GIUNTI Ricerca (GIUNTIRIC, Italy)

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GIUNTI Ricerca S.r.l. (GIUNTIRIC) has been founded in September 2000 as the spin off New Media Research Centre of Interactive Labs S.r.l. (GIUNTI Ilabs), the professional publishing and courseware design and development facility of the GIUNTI Publishing Group. GIUNTI Ricerca, located in the restored ancient Abbey of Dominican Fathers, looked out to the Bay of Silence in Sestri Levante (on the Genoa East coast), group together high-level professionals as R&D project managers, project engineers, software developers and analysts. GIUNTI Ricerca operates at European level on the most advanced technologies for electronic publishing, e-learning and broadband multimedia communication (such as wearable computers, mobile Internet, e-learning platforms, multimedia databases, portal technologies, e-books, intelligent agents).

The company mission is to develop R&D projects (New Media Research) for GIUNTI Publishing Group, other third parties (as other publishers, national and international companies, public bodies), working in international consortia, co-funded by the European Commission and other Italian official bodies, such as the Ministero dell'Istruzione, dell'Università e della Ricerca (MIUR), Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali (MBAC) and Ministero del Lavoro.

GIUNTI Publishing Group is the Italian leader in the Educational Publishing sector which ranks among its authors illustrious names in the world of contemporary culture (e.g. Le Goff, Vlad, Bernstein, Rubbia, Rita Levi Montalcini, Calvesi, Lavin, Argan, Dulbecco, Hodgkin, Muti) and the honorary Group President was Prof. A. Ruberti, previous EEC Research Commissioner. Giunti has headquarters in Florence Italy and its own nation-wide distribution network (over 240 agents, 8250 regularly supplied bookshops, 5000 catalogued titles available with 450 average new titles per year). The Group also owns more than 120 bookstores in the North Eastern part of Italy. The Giunti Group actually accounts for 600 employees, more than 180 million EUROs consolidated turnover with major shares in 25 companies covering all publishing issues, from copyright clearance to printing and distribution. Some companies cover specific content sectors, such as psychological tests publishing or educational information services. The Giunti Group is also part (one of the three coordinators) of the Consortium (TRIO) managing all SME teletraining activities for the Tuscany region in Italy and is the main shareholder of the network of bookstores and ticket offices in all the Museums of Florence (including Galleria degli Uffizi, one of the World's most visited museums). After a thorough analysis about the evolution of traditional publishing towards digital means, the Giunti Publishing Group, first in Italy, has set up in 1992 digital publishing branches in Milan, Florence, Genoa, Varese, and Tortona, respectively dealing with consumer publishing (Giunti Multimedia), teletraining and educational electronic development and publishing (Interactive Labs), online and advanced graphics gaming (Game Over and Giunti Entertainment). In 1994 Giunti Publishing Group acquired major shares in Interactive Lab S.r.l., (short name GIUNTI Ilabs) one of the first established (1988) and mostly active interactive multimedia software design and development facilities in Italy and Europe.

Today the Multimedia Companies of the Giunti Group account for more than 10 million EUROs turnover in 1998 with 30 employees and an average of 70 permanent external consultants from the Publishing Group (Art Directors, Graphic designers, Content Authors, AudioVisuals Profs, additional programmers). All Giunti Group facilities for authoring, contracting, design, printing and distribution are constantly shared in Giunti electronic publishing activities carried forward at GIUNTI Interactive Labs and other electronic companies. GIUNTI Interactive Labs is one of the first multimedia production companies in Italy and one of the most active on both Italian and European market. GIUNTI Interactive Labs has, since the beginning, exploited multilingual and multiplatform digital production in Europe producing one of Europe's widest consumer catalogues and signing agreements with main distributors and publishers (e.g. Philips, Olivetti, Commodore, EMME, Hachette, Editoriale La Repubblica, Telecom Italia, IBM) producing up to now about 200 interactive multimedia titles.

Together with other companies in the Group, GIUNTI Ilabs and GIUNTI Ricerca rank a wide experience in multimodal and multiformat electronic publishing for the home and school market. Nevertheless GIUNTI Ilabs has focused on the design and development of software titles for all Giunti companies and for third party companies, either consumer publishers or actors of the professionals sector. Besides such EP services activities, GIUNTI Ilabs, and GIUNTI Ricerca for R&D activities, are the main reference point within Giunti and main actors in Italy for teletraining and professional EP having technical skills on all market software platforms for CD-Roms, Web and WEBCD authoring and on research activities in the field of Intelligent Tutoring Systems (ITS), adaptive user interfaces, satellite Interactive Distance Learning (IDL), multimedia palmtop and wearable computing, electronic commerce experimentation, broadband Internet.

GIUNTI Ricerca, together with GIUNTI Ilabs, is well-known at European level, especially in the field of multimedia research & development and professional training, being very active in European Commission projects (in ESPRIT, Telematics Applications, ADAPT, Socrates, Innovation, ACTS, TEN-TELECOM programmes) and activities, such as working groups (PROMETEUS, MEDICI, CEN-ISSS WSLT, IEEE P1484 LTSC), conferences (EMMSEC, MILIA, IST), coordination meetings, direct services to EC DGs (i.e. A World of Understanding WEB-CD, MERIT, PLUS/PROSOMA) as well as V Framework Programme (FP) IST Projects (ARTISTE, EASEL, IEYE, KOD, IMAGEN, JUST, UPLOADED IT, I-MASS, WEBSCHOOL).

Key people: Dr. Fabrizio Cardinali, Dr. Giancarlo Bo

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