequencing software at the Institute for Genomic Research
- IBM System 360 OS
- Java language
- Mosaic browser
- Sabre system
- Macintosh OS
- Excel spreadsheet
- Apollo guidance system
- Google search rank
- The Morris worm
And the five that did not make it on the list:
- Sketchpad
- Smalltalk
- GPS – Global Positioning System
- Video Games
- Virtualization
Even though Babcock argues for a “personal list”, I would have preferred somewhat more explicit criteria for establishing such a list. In any case, some systems that I would personally name are on the list (Smalltalk, Java; I’d perhaps put “the link”, e.g. realised in http/HTML on the list (depending on the criteria …)).
August 16th, 2006
Up to know (that is including the 6th Framework Programme FP6), European Research was labelled “applied research”. And it was not just a label but the general objective of (almost) all research activities. Now, in FP7, the commission also wants to foster basic research. The term they use is “frontier research”.
Why that term? Well, first I would argue that the commission is keen on introducing new terms (and acronyms 
). Secondly, often the distinction between basic and applied research is not so clear anymore, e.g. in some parts of life sciences you do not really know whether it’s applications you are after or whether you gaining new (foundational) insight. I think this is a necessary (and logically) step with respect to the (revised) Lissabon objectives.
The homepage of the Scientific Council of the European Research Council is http://ec.europa.eu/erc/index_en.cfm.
The list of the 22 members of the council includes Prof. Wendy Hall 
, Head of School of Electronics and Computer Science, University of Southampton. She was my boss at the Multimedia Research Group (now: Intelligence, Agents and Multimedia) when I did a post-doc in Southampton (1996-1999) and she also wrote a foreword in our Web Engineering book.
August 13th, 2006
… will take place in Odense, Denmark, from 23 – 25 August 2006. This year’s theme is “tools for supporting social structures”. See http://www.ht06.org/ for further details.
And: the Sept./Oct. 2005 issue of IEEE Internet Computing, focuses on social network anaylsis. In the introductory article (by Churchill and Halverson), there are some pointers/arguments relevant to hypertext:
- the use of structure/relations rather than attributes (this reminds me of the discussion of structure vs. data), see page 2 “definitions”
- SNA and its influence on tools’ development, see e.g. page 9 “tools”
- with systems/sites such as friendster, etc. it is also quite popular and would attract people/communities
August 9th, 2006
A message I came across recently, posted by Stevan Harnad, Prof. of Computer Science at the School of Electronics and Computer Science, Southampton. He also coined the term “scholarly skywriting”.
The following poem, “Publish or Perish,” has won the (English-language category) prize in the Euroscience Open Forum (ESOF2006) Poetry Competition, sponsored by the Andrea von Braun Stiftung. The award of 300 euros has been donated by the author to the Alliance for Tax-Payer Access in support of their efforts to promote the adoption of the Federal Research Public Access Act (FRPAA) in the US: With UK OA now well on its way, let Euroscience and euros now reach across the Atlantic to help spread OA to the entire planet…
See http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/112-guid.html
August 9th, 2006
