Yahoo is releasing an upgrade to its Yahoo Widgets platform that accommodates Adobe's Flash multimedia display technology.Widgets are lightweight applications that provide desktop access to various types of content, such as news feeds or reminders. Featured in the upgrade is a new version of the Yahoo Widget Engine, which is a runtime environment that allows the widgets to run on a desktop, and an updated Yahoo Widget Gallery, offering more than 4,000 widgets, Yahoo said.Yahoo Widget Engine 4.5, accessible on Yahoo's widget download page, adds capabilities for developers to write widgets based on Flash; also, HTML support has been extended, said Scott Derringer, director of product management at Yahoo. Specifically, Flex and ActionScript are supported for writing Flash-based applications."What we're seeing is authors are wanting to write movies and video, and that's a new capability that can now add to desktop widgets," Derringer said. A widget can be built that runs assets that already existed in Flash."Video can now be run inside of a widget," said Derringer. Full HTML support, meanwhile, provides capabilities like flow layout and more standard control.While widgets are primarily consumer-focused, there could be business uses, such as running training videos, he said. SAP, for its part, has built enterprise widgets and a plug-in architecture, called SAP Widget Foundation, which could access information like sales data, said Jonathan Strauss, Yahoo senior product manager. SAP's technology extends the Yahoo Widget engine."Using the SAP plug-in, you can query your SAP system to put those sales numbers into your desktop widget," Strauss said. An SAP representative said SAP's platform can use the Yahoo engine but does not rely on it exclusively; other engines, such as Google's, also can be used.Version 4.5 of the Yahoo engine offers an enhanced security model to give users a better understanding of what a widget does. Also new is a reworked document object model so it is compliant with World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) standards. "The benefit there is really familiarity form the developer's point of view," said Strauss.The new Yahoo Widget Gallery has been revamped to make it easier for consumers to find widgets they want. Top-rated and heavily downloaded widgets are highlighted. A new categorization is featured based on tags.Other improvements in the gallery include more search functionality and a new ratings and reviews system for users."We find people are quite passionate," about the widgets, said Strauss.Yahoo monetizes the widgets through advertising. Yahoo acquired the widget technology when it bought Pixoria and its Konfabulator technology two years ago.

IBM and Yahoo issued a new version of their free enterprise search product on Tuesday, just weeks after rival Microsoft announced a competing product.The latest release of IBM's OmniFind Yahoo Edition contains a number of enhancements, according to IBM. Users can now generate up to five separate indexes of documents, thereby enabling them to search from a particular set instead of the entire repository.Other tweaks include the ability to define additional custom search fields, such as from HTML tags or document metadata. "If you've created a Word document with customer metadata fields, it will be able to extract it," said Aaron Brown, IBM's director of search and content discovery. IBM also said the software is now easier to install as a Windows service.OmniFind Yahoo Edition is based on the open source Lucene project. The update includes the latest version of the Lucene core, according to Brown: "It helps us close the loop with the community, because we've contributed a lot of IBM code back into Lucene."However, the update does not include any scalability improvements, and remains limited to searching 500,000 documents per instance, Brown said.Brown said the updates were primarily guided by feedback from customers. The software has been downloaded about 25,000 times, according to IBM. Yahoo and IBM released the first version of the search engine about one year ago.Microsoft's entry into the stand-alone enterprise search market has been seen as potentially disruptive for certain vendors, such as Coveo, but not for search companies offering high-end, specialized products.Like IBM, Microsoft is adopting a multitier strategy around search. Both companies are giving away an offering in the hopes of attracting customers, who will eventually desire greater capabilities and pay for commercial products.Microsoft's new products, Search Server 2008 and Search Server Express 2008, which is free, will be generally available in the first half of 2008, according to the company.Brown said Microsoft's move was not unexpected: "We obviously didn't have any inside information. I can't say I was entirely surprised, given where the market is moving."He said there is "a lot of traction" in Europe for OmniFind Yahoo Edition right now, adding that a range of organizations are using the product, from a small U.S. public school district to a global electronics company, which he did not name.Burton Group analyst Guy Creese recently told IDG News Service that he expected Microsoft's partner community to build products on top of the company's base search technology, extending its market potential. IBM has a head start in this area, with companies such as Axioma.Brown said of IBM's partners, "They've adopted the base platform and are building richer stuff."

Senior Java Developer / Architect - Amsterdam Our client is one of Europe's fastest growing, most successful and most innovative consumer electronics companies. As a leading provider of personal navigation products and services, they focus on innovation, quality, ease of use and value. Since 1991 the company has grown substantially, and they are European market leader for personal navigation devices. Their navigation solutions are used in 20 countries with a mission to further expand their global customer base. They are on the look out for a Senior Java Developer / Architect with J2EE expertise and a pioneering attitude .You will start working on a green – field project for our client’s content and service department. Currently our client runs it’s Content Services under PHP. However, due to their growth, they are now rolling out a J2EE platform to meet the needs of scalability and performance. This will require you to give the very best of your capacities in the areas of • Write functional and technical [JavDoc ] documentation • Proof of concept involves design and development from back-end to front-end, documentation, establishment of coding standards, creation of Junit tests , and definition of project standards • Migrate an early component to its J2EE counterpart Skills required are: • More than 2 years of experience with J2EE - You should have experience of Eclipse, Ant, JBoss, JUnit, Servlets, JSP, J2EE, Hibernate, Spring Framework or EJBs, JDBC, SQL, RDBMS, XML, HTML, Object Oriented programming and a Web framework like Struts, Velocity, JSF or Spring MVC If you want to work with cutting edge technology and a market leader that takes care of its employees, then forward your resume to jmoles@abraxas.com Abraxas plc acts as an employment agency/business. No terminology in this advert is intended to discriminate on the grounds of age, and we confirm that we will gladly accept applications from persons of any age for this role.

Letter and paper from Theresa Anderson of the Gaia Foundation: Dear Friends and Colleagues,This year has seen the beginning of what promises to be the next newlarge-scale threat to Africa's food, land, environment and farmers -Biofuels.The reality of Climate Change has now been accepted by worldgovernments and industry, and with it, acceptance that Carbon Dioxide(CO2) from burning fossil fuels is responsible for heating the planet'satmosphere and changing weather patterns.Everyone agrees that CO2 emissions must be reduced, but one of thesolutions proposed is likely to create more social and environmentalproblems, and probably more CO2, than they claim to solve. As Europein particular looks to alternatives to fossil fuels such as oil andcoal, Biofuels from crops such as maize, sugar, soya and palm oil, arebeing promoted as the new "green" solution.However, Europe does not have enough land to grow its fuel needs. Forexample, even if the UK were to turn over all of its land to growingbiofuels instead of food, it would need 4 times the amount of land tomake enough fuel to meet its current needs. Europe is thereforelooking to Africa to provide the land that will grow the fuel.Already, we hear of large-scale biofuels projects mushrooming acrossAfrica, with the supports of governments keen to believe that this isthe economic boom of Africa's future. Tanzania, Uganda, Ethiopia,South Africa, Zambia, Ghana, Benin and other countries are at theforefront of the new Biofuels Boom.However, the negative stories follow these projects just as quickly.Protests, riots and arrests broke out in Uganda last month over thegovernment's plans to degazette Mabira Forest, the largest rainforestarea in the country. The forest was to be handed over and cut down forsugar plantations - some of which would go to producing biofuelethanol. Other news shows that land grabs, deforestation andincreasing food prices come about as a result of growing fuel insteadof food.Using land to grow fuel instead of food, rising grain prices, and thedisplacement of rural communities will lead to greater food insecurityin Africa. Any environmental benefits from using biofuels instead offossil fuels will be cancelled out as forests, peatlands, mangroves andprotected areas are cut down, burned, and converted to farmland. Andthe GM industry intends to use this as an opportunity to promote GMbiofuels, to gain a foothold into Africa where there has beenhard-fought resistance to GM contamination of food.While campaigns in Europe against increased biofuel targets are juststarting up (see www.biofuelwatch.org ), African farmers, communities,civil society and governments also urgently need to wake up and raiseawareness about the threats. We need to act before the land is givenaway, the forests are cut down, and the food priced out of the reach ofthe poor.Best wishes,Teresa**************************************1. Rural Communities Express Dismay: "Land Grabs Fuelled by BiofuelStrategy."Statement from South African Civil Society. Date: March 20072. Biofuels Boom Spurring DeforestationArticle from Inter Press Service. Date: 22 March 2007Stephen Leahyhttp://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=370353. Biofuel Demand Makes Food ExpensiveArticle from BBC. Date: 23 March 2007Nils Blythehttp://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/6481029.stm4. The Next Genetic Revolution?Article from The Ecologist. Date: 29 March 2007Robin Maynard and Pat Thomashttp://www.theecologist.org/archive...ntent_id=8315. If We Want to Save the Planet, We Need a Five-Year Freeze onBiofuelsArticle from the Guardian. Date: 27 March 2007George Monbiothttp://www.guardian.co.uk/commentis...3724,00.html 6. Biofuel Crop RejectedArticle from Cape Times. Date: 28 March 2007Melanie Goslinghttp://www.int.iol.co.za/index.php?set_id=1&click_id=14&art_id=vn20070328014024150C782941****************************************1. Rural Communities Express Dismay: "Land Grabs Fuelled by BiofuelStrategy."Statement from South African Civil Society. Date: March 2007 More than sixty people met in Durban on March 5th 2007, to discuss theSouth African government’s Draft Industrial Biofuels Strategy, which isopen for public comment until the end of March. The undersigned NGOs,individuals, farmer organisations and rural communities fromKwaZulu-Natal, Eastern Cape, Limpopo and Mpumalanga who attended theworkshop, express our extreme disquiet and consternation with thestrategy. We believe that both the Biofuels strategy and the associated publicconsultation process are fundamentally flawed. As affected ruralcommunities and organisations, we are astounded that we have not beenproperly informed and consulted about the strategy. What makes it allthe more unforgivable is that the anticipation of a subsidised Biofuelsindustry is precipitating massive “land grabs” of municipal commonagesand traditional communal and tribal land in the former independenthomelands. While the DME pays lip service to developing Biofuels tomeet local energy needs, deals have already been struck for large-scaleplants to export Biofuels to the European Union. In the process ruralfarming communities are coerced into signing over their land for apittance for industrial plantations of canola, maize and soya[1]. We note that the draft strategy aims to contribute to South Africa’sdevelopment goals through job creation, transformation as well asreducing the negative impacts of energy consumption on the environment,but find little detail in the strategy on how this will be achieved.Instead we have found the strategy to be preoccupied with economicinstruments that will facilitate large corporate involvement inBiofuels with trickle down economic benefits to the poor at best, andpotentially disastrous consequences due to the expansion of industrialagriculture into new areas.We call on government to redraft the Biofuels Strategy in its entirety,including full participation of potentially impacted communities sothat a new strategy emerges that emphasises the development needs andpriorities of poor communities, particularly in rural areas.In particular, we suggest that the Biofuels strategy should aim at: • addressing energy poverty within a context of integratedenergy planning and rural development, with the genuine participationof rural communities, particularly women;• adopting an integrated energy planning approach, which mustinclude “true green Biofuels” such as biogas and ethanol gel and soforth;• making an unequivocal commitment to improving publictransport systems with a view to reducing South Africa’s dependence onfossil and now, liquid fuels;• Providing the economic enabling environment fordecentralised, community-owned Biofuels plants based on biodiverse andorganic agricultural production that ensure rural energy and foodsecurity;• Ensuring that economic instruments (subsidies, levyreductions and tax incentives) are targeted specifically to createsmall and cooperative Biofuels enterprises premised on best social andecological practice;• Including strategies to improve infrastructure, training,technical support, marketing and access to the Biofuels market in ruralareas for rural communities; and• Specifically excluding the use of staple food crops, largeindustrial plantations of monocultures, genetically engineeredorganisms and prime agricultural land in the production of Biofuels inSouth Africa.We further call on government to place an immediate moratorium onlarge-scale bio fuels projects and to stop the “land grabs”.SIGNED1 ACUSO Project2 African Centre for Biosafety3 Biowatch4 Buyambo Seed Bank5 Centre for Civil Society (Environmental Justice project),University of KwaZulu-Natal6 Diakonia Council of Churches7 Earthlife Africa eThekwini8 GRAIN9 Intuthuko Yesiziwe10 Institute for Zero Waste in Africa (IZWA)11 Kwa-Ngwanase Farmers Association12 Sigidi Trust - Bizana13 LAMOSA14 Lindizwe Help Group15 OR Tambo Farmers Association16 OR Tambo Youth Farmers Association17 PCD Vreyheid18 Siyakha Project19 Syazama Youth20 Tafuleni Co-op Project21 Timberwatch22 TWIG23 Ubuhle Project, Justice and Peace24 Uvuyo Holdings25 Wildlife and Environmnet Society of South Africa (WESSA)26 Women in Agriculture Rural Development27 Women’s Leadership and Training Project (WLTP)28 Zamukuphila29 Zululand Economic Development AgencyIndividuals: Peter Gilmore - Durban, Atul Padalkar - Durban, MdimadiMathenywa – Makhatini Flats, Fi Mntungwa - Underberg, Penny Zeffertt -KroondalAdditional South African support:1. Ekogaia Foundation2 Farmers Legal Action Group – South Africa3 Safe Food Coalition4 South Durban Community Environmental Alliance (SDCEA)International support:1. Edmonds Institute2 Gaia Foundation, UK3 Stop BP-BerkeleyFootnotes:[1] For instance in the Eastern Cape, the Provincial Biofuels Task Teamand Eastern Cape Development Corporation, revealed plans to plantcanola on 500,000ha of the most arable non-irrigated commonage andcommunal land in the former Transkei and then process it into bio-fuelat a plant in the East London industrial development zone. R1.5 billionwill be spent on fencing and liming this land to prepare it formonoculture. Furthermore, while local communities forego their existingdiverse food gardens and communal grazing lands, multinationalcompanies like Monsanto will collect on government agriculturalsubsidies through the Massive Food Production Programme by providingseed, chemical inputs and even mechanisation on the farmer’s behalf.The EC Premier’s State of the Province Address for 2007 confirms thatan initial 70,000 ha of irrigated land in the Umzimvubu valley is to beplaced under canola monoculture in the next season.******************************2. Biofuels Boom Spurring DeforestationArticle from Inter Press Service. Date: 22 March 2007Stephen Leahyhttp://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=37035Nearly 40,000 hectares of forest vanish every day, driven by theworld's growing hunger for timber, pulp and paper, and ironically, newbiofuels and carbon credits designed to protect the environment.'DEFORESTATION DIESEL'Workers load palm oil fruits onto a lorry at a plantation in KualaLumpur March 13, 2007. Vast tracts of forest in Indonesia, Malaysia,Thailand and many other countries have been cleared to grow oil palms.REUTERS/Zainal Abd Halim (MALAYSIA)The irony here is that the growing eagerness to slow climate change byusing biofuels and planting millions of trees for carbon credits hasresulted in new major causes of deforestation, say activists. And thatis making climate change worse because deforestation puts far moregreenhouse gases into the atmosphere than the entire world's fleet ofcars, trucks, planes, trains and ships combined."Biofuels are rapidly becoming the main cause of deforestation incountries like Indonesia, Malaysia and Brazil," said Simone Lovera,managing coordinator of the Global Forest Coalition, an environmentalNGO based in Asunción, Paraguay."We call it 'deforestation diesel'," Lovera told IPS.Oil from African palm trees is considered to be one of the best andcheapest sources of biodiesel and energy companies are investingbillions into acquiring or developing oil-palm plantations indeveloping countries. Vast tracts of forest in Indonesia, Malaysia,Thailand and many other countries have been cleared to grow oil palms.Oil palm has become the world's number one fruit crop, well ahead ofbananas.Biodiesel offers many environmental benefits over diesel frompetroleum, including reductions in air pollutants, but the enormousglobal thirst means millions more hectares could be converted intomonocultures of oil palm.Getting accurate numbers on how much forest is being lost is verydifficult.The FAO's State of the World's Forests 2007 released last week reportsthat globally, net forest loss is 20,000 hectares per day -- equivalentto an area twice the size of Paris. However, that number includesplantation forests, which masks the actual extent of tropicaldeforestation, about 40,000 hectares (ha) per day, says Matti Palo, aforest economics expert who is affiliated with the TropicalAgricultural Research and Higher Education Center (CATIE) in CostaRica."The half a million ha per year deforestation of Mexico is covered bythe increase of forests in the U.S., for example," Palo told IPS.National governments provide all the statistics, and countries likeCanada do not produce anything reliable, he said. Canada has claimed nonet change in its forests for 15 years despite being the largestproducer of pulp and paper."Canada has a moral responsibility to tell the rest of the world whatkind of changes have taken place there," he said.Plantation forests are nothing like natural or native forests. Moreakin to a field of maize, plantation forests are hostile environmentsto nearly every animal, bird and even insects. Such forests have beenshown to have a negative impact on the water cycle because non-native,fast-growing trees use high volumes of water. Pesticides are alsocommonly used to suppress competing growth from other plants and toprevent disease outbreaks, also impacting water quality.Plantation forests also offer very few employment opportunities,resulting in a net loss of jobs."Plantation forests are a tremendous disaster for biodiversity andlocal people," Lovera said.Even if farmland or savanna are only used for oil palm or otherplantations, it often forces the local people off the land and intonearby forests, including national parks, which they clear to growcrops, pasture animals and collect firewood. That has been the patternwith pulp and timber plantation forests in much of the world, saysLovera.Ethanol is other major biofuel, which is made from maize, sugar caneor other crops. As prices for biofuels climb, more land is cleared togrow the crops. U.S. farmers are switching from soy to maize to meetthe ethanol demand. That is having a knock on effect of pushing up soyprices, which is driving the conversion of the Amazon rainforest intosoy, she says.Meanwhile rich countries are starting to plant trees to offset theiremissions of carbon dioxide, called carbon sequestration. Most of thisplanting is taking place in the South in the form of plantations, whichare just the latest threat to existing forests."Europe's carbon credit market could be disastrous," Lovera said.The multi-billion-euro European carbon market does not permit the useof reforestation projects for carbon credits. But there has been atremendous surge in private companies offering such credits for treeplanting projects. Very little of this money goes to small landholders, she says.Plantation forests also contain much less carbon, notes Palo, citing arecent study that showed carbon content of plantation forests in someAsian tropical countries was only 45 percent of that in the respectivenatural forests.Nor has the world community been able to properly account for thevalue of the enormous volumes of carbon stored in existing forests.One recent estimate found that the northern Boreal forest provided 250billion dollars a year in ecosystem services such as absorbing carbonemissions from the atmosphere and cleaning water.The good news is that deforestation, even in remote areas, is easilystopped. All it takes is access to some low-cost satellite imagery andgovernments that actually want to slow or halt deforestation.Costa Rica has nearly eliminated deforestation by making it illegal toconvert forest into farmland, says Lovera.Paraguay enacted similar laws in 2004, and then regularly checkedsatellite images of its forests, sending forestry officials and policeto enforce the law where it was being violated."Deforestation has been reduced by 85 percent in less than two yearsin the eastern part of the country," Lovera noted.The other part of the solution is to give control over forests to thelocal people. This community or model forest concept has proved to besustainable in many parts of the world. India recently passed a billreturning the bulk of its forests back to local communities formanagement, she said.However, economic interests pushing deforestation in countries likeBrazil and Indonesia are so powerful, there may eventually be littlenatural forest left."Governments are beginning to realize that their natural forests haveenormous value left standing," Lovera said. "A moratorium or ban ondeforestation is the only way to stop this."This story is part of a series of features on sustainable developmentby IPS and IFEJ - International Federation of EnvironmentalJournalists.© 2007 IPS - Inter Press Service**************************************3. Biofuel Demand Makes Food ExpensiveArticle from BBC. Date: 23 March 2007Nils Blythehttp://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/6481029.stm

There may be all kinds of technology issues, business plan problems, and potential failures to address before the mobile Internet becomes a success. But for Tim Berners-Lee there's really only one issue.On the opening day of Mobile Internet World in Boston, the man credited with inventing the World Wide Web told a packed hall that the mobile Internet needs to be fully and completely the Internet, nothing more and nothing less. It needs to be free of central control, universal, and embodied in open standards."The Web is an open platform on which you build other things," he said. "That's how you get this innovation. The Web is universal: you can run it on any hardware, on any operating system, it can be used by people of different languages...It's a sandbox where people can [play and] exercise their creativity. It's very important to keep the Web universal as we merge the Internet with mobile."The title of his talk was "Escaping the Walled Garden: Growing the Mobile Web with Open Standards." The "walled garden" is the metaphor that describes today's cable TV and cellular data networks, where subscribers can only use devices authorized by the carrier, and can only access content and services authorized by the carrier, the exact opposite of the World Wide Web running over the IP-based Internet, which cell phone users access from their home and work PCs.Though Berners-Lee didn't mention Google's new foray into mobile services, the search giant's Android platform, a software development stack for mobile phones, is based on open standards, open source software and overseen by the newly organized Open Handset Alliance consortium.PC users through an ISP can access independent movies on any site that offers them, Berners-Lee said. By contrast, a cable TV company acting as an ISP could block such access, because it wants subscribers to select the pay-per-view movies it alone offers.Berners-Lee is director of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), which coordinates the work of its members to create Web standards and guidelines for the Web's evolution. Two years ago, the group launched the Mobile Web Initiative to focus on standards to facilitate access to the Web by handheld devices over wireless connections. The focus of the MWI is to create standards and best practices for authoring content, and for serving it to and displaying it on any mobile device. Content becomes easily reusable, and can be re-used in ways the original creator could never imagine, he said."An open platform means using standards," Berners-Lee told his audience. "The mobile internet must use the same standards as the Internet. When you erect a wall around the garden, we know now all the flowers bloom outside the wall, not inside."As an example of what not to do, he referred to a "well-known device" that lets you go to only one online music store to buy music downloads, an obvious reference to Apple's wildly popular iPod and the company's online iTunes store. "Being able to go to any store would open that whole model up," he said. Consumers would have more choice, he suggested, there would be more competition, and more innovation, a kind of virtual circle of Web-inspired and Web-based activity.The Web itself is undergoing change, Berners-Lee said, as a result of people's new uses of it. Until recently, the dominant metaphor for the Web was the HTML document or poage. But that's changing as a result of the rise of social Web sites such as FaceBook and mySpace. Today, users have to create at each site