Italian Media Company Sues YouTube

Italian media conglomerate Mediaset Group has sued YouTube for €500 million (US$780 million), alleging the Google video-sharing site illegally hosts thousands of video clips that belong to Mediaset.

The suit, filed in civil court in Rome, names both YouTube and parent company Google. Mediaset operates television stations in Italy and Spain and produces films and TV shows. Its vice chairman, Pier Silvio Berlusconi, is the son of Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, who is also a media tycoon.

The company claims that on June 10, there were 4,643 video clips on YouTube, totalling more than 325 hours of material, owned by Mediaset. The company believes that as a result, its three Italian TV stations have lost 315,672 viewing days. The €500 million claim does not include the loss of advertising revenues from the shows.

YouTube is already grappling with a $1 billion copyright lawsuit by U.S. media giant Viacom, which similarly claims its content is offered on YouTube without permission.

YouTube has said its policy is to remove infringing clips if media owners complain.

Google officials were not immediately available for comment.

Soundsnap: User-Generated Royalty-Free Audio Samples to Mix

So you’re a music prodigy. You’ve got something in mind for a new tune or “composition” and you need some kind of special effect to really get the sound you crave. Maybe you’re looking for some real-world ambiance, some background noise to channel Pink Floyd or Nellie McKay (sure didn’t think those two would pop up next to one another, eh?) or some other theatrical act. What do you do? Well, you could probably find some producer with a catalogue of odd samples to add to your mix. Or you could you save the effort - and the cash - and instead head on over to Soundsnap.

Soundsnap is an online resource that promises to share “pro-quality” sounds, samples and loops with the world of audio experimentalists and songsmiths without any cost to the end user. Yes, royalty-free, non-exclusive, sublicense-transferable and high-fidelity recordings are what the site is advertising, and having given it a good once-over, I’ve concluded that for those of you out there who like to dabble and like to assemble lots of little things into larger, interesting things, the site is a real pleasure to use.

With an archive of some 30,000+ audio clips, ranging in length from seconds to minutes, the volume of material that you can piece together and mold at will is fairly immense. Big enough for spark some new ideas, for sure. What’s more, the library presented by Soundsnap is almost entirely user generated and user supplied. Only at its very start did the site require the investment of time and talent by a number of sound designers and producers to get things rolling.

Indeed, if you feel so inclined as to contribute a riff or some other amusing recording, you may do so, and your piece(s) to the grander puzzle even has a good chance of being recognized and perhaps even utilized. In the category labeled ‘Interiors,’ which one might suspect would be seen as obscure and relatively barren and unappealing to visitors, Soundsnap shows that some of the most recent contributions have been sampled and downloaded hundreds of times. A 55-second clip of sounds emanating within a cafe in Tokyo, Japan, racks a 3-star rating and has been downloaded 374 times and counting, either as an MP3 or AIFF file. Surprising? I think so. Intriguing as well.

The interface provided by Soundsnap is an intuitive one. Genres are easy to decipher and icons are similarly simplified. You spend a few seconds browsing its homepage and any substrata and you’re immediately get it. Which is a good thing. It turns visitors into repeat users, which really quite crucial to making this type of service work and work well. If it weren’t so easy to use, it wouldn’t garner the attention is has thus far.

All in all, I’d very much recommend any audio geeks to give Soundsnap a try. You may not find precisely what you’re looking for. But I’m almost certain that anyone interested in sound samples of extraordinary varieties will find something that catches their ear.

Curious as to how Sounsnap survives? It’s a mix of advertising and sponsorships, of which it lists Digidesign, Ableton, Novation, Focusrite, and Propellerhead as partnerships underwriting the project. Soundsnap, open to the public since July 2007, is run by a Greek sound designer and engineer by the name of Tazos Frantzolas who’s spent the last 5 years residing in London, England.

Official Google Blog: Encouraging people to contribute knowledge

The web contains an enormous amount of information, and Google has helped to make that information more easily accessible by providing pretty good search facilities. But not everything is written nor is everything well organized to make it easily discoverable. There are millions of people who possess useful knowledge that they would love to share, and there are billions of people who can benefit from it. We believe that many do not share that knowledge today simply because it is not easy enough to do that. The challenge posed to us by Larry, Sergey and Eric was to find a way to help people share their knowledge. This is our main goal.

Earlier this week, we started inviting a selected group of people to try a new, free tool that we are calling "knol", which stands for a unit of knowledge. Our goal is to encourage people who know a particular subject to write an authoritative article about it. The tool is still in development and this is just the first phase of testing. For now, using it is by invitation only. But we wanted to share with everyone the basic premises and goals behind this project.

The key idea behind the knol project is to highlight authors. Books have authors' names right on the cover, news articles have bylines, scientific articles always have authors -- but somehow the web evolved without a strong standard to keep authors names highlighted. We believe that knowing who wrote what will significantly help users make better use of web content. At the heart, a knol is just a web page; we use the word "knol" as the name of the project and as an instance of an article interchangeably. It is well-organized, nicely presented, and has a distinct look and feel, but it is still just a web page. Google will provide easy-to-use tools for writing, editing, and so on, and it will provide free hosting of the content. Writers only need to write; we'll do the rest.

A knol on a particular topic is meant to be the first thing someone who searches for this topic for the first time will want to read. The goal is for knols to cover all topics, from scientific concepts, to medical information, from geographical and historical, to entertainment, from product information, to how-to-fix-it instructions. Google will not serve as an editor in any way, and will not bless any content. All editorial responsibilities and control will rest with the authors. We hope that knols will include the opinions and points of view of the authors who will put their reputation on the line. Anyone will be free to write. For many topics, there will likely be competing knols on the same subject. Competition of ideas is a good thing.

Knols will include strong community tools. People will be able to submit comments, questions, edits, additional content, and so on. Anyone will be able to rate a knol or write a review of it. Knols will also include references and links to additional information. At the discretion of the author, a knol may include ads. If an author chooses to include ads, Google will provide the author with substantial revenue share from the proceeds of those ads.

Once testing is completed, participation in knols will be completely open, and we cannot expect that all of them will be of high quality. Our job in Search Quality will be to rank the knols appropriately when they appear in Google search results. We are quite experienced with ranking web pages, and we feel confident that we will be up to the challenge. We are very excited by the potential to substantially increase the dissemination of knowledge.

We do not want to build a walled garden of content; we want to disseminate it as widely as possible. Google will not ask for any exclusivity on any of this content and will make that content available to any other search engine.

As always, a picture is worth a thousands words, so an example of a knol is below (double-click on the image to see the page in full). The main content is real, and we encourage you to read it (you may sleep better afterwards!), but most of the meta-data -- like reviews, ratings, and comments -- are not real, because, of course, this has not been in the public eye as yet. Again, this is a preliminary version.

html2pdf : Convert Html to PDF

Why would you convert HTML to PDF? Have you ever hit your browser print button, only to find that the printed version of the HTML page has cut off the right side of the page? When you use VeryPDF-HTML2PDF to convert HTML to PDF, you don't have that problem.

HTML2PDF is a simple HTML to PDF tool which can quickly and easily convert thousands of HTML pages into PDF reports.

HTML2PDF (include PDFcamp + DocConverter COM) is the easiest way to convert your web pages and DOC, RTF, TXT, PPT, XLS files into PDF documents, HTML2PDF quickly and accurately transforms well-formed HTML, DOC, RTF, TXT, PPT, XLS files into PDF files, the HTML2PDF supports both server and client sides, the end-user doesn't need any software (Adobe Acrobat and Reader NOT required).

HTML2PDF (include PDFcamp + DocConverter COM) offers you the flexibility and speed you need to convert multiple HTML, DOC, RTF, TXT, PPT, XLS files into PDF format. Whatever the reason, pdf files can be created directly from MS Internet Explorer (or at background) and even emailed to a recipient/recipients simultaneously.

HTML2PDF Features:

• HTML2PDF can create page headers, footers and page numbers
• HTML2PDF can convert HTML, DOC, RTF, TXT, PPT, XLS files to PDF files on the fly
• HTML2PDF supports adjust paper orientation and size to accommodate HTML documents
• HTML2PDF supports nested tables
• HTML2PDF supports all elements in HTML document, include asp, cgi, css, Java Applets, flash, cookie etc.
• HTML2PDF supports dynamic page breaks with headers and footers
• HTML2PDF supports convert a URL or local file to PDF file
• HTML2PDF can convert .doc/.html/.rtf/.txt/.xls etc files to PDF files from a Command Line Tool, this Tool without any user intervention
• HTML2PDF supports command line operation (for manual use or inclusion in scripts)
• more...

How convert a HTML, DOC, RTF, TXT, PPT, XLS files to PDF files with DocConverter COM?
Step 1:
Please download and install the PDFcamp (PDF Writer) software,
http://www.verypdf.com/pdfcamp/pdfcamp_setup.exe
Step 2:
Please download and register the DocConverter COM software,
http://www.toppdf.com/pdfcamp/doc2pdf_com_trial.zip
Please register the pdfout.dll file in your system, for example,
~~~~~~~~~~~
regsvr32 pdfout.dll
~~~~~~~~~~~
Step 3:
Please run the html2pdf.exe software from the Command Line Window to try, the html2pdf.exe software is included in the DocConverter COM package,
For example:

• html2pdf.exe "http://www.yahoo.com" "c:\yahoo.pdf"
• html2pdf.exe "http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=pdf" "c:\google.pdf"
• html2pdf.exe "C:\example.doc" "C:\example.pdf"
• html2pdf.exe "C:\example.xls" "C:\example.pdf"
  

Step 4:
Congratulations! You have converted HTML, DOC, RTF, TXT, PPT, XLS files to PDF documents now.
Step 5:
Now, you can call the html2pdf.exe software from your Delphi, C++, VB, BCB etc. applications.

HTML2PDF - Converting your HTML, DOC, RTF, TXT, PPT, XLS files to PDFs has never been easier! Combine several of your HTML, DOC, RTF, TXT, PPT, XLS files into a single PDF file. Convert a HTML file into a PDF file, or convert ANY file format to PDF file! Now choose from more options when converting your HTML, DOC, RTF, TXT, PPT, XLS files to PDF! HTML2PDF has the ability to add embedded fonts, security options, and more to your PDF output. Click here to learn more..

HTTrack website copier

HTTrack is an easy-use offline browser utility. It allows you to transfer a World Wide Web site from the Internet to a local directory, building recursively all structures, getting html, images, and other files from the server to your computer.

Links are rebuilt relatively so that you can freely browse to the local site (works with any browser). You can mirror several sites together so that you can jump from one to another. You can, also, update an existing mirror site, or continue an interrupted transfer. The robot is fully configurable, with many options and features. The program is Open Source.

SoftSea.com had fully tested, reviewed and uploaded the install files, WinHTTrack does not contain any adware or spyware, the latest version is 3.40-2, you can download this offline browser software (3.27 MB) from special server of SoftSea.com. The license of this internet software is Freeware, you can free download and free use this Internet software.

A few non-critical settings such as language, window attributes and recent file list are written to the Windows registry.

Online Flash Effect Generator

The Effect Generator is whole new way of creating Flash content online for free, within a simple but powerful what-you-see-is-what-you-get drag-and-drop graphical editing environment.

The Effect Generator lets you select from whole multitudes of transitions, layouts, animations and public media, so your imagination is the only limit. The site also contains a moderately-sized template library, which, aside from illustrating the power of the effect building system, also lets you rapidly configure stock effects.

Once created, effects can be rapidly posted to blogs, social networks, or any custom HTML page.

The left sidebar contains the necessary tools for making your Flash slideshows, you can add photos, text, shapes etc. You can add several animation effects for your flash slideshows or movies. The created flash slideshows can be shared via social networks, blogs by embedding. I have embedded a slideshow below for demo purpose.The Effect Generator is a good tool if you are looking for a good tool to create flash slideshows online.

30 essential PDF documents every designer should download

Well it took me a lot longer than I had originally expected but I was able to track down the original links to more than thirty PDF documents that I have collected over the past couple of years. I have personally archived every one of these files due to the high quality of content. No matter what you call them; ebook, white paper, or resource they all contain information that no designer should go without. (In actuality there are more than 30 files however it was a good round number for the title…)

RESOURCES

YAHOO! Design Pattern Library

The WordPress Help Sheet

The Advanced WordPress Help Sheet

AIGA | Aquent Salary Survey

AIGA Why Design? Booklet

Type Classification eBook - Jacob Cass

WEB DEVELOPMENT & PROGRAMMING

Getting Real - 37signals (Read Online for Free)

DotMobi Mobile Web Developer’s Guide

Accessibility Checklist - Aaron Cannon

CSS Selectors Cheat Sheet - Cameron Moll

CSS Support in Email Clients

Dive Into Accessibility

PRESENTATIONS

Design is in the Details - Naz Hamid

Grids are Good - Khoi Vinh & Mark Boulton

Destroy the “Web 2.0 Look” - Elliot Jay Stocks

Print is the New Web - Elliot Jay Stocks

Creating Content for the Web - Naz Hamid

Elegant Web Typography - Jeff Croft

Entrepreneurs on Rails - Dan Benjamin

Bulletproof Web Design - Dan Cederholm

Interface Design Juggling - Dan Cederholm

FREELANCING & INCOME

Web Designer’s Success Guide

Passive Income Guide - Freelance Switch

Time Management for Creative People - Mark McGuinness

A Primer in Social Media - SmashLAB

Contingency Design - 37signals

Introduction to Good Usability - Peter Pixel

How to Be Creative - Hugh MacLeod

PDF COLLECTIONS

Creative Latitude Business Resources

Computer Arts Tutorials

AIGA Design & Business Forms