Recently Stewart Mckie in a blog posting (http://holistic.tripos.biz/about/gri-and-software-certification/) pointed out that the GRI appears to have changed the wording of its copyright notice with regard to use of the GRI content in software solutions. It is now "Illegal" to use GRI text, indicators or content in software systems without paying a license to the GRI.

  XBRL US Inc is releasing their iPhone application. Congratulations to XBRL US Inc for creation of that application and the decision to release it as a free application. This is a great move to support the wider adoption of XBRL.

  There’s no replacement for XBRL. But Dr. Graham G. Rong, Fellow at the MIT Sloan School of Management and chair of the MIT Sloan CIO Symposium, thinks there are opportunities for Semantic Web technologies to enhance it, turning the data within financial reports into meaningful knowledge that helps both the producers and consumers of these materials.

  No one should believe that CSR / Sustainability reports will be Fraud-Free zones. Where there is a need or desire to provide reported outcomes that differ from actual outcomes, there will be mis-staement and fraud. Corporate officers are now required (under the US Sarbanes-Oxley law – “SOX”) to certify that the reported results are accurate. These officers face criminal and civil penalties if they knowingly certify inaccurate information in the reports.

  Last week, the Committee of European Securities Regulators (CESR) offered several measures to improve access and search of financial information of listed companies in the EU’s 27 member countries. The proposals present options for the organization and centralization of so-called Officially Appointed Mechanisms (OAMs) that are the financial information storage facilities for public firms. The measures also call for a cost/benefit analysis of an XBRL mandate for listed company financials and contemplate a five-year phase-in period.

  A few weeks ago, Haaretz, Israel’s oldest daily newspaper, published an article about the country’s adoption of XBRL with the chilling headline A third of Israeli companies get int’l financial reports wrong. Summarizing the findings of a recently published study by a trio of researchers, the piece states:

  WASHINGTON, July 27 /PRNewswire/ — XBRL US, the non-profit consortium for XML business reporting, has released a second version of its XBRL Consistency Suite with improved functionality and additional checks that now cover detailed footnote tagging. The new version also now provides a quick and easy way to compare the 2009 Taxonomy Release to the 2011 Pre-release of the US GAAP Financial Reporting Taxonomy, recently published by the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB).

  Vinod Kashyap is a Director at NextGen Knowledge Solutions Private Ltd., which is engaged in the business of conducting training courses on XBRL for banks, corporations, and financial professionals in India. He is a member of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India and is a qualified Information Systems Auditor.

  SEC requirements for XBRL disclosures affect three types of entities: operating companies, mutual funds, and credit rating agencies that are Nationally Recognized Statistical Rating Organizations (NRSROs).

  the impact that creating XBRL exhibits has on traditional financial statements. The process forces (or, more optimistically, enables) accountants to think about their financials and the underlying accounting in fresh and useful ways.