Google Gets Earthier

Google has acquired the mapping company Endoxon:

Endoxon is a developer of internet mapping solutions, mobile services, data processing, cartography, direct marketing and the Trinity software suite. Since 1988, Endoxon and its 75 employees have created ground-breaking solutions for a wide variety of geographic needs. Endoxon is a pioneer in AJAX mapping technologies. Endoxon technologies enable the integration and processing of geo-referenced data and high-resolution aerial and satellite images for dynamic internet and mobile services.

What's interesting about this is that it shows Google pushing forward in the field of mapping, cartography and 3D interfaces - and area that is emerging as increasingly important. (Via Ogle Earth.)

EU OSS for OA

Here's the EU and International Atomic Energy Authority trumpeting all sorts of stuff, including the fact that the former's Joint Research Centre:

has developed software which monitors a wide range of open access sources such as news articles, research papers, reports and satellite images.

The ever-perceptive Peter Suber comments:

I'd like to see the EU make the software public and open the source code. I'm assuming it works with a separable database of cues and sources relevant to nuclear non-proliferation, which could remain classified. The software was developed at public expense, has general utility, and could serve another urgent public purpose: accelerating scientific research. It wouldn't be the only text-mining application around, but I'm assuming that the IAEA wouldn't have chosen it unless it had some strengths missing from other packages. The public gains when new tools and access policies make public research more useful than it already is --and OA benefits when new tools give authors and publishers an extra incentive to make their work OA.

Charlie is Not My Darling

'McPatent' McCreevy is at it again:

In the context of the debate about the resolution of the European Parliament on future patent policy the EU Commission will press ahead with an official communication and an action plan of its own and will thereby seek to support the much criticized European Patent Litigation Agreement, Charlie McCreevy, the European Commissioner for Internal Market and Services, told the European Parliament during a plenary session in Strasburg on Thursday.

And there was a telling quotation:

"compared to our major trading partners, Europe is losing ground," Mr. McCreevy, referring to the patent systems in, for example, the United States and Japan, critically observed.

He's clearly referring to the number of patents in Europe (too low), and their quality (too high) compared to those in the US and Japan. But don't worry, Chas'll fix it....

UK PubMed Central: Good News, Bad News?

The US PubMed Central service has become one of the cornerstones of biomedical research, and a major milestone on the way towards full open access to all scientific knowledge.

Just as the world's central genomic database GenBank exists in three global zones - the US, Europe and Japan - so the natural step would be to roll out PubMed Central as an international service. The first move towards that has now been made with the announcement that a consortium of UK institutions has been chosen to set up UK PubMed Central (UKPMC). That's the good news. The bad news - maybe - is that one of them is the British Library.

Why is that bad news, since the British Library is one of the pre-eminent libraries in the world? Well, that may be so, but it is also deeply involved with Microsoft's Open XML, the rival to OpenDocument Format; Microsoft is trying to push Open XML through a standardisation process to match ODF's full ISO status. It is particularly regrettable that the British Library is bolstering this pseudo-standard with its support, rather than wholeheartedly backing ODF, a totally open, vendor-independent standard, and this could be real problem because of the British Library's role in the UKPMC consortium:

In the initial stages of the UKPMC programme, the British Library will lead on setting up the service, developing the process for handling author submissions and marketing the resource to the research community.

It's the "handling authors submissions" that could be bad news: if, for example, the British Library gave any preference for submissions be made in Microsoft's XML format formats, it would be a huge step back for openness. The US PubMed Central does the Right Thing, and takes submissions in either XML or SGML. Let's hope the UK PubMed Central follows suit and goes for a neutral submissions policy. (Via Open Access News.)

Are Coders Beginning to Get the Message?

The Reg has a good summary of the European Commission's initial findings from its public consultation on Europe's patent system. For me, the most interesting statistic to emerge is that 24% of those who replied came from the open source and software developers community. This says to me that people there are beginning to get the message that they must become involved if they want to change things. Maybe there's hope after all.

Fab Firefox Figures

The Fox just keeps on flying.

Latest figures from the French research company Xiti show that across Europe Firefox now commands 20% of the browser market. The even-better news: weekday usage nearly matches weekend use, suggesting that businesses are big converts, too. The bad news: the UK lags miserably, with just 11% usage. Come on, what's wrong with you lot?