Anni Rowland-Campbell and team have published a White Paper on the topic which can be downloaded from this location. Looking forward to the results of their research project!

Powerset is a leader in Semantic searching, and has recently licensed Xerox PARC technology.

Although the most immediate application is to improve Live Search and other Microsoft search capabilities, let’s hope some of these capabilities also make it into the Future of Documents - allowing Document 3.0 to semantically analyze and tag their own content, thus facilitating searching, understanding and validation of their content.

Sure, it probably does not have the look and feel, the gloss and illustrations of a real encyclopedia, but you can take it anywhere. Compare that to the 32,640 pages of Encyclopedia Britannica, in terms of weight, convenience and paper usage or environmental impact…

That’s a very good example of how Web 2.0 technologies can cross-fertilize with new Document technologies and generate interesting side effects that will probably shape the Future of Documents - Document 3.0.

Microsoft’s national technology officer, Stuart McKee, speaking at a panel at the Red Hat Summit in Boston, said:

“ODF has clearly won. We sell software for a living. The ability to implement ODF in the middle of our ship cycle was just not possible. We couldn’t do that during the release of Office 2007. We’re looking forward and committed to doing more than [ODF-to-OOXML] translators.”

Full support for ODF will appear in Office 2007 SP2, slated for first half of 2009.

Great news for the Future of Documents and all of us end users! One single XML-based Format will be used as standard for most, if not all, of our Document Processing files, thus allowing easy interchange . Furthermore, one can hope the standardization work will now be shift focus from making one standard prevail over each other towards a joint enrichment of the format to support more “semantic” like representations of documents, thus enabling easier content and information extraction from these extractions.

…Unless China’s UOF actually becomes a significant player ?

But that is changing. With Mortgage Document Collaboration Networks such as BlitzDocs,  lenders, brokers and investors can circulate and share electronically the documents needed to underwrite, audit, collaborate, deliver and archive loan documents electronically. Some of these documents can be generated, transmitted, and remain electronic throughout their whole lifecycle.

Still, paper remained required for many documents because of legal compliance and signatures. But not anymore ! e-signature now allows these documents to remain electronic. See here a great coverage by Mortgage Technology of Xerox Mortgage Service’s recent announcement of the addition of e-Signature to simplify Loan processing.

Licensed through eSign Systems, a division of Wave Systems Corp., the  electronic signature capabilities will help expand the BlitzDocs’ network of mortgage participants – giving users access to a larger pool of financial lending institutions and other service providers - but equally important will be the reduction paper consumption.

ComputerWorld published a very interesting and comprehensive roundup on the technology: “The Future of ePaper“. Although just a concept, I really like the Fabric PC, “a computer that’s soft, pliable, and can comfortably be carried like portfolio of paper”. It also mentions ways in which ePaper can render color, and predicts that “If e-paper grows from its current 0.1% of that market to even just 3% or 4%, you’ll be looking at a $9-$12 billion market.”

 The only missing bit is turning ePaper from a mere display medium into a fully interactive,  device: compared to paper, eBooks have today no or very limited annotation capabilities  (except for a few ones such as the Iliad IRex). However, this shortcoming should be overcome shortly, as Wacom and E Ink have recently announced a pen-input ePaper display.

Brazil, India and South Africa have appealed against ISO’s approval of OOXML as a standard. Denmark protested too. Oh well… this might not be the end of the story after all.

More interesting than these endless ideological / political battles though is understanding the fundamental differences between OOXML and ODF. No need to read 6,600 pages (6,000 of OOXML specs plus 600 of ODF) anymore - this excellent document gives you a very succinct, (although maybe not totally unbiased ?) idea of the architectural and philosophical differences between the two standards.

Demand Drivers for Printing Paper (April 2008) gives very useful data on the paper evolution and outlines regional differences, esp. between Emerging and Mature markets. It complements very well the “Less Paper” Office White Paper and some of my latest blogs on the topic with very precise details on a few technologies (Transpromo document, Hybrid Printing). It finally gives a good overview of as well as driving forces and trends underlying the “Green movement” and its effects on the paper industry, including Recycling, Forest Certification, and Standards.Recommended reading !

In this article, Xerox gets very good credits for its contributions and legacy in that space: PARC’s initial vision by George Pake, some of the later contributions (”The Myth of the Paperless Office” was written by Richard Harper as he still was Xerox Research) and findings (”half of the documents printed in typical offices are thrown away within 24 hours”), as well as products that support the paperless office (e.g. Xerox Mortgage Services).

Quick and very interesting reading.

The University of Calgary started on a journey to reduce paper consumption a few years ago - first realizing how abysmal their paper consumption was, then taking actions to reduce it, through advanced print fleet rationalization and other innovations.

As the UoC president stated: “In 2006, the University of Calgary community printed (consumed) 72 million pieces of paper.  For those of you who prefer to think visually, consider that 500 sheets of paper is a stack 2 inches high.  So, 72 million pieces of paper is a stack of paper 4.5 miles high – this is equivalent to about 38 Calgary Towers stuck one on top of another. ”

[Note: for those - like me - that haven’t seen the Calgary tower, that’s about 24 Eiffel towers or 19 Empire State Buildings - almost the Everest]

 ”By 2007, we had reduced our paper consumption to 56 million sheets, through a variety of interventions the most important of which likely was widespread introduction of desktop printers that were set for two-sided printing.  That’s a saving of a stack of paper about one mile high. Good progress, but still an awful lot of trees.”

Building on an interesting computation that Harold made on his blog, if we could stack up all pages printed, one year’s worldwide “production” could take us between 5 and 15 times to the moon depending on the estimates… Not quite enough yet to take Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter to destination, but we’re getting there !