Blogging journalists in Denmark are up in arms over a renewed effort by Danish newspaper publishers to stop websites like Google News from linking to individual articles rather than a newspaper's homepage. They call this “deep linking”, and it is precisely what bloggers usually do. Regardless of what is considered normal practice around the world, the Danish Association of Newspaper Publishers insist they only want homepage links, so they can better control the user experience.

Specifically, the Danish Newspaper Publishers Association are frustrated that Google News in Denmark wants to list and link to articles of Danish newspapers without paying them royalties.

Danish blogger, Peter Svarre writes, “AAAARRRRGH!” upon reading arguments against Google News.

I don’t really know whether I am in a state of shock, despair or outright frustrated rage, but after reading an article in Politiken I just realized that the traditional Danish media or at least the editorial board of [newspaper] Berlingske Tidende seems to have understood nothing and learned nothing of the last five years development on the Internet. What seems to be common sense and ordinary street knowledge for media and advertising people in New York is apparently exotic, dangerous, and threatening lore to the established Danish Media industry.

There was a similar dispute in Belgium in 2006-7, when newspapers there took Google News to court and according to Finfacts threatened to fine them €1 million a day if they kept linking. In Denmark, there are also precedents. In 2002, the Danish Newspaper Publishers Association took a Danish web company, Newsbooster, to court for emailing links to news articles to their customers. Newsbooster was forced to shut down.

Blogger Ricco Førgaard at Fiskeben.dk [Da] said in May:

Det er tydeligt, at disse såkaldte medier ikke har forstået en pind og ikke er kommet ud af 1994 endnu. De har ikke forstået, at det er trafikken på hjemmesiden, som sælger de (irriterende) reklamer, som efter sigende skal være med til at financiere nyhederne.

On Medieblogger, Lars K Jensen quotes [Da] from a recent email discussion on the mailing list of the Danish Online News Association (DONA), where the chief legal adviser from the Danish Union of Journalists, Anne Louise Schelin, responded to a question about the official rules for citation and linking.

Schelin advised, that one should never link to anything but a website's homepage, even in an email to colleagues about a specific article. The only redeeming factor would be whether a link could be considered “loyal,” she said, referring to a Danish court case between two real estate websites from 2006.

Others on the mailing list vehemently disagreed, calling it “nonsense from the fax generation”. Blog editor of Politiken newspaper, Kim Elmose published his response in his personal blog Mediehack, calling the resistance to deep linking counter productive, and pointed to the irony that most Danish journalists use Google News as a tool themselves.

Lars K Jensen asks in Medieblogger:

Tilbage sidder jeg med spørgsmålet: Hvad er et illoyalt link? Hvem definerer, hvornår et link er loyalt eller illoyalt?

Et link er vel et link?

And now I am left with the question. What is an un-loyal link? Who defines when a link is loyal or not?

Isn't a link just a link?

* Photo above of Danish newspapers is by Jacob Bøtter on Flickr.

• Content Commerce Pavilion is produced in partnership with VideoNuze and located within Content Central. This area will unite all members of the content community to facilitate business to business information sharing and innovation, explore opportunities and examine new business models for distributing content over next generation platforms.
  
  "I'm thrilled that VideoNuze is partnering with NAB to create the Content Commerce Pavilion at the 2009 NAB Show," said Will Richmond, editor and publisher of VideoNuze. "The broadband video industry is exploding with content and technology choices; this will be a premier opportunity to see the latest monetization, video platform, syndication, and ad support technologies that will expand audience reach for content owners."
• 
  
• Mobile Solutions Pavilion is produced in partnership with Mobile Entertainment Forum (MEF) and will showcase the latest in mobile technologies including: standards, handsets, advertising applications and end-to-end mobile solutions.
  
  "We are excited about our ongoing relationship with NAB and the partnership to help create the Mobile Solutions Pavilion at the 2009 NAB Show," said Jim Beddows, board chairman for MEF Americas. "The rapid acceleration of video consumed through mobile devices bodes well for cross-platform opportunities and for the content industry as a whole."
• 
  
• 3D Pavilion includes the latest in stereoscopic and auto stereoscopic technologies. This area will feature 3D software tools for content professionals looking to create cutting-edge 3D footage. Participating first time exhibitors include Phillips 3D Solutions and 3ality Digital.
  
  "Exhibiting at the NAB Show is vital for Philips 3D Solutions," said Bjorn Teuwsen, manager of marketing and communications at Phillips 3D Solutions. "The NAB credo 'where content comes to life,' will become reality when you experience the new dimension of our immersive 3D displays."
• 
  
• NHK Pavilion will include a super hi-vision theater and an integral 3D television system, a new development in 3D technology that reproduces the 3D effect in HDTV without being sensitive to viewer position. Japan's terrestrial digital broadcasting system, ISDB-T, will also be displayed at the pavilion, featuring an innovative application that shows how mobile DTV services can be utilized for emergency warning systems.

This is a guest post by Kathlyn Clore, Associate Editor at the European Journalism Centre who was kind enough to write this report for us after attending the press event.

A cadre of European politicians gathered Thursday at the Museum of the 18th century in Brussels to launch Europeana, a digital museum that allows visitors to explore classic paintings, photos, recordings and texts in the same manner in which it is possible to search, say, Amazon.com.

Trying to access Europeana on the day of its launch, though, was akin to navigating the Vatican Museums in the tourist-thick month of August. It was impossible to see anything, as the project’s three servers were totally overwhelmed.

The Commission said Saturday in a press release that the site received about 10 million hits per hour throughout Thursday - double server capacity. The site was taken down Friday evening and is expected to be back up in mid-December.

Europeana’s three servers are located in the Hague, where the project is headquartered, but programmers plan eventually to put mirror servers around the world.

A pair of Dutchmen programmed Europeana in about 10 weeks, said technical developer Eric Van der Meulen. They added the final two of 21 European languages, Finnish and Hungarian, at 7 p.m. on Wednesday.

Europeana, which is still in beta, was programmed using only open source applications, Van der Meulen said.

“Once we get the thing finished and stabilized, we want to be able to put this down as an open source application so other people can look at it and go, ‘Ok how did you do this?,’ and ‘Wow, maybe we can use this for something.’ The future of computing is open source and not only that but you can get a lot of input from all over the world this way.”

Technical challenges included harvesting and normalizing metadata from more than 1,000 different museums and libraries from around Europe. Half of participating cultural heritage institutions so far are French. The Louvre in Paris, the Institut National de l’Audiovisuel (which contributed footage shot on French battlefields in 1914) and the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam are three of the biggest participating museums.

Europeana is an outgrowth of The European Library, on which Van der Meulen also worked. But it has in the press been compared to Google’s Library Project. Copyright concerns are abundant in all three projects.

Viviane Reding, European commissioner for media, worked to bring the European Digital Library to fruition prior to realizing Europeana.

Issues of intellectual property will certainly complicate Reding’s goal of adding 10 million more objects over the next two years. The project will receive 2 million Euro over the next two years for that goal, said European Commission president Jose Manuel Barroso on Thursday. For now, all objects on Europeana are in the public domain.

Reding said Thursday that she encourages users of the site to ‘remix’ what’s available. Moving forward, she plans to facilitate dialogue among various stakeholders to find a way to legally include contemporary works. Nobody wants a black hole when it comes to artifacts from the 21st century, she stated. In particular, she said she will continue discussions with books publishers in order to arrange for digitization of orphan works.

The difference between Europeana and existing library projects, though, is in the diversity of digital objects available on Europeana. Van der Meulen, for example, is able to search the names of his family members and come to a recording of his uncle’s 1970s rock band, the Makkers, or photos of his father Leendert Van der Muelen, a world-class cyclist.

“It’s for a lot of people that way,” he said. “Its a fun toy. Everybody Googles their name, you know. Only with this you get associations with your own name that you wouldn’t find in Google.”

Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.

Hello world! I'd like to introduce myself as one of the new contributing editors to the Digital Home Thoughts team. I used to be known as fyresyght on the forums, but you'll find that I'm now Hooch Tan, my real world moniker. In the real world, I act as a senior support engineer for a voice application software company, so electronics and technology are my bread and butter. Despite the daily grind, I remain interested in technology as a hobby. I'm a firm believer that technology has a place in our lives without making things more complicated if used properly. I look forward to adding my thoughts to the site and talking to everyone in the forums!

Wave Editor is the most comprehensive document-based waveform editor, sound design tool and mastering suite for Mac OS X.

Designed in Cocoa from the ground up, Wave Editor proudly takes advantage of Core Audio, Quartz, and other solid OS X features.

Wave Editor takes over where Spark and Sound Designer II left off—incorporating the standard audio editing features you're used to while bringing you up-to-date with the latest advances in interface design, speed and stability, without compromising the power.

Features include:

• DDP 2.0 Export Standard
• iZotope 64-bit SRC
• iZotope MBIT+ Dither
• Support for Surround/Multichannel Files
• Channel Independent Editing
• Combine different file types/sample rates/bit-depths in single file
• Bezier-based Fades
• Advanced Metadata Editing including Broadcast WAVE
• SmartEdits & SmartEdit List
• Layers (Patent Pending)
• FLAC Import/Export
• Ogg Vorbis Import/Export
• Apple Lossless Import/Export
• Sassafras K2 KeyServer Support
• Searchable Keyboard Shortcuts
• Customizable Scroll-wheel Actions
• Integrated Help Desk

Eric J. Wilhelm, of Instructables, will be on NPR's "Weekend Edition Saturday" and WCBS-AM 880 this coming Monday to talk about The Best of Instructables for a holiday gift-themed program.

The airtime for "Weekend Edition Saturday" will vary by market. The WCBS-AM program will air on 11/24 at 10:20 am, 11:40 am, 12:20pm, 1:40 pm, and 2:20 pm (all times ET). You can listen to it live at http://www.wcbs880.com/

Also, you can log onto NPR.org/gifts at 1:30pm ET tomorrow for a live chat featuring Eric talking about ECO-nomical holiday gifts!

Best Of Instructables Instructables.com has become one of the most popular magnets for makers and DIY enthusiasts of all stripes. Now, with more than 10,000 projects to choose from, the Instructables staff, the editors of MAKE magazine, and the Instructables community itself have put together a collection of some of the best craft and tech how-to's from the site. The Best of Instructables Volume 1 includes plenty of clear, full-color photos, complete step-by-step instructions, and tips, tricks, and new build techniques you won't find anywhere else. Over 300 pages and 120 projects!

It includes drills for U.S., Dvorak, French, and German keyboard layouts, the ability to type your own text files, eBooks by page, create your own progressive drills using the drill editor or use those provided.

Track your progress towards mastery of a speed goal and accuracy and print certificates once mastered. There's a game of saving paratroopers by typing open their parachutes in the ParaTyper. Several possible network setups are possible for multiple classes and users, including mixed platform networks.
WHAT'S NEWVersion 5.4.2:

• Fixed a cheat bug in ParaTyper