At Milia, a Search for New Web Business Models.(multimedia festival)

AFTER HANGING ON during the rise and fall of CD-ROM and other good tries, the annual Milia fair in Cannes was ready for the Internet explosion. At this February's show, subtitled "International Content Market for Interactive Media," the fair's universe expanded, and considerably, with producers, developers and designers exhibiting alongside the next turns in the road in enabling technology. Some 7000 participants were clocked in, including boothless walk-ins as well as impressive floor shows from the likes of Intel, Apple and Microsoft.

For book people, this sixth Milia was perhaps less a market than a market study. Wonder how Germany's big B is going to operate its global online bookselling? One could buttonhole the Bertels-men in Cannes. Need some content? Try Bill Gates's art and photo archive Corbis or the China Cartographic Publishing House. Unlike most other electronics shows, Milia is future-oriented, but that doesn't necessarily mean virtual--you can see and touch.

Although a well-attended keynote address by James Murdoch, president of New America Digital Publishing (part of his father's News Corp.), consisted largely of quotes from …