News

SONY Corp. said on Monday it would begin marketing digital video disk re-writable (DVD-RW) drives for personal computers in the US this autumn. The new drive allows PC users to read and write a data storage capacity of 3.0 gigabytes.

SONY plans to manufacture 10,000 to 20,000 units of the drives per month at a domestic plant ahead of the scheduled US launch in the second half of 1999, a company spokesman said. The company has not yet set a date for the introduction of the drives in Japan, he said.

SONY and Philips Electronics NV have been working to promote DVD-RW as an alternative to the DVD-RAM (random access memory) format promoted by Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. and Toshiba Corp.

SONY Music Entertainment (Japan) Inc. went a step further in promoting digital broadcasting on Monday, saying it would broadcast music by some major Japanese artists for the first time in the new format.

Japan's leading music producer, Tetsuya Komuro, in a press conference to promote his record label with SONY Music said, he would start distributing songs by the label's artists through a satellite music broadcasting channel on SkyPerfecTV starting in October.

A SONY Music spokesperson said Komuro's endorsement of the new technology was a significant step as top-selling artists had been reluctant to embrace the format which was regarded as still immature. (Reuters)

Videsh Sanchar Nigam Limited (VSNL) is planning to install a new, multi-service backbone project, involving a spanking new network built around convergence technologies. For subscribers, this would mean better international telephone service and faster and improved internet access.

Confirming this, VSNL's acting chairman and managing director said, "this is a long term project and should be in place in the coming few months." VSNL is the process of reviewing tenders, and the project is expected to be completed by the end of this year.

VSNL would be installing eight ATM (Asynchronous Transfer Mode) switches in various locations with individual capacity of 20 gigabits.

The capacity and its spread across the country are expected to ease a number of bottlenecks. The company has six international gateways which are used for both telecom and other value-added services such as video-conferencing and Internet.

A convergent network would mean greater operational efficiency instead of setting up individual backbones for its services.

The College of Applied Science for Women Library (University of Delhi) inaugurated its fully computerised library on March 11, 1999 with the help of CapsLib, a graphical user interface library automation software package by Prof. V Ramalingaswami, Director (National Research Professor at AIIMS, also former Director General of ICMR) in the presence of Dr. SS Rana, Dean of Colleges, Delhi University; Mr. Pallhan, Director, Sri Singari Sharada Institute of Management; and Dr. S Lakshmi Devi, Principal, College of Applied Science for Women.

The Library has a collection of 6400 books on specialized subject like Food Technology, Instrumentation, Electronics, Computer Science, etc. and subscribes to 29 periodicals. The CapsLib uses MicroSoft Access as a base tool and visual basic as the front end. It is completely menu driven and has a graphical user interface which can do all house keeping jobs of library viz. Acquisition of books, Circulation of book, Query of a particular book with different parameter like author, title, series, etc. It also inform us as to the availability of books in the library at any point of time.

For the exclusive identification of a member, the provision has been made available of photograph of each member in the software. Auto dialer has been made available in the software which helps the library staff to telephonically converse with any member of the library. It is already running on multi-user environment as a share database concepts.

CapsLib is also helpful for selective dissemination of information and bibliographical service. This has been developed by Mr. Projes Roy, Librarian, College of Applied Science for Women.

- Personal Communication from The Librarian,
College of Applied Sciences for Women to The Advisor

India's most advanced multipurpose satellite INSAT-2E was launched by European Ariane Launch Vehicle at Kourou, French Guyana, in South America. It is the latest in the INSAT-2 series of satellites built by ISRO for telecommunication, television broadcasting and meteorological services.

The satellite is located at 83 degrees east longitude in the geostationary orbit. INSAT-2E, weighing 2,550 Kg at lift-off, carries seventeen transponders - twelve operating in the normal C-band frequency with coverage over Central Europe, Southern Region of former USSR, East Asia and Australia. Seven of normal C-band transponders have wide beam coverage and remaining have zonal coverage. Rest five are in the lower extended C-band which would cover India, China, West Asia and South East Asia.

Out of seventeen, eleven transponders will be leased to Intelsat Consortium of countries which will bring over US$ 10 million every year as lease fees to the ISRO. The rest of the transponders will be made available for domestic use.

INSAT-2E launched to a Geosynchronous transfer orbit has a perigee of 250 Km and an apogee of 36,150 Km. The satellite was manoeuvred to its final orbit by firing the satellite apogee motor in three phases. Subsequently the deployment of solar array, antennae and the solar sail were carried out and the satellite commissioned after in-orbit checks. The salient features of INSAT-2E are:

Orbit	Geostationary (83 degree E longitude)
Dry Mass	1,150 Kg
Mass at Lift-off	2,550 Kg
Size	Cuboid 1.9 m x 1.77 m x 2.4 m with solar array on the south and solar sail & boom on the north
Length When fully deployed	26 m
Spacecraft Propuslsion	440 N Liquid Apogee Motor with N2O4 (Nitrogen Tetroxide) and MMH (Mono Methyl Hydrazine) for orbit raising, 3-axis body stabilised in orbit using momentum wheels, sensors, solar flap, magnetic torque and sixteen Reaction Control Thrusters of 22 Newton each
Power	Solar array generating 2,050 W
Mission Life	12 Years

MicroSoft has won its first software piracy law suit in China against Beijing Haisida Science & Technology Development Co. and Min'an Investment Consulting Co. The Beijing Court has ordered the companies to pay $ 100,000 to MicroSoft and issue a public apology in specified newspapers as the duo was found guilty of copyright infringement involving unauthorized use of MicroSoft Products. (Financial Express, 15 Feb 1999)

Persons wishing to have monthly update on the decision of the courts relating to intellectual property issues, mainly in UK and Europe, may subscribe to a monthly journal, Intellectual Property Decisions. This monthly journal contains information on legislation and regulation, new and pending cases, division and judgements of the UK and European patent Offices, House of Lords and the High Court, the UK Design Registry, UK Trade Mark and Copyright Tribunal. For details, contact at 01787467267 or Fax at 01787 881127. (Comline, March 99)

M/s K Krishnamurty Booksellers have gone hi-tech. They have created a web site to provide detail of not only the stock they hold but also other books available elsewhere through a 'link' service. Members may recall that during the Meet between FBPAI/BAPASI and the Librarians, organised about six months ago, a request was made to make available GOC rates to all libraries. This can now be accessed at http://www.kkbooks.com

IIT, Chennai has taken the initiative to get ISO 9001 certification for six of its major units. Library is one of them. The work on quality testing and assessing began four or five years ago. Library has been on top of the list of departments from the beginning. A number of quality indicators had to be taken such as user-friendliness, staff training in customer care, periodical library staff and user interaction to obtain feedback, streamlining complaints procedures and elaborate documentation covering a range of activities and an inbuilt mechanism for periodical checking to ensure continued improvement of service efficiency and effectiveness. A Mission Statement is prominently displayed at key locations. As is the practice, external examiners of accredited bodies went critically into all procedures and practices. The services of a consultant were enlisted. The fruits of nearly five years of labour, IIT is a proud ISO 9001 certified organisation which speaks highly of the quality and the standard of education imparted in it.

The British Council, UNICEF and M S Swaminathan Research Foundation (MSSRF) organised a two-day workshop on 'Internet and Web publishing for voluntary agencies' on 15 and 16 April 1999 at MSSRF. The INDEV project was formally launched at Delhi on 26 March by Baroness Helena Kennedy, the Chairperson of the British Council. The formal launch was preceded of the British Council. The formal launch was preceded by ground work spread over a year, when British Council staff interacted with a large number of NGOs across the country involved in development work. Information collected through meetings with individuals and groups helped design the system in a way helpful for all stakeholders.

INDEV is British Council's initiative to address problems faced by development managers in accessing development information on India. It is an electronic gateway to development information on India. It is an electronic gateway to development information. ' a website; a web-hosting service; a training centre; a meeting room; a daily news magazine; a mailing office; and a discussion forum. The network will provide an opportunity to NGOs to create their own web sites, share and exchange information and learn from each other. For more details visit http://www.indev.nic.in

There is a welcome strategic alliance between learned societies spread over continents to publish new electronic, scientific journals at low-cost in direct competition with the commercial publishers whose annual price hikes are causing anguish to cash-trapped academic libraries. The implementation of this development could be far reaching to all concerned. The Standing Conference of National and University Libraries [SCONUL], UK has started the ball rolling by joining hands with the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition [ SPARC] founded recently in the US and Canada by the Association of Research Libraries [ARL]. Academic libraries are backing this bold new venture by investing a fee and a promise to spend a small proportion of their acquisition budgets on SPARC. This guarantees a market, encouraging learned societies to go on-line.

The Royal Society of Chemistry has already started publishing its first SPARC journal, PhysChemComm. Initially the journal was free to view on the Internet. It will now cost œ200/- per year, compared to $8000 for an equivalent commercial publication. More journals are being planned for the next two years.

In a similar initiative, the Institute of Physics is publishing an on-line-only New Journal of Physics, in partnership with the German Physical Society.

The Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC) has launched a new Internet and Email ready Indian language word processing software called "Ileap". Ileap is capable of sending Email messages and creating the web pages Ileap is a new version of Leap range of Indian language word processor for Windows and could send multi-lingual Email and incorporated features including online keyboard, multi-lingual spelling checker and language sensitive multi-lingual editor. The languages supported in "Ileap" package were Assamese, Bengali, English, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Oriya, Punjabi, Sanskrit, Tamil and Telugu with 10 fonts of each language.

One of the dreams of the digital age has been the electronic book, a handy portable device that would store multiple volumes in a small space and drastically cut book prices. Several companies have planned to introduce electronic books this year. Two recent examples are : 1. The Rocket e Book from Nuvo Media and 2. Softbook from Soft Book Press, both U.S. companies. Each is a small, portable computer designed solely for reading and annotating the electronic texts of books. These texts will be downloaded from the internet and the prices are expected to be below of paper books.

Of the two, SoftBook is the more booklike and also most innovative, because it operates entirely without a personal computer. About 20 centimetres by 25 centimetres in size and about 2.5 centimetres thick, and weighing roughly 1.4 Kgs, the SoftBook is curyaceous, black, plastic panel with a soft leather cover permanently attached to its left edge. You just open the cover, and the SoftBook lights up, ready to read. A large plastic bar, which you press to turn pages back and forth, sits to the right of the 24 centimetre diagonal screen. Three other buttons summon menus of commands, represented by on-screen icons, which you press with a finger or the built-in plastic stylus.

It has several attached features, such as for example, facility for setting multiple book marks, highlighting passages, two font sizes, plugging a telephone line into the built in modem to obtain instant connection to the SoftBook on-line store, etc.

Some of the features of the Rocket eBook are its lower cost, size, weight, design and weight. The text on the Rocket is sharper. Unlike the Soft Book, Rocket offers a variety of font sizes and typefaces and can display text either vertically or horizontally.

Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Chennai has developed a wireless system that provides highspeed internet access and leaves line free to make and receive telephone calls. This low-cost system, based on IIT's wireless in local loop (WLL) technology, uses radio frequency waves instead of cables to send and receive signals. It allows the subscriber to connect to any telephone or fax machine. Internet connection is provided without the need for a modem by directly connecting the personal computer (PC) to WLL subscriber terminal. An additional advantage with the IIT's WLL system is that the line is free to make and receive telephone calls even when the internet is being accessed.

The Railways have launched a Hindi Website on the history and scientific development of rail communication in India showcase in its museum at Delhi. With the availability of bilingual access, the rail museum became the first museum in India to go on Internet. The website http://www.railmuseum.com displays varied exhibit, models, records, etc. in indoor gallery and 77 real size exhibits Fairy Queen of 1855 and Garrett-234 tonner in the outdoor gallery.

The European Commission has a considerable budget for science and technology at its disposal. However, it is not always easy to get information about it. In order to provide companies all over Europe an easy-to-handle tool for gathering information on its budget, the commission has launched an Internet Supermarket for Companies. This Web site helps to find answers to many practical questions and provides links to data, information, consulting and other sources. It offers direct access to the database Tenders Electronic Daily (TED) and to contact offices for solving problems of citizens and companies regarding the European interior market. The Web site also offers companies a better and easier access to information and consulting on the rules and the opportunities of the interior market. The Internet Shop is expected to yield valuable feedback on what kind of problems companies are encountering in the interior market. The site, which is offered in the eleven official languages of the European Union has been set up as part of the Interior Market Action Plan. [ http://europa.eu.int/business ]

The world's smallest Web server with Ethernet on board has been presented by the Aachen Electronics Expert Gesytec. The base of the system is a DIMM PC, which houses a complete PC on an area measuring only 26 cm2. Having left its prototype stage and being ready for industrial production, the tiny server is available for all embedded applications, according to Gesytec.

This product opens up new prospects for internet technology, and it has many practical applications: Drinks dispensers could order refillings on their own, or blood sugar measurement devices could send their results to the doctor every day. In case of a puncture, a car could report its malfunctions and diagnostic data to the workshop and thus order spare parts. Industrial machinery could report all maintenance data online and thus save the maintenance technician long travels or at least enable him to prepare himself for the job.

A group of researchers at the Institute for Computer Networks at Dresden University of Technology has solved the problem of high-quality multimedia conferencing with safe data transmission for all participants. Their next-generation videoconferencing solution, the development of which has been supported by the German Research Society ,was presented to the public for the first time at the CeBIT'99.

Conventional systems for setting up virtual working parties, e.g. in consulting customers of a bank or an insurance company as well as telemedicine and teleteaching, offered only a bad image quality, or required costly specialised hardware. The Dresden scientists have developed a reliable software providing a comparatively high quality of video graphics and dispensing with specialised hardware. Based on the use of modern networks, a multistage compression procedure has been developed that only precompresses the video data flow on the end systems. A further innovation is the integrated 3D video display, which makes the new system particularly attractive to medical applications. The systems allows a videoconference for up to six participants on systems that are available today.

After her tour of the CeBIT ' 99, Federal Minister for Education and Research Mrs. Bulmahn announced at a press conference that Germany is entering the race with the USA for the Next Generation Internet. The Federal Government intends the Masterplan Internet 2005 to be the basis for a leading position of Germany in using and developing the Internet. Masterplan Internet 2005 is connected to the Federal Government's action programme Innovation and jobs in the Information Society.

One of the most important objectives of the Masterplan is to make optical data transmission on the terabit-scale available for use by 2005 - this means today's transmission speed has to be increased by the factor 1,000. An equivalent increase is planned for mobile telephone technology: here the goal is "from kilobit/s to megabit/s", as Bulmahn put it. She also emphasised the importance of contents on the Internet, and that without contents, technology would be useless. Software development should therefore have the same importance as hardware development, and future funding should focus on new applications and software development.

According to the minister, the development of educational software with high quality of subject matter and didactics is particularly important. The minister called upon the Laender and the industry to join forces in a Public-Private Partnership to improve the quality of computer equipment in schools. The industry should offer cost-efficient PCs and laptops for schools, as the pupils are the users of tomorrow.

Biometrical recognition systems identify people on the basis their physical features. Scientists at the German National Research Center for Computer Science (GMD) currently work on biometrics in connection with integrated circuit cards (smartcards), specifically on methods for finger-print identification. The project team Biometrics Technology pursues the goal to realise as soon as possible biometrical comparison technology in smartcards. This includes analysing biometric technologies and algorithms in view of their applicability to smartcards, and work on the open questions concerning standardisation.

The application demonstrator BioSign shows how a fingerprint identification system can be used for security applications with digital signatures. BioSign, as presented on the CeBIT '99, uses capacitive FingerTIP-sensors developed by Siemens to demonstrate how knowledge-based and biometrical identification can combine to clear digital signatures in various areas of application e.g. signing digital prescriptions in medical offices or electronic default summons in a lawyer's office, or emails in any offices environment.

On April 8th, the Alfred-Wegener-Institute for Polar Research and Oceanography (AWI) officially established a permanent satellite link with the Number Station in the Antarctic. This way, the AWI can greatly improve and speed up the processing of data from the station's three scientific observations and the availability of the data for international databases. The German Antarctic station is manned all year round and serves as scientific observatory for geophysics, meteorology, and air chemistry. The link is a SCPC-link (single channel per carrier) with a capacity of 64 kbit/s via Intelsat, a satellite that covers large parts of Antarctica. An expansion of the bandwidth to 384 kbit/s is planned for the near future in order to enable video conferencing. [ http://www.awi-bremerhaven.de/NeumayeOnline/NM_WebCam/ ]

NEC Corp. said it has developed a device like a computer mouse that is designed for visually impaired people, making it easier for them to use regular personal computer software. The device combines the regular functions of a mouse with slider bars, Braille-type tactile pins and voice-synthesis software. This enables the user to guide the mouse accurately around the computer screen as well as receive tactile feedback that lets him or her know when the cursor has landed above a folder or other screen icon and to hear from the synthesized voice how the icon is labelled.

Mitsubishi Electric Corp. said it has developed software that can automatically create three dimensional digital maps from data about cities, arranging the information in a way that facilitates high speed scrolling even when the user zooms in for an enlarged view.

The software is expected to have a wide variety of applications, including easy production of virtual reality systems in which the user is free to roam around the city. The 3-D maps can also be used to help plan construction of infrastructure, such as power and gas lines, surface and underground waterways, and to monitor an area in emergency situations, such as after a natural disaster.

The programme works on existing, commercially available digital map databases, automatically created a 3-D view of the city from the information it reads about buildings and other structures, including their locations, types and number of stories. This eliminates the need for people to spend the time creating 3-D computer-graphic images. Moreover, the software is capable of integrating different types of digital information, such as creating a 3-D image that overlays map data with other maps that pinpoint the location of all utility poles.

This integration feature has widespread applications, providing a means to create appropriate 3-D maps for a variety of construction and business tasks, the company noted. Because of the way the data are organized, a user can scroll while viewing enlarged images of the 3-D maps at a speeds of 2 to 10 times faster than with conventional 3-D viewing programmes. The enlarged images are refreshed at 10-20 frames per second, which is fast enough to create a smooth-motion image.

Normally, when a user wants to look at an enlarged image on a computer screen, the viewing software extracts the image that is to be enlarged from the entire map database. Because, 3-D maps involve such a huge amount of data, the process of scrolling can slow down considerably because it takes so much time to check the entire database for each screen view.

But the new software creates a map database with a hierarchical, branching-tree structure and uses an efficient method of selecting only those branches that need to be checked. This greatly speeds up the rendering process when a user is scrolling through enlarged images on the screen. The 3-D digital maps created with this software could be used for virtual-reality systems.

A research team at Keio University's Faculty of Science and Technology has developed a computer display system that uses a special glass desktop as the monitor. Designed to let people operate personal computers similar to the way they work with pen and paper, the system developed by Professor Atsushi Matsushita and his team at the Tokyo University consists of a projector, mirror, glass desktop and video camera. The projector beams the image output from the PC onto the mirror, which then reflects it on the glass desktop. The system uses a transparent sheet with a bar code on it to determine where on the desktop the display area should be. Users first establish a link between the transparent sheet and the PC screen, with the display area following the location of the transparent sheet on the desktop once the link is set. This tracking is achieved by monitoring the location of the sheet using a video camera on the ceiling above the desk. The system is capable of handling multiple transparent sheets and PC screens. Stacking multiple sheets on top of each other results in their respective display images being overlapped. When the system is used in conjuction with special electronic mail software, users can create email by writing the message with a special pen on the email document window reflected on the glass desktop. When the message is completed, the email can be sent by changing the direction of the transparent sheet. The research team started its work based on the idea that computers would be easier to use if they could be operated similar to the way people use stationery. The team aims to refine the system further to ake it even easier to use.

System Craft Inc. has commercialized a Message Board (MB 7083) for the scrolled display of messages such as information/guidance hints/advertisements/commercial information as well as updated news disseminated by the Jiji Press Ltd. The messages are prepared with ease with a special-purpose personal computer software, and the messages transmitted to the Message Board for display. A maximum of 31 units of message board can be linked to a personal computer over a distance of 1000m, and different messages registered separately with each message board. Up to 16 different types of messages can be registered, each with a maximum of 50 characters, and the scroll system is available in either the horizontal or vertical type.

These message boards are incorporated with a display memory, so by extending the cable, the registered messages can be retrieved from the personal computer and displayed at some other place. Therefore, the message board system will be ideal for use in multiple places inside the same building or facility. By linking a separately sold pocket ball receiver unit pager, it will be possible to receive the most updated news and weather forecasts disseminated by the Jiji Press Ltd.

It is also possible to utilize the public telephone circuit maintained by NTT Corp. to transmit news and instructions from a company's head office to remotely situated branch offices.

Technos Japan Co. Ltd. has started marketing an intent transmission system MCTOS (Mactos) for use by seriously physically handicapped persons. Even seriously physically handicapped persons who cannot move their hands and feet or cannot speak out can emit cerebral waves (beta waves) and convey their intents in response to questions asked by their nursing personnel. A detector fitted on the physically handicapped person's forehead detects the signal normally generated when a person gets excited and manipulates various types of equipment.

Mactos is available in two types. Model SX is for use by persons who are capable of moving their eyeballs left and right or of moving their facial muscles slightly, and is designed to use physical signals such as muscular electric signals (EMG) and eyeball electric impulses (EOG). Physical signals are generated with EMG by closing the eye tightly, moving the eyebrows or clenching the teeth strongly, and with EOG by moving the eyeballs left and right or up or down.

A consortium comprising some 140 publishers and booksellers in May will begin offering books and comics in digital form on a trial basis. Books, converted into digital data at E-Book Japan's distribution center, will be transmitted via communication satellites to dedicated terminals at bookstores and convenience stores, the books will then be sold to consumers on discs. When the service is commercialized in 2000, paperback-size terminals that accept MiniDiscs are expected to be used for viewing. The industry group, however, decided to use personal computers as the visual medium for the tests.

More than five centuries after the death of Johann Gutenberg, the father of the movable-type printing press in Europe, digital technology appears to finally present an alternative to the traditional book. While the book distribution system has been undergoing drastic changes recently, including the consolidation of sales channels, electronic books would all but eliminate distribution costs.

China is expected to become the largest information technology market in the Asia-Pacific region excluding Japan by 2000, according to a report prepared by International Data Corporation (IDC), a US Market Research firm. China will represent approximately one-third of the total IT market in the region excluding Japan by 2003, Jared Peterson, Research Director for IDC, China, was quoted as saying in the company's China IT Market Overview 1999. By 2000, the IT market in China is forecast to grow to US$ 15 billion from US$ 9.24 billion in 1998.

The impressive annual growth rate - the fastest in the region - could last till 2003, IDC said. China surpassed South Korea to become the second largest IT market excluding Japan in 1998, and it is expected to pull ahead of Australia in 2000 to become the No. 1 market.

Doctors need to keep up-to-date, but subscribing to medical journals is expensive, and medical textbooks get outdated very soon. To celebrate Doctor's Day on July 1, HELP, the Health Education Library for People, India's first free health library, in partnership with MDConsult, USA, offers doctors free access to the full-text of over 37 renowned medical reference books and 48 of the world's best medical journals online, at http://www.mdconsult.com, for 10 days.

After this time, doctors in India can continue to access the world's largest online virtual medical library, for only Rs 5999 per year for a single-user password. This specially reduced price for Indian doctors allows unlimited searching of the full text of these books and journals for a full year This information is constantly updated - and doctors only need an internet connection to access it, at any time, from anywhere. A wealth of invaluable clinical content is now available at the doctor's fingertips - and it's just a mouse-click away!

The power of Internet technology thus allows doctors to provide the best medical care for their patients-after all, Information is the Best Prescription! This service is especially valuable for doctors in private practise, as well as those who practise in smaller cities, who do not have access to a medical library.

The online 37 full-text medical reference books cover all fields of medicine, including: Nelson's Textbook of Paediatrics, Cecil's Textbook of Medicine, Kaplan & Sadock's Comprehensive Textbook of Psychiatry, Conn's Current Therapy, Merritt's Textbook of Neurology, Sabiston's Textbook of Surgery, The Medical Management of AIDS, Danforth's Obstetrics and Gynaecology, and Campbell's Urology.

Doctors also have access to the full-text of all the articles in over 48 medical journals including the American Heart Journal, American Journal of Obstetrics & Gynaecology, Annals of Emergency Medicine, Annals of Surgery, Cancer Journal from Scientific American, Critical Care Medicine, Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism, Journal of Paediatrics, Medicine, Neurology, Paediatrics, and all the Clinics of North America.

Doctors also have access to a complete Patient Education Library, with over 2,500 patient education handouts, which they can personalize, with their own special instructions for their patients, and print out; prescription information for more than 30,000 medications; more than 600 peer-reviewed clinical practice guidelines; and personalised daily summaries of important articles in clinical medicine, so that they can keep up to date with the latest developments in their field.

- Personal Email Communication from Dr. Aniruddha
Malpani to Dr. Abhijit Lahiri, Advisor

Padma Vibhusan Justice VR Krishna Iyer formally released the book 'Internet for Library and Information Services' by presenting a copy to Dr. KN Syamasundran Nair, Vice Chancellor, Kerala Agricultural University, during the seminar on Libraries and Rural Development organized by Thrissur District Library Council.

The Justice remarked that though Internet and Information Technology has made possible the retrieval of required piece of information from the whole universe of knowledge within seconds, we can not rely on all the information we get. The Internet is also misused. Most of the content available at present through Internet is developed in USA or other countries so as to protect their interests. Hence is biased and we can not believe all that we get. We have to concentrate on developing our own content in digital media on our culture, ancient sciences and the like which can help sustainable development of the nation; and should be available on Internet for the use of our people. Only then Information Technology will become useful.

Author Shri R Raman Nair stated that the intention of the book is to help librarians and academicians to tap the benefits of Internet for providing information services and for retrieving documents and information required for research, teaching, learning or leisure.

Greek specialist MLS LaserLock International, provides security for a different, but equal important Information Society constituency - software producers. Many market leaders now use the company's products to protect their intellectual property rights.

Software piracy is very big business indeed, and the falling price of CD writer drives has made the problem worse. Worldwide, illegal copying costs the software industry an estimated Euro billion each year, inflating the cost of legally purchased products, and raising artificial barriers to innovative new software technologies.

LaserLock is the first complete software copy protection system developed especially for the CDROM. Combining sophisticated code encryption software, a physical CD signature created during a special mastering process, and state-of-the-art debug prevention engineering embedded in the encryption code, it provides high security, low-cost protection against illegal reproduction and remastering.

According to the company, the concept behind the latest version of the product is unique. It uses an analogue locking parameter to protect digital data, offering flexibility and ease of use to developers, transparency to legitimate end-users - and an impenetrable barrier to pirates and hackers.

Move over http://www.amazon.com. The largest web site for Indian books is coming from the house of UBS Publishers' Distributors (UBSPD) and Indian books will soon be just a mouse click away.

"Our Site, which should be ready by August, 1999 will offer some 15000 Indian titles from 700 publishers," said Mr. Sukumar Das, Executive Director of the Delhi-based publisher and bookseller UBSPD.

Mr. Das said, initially only English titles printed and published from India will be available from the UBSPD site. Later the bookseller will also offer vernacular titles in all regional languages. He also said web site was being developed along the lines of the one that Amazon.com has. The books will be listed on the site under three classifications of titles, authors and subjects. The site will offer chat room feature for online book lovers and will also have the facility for readers in review books.

Surfers will have the option to order out of print books and UBSPD's knowledge of the book trade will help it to locate such out of print titles, Mr. Das said.

He said UBSPD was also planning to get into digital publishing. Digital publishing helps a publisher to print books in small numbers. "Books which have a small niche market are ideal for digital publishing," Mr. das said. This will help the company to reduce expenditure on inventory management, he said.

Apart from publishing books, UBSPD is also looking at the emerging CDROM publishing market. The publisher will first come out with a CDROM on 'Books in Print' to the Indian market.