Company will track and ‘fingerprint’ AP content on the web

The Associated Press is moving to protect its content by partnering with the technology company Attributor, which will track AP material across the Internet. The arrangement will allow Attributor to ‘fingerprint’ AP copy down to a level where it can be identified anywhere on the Web. ‘Our goal is to get a feeling for some of the useful ways to monitor content,’ said Srinandan Kasi, vice president, general counsel and secretary at the AP. ‘We are looking at it not just to protect our rights but to derive some intelligence.’ The Redwood City, Calif.-based Attributor can keep tabs on text but extracting what Attributor CEO and co-founder Jim Brock calls the ‘DNA’ of the material, which boils down to a specific paragraph or a few sentences. With that information, Attributor can watch where the content is going in turn giving publishers a map. Publishers can then determine where, how, and when the content is used. For now, AP is using Attributor’s platform to first monitor use of text across the web but eventually it will test out video and still images with Attributor. (Editor and Publisher)

Google launches search translation service

Google Wednesday launched a test version of a translation tool that enables people to search the Internet in any of a dozen languages and have the results converted into their chosen tongue. A beta version of Google’s ‘cross-language information retrieval’ feature is online at http://translate.google.com/translate_s. The service ‘in effect, will make the Web universal,’ Google vice-president of engineering Udi Manber said while describing it to the press at the Internet search giant’s campus in Mountain View, California, last week. ‘We have been working on translating all of the Web to all languages,’ Manber said. ‘The results are probably not perfect, but the information you want will be there.’ Google’s new software translates queries to perform multi-lingual searches of the Internet and then converts the results to a searcher’s language. The languages included in the service are French, Arabic, English, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, and traditional and simplified Chinese. The service is to eventually be expanded to include other languages. (Middle East Times)

Pressdisplay brings Newspapers Online

Last week Pressdisplay.com mailed me and said they had chosen to give me unlimited personal access to their new system.- And I must say I am impressed. I have just read my local tabloid, Jerusalem Post and The Guardian in full versions on my tablet-pc with a bunch of features that makes newspaper reading much more fun and integrated with what else I do. I can blog a specific article as an image with link to the full original article for my readers to view, I can have articles read by a female machine voice if I prefer and I can setup a subscription system locally on my laptop that automatically downloads my preferred newspapers among more than 200. The system also stores my downloaded newspapers for up to 60 days.

Let me show you how it works.

Pressdisplay lets you access more than 200 newspapers from one site and with one subscription. When you subscribe you can read your newspapers before it appears in newsstands and before it is even printed! As a subscriber you can read your newspapers online and/or download the PressReader, a program that lets you read and manage newspapers for offline reading and more convenient page browsing.

Interestingly the Pressdisplay browser really makes the regular print newspaper format browsable. Specially if you use a vertical screen like a tilt LCD or tablet pc. I use the PressReader on my tablet PC, but there is a version for smartphones as well running the Windows Mobile platform 5.0.
When logged in to my account I can browse newspapers by language, title or country. I can pick a newspaper and its front page will appear in full screen size. At the bottom of the screen some tools for surfing, zooming and other things show up. At the right thumbnails of the issues other pages are listed. One click and that page shows up. Pages can also be flipped by clicking the corners of the pages.

This is yesterdays edition of The Guardian, viewed with PressReader online. This is also here I can choose newspapers for my off line PressReader.

Here is the downloaded version on a tablet. All pages is listed at the right sidebar.

If I chose to hear the words of an article spoken I just click the loudspeaker icon next to the headline of an article and a player starts.

I choose to save The Guardian for offline reading.

The Guardian now shows among my other preferred newspapers in the PressReader display, it is fully downloaded and I can start reading.

Most of the time I read in single page full screen view. It takes a few minutes to get used to the navigation. One click zooms in and four-way scrolling is done by holding the pen down on the screen. Here you see full page view, the text is too small for reading articles.

First level zoom is perfect for reading four columns, that makes up The Guardians Berliner format.

If I find something interesting, that I would like to share I can send a number of articles each month to friends and theres a blogging feature that allows subscribers to publish directly from the system to blogs. WordPress, Blogger, Livejournal and MSN Spaces are supported.

PressDisplay has a range of subscription models. There is a free sign up, where you can view front pages and buy single editions for USD 2.75. for USD 10 you can have monthly access to 31 newspapers of your own choice etc. There is also some corporate solutions and plans for libraries and hotels.

Newspaper Index in Korean, Russsian, Malay and Vietnamese

This week I will finish the translations Newspaper Index in Korean, Russian, Malay and Vietnamese. The Korean version is online now: Link

Next step, probably in june, will be to translate the site into Thai, Hindi, Polish and Finish. Later Portuguese and Dutch will be added and the site will be translated into the 23 most widespread languages on the Internet.

Joost signs major advertisers for TV-over-Web plan

Joost, the Internet TV company founded by Europe’s top Web entrepreneurs, has taken a big step towards commercial viability by signing up 31 advertisers worldwide ahead of the launch of its free service. The company, aiming to become a new kind of global cable TV network on the Web, was started last year by Niklas Zennstrom and partner Janus Friis, founders of Web phone company Skype, now owned by eBay Inc., and music-sharing site KaZaA. Joost aims to combine TV-like viewing with the wide choice and user control of the latest generation of Web services. Luxembourg-based Joost has already signed broad programming partnership deals with Viacom Inc., CBS Corp. as well as independent producers. It said marketers that have agreed to support its ad-supported network worldwide include Coca-Cola Co., Hewlett-Packard Co., Intel Corp., and Nike. U.S. backers include Visa, United Airlines and the U.S. Army, consumer goods suppliers such as Procter & Gamble Co. and Kraft Foods Inc. and technology companies Electronic Arts Inc., Sony Electronics Inc., Microsoft and Motorola. In Europe, advertising partners include General Motors Europe; IBM; L’Oreal Paris; Nokia’s N-series phones; Vodafone; and Time Warner Inc.’s Warner Bros. the company said. (Reuters)

Women don’t click with Internet videos

Women prefer the remote over the mouse when it comes to watching videos even though they outnumber men in cyberspace. About 97 million women in the United States will use the Internet this year compared with 91 million men, according to a study by eMarketer. But the report also says only 66 percent of those women are watching videos online compared to 78 percent of men. ‘Men are more visual than women, who tend to communicate in writing and or in words,’ said Debra Aho Williamson, senior analyst with eMarketer and the author of the report. ‘Women are more likely to use the Internet to get things done,’ Williamson said. ‘Men are more likely to use the Internet to have fun. And a lot of what you see on youtube.com is silly, time-saving kinds of things that maybe women don’t feel they have the time for, or don’t want to have the time for.’ Williamson said that despite the growth of youtube.com, women have not been part of the site’s traffic spike. The study suggests however that women will not lag behind for long. By 2011, 84.6 percent of women will be Internet video viewers, right behind men at 88.8 percent. ‘The gap is going to close pretty quickly as the content becomes available that women are interested in and they become more comfortable with it,’ Williamson said. (Reuters)

Topix taps Web readers to bolster local news

Web news search site Topix, owned by three top U.S. newspaper publishers on Monday will begin recruiting users to report local news that traditional outlets do not sufficiently cover in a bid for more readers. Registered readers will be able to submit news to the site from their computers and mobile phones. The service is the latest attempt to engage ‘citizen journalists’ and expand on local news offered by city and small town newspapers. The site was created by Gannett Co. Inc., McClatchy Co. and Tribune Co., which have invested $64 million to date. It aims to give Internet users a centralized place to find local stories and make money from advertisers keen on targeting specific markets. (Reuters)