At the recent International DOI Foundation Annual Members' Meeting, held in Redmond, Washington, USA, the IDF demonstrated advanced DOI functionality with the release of a simple plug-in which can be customised to deliver numerous applications with Adobe products such as pdf files. These can include adding menu items and tool bar icons to Acrobat or Acrobat Reader, opening dialog boxes, and initiating processes. Among applications demonstrated were alerting the user to the existence of a newer version of a document, showing up-to- date related links specific to the document in hand, creating a citation for the document in hand, and initiating a rights transaction.

Detailed information is available to IDF member organisations. IDF will be following up this work with standardised functions, such as those described above, which can be added incrementally and with packaging and licensing of the plug-in for distribution. IDF also intends to follow this example of delivering easy-to-use DOI functionality through a widely deployed common tool with other major software tools.

Corbis and Content Directions Inc. (a DOI Registration Agency) are partnering to produce a new, innovative system for viewing, licensing and enabling protection of digital images on the Internet that will help clients remain compliant with image licenses, offer clients quick access to update or expand upon an image license, and otherwise provide easy Web navigation from the image to an array of complementary services, including for example links to destinations offering similar images for speedy licensing. Using Content Directions' applications of the underlying DOI System will make Corbis images used in a digital environment "active", and these active digital images provide a powerful tool to navigate at point of view various licensing options as well as other expanded functionality. Corbis and CDI are developing these applications to serve the image rich environments of book, magazine and web-based publishing. Corbis is a leading provider of digital media. With more than 65 million images, 2.1 million online, Corbis offers a wide range of choice and is the leading provider of digital media to professionals, consumers and emerging markets around the globe. See the joint press release for further information.

IDF is participating with a range of partners in Interparty, an EC project to design and specify a framework for the unique identification of parties (natural and corporate names) in the intellectual property e-commerce chain. As with other activities (such as the <indecs>rdd data dictionary now adopted by MPEG-21), this activity is based on the fundamental principles of metadata interoperability introduced by the indecs (interoperable data in e-commerce systems) framework, co-funded by IDF and underlying the DOIs ability to offer interoperable identification using a variety of metadata schemes.

IDF's role in Interparty is especially concerned with issues such as governance and policy, and also in the use of actionable identifier such as DOIs within the framework of managing such identifiers.

A fact sheet about Interparty is available at http://www.doi.org/topics/InterpartyFactSheet020530.pdf.

GiantSteps Media Technology Strategies and Content Directions, Inc. (CDI) have released a white paper "Enterprise Content Integration with the Digital Object Identifier", quantifying the business benefits for information publishers of implementing the Digital Object Identifier (DOI) to facilitate internal content management and to enable faster, more scalable product development.

Bill Rosenblatt, author of the white paper, is a well-known publishing industry consultant and book author, as well as having been one of the founders of the DOI system in 1994- 97. "The DOI system has emerged as an important, well-endorsed digital infrastructure tool for content providers, enabling them to more fully leverage their core assets for scalable product development, incremental revenue, and cost savings," he said. "Now with the advent of Registration Agencies such as Content Directions, who sponsored this white paper, companies can finally take advantage of commercial tools and services to implement and profit from the DOI economically and reliably."

The white paper may be obtained free of charge by clicking on the white paper's DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1220/whitepaper5. [This also provides a live example of the DOI itself in action: unlike a simple URL, a DOI-based hyperlink link always remains valid, no matter how much time has gone by since the hyperlink was first created, and no matter where the link is disseminated -- e.g. distributed via this news release, populated onto 3rd- party websites, discovered within search engines' search results, or even embedded within downloaded documents].

The International DOI Foundation's latest member is TSO (The Stationery Office, http://www.tso.co.uk/), the UK's leading provider of information management services who provide content management, web & e-business and traditional publisher services to an extensive and growing client base, both in the public and private sector. A further announcement about TSO's work with DOIs will follow in the next DOI news.

For information on joining the growing list of content, technology and intermediary organisations who are supporters of the DOI system, see the DOI web site at http://www.doi.org/handbook_2000/intro.html.