FYI France: Conf.des Grandes Ecoles -- Multimedia (?) and France This month's issue presents a list of France and US "multimedia" resources, and an appeal for some help in extending and refining it. The list is online for the Confe'rence des Grandes Ecoles International Symposium III, meeting May 27 - 30 in Sophia Antipolis in France (see FYI France, May 1 Extra issue -- I can answer questions about the Symposium if you would send me email), so the references are biased toward France and things of interest to the French. Suggestions from anyone here who might have interests in either or both multimedia and France would be appreciated very much. Jack Kessler kessler@well.sf.ca.us XXX France hosts the Cannes Film Festival (this week!), and it invented ballet and a lot of what goes into modern art and music and drama; and their movie industry is smarting -- badly -- at the moment under Hollywood pressures. So there is a great and growing interest in France in "multimedia", whatever that is. The French also are very interested in the Internet. They invented the Minitel, and French Internet usage and growth figures have been among the highest in the world recently. Several government initiatives in France are busy "wiring" everything in sight within the "hexagone". So "multimedia" applications have a fascination for the French by virtue of their Internet association, as well. What follows, then, is a little "multimedia" resource list which I have prepared for the upcoming International Symposium III, hosted by the Confe'rence des Grandes Ecoles and MIT and UCB Berkeley: at Sophia Antipolis, just up the road from Cannes, May 27 - 30 -- see FYI France Extra May 1 -- full symposium details may be found at, http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/IS3/ . The list makes no pretensions at being comprehensive: "Internet" coupled with "comprehensive list" forms an oxymoron. And it is only one user's list, designed to fit on a couple of pages of a conference posting. But the list does make some attempt at being useful, which is more than many "information overload" Internet lists do: when I do searches on Internet indexes nowadays I normally get 2 or 3 million retrievals, pared down only by some highly - suspicious relevance ranking routines: here I have tried to find only things which beginning users in France and the US might really find interesting. And no I don't myself know what "multimedia" is. I have heard the term used to describe the movies, video games, electronic journals, Internet telephony, pop - up books, video - conferencing, performance art, the ballet, poetry readings, newspaper comics, medieval Miracle Plays, Greek drama, the entire cdrom industry, Internet Relay Chat, and all of grand opera. Dieter Rot's books were "multimedia", as I remember, as was Schwitter's "twitter machine" and just about everything which Jean Tinguely ever did. Adding "digital" to "multimedia" might help a bit for now; but because increasingly everything can be digitized -- including art and drama and live performance -- ultimately "digital" just gets us back to where we started, on the definition. Perhaps "the truth is in the labeling", as Madison Avenue says: perhaps the best we all can do for now is to follow all the disparate threads of the "multimedia" discussion as best we can, at least until the label settles down and some government agency decrees its official meaning, or until someone really starts making lots of money from it: by then it won't be much fun anymore, anyway. The following list isn't finished -- the conference isn't for two weeks yet, and we all know that a Website can change (not easily, but it can be done) -- so additions and deletions and corrections will be gratefully accepted via email to kessler@well.sf.ca.us . XXX Outline handout for the Confe'rence des Grandes Ecoles / MIT / UC Berkeley "International Symposium III", May 27 - 30, Sophia Antipolis: May 15, 1996 How to Get in Touch and Stay in Touch with Developments in Multimedia by Jack Kessler, kessler@well.sf.ca.us The following list offers two things: A. Some Multimedia Resources Online, 1.00 In France 2.00 In the US 3.00 Elsewhere 4.00 And, Tools... B. And How to Get Them [omitted in this FYI France version. jk] A. Some Multimedia resources online: what follows is only a personal selection... among many hundreds of possibilities to be found just online -- 1.00 In France * http://www.cicv.fr/PAGES/ECOLES/france.html -- A list of educational institutions in France which offer multimedia training, with contact information. * http://www.Imaginet.fr/~fcm/ -- Commercial site containing links to online cinema offerings and news. * http://www.ita.doc.gov/industry/computers/mkt11.txt -- US Embassy Paris newsletter on annual "MILIA, a trade show for multimedia applications" held in Cannes. * http://www.msh-paris.fr/~leca/ -- Philippe Leca's personal selection of a large variety of Multimedia (and other Internet) links. [Leca's is only one among many such personal selections to be found online.] * http://www.adit.fr/Produits/DT/DatDT/DT94MUL.html -- order form / bon de commande for a report, "France Facing the Multimedia Sweepstakes" / "La France face aux enjeux du Multime'dia" (20 pages, 527.50 francs, no indication of its date), by ADIT / Agence pour la Diffusion de l'Information Technologique -- "e'tab. public caract. industriel commercial / Min.s Industr, De'f, Econ.". * http://www.nh.fr/CNET/Teleamphi.html -- Tele - conferencing offering of France Te'le'com: "communications interpersonnelles multime'dia". * http://www.ensica.fr/~mmm96/ -- MultiMedia Modeling 96. W3 homepage for the "Third International Conference on Multimedia Modeling" to be held in Toulouse, France, Nov 12 - 15 1996. Sponsors include IFIP W.G. 5.10 (computer graphics and virtual worlds), The Computer Graphics Society, ACM (requested), IEEE (requested), LAAS - CNRS / Laboratoire d'Analyse et d'Architecture des Syste`mes - CNRS, ENSICA / Ecole Nationale Supe'rieure d'Inge'nieurs de Constructions Ae'ronautiques: to be held at ENSICA. "A forum for presentation of the state of the art in the representaiton, processing, interaction, integration and retrieval of multimedia information...". * http://www.ccett.fr/ -- CCETT / Centre Commun d'Etudes de Te'le'diffusion et Te'le'communications. A France Te'le'com group for audiovisual and multimedia technologies. * bhttp://www.cd-rama.cie.fr/ -- CD - RAMA magazine. French multimedia magazine. Online calendar and archive, and a good list of links. * http://www.bull.com/ -- Socie'te' Bull, the largest French computer company. * http://www.rpnews.com/ -- RP News. French multimedia weekly newsletter. * http://www.mmania.com/ -- The Virtual Baguette. Wonderfully - entitled bi - lingual multimedia newsletter. * http://www.festival-cannes.com/c/a/aca01.htm -- "Interactive Festival": "linked to the first "Multimedia Day" organised by Zenith Data Systems at the 49th International Film Festival in Cannes..." * http://sap.mit.edu/projects/mit-lyon/project.html -- "MIT <-> Lyon Information Transcript": cooperative MIT <-> Lyon Third International Art Biennale project, involving large (220+k bytes) but fascinating online image map, "IBM bilingual speech recognition engine", simultaneous (?) machine translation, voice synthesis, and international interactive access, although I can't get the links to work myself. * http://www.capmedia.fr/capwww.28/anglais/cintv_fr.htm -- Capmedia's links to French tv and movie offerings online. * http://www.francenet.fr/cine/cannes/ -- The Cannes Film Festival. * GRAPHIQUE-L -- econference: "a` propos du graphisme avec un grand 'G' (graphisme, image, hyperme'dia)" -- graphique-l@univ-lille1.fr * JAVA -- econference: "Java (le nouveau langage de Sun conc,u pour le Web)" -- java@u-strasbg.fr et cetera... many others. 2.00 In the US * http://www.bamta.org/ -- BAMTA / Bay Area Multimedia Technology Alliance. San Francisco "Bay Area" (including "Silicon Valley") group of US government, commercial, educational organizations working in digital multimedia. Newsletter available. * http://www.oracle.com/ -- Oracle, producer of, among many other things, the forthcoming "NC / Network Computer / Non - Computer". * http://www.sun.com/ -- Sun Microsystems. * http://www.aol.com/ -- America Online. * http://www.adobe.com/ -- Adobe. The Book Arts come to the Internet. * http://www.cisco.com/ -- Cisco. The leading problem of the Internet's multimedia, and of the Internet generally, is its bottlenecks. Cisco is the current world leader in solving this problem. * http://www.microsoft.com/ -- Mr. Bill Gates. And many multimedia developments. * http://www.paramount.com/ -- Paramount cinema. Content: what the public will consume as "multimedia". Now owned by a leading US cable TV provider, Viacom. Many others like this are becoming available now: Disney (!?), for example. * http://www.hotwired.com -- online version of a leading, some would say _the_ leading, US - based hi - tech / Internet / multimedia magazine. "Pop" format and style -- something to outrage people with -- but consistently - successful effort to stay on the "leading edge" of these things. * http://www.herring.com -- "Red Herring Magazine" (and online services) provides a good example of journalism entirely devoted to the business - side of Silicon Valley, now including regular and extensive coverage of Multimedia business events. It calls itself, "a smart new technology strategy and finance magazine": sort of the Bourse equivalent of the trendier "Wired". * http://www.well.com -- original home of much of the discussion and no small few of the ideas which contributed to the early evolution of digital information and networking. The Well / the Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link, founded by the "hippies" (French term) who produced the famous Whole Earth Access Catalog, still preserves its fine tradition of eclectic and amusing and very original discussion, on topics ranging from Multimedia to San Francisco driving habits to "The Grateful Dead". You'll find most people / entities in San Francisco's "Multimedia Gulch" online on The Well. * http://www.liber.net/law-france/ -- Law - France: indispensable resource for those interested in, and with confidence that there are answers to, the questions of copyright which inevitably come up in multimedia discussions. In French and English: econference attached. * MMDEVX -- "MMDEVX is an electronic mailing list for multimedia developers & programmers interested in cross-platform multimedia tools & authoring environments" -- email to MMDEVX-request@knex.mind.org saying, only, SUBSCRIBE 3.00 Elsewhere * http://www.nlc-bnc.ca/ifla/VII/s21/p1995/sitp2.htm -- Inventory of Multimedia Software * http://viswiz.gmd.de/MultimediaInfo -- Index to Multimedia Information Sources -- invaluable starting point in the subject, for the US, France, wherever * http://www.nic.in/announcements/MM96/ -- "Multimedia '96 -- International Conference on Multimedia Information Systems, 25 - 29 February 1996, Venue: The Hotel Taj Palace, New Delhi" * http://www.wave7.com/cdm96/ -- "Multimedia '96/China -- The Second International Exhibition of Technologies and Applications of Multimedia, April 23- 26 1996, Beijing International Convention Center" * IMAGE-L -- "Image Processing and Applications e-conference" -- email to listserv@vm3090.ege.edu.tr saying, only, SUBSCRIBE * MMEDIA-L -- "The Multimedia e-conference" -- email to listserv@itesmvf1.rzs.itesm.mx saying, only, SUBSCRIBE 4.00 And, Tools -- The best way to find things about "Multimedia" or anything else online, as these things multiply and change, is to become familiar with and to use the online indexes: among these are -- http://www.altavista.digital.com -- DEC's "Altavista", currently the largest and fastest; http://magellan.mckinley.com -- "Magellan" offers its own very useful judgments about which sites are good and no - so - good; http://www.yahoo.com -- "Yahoo" offers good subdivided indexing, for narrowing down searches; http://www.cs.colostate.edu/~dreiling/smartform.html -- "SavvySearch" allows you to pursue a single search easily over multiple search engines; -- try searching these for "Multimedia", but then when you retrieve for example "Altavista's" 900,000+ entries, try looking at the various sophisticated ways which these search engines offer for narrowing your search -- the problem no longer is too little information. B. And How to Get Them [about ISP's / WSP's in France and elsewhere, and some general notes on the effective use of all of this -- omitted in this FYI France version. jk] XXX FYIFrance (sm)(tm) e - newsletter ISSN 1071 - 5916 * | FYIFrance (sm)(tm) is a monthly electronic newsletter, | published since 1992 as a small - scale, personal, | experiment, in the creation of large - scale | "information overload", by Jack Kessler. Any material / \ written by me which appears in FYIFrance may be ----- copied and used by anyone for any good purpose, so // \\ long as, a) they give me credit and show my e - mail --------- address and, b) it isn't going to make them money: if // \\ if it is going to make them money, they must get my permission in advance, and share some of the money which they get with me. Use of material written by others requires their permission. FYIFrance archives may be reached online at http://infolib.berkeley.edu , or via gopher to infolib.berkeley.edu 72 (path: 3. Electronic Journals (Library-Oriented)/ 6. FYIFrance/ or http://www.univ-rennes1.fr/LISTES/biblio-fr@univ-rennes1.fr/ (BIBLIO-FR econference archive), or gopher.well.sf.ca.us , or via telnet to a.cni.org , login brsuser (PACS / PACS-L econference archive). Suggestions, reactions, criticisms, praise, and poison - pen letters all will be gratefully received at kessler@well.sf.ca.us . Copyright 1992 by Jack Kessler, all rights reserved. XXX end