Canto Software announced the immediate availability of BrandAssistant, offering professional digital asset management from within QuarkXPress 7. Designed for Brand Managers, who need absolute control over the assets they manage, BrandAssistant is meant to reduce production and approval delays, decrease time to market and increase asset security and distribution control. In addition to finding cataloged files and composition zones (and using drag & drop to place them in layouts), BrandAssistant enables layout artists to catalog new layouts, autocatalog assets used in those layouts, and even mark files ready for review, without leaving the QuarkXPress environment. The complete text used in layouts can be cataloged as searchable metadata, making it easier to find files based on their content. The asset-relations tracking technology first introduced with Cumulus 7 is included, enabling users to find assets based on their relationships with other assets: contains/is contained in, references/is referenced by, and more. PDF variants of layouts can be created automatically by BrandAssistant, making the review process easy for those without access to QuarkXPress. BrandAssistant is based upon a full version of Cumulus 7 Workgroup, offering complete, version-controlled digital asset management, even for projects outside the QuarkXPress workflow. All file formats are supported, and Cumulus offers enhanced metadata support for the most popular file formats, including PDF, Microsoft Office, Photoshop, Illustrator, TIF and many more. From within QuarkXPress 7, users can access and place any file format supported by QuarkXPress, including text, images and composition zones. Outside QuarkXPress 7, users can access asset libraries using the Cumulus Native Client included for Mac OS X and Windows. BrandAssistant can be purchased from authorized Canto resellers at an introductory cost of EUR/USD 5,995 until 1/31/07, and afterwards at EUR/USD 6,795 for a 3-user license. (BrandAssistants Web access for clients ties up no user licenses.) Each system comes with a years worth of Software Maintenance, offering free updates and expert technical support. The BrandAssistant Server is available for Mac OS X (Universal Binary) or Windows (2000, 2003, XP). Cumulus Client software is available for Mac OS X, Windows and the Web. http://www.canto.com

Liferay announced the release of Liferay Portal 4.2. The latest version offers added back-end enhancements to workflow and content management via integration with ServiceMix JBI, jBPM workflow engine, and Alfresco, as well as new features such as chat and other user-interface enhancements to improve end-user experience and collaboration. New upgrades in Version 4.2 include integration with the ServiceMix JBI (Java Business Integration) engine, which acts as a single point of connection for disparate enterprise applications. ServiceMix simplifies the integration, upgrade and substitution of siloed applications such as CRM, ERP, and ECM, reducing development time and lowering maintenance costs. Other new features of Liferay Portal 4.2 include: jBPM workflow engine allows developers to quickly change application workflow to reflect evolving business processes; Liferay Chat a secure, portal-based instant messaging solution with an intuitive AJAX/Web 2.0 interface; Alfresco integration allows users to manage enterprise content directly through the Liferay Portal environment; A new parallel portlet rendering engine reduces end-user wait time by allowing portlets to load independently. Liferay Portal, available at no cost under the MIT license, supports all major middleware and database platforms including JBoss JEMS, BEA Platform, WebSphere, Tomcat, Oracle, mySQL and SQLServer. It also complies with major standards such as JSR-168 and JSR-170. Version 4.2 is available in both current editions of Liferay PortalLiferay Portal Professional, the standard product; and Liferay Portal Enterprise, which includes all Professional features plus the ability to cluster portlet transactions across multiple servers. The product is available for immediate download in both editions at http://www.liferay.com

IBM (NYSE: IBM) and Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ: YHOO) introduced new, free enterprise search software with Web search services powered by Yahoo! that enables departments and businesses of all sizes to find, access and capitalize on information stored within organizations and across the Web. IBM OmniFind Yahoo! Edition is a no-cost, entry level enterprise search product developed to help eliminate financial and technology barriers to intranet and Web search. The new offering from IBM with Web search services powered by Yahoo! can be downloaded for free and is simple to install and use with existing hardware. The offering supports up to 500,000 documents per server, more than 200 file types and documents in more than 30 languages. It features a three-click installation process and takes customers only minutes to go from download to live search and information access. IBM OmniFind Yahoo! Edition also uses the open source Lucene indexing library to provide cross-platform full text indexing. IBM OmniFind Yahoo! Edition offers automatic spell correction, support for synonyms and shortcuts, wildcard support to substitute for unknown characters, query reporting, and graphical user interface customization. In addition, it is fully integrated with Yahoo! Search, providing one-click access to send queries to Yahoo! web, image, video, audio, directory, local and news search services. The new software complements IBM’s existing OmniFind search and content discovery software. It provides a no-cost entry point for clients who want to get started with basic search but might have future needs for advanced secured search, or capabilities beyond traditional search such as business analytics, quality insight reporting, e-commerce or customer service self-help, or who want to leverage their unstructured information more broadly as a service throughout the enterprise. Worldwide, enterprise-class phone support (for a fee) is available from IBM. IBM OmniFind Yahoo! Edition is available at no charge and can be downloaded at http://omnifind.ibm.yahoo.com