Most of us hate standing in queues or filling out forms, however patiently we suffer them. Electronic documents and signatures could save hours of our time running to offices and waiting for our identities and details to be checked, but attempts by governments and companies to use them have tended to be patchy. That is quickly changing, however, thanks to the results of an ambitious project, which has developed revolutionary global solutions.

Five years ago, developers at digital security solutions specialist Gemalto realised governments were increasingly introducing electronic passports or electronic identity documents and more and more telecoms operators were piloting new services where consumers could buy goods using technologies such as SMS. However, they believed for e-identity documents or mobile transaction systems to be useful they needed to be recognised by more than one government or mobile operator and use a few common security and transaction standards in a similar way to credit cards.

Gemalto teamed up with 15 other companies from six European countries to develop a set of international standards related to e-identity and mobile transactions and to demonstrate concrete implementation of these standards. At the heart of the project were advanced prototypes for new generation of e-ID cards or SIM devices. They called the project Onom@Topic+.

At a European level, they saw one clear tangible benefit for citizens: the possibility to access e-government services in other countries on the same basis as their own. “We wanted European citizens to be able to access the same services in other member countries as at home” says Jean-Pierre Tual, Industrial Relations Director at Gemalto. For that purpose, the project partners defined all the background specifications for a new standard for European electronic identity documents using a smartcard system, called IAS-ECC -Identification Authentication Signature -European Citizen Card-.

On the mobile telecommunications side, the project found innovative solutions using the increasingly popular Near Field Technology, allowing the wireless exchange of data between two electronic devices.  This technology breakthrough enabled the partners to make successful proposals to the international standardisation bodies.

Technically, the project was extremely ambitious and led to complex software developments. On the hardware side, special microchips for smart-cards were developed- very secure microprocessors incorporating advanced cryptographic material on which an individual’s data could be stored, such as name, a photo and even other biometric data like fingerprints-. The proper handling of security issues was a major point, because for governments or other bodies like operators to be convinced enough to adopt the technologies from the project, they would have to be sure they would protect the e-id cards or SIM devices from being forged.

Smartcard and chip makers, mobile operators, handset manufacturers, software editors, electronics designers and biometric specialists were just some of the experts on board. The team divided into groups working on transversal domains such as security or contact-less and also into two vertical groups to tackle governmental requirements and commercial needs.

Over the three years of the project, which started in 2005, the partners held sub-project meetings monthly and the whole consortium met every three months to closely monitor progress. Special care was also taken to test all new concepts introduced: “The testing was very complicated,” recalls Tual. All components of the new technology had to be tested separately in all types of situations and the complete impossibility to clone the microchips had to be demonstrated.

“We were addressing a very broad technical subject and aiming at a very large market so we had to ensure we had a representative sample of European countries to be capable of doing it”.

In 2007 at the final review of the project the team demonstrated how microchip-based devices using their standards worked in practice. “In the mobile communication area, we showed new ways to manage electronic diaries, to allow for users to search and put information on the blog of a person using a mobile phone, or to order video-on-demand from your phone and play it at home on your own TV. In the e-government area, we showed how to exchange administrative data across borders controlled by interoperable e-id cards, demonstrated digital signature from on-card biometric checks or the incorporation of new very high-speed contact-less protocols in e-identity devices” says Tual.

The exploitation of project results has become a reality. In the e-government area, the IAS-ECC standard has become the reference standard for all new major e-ID programmes running in Europe.

The partners think the potential is even greater since there is a global trend towards electronic passports and the sharing of information between governmental agencies, ever since September 11, 2001, when some of the suicide bombers were found to be flying on fake passports. Since the end of 2006, the U.S. for instance, requires visitors to have electronic passports, a new generation of which is currently being developed.  New markets also opened for the project partners in the Gulf and South America. Onom@Topic+ has given birth to a new MEDEA+ project (BioP@ss) where these aspects are currently being explored.

Telecoms companies are also deploying new services using the standards developed in the project. The partners have contracts to develop customer payment or loyalty schemes using smartcards as well as ticket buying through mobiles. “The technology is used today by almost all telecoms operators developing this kind of services,” says Tual. “We developed some extremely clever solutions implemented in many pilots world-wide. We are confident that mass deployments will come soon.”

Today (Friday 13th August 2010) five members of the Challenge Europe Low carbon EntrepreneursProject (from Meath, Dublin, Belfast and the USA) will launch www.lowcarbonentrepreneurs.com, a website providing the information entrepreneurs need to start new businesses that take advantage of the emerging green economy.

“This is an information portal that helps entrepreneurs explore the commercial possibilities of low carbon technologies.  It provides an overview of the sector and provides links to more detailed information on funding and networking opportunities.  Our goal is for the website to be a ‘one-stop-shop’ of information for would-be and existing entrepreneurs.” Andrea Carroll, one of the five founders explains.

This all-island website will be going live on the 13th August and the occasion will be marked with a networking launch  event in The Greenhouse, Dublin at 6pm.  The event will include speakers from the British Council, Scandinavia and Irish Business.

Challenge Europe is a 3 year programme initiated by the British Council to encourage enterprising people from across Europe to create a project that makes a real difference to climate change. The five founders are working in the environment sector in Ireland.  Challenge Europe is supported by Cultivate, Comhar Sustainable Development Council Ireland, Sustainable Development Commission Northern Ireland and Business in the Community Northern Ireland.

Social CRM Workshops are now being hosted by DMC Software Solutions, leading Sage (UK) Business Partner and Overall Sage Circle of Excellence Winner 2009, with the intention of making social media more accessible for businesses.

With the rising importance of social media, businesses need to keep up with the various social avenues in order to remain fully competitive. In response, a new series of Social CRM Workshops are being hosted by DMC Software Solutions, leading Sage (UK) Business Partner and Overall Sage Circle of Excellence Winner 2009.

The release enables eLearning course creators to publish interactions developed by them to mobile phones that have Flash player support, such as Android, BlackBerry and others. With full screen customization window and dockable panels, the release also sports important user interface enhancements that enable easier customization of interactions.

“The ongoing revolution in mobile phones, tablets and handheld devices means that course creators have a unique opportunity to engage their learners in newer ways.” said Vikas Joshi, chairman and managing director of the Harbinger Group. “With this release, we are taking eLearning course delivery into these new media, and helping course creators to reach students, employees and other learners through these popular devices.”

With the new Raptivity 6.0 from Harbinger, course creators can also use their existing questions in the courses they create with Raptivity. This means that course creators with an existing library of questions can import them into Raptivity, and easily use them in Raptivity interactions. Other enhancements include the ability to edit images used in creating interactions and an asset library of commonly used images for creators’ use.

“We are constantly listening to our users and course creators around the world, and features added in this release are a direct result of our interactions with them,” said Seema Chaudhary, president of Harbinger Knowledge Products. “We know that the existing and new Raptivity users will be thrilled with the features we are bringing in with this release.”

About Raptivity

With Raptivity, users can create interactivity rapidly and add it conveniently to their eLearning content. With interactive content, learning experiences become memorable and drop-out levels go down.

Raptivity provides a pre-built library of rapidly-customizable interaction models. These interaction models are based on best practices in instructional design. Users can customize them to create any number of variations. The content published by Raptivity is a single flash file so it fits right into hundreds of eLearning tools and can be used anywhere. With its patent-pending technology and open architecture, Raptivity is at the forefront of rapid interactivity technology.

In 2007, Raptivity was the winner of the eLearning Guild Platinum Award for highest user satisfaction in the simulation tools category. Raptivity also won the gold award under the game tools category.

Raptivity was voted number one in two categories – time to proficiency and complex practice and assessment interaction building, according to a global survey by eLearning Guild. Another Guild survey ranked Raptivity number one in ease of use and integration with eLearning tools.

Raptivity also won the prestigious Technology & Learning’s 2007 Award of Excellence, judged by a panel of eminent educators in San Francisco.

For more information on Raptivity, visit http://www.raptivity.com

About Harbinger Knowledge Products

Harbinger Knowledge Products is recognized as a global leader in interactivity solutions for knowledge-sharing applications including learning, presentation and web development.

For two consecutive years, Deloitte has named Harbinger Knowledge Products among the fastest growing technology companies in its Technology Fast 500 Asia Pacific and Technology Fast 50 India programs.

Harbinger Knowledge Products is a part of Harbinger Group, which serves customers in over 45 countries through its offices in Pune (India), Redmond (WA, USA), San Jose (CA, USA), Pleasanton (CA, USA), London (UK) and through its partner network worldwide.

Harbinger’s patent-pending technology and sound thought leadership have resulted in groundbreaking products, including market-leading Raptivity, innovative YawnBuster and cutting-edge TeemingPod. Red Herring has named Harbinger amongst world’s top 100 private technology companies.

For more information, visit www.harbingerknowledge.com.

Media Contact:

Seema Chaudhary
President,
Harbinger Knowledge Products Inc.
Tel: 425.861.8400
Fax: 425.671.2641
PO Box 2827, Redmond,
WA 98073
seema@harbingergroup.com 

One of the difficulties facing many businesses and organisations today is that the increased need to provide effective, relevant and up to date health and safety training is costing a great deal of both time and money, with staff required to leave the business premises for hours or even days at a time, resulting in a great deal of disruption and additional expense. ComplyWise, a leading supplier of health and safety e learning in the UK represents a real solution that could save businesses time and money.

ComplyWise has been providing a range of health and safety e learning solutions for many years, with their catalogue of courses continuing to grow. Because ComplyWise offers computer based health and safety e learning that is available to businesses anywhere, anytime, staff can undertake their training in a much more positive way, fitting in training when it is convenient, rather than causing significant disruption. The health and safety e learning courses available from ComplyWise have been praised by many of those who have either delivered the course to their staff or by those who have completed the training themselves, with the clarity of information and ease of use resulting in widespread recommendations.

If your business or organization is in need or any health and safety training, including fire safety training, manual handling, stress management, personal safety or risk assessment training, visit ComplyWise and discover how their health and safety e learning packs could provide the training you need, without the inconvenience that threatens to disrupt business and cost both time and money. All health and safety e learning from ComplyWise is driven by up to date legislation and incorporates recommended guidelines provided directly by the Health & Safety Executive.

For more information about ComplyWise and their wide range of health and safety e learning opportunities available, visit their website at http://www.complywise.co.uk/

Pune Layar is an augmented reality (AR) application for mobile phones that enables users to find significant landmarks in and around Pune city. With a view to exploring the application of AR in the field of eLearning, Upside Learning had released this Layar back in April, making it India’s first crowd-sourced Layar.

After having received many eyeballs and being covered by some of the biggest newspapers (like Sakal, DNA, Indian Express, Sakal Times, Pune Times), Pune Layar has now managed to figure in one of the oldest and prestigious technology magazines in the country – PC Quest.

PC Quest is a premier Indian (PC) computer magazine providing online computer news, IT articles from India & abroad. The second oldest IT publication in the country, it is ranked as the number one magazine by IT purchase decision makers in helping them with their IT purchases. In its July 2010 issue, covered under the “Exploring MARS – The Renaissance of Reality”, the magazine talks about Pune Layar – its significance from the Indian perspective and that with regard to the growing market of smart phones. The article also details the developer’s angle behind this application and Upside learning’s take on the emerging technologies.

“To be featured in a magazine like PC Quest, is indeed a great honor. Positioned highly in the enterprise IT implementation space, the magazine is renowned for its stringent reviews and factual editorial pages. We hope to continue with our endeavor in exploring new technological avenues and developing advanced & innovative tools so as to bring better ways to solve problems and create solutions.”, said Amit Garg, Director of Content Solutions at Upside Learning,

About Upside Learning

Established in 2004, Upside Learning is a globally recognized leader in training outsourcing, custom e-learning development & LMS solutions. With a collective experience of 600+ person-years, it has successfully completed more than 300 corporate and academic projects for over 150 clients worldwide.

The company’s product & services portfolio ranges from Custom eLearning to Catalog Courses, Mobile Learning to Blended Learning, Learning Management Systems to Technical support services tailor-made to an organization be it an Enterprise, a SMB or a Training Company.

Upside Learning has been consistently picking up awards & other recognition every year, including the most recent, 3 Brandon Hall Excellence in Technology Awards for its flagship Learning Management System – UpsideLMS and Deloitte’s Technology Fast500 Asia Pacific Program award.

It is its constant endeavor to develop advanced & innovative learning solutions to provide cutting-edge solutions to its clients thereby impacting their organizational learning and hence, performance.

The partnership will involve co-marketing and future integration plans between Industrial Logic’s eLearning suite and market leading tools from JetBrains like ReSharper and IntelliJ IDEA.

Marketing director Ann Oreshnikova adds, “We are excited to partner with Industrial Logic. Their courseware provides an important component missing with most learning, as it provides instant feedback on productivity savings and efficiency of the developer. We look forward to working with them on tool and courseware integration to provide our users great materials in learning agile and development methodologies.”

“JetBrains is the market leader with professional tools for expert developers”, remarked Joshua Kerievsky. “They are a natural partner for us to co-market our series of Agile eLearning products. We will deeply integrate with their products to give our students the best productivity and learning experience possible.”

About JetBrains

JetBrains is a technology-leading software development firm specializing in the creation of intelligent, productivity-enhancing software. The company is widely known for its innovative, award-winning Java(TM) integrated development environment, IntelliJ(R) IDEA (see details on the Web at http://www.jetbrains.com/idea), ReSharper and dotTrace Profiler for .NET developers (see http://www.jetbrains.com/resharper, http://www.jetbrains.com/profiler), RubyMine for Ruby on Rails developers (http://www.jetbrains.com/ruby), and TeamCity – a continuous integration and build management environment (http://www.jetbrains.com/teamcity). JetBrains maintains its headquarters in Prague, Czech Republic, with its R&D labs located in St. Petersburg, Russia and Boston, Massachusetts. For more information, see http://www.jetbrains.com.

About Industrial Logic

Industrial Logic (http://industriallogic.com) is a recognized pioneer and leader in Extreme Programming (XP) and Lean Management. Since the late 1990s, the company has provided Agile assessments, coaching and training. Its expert coaches work with executives, managers, customers, programmers, testers, auditors and others to successfully transition people, teams and whole organizations to ultra lean agility. Industrial Logic’s dedication to efficiency and effectiveness has led them to create ground-breaking technical and managerial eLearning (http://industriallogic.com/shop) in agile values, principles and practices. If you are looking to “amplify your agility” using authentic, modern agile software development, please contact sales@industriallogic.com.

Two days after this announcement came word of another significant alliance for BN. Blackboard and BN will collaborate on a system of flexible access to etextbooks and other courseware within Blackboard Learn. This move is intended to integrate BN more centrally into the learning platforms of online courseware of higher education and potentially K-12 and other learning markets-a multi-billion dollar industry today, and growing.

Barnes & Noble bills itself as “the world’s largest bookseller and the nation’s highest rated bookselling brand.” Today, the company includes 775 retail bookstores and 636 campus bookstores serving more than 4 million students and 250,000 faculty members across the country.

According to the Statistical Abstract of the United States, 49% of all book purchases in 2000 were done online. In 2007 (the latest available data) this increased to 61%. Today’s bookselling powerhouses, BN, Borders, and Amazon, are each pursuing both online sales and ebooks.

Not to be left out of this mix is Google Editions, the long-promised venture with the American Booksellers Association (the trade group for U.S. independent bookstores), intended to make Google the primary source of finding and purchasing ebooks on the internet. Although the launch date for this collaboration has been moving, most expect the service to launch by early fall.

A longtime pioneer in the college bookselling industry, founder, and current chairman Leonard Riggio entered the bookselling industry by establishing Student Book Exchange in Greenwich Village in 1965. He purchased BN in 1971 and began building a chain that now has operations in both academe and storefronts in every state in the U.S. In 1998 BN dipped its toes into the digital marketplace with an investment in the Rocket eBook reader. This failure caused a refocusing of the corporation on superstores and other areas, leaving innovation in online bookselling to the upstart Amazon. Today, however, the company is clearly positioning itself to reclaim lost territory.
NOOKstudy-A Free, Platform-Independent Solution

No advanced copy of NOOKstudy was available for review. However, the product’s PR promises a variety of important features:

* Integration: NOOKstudy organizes your etextbooks, class handouts, course syllabi, lecture notes, and other electronic materials, making them easily and quickly accessible on your existing computer set-up.
* Organization: Course materials are presented and organized for easy, quick access to what you need, when you need it.
* Multitasking: Opening multiple textbooks at the same time or have pages from different books open simultaneously.
* Zooming: The ability to zero in on full-color diagrams or other elements in the material.
* Intelligent bookmarking: Automatically returning you to the last page you were reading.
* Instant access to key publishers and titles: Downloads of more than 1 million ebooks and etextbooks through BN or other sources.
* Notetaking, tagging, web-linking: Making notes directly in your etextbooks and tagging content using easy-to-search terms; highlighting and annotating important passages; marking questions for in-class discussion or even integrating information found in a web search.
* Integrated search capability: Easy searching through the entire text of a book or your own notes. Searching websites, such as Google and Dictionary.com, to look up definitions, formulas, or other information from NOOKstudy.

Tracey Weber, BN’s executive vice president for textbooks and digital education, notes that “NOOKstudy is a big win for college students. It will not only lighten their backpacks, but also help them save money and study more efficiently.” The company reports that the system is currently being tested at Pennsylvania State University, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, Queensboro Community College, Rochester Institute of Technology, and William & Mary.

“Students can download their textbooks on up to two devices and literally carry all of their textbooks with them,” notes William & Mary’s Carolyn Davis. “We also feel that the interactive feature of using this software will be appealing to students and faculty. It will be interesting to see how successful it will be. We have our fingers crossed!”
A Significant Move By a Retailing Giant

“The fact that this is being offered for free is significant,” says University of Minnesota Press director and editor-in-chief Douglas Armato. “Amazon’s Kindle hasn’t been able to move into the laptop domain, which is significant in terms of acceptance, especially for higher ed. The Kindle device suffers from the size of the display and lack of color-which are both significant for the academic marketplace. However, Kindle has an incredible title base today.”

Most analysts agree that the final, successful ebook product won’t involve proprietary readers or materials and will have to offer significant advantages and reasonable pricing for a global audience in order to fight off the enduring benefits of the printed book. Outsell’s Kate Worlock believes that “the real excitement in this market comes, I think, from the potential of moving outside the concept of the textbook. It is services like Pearson’s MyLab or WileyPLUS which show real developmental flair and effective usage of the digital medium. Just putting books on a screen doesn’t cut the mustard.”

“So far you could say academe has been underwhelmed. Students have been slower to adopt than the general public,” Armato notes. “The acceptance of etextbooks has been very marginal-3-5% up until now. There is the issue of publishers’ costs, author issues in terms of compensation for works, and students are imbedded with the ability to sell used books. All of this inertia works against the new technology.”

In the past 3 years, the prices of a Kindle and Sony Reader have been cut in half from $400 to $200. The displays, storage, and other features have improved significantly as well. Other options for accessing books and other materials electronically have also grown-from PDA and cellphones to netbooks and iPads. Efforts that would require an open (non-proprietary) solution have grown as well.

Downloading of free etexts is growing rapidly. The University of Virginia Library’s Electronic Text Center, for example, records millions of downloads of its free books and materials. Many courses already use free versions of materials-from Open Access, author’s posted copies, etc. -in their coursepacks. The issue isn’t acceptance of electronic versions as much as the quality, access, and pricing for them. If what you are being offered isn’t as good as what you already have, there is little incentive to change.

BN seems to be using well the lessons the corporation has learned over the years in its experiences with academic users. “NOOKstudy is a revolutionary approach to learning that offers students access to the reading and organizational tools they need, across all content sources and formats, enabling them to study smarter, not harder,” notes Weber. “It may not be the right learning tool for every student or every class but it does offer to be another affordable alternative to our students.”

“Now that the genie is out of the bottle, everyone will quickly duplicate this functionality. The eBook market is too competitive for any of the vendors to allow another to get a step ahead if they can possibly catch up. I imagine Amazon will offer similar functionality for the Kindle by August,” reports Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols, editor-in-chief of the Practical Technology blog. “I see this as giving BN a very brief lead. If it works well, then they may maintain momentum for two or three quarters. After that, everyone will have caught up.”

“Amazon and Apple don’t appear to be interested in this elearning marketplace,” Armato continues. “Google’s Google Editions brings them closer to the academic market, but they aren’t targeting texts. However, Google Editions could really shake things up as well. Maybe it will be Barnes & Noble that really moves that segment along.”

Senior IBISWorld analyst George Van Horn notes that BN “is obviously expanding the NOOK brand in order to appeal to multiple audiences-NOOKstudy for learning and NOOK ereader for entertainment readers. There should be some deferred benefits from a successful NOOKstudy that will help BN’s online bookstore, yet the benefits will occur over time, not immediately.”

“The Next Web” blogger Alex Wilhelm believes that “BN wants to get ahead in this market, their future depends on it, so they are building a new product and revenue stream that will boost their vanilla ebook efforts.”

Just as the music industry found itself completely reinvented by the onset of internet-based distribution and sales channels, the book publishing industry finds itself on the verge of a major distribution revolution as well.

“Barnes & Noble is the company to watch,” Armato concludes. “They have the most content-especially their backlists-for the academic market. The next 18 months are key to the development of this marketplace. The question is who will be able to capitalize on this opportunity? It takes high capital to invest in this area: Google, Amazon, and Apple have been the leaders in this area. Barnes & Noble is clearly joining this troika.”
Nancy Herther is anthropology/sociology librarian at the University of Minnesota Libraries, Minneapolis.

With KMx Mobile, end- users can access courses, learning objects, exams and surveys using their iPhone, Android, Blackberry or Microsoft handheld device with full learning management capabilities, including:

• Time tracking (when, by whom and for how long was the learning object accessed)
• Bookmarking (allowing the user to save their progress and return at a later time)
• Assessment Scoring and Remediation (recording each student response and tracking retakes)
• Survey and Performance Appraisal Delivery
• Pass/Fail and Completion Status Recording
• Real-time tracking with no post-lesson upload of progress information

“Our clients can now leverage mobile devices to deliver and administer performance appraisals and peer reviews, provide instant access to company experts via chat rooms and threaded discussion forums, and deliver a robust content repository for just-in-time training and to support workers in the field” said Brandi Lee, Vice President of Customer Service at KMSI.

The KMx SCORM Application Programming Interface (API) is the only full implementation of the learning standard that has been designed to support both online and offline use. With KMx Mobile the KMx core platform technology has been extended to provide support for most mobile devices and hand-held devices.

“It is really exciting to see health care providers, insurance agents, sales executives and workers from all industries access learning objects and assessments using mobile devices in the field, instead of having to break away from the task to find a workstation to access critical information. KMx mobile courseware can provide a rich media experience with audio, video, animations, exams, surveys, branching and interactivity” said Mike Binnix, CTO of KMSI.

KMSI has also included a full mobile collaboration suite with the KMx Mobile release. Collaboration features include mobile chat rooms, threaded discussion boards, surveys, performance evaluations, a searchable knowledge management system, a performance management system and talent management tools.

KMSI will be providing a FREE web seminar to introduce the courseware development and delivery options available for iPhone, Microsoft, Blackberry and Android mobile devices using KMx Mobile. Visit http://www.kmsi.us/white_paper13.htm (http://www.kmsi.us/white_paper13.htm) to learn more and register!

About KMSI: Knowledge Management Solutions, Inc. is a leading provider of innovative knowledge and learning management solutions for Fortune 2000 companies and government agencies. KMSI provides technologies and services that enable clients to achieve high performance by measuring and meeting the training, qualification and performance needs of management, employees, agents, partners, suppliers and customers.