Why isn't your annual report in HTML?

There's a growing trend over the last few years to put company annual report online. However, just sticking the print version on your website as a PDF (Portable Document Format) docuemnt just doesn't cut the mustard any more. In fact, in this recent research from Nexxar, in the UK two thirds of our top companies now produce their annual reports in HTML format.

Now I've previously covered the topic Company Report -The Next Generation, and in last year's posting I explained the benefits of delivering your Annual Report in HTML format. However what surprised me most about the finding's of Nexxar's research, was not that there are still a lot of companies holding onto their old formats, but that a number of the top French companies in the CAC40 have actually stopped producing HTML reports (and seemingly gone back to PDF or image-based reports in JPG format).

Have I missed something here and there's a reason for this? Or has the overall business climate contributed to a completed backwards step in how annual reports are now delivered online?

France wants to tax online

This world gets crazier & crazier the more you read ("so read less" I hear you say), but those daft Frenchies have taken things to a whole new level by commissioning a report that proposes a tax on online business. Aready being called the "Google tax", this report suggests that each time an ad is clicked, online firms should be charged a between one to two percent of the revenue generated, thereby raising between €10m and €20m a year.

Said Olivier Esper, senior policy manager for Google France "

We don't think introducing an additional tax on internet advertising is the right way forward as it could slow down innovation"

So what worthy cause will benefit from this taxation? A college, a hospital or some other public-spirited initiative that will improve the quality of life in France?

Errr... no! .The report suggests that this money would be used to compensate media and content owners such as recorded music or print media. So... those mainstream media companies who have not fully found a way to benefit from the Internet are to be compensated by those that have?

And which level-headed and informed individuals did they find to author this report? Why none other than Guillaume Cerruti (president of Sotheby's auction house in France), Jacques Toubon (former French Minister of Culture) and Patrick Zelnik (owner of the Naive record label, which could end up being the very beneficiary of this tax revenue).

Now far be it from me to criticize a government of bias, but I can't help but wonder if Carla Bruni-Sarkozy being signed to the Naive record creates some conflict of interest here.....?

French newspaper must evolve or croak

Well well, one of the last bastions of french journalism has woken up and smelt the expensive coffee of the modern age before it is possibly too late. I understand that French newspaper, Le Monde, has just completed the development of its TV studio somewhere in its offices (in Paris I assume).

This facility allows journalists to produce articles and video clips alongside each other for the different versions of its paper, with the video obviously making its way online to support the electronic version.

Well-regarded print-based publications such as this one have done all they can in the past not to venture down this path, with critics stating this should have been something done in the more media-friendly 1990's. This would at-least have given these publications time to learn their craft and they could perhaps even have taken some of the lower-level TV channels on at their own game back then.

Could it also be a cooincindence that Le Monde is also looking to cut 130 jobs by March 2009, all in the name of cost saving?

Reddit!