The Internet is often a great place to find information and advice on how to pursue your education or get training in the European Union. But it is often hard to know where to look and how to piece together information into results you can use. PLOTEUS, a site managed by the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Education and Culture, now makes it possible.

Clicking any of the categories brings up a questionnaire where you can enter your choice of country, type of training or employment, and language of instruction. Needless to say, the range of possibilities is impressive!

Once the search results are displayed, you simply click the link you want.

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How can British views on VoIP be assessed when most people in England don’t know what it is? What makes IPTV so promising even though some European countries are lagging behind, and which countries will take the lead? How can you confidently find the nearest free Wi-Fi access point? With the launch of Google Maps and Google Earth in Europe, should their competitors be worried? This special report provides answers.

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The English know what they’re talking about when it comes to VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol). Results of a survey by Harris Interactive show that 46% of the English know what VoIP is, or already use it.

That’s significant. In September, a survey by Verizon showed that 10% of Americans gave low-carb vodka as their response when asked what VoIP stood for. In the Harris Interactive survey, which also covered the United States, the number of Americans polled who knew what VoIP is had increased from 36% to 51%.

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Despite constant media attention surrounding the Internet in China, people still know very little about this new Internet frontier. Hardly anyone can tick off the names of dotcoms that are a part of daily life for Chinese Internet users.

We know all about using MSN Messenger to chat with friends, Amazon.com to buy a book, and eBay to sell a vintage collection of Rolling Stones LPs. Not so in China.

Exit MSN Messenger. The young (typically urban) Chinese Internet community uses QQ to chat online and goes to Joyo.com (recently acquired by Amazon.com) or DangDang Bookstore Online to by the latest Harry Potter book in Chinese. For online buying and selling, Shanghai and Beijing websurfers log into TaoBao.com, the country’s leading online auction site with over 10 millions users—20 times more than are registered with its competitor eBay China.

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Kamel Ouadi, the new L’Oréal CRM and e‑business director for China, met with L’Atelier BNP Paribas at his new Shanghai office. Ouadi came from Paris in January to implement a new marketing strategy that is already succeeding with eLadies, a site developed in partnership with China’s number-one portal, Sina.com.

L’Atelier: How is L’Oréal using the Internet to market itself in China?

Kamel Ouadi: We are primarily experimenting with the tremendously popular portal eLadies launched in April 2002 in partnership with the number-one Chinese portal, Sina, which attracts two million visitors a day and has nine million members. Our approach is mainly service oriented. We provide information on all our product lines and upcoming events.

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Have you heard of JingJing and Chacha? These cute little characters look like they came straight from a children’s comic strip. The people of the city of Shenzhen in southern China discovered them on January 21, 2006, on the official city portal as representatives of the Shenzhen Internet Police.

The message is clear: “Jing cha” means “police” or “police officer” in Chinese.

According to the Shenzhen Public Security Bureau, Division of Internet Surveillance, the two characters are there to remind Web users that the Internet—a public space—is not exempt from the law and police surveillance.

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Interestingly, many Chinese Web addresses are number based: 163.com, 18900.com, 7cv.com, 263.com, 5291.com, 3721.com, 126.com, hao123.com, etc.

You’re probably thinking that such addresses—mainly made of meaningless numbers—would be hard to remember. True, but not necessarily any harder than addresses based on the 26 letters of the Roman alphabet are for a Chinese person, especially one who doesn’t know English.

In many cases, the more universal language of numbers thus provides highly effective mnemonic devices for remembering an address. This is especially true in the Chinese culture, which attributes particular meanings to certain numbers, some positive, some negative. Against all appearances, the series of numbers in these Web addresses hold specific meanings that help Internet users remember them. And they are intentionally selected to associate a positive meaning and image with the site.

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One essential difference between U.S. and European Internet demographics and those of China is that more than half of all Chinese Internet users are under 25 years old. That’s the largest community of young websurfers in the world, outranking even the United States.

Marketing specialists and advertisers have it right: The best way to reach the much coveted market of young Chinese consumers is through the Net. Companies specialized in such matters, like U.S.‑based Market China Inc.(www.marketchinainc.com), describe it as “a gateway to China’s youth market.”

For hot content, young Chinese Web hipsters go to general entertainment Yahoo‑type portals that are community focused. Top sites include Sina.com, Sohu, and Netease (www.163.com/). All three are listed on the Nasdaq.

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In this special report, you will find some trends and analysis on the blogosphere. With some key questions, that we assumed to be some of the hot topics of the coming year.

Is citizen journalism yet mature enough to be economically viable? What is Apple trying to do in the blogosphere with iLife06? Where are we on the Gartner Hype Cycle regarding the blog phenomenon? And is videoblogging the next kill app’?

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Is it finally easy to videoblog? Only recently has blogging come to mean more than just text and pix. A little over a year ago, podcasting hit the scene and has been developing at lightning speed, making it possible to produce and post your own personal radio shows on the Net. Many applications such as Apple’s Garage Band give you the potential to produce professional-quality programs… assuming you’ve got the talent. Not bad, but wannabe media tycoons want more. That’s why 2006 will be the year of the video blog. Videoblogging is being made easier and easier, especially by a young San Francisco startup called VideoEgg (www.videoegg.com).

VideoEgg, founded by three young Yale grads, officially launched its flagship product in September 2005. The company quickly found its way to the Silicon Valley - to San Francisco more precisely - and to venture capitalists, who quickly sensed the software’s potential. VideoEgg is announcing that it has closed its second venture round with August Capital for an amount still under wraps. That’s quite an accomplishment for a few short months.

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