Persistence Software today announced "E-Nough," a campaign aimed against the desecration of the English language and proliferation of artificial words starting with "e-." In an effort to curb the rampant and annoying spread of "e-" words, Persistence has furthered the cause by establishing "The Society for the Preservation of the Other 25 Letters of the Alphabet." The first 500 people to submit particularly offensive examples of "e-" words on the Persistence website (www.persistence.com/e-nough) will receive a free "E-Nough" T-shirt. In addition to compiling a list of the most flagrant "e-" violations, the web site also pays homage to the unjustly neglected French author, Georges Perec, who wrote an entire book without using the letter "e." "Nobody wants to live in a society where all the words start with the same letter," said Chris Keene, CEO of Persistence Software. "More vendor effort seems to be going into promoting new e-words than in helping companies deliver real electronic commerce solutions. We felt it was time that somebody took a stand and stood up for the other 25 letters of the alphabet." The generation of Internet users now conducting business, social and personal transactions online does not need a generic moniker to collectively identify itself," Keene continued. "Nor does it need a set of artificial marketing buzzwords beginning with 'e-' to define its actions. What are needed are products and services that facilitate and improve online transactions. The 'E-Nough' campaign is meant as a direct challenge to the companies involved in electronic commerce to stop substituting catchy phrases for real customer successes." Georges Perec's French novel, La Disparition, is written entirely without the letter "e." Its plot is full of wordplay, such as a character that cannot remember his name because it contains an "e." Though it may be hard to believe considering the restriction under which it is written, the novel is quite engrossing. Apparently many reviewers were not even aware that a special constraint was used in writing it. After writing the novel, Perec faced a protest from the "a", "i", "o" and "u" keys on his keyboard that they did all the work and "e" was leading an easy life. So Perec had no choice but to write a short work called Les Revenentes, where "e" is the only vowel used. www.persistence.com.
Fatbrain.com debuted its eMatter content for sale at www.fatbrain.com. eMatter is a secure digital publishing solution that allows authors and publishers to publish and sell their works online, earning royalties of at least 50 percent on every copy sold. The eMatter program provides a new global distribution channel for works of all kinds, including books, magazines and articles. In addition, eMatter is ideal for specialty documents, which may include articles that are longer than a magazine but shorter than a book and out-of-print materials. To publish an eMatter document, the author simply uploads the document to Fatbrain.com as an PDF file, Microsoft Word document, Postscript file or text file, sets a price, provides summary information, and then places the work into one of the thousands of subject categories available through Fatbrain.com. The published eMatter document is posted for sale, where it may be found via normal search mechanisms and then purchased for download in electronic format. The author then receives a royalty check and a detailed sales report from Fatbrain.com based on the number of people who have purchased the work. To secure eMatter documents, Fatbrain.com has developed new patent-pending secure digital rights technologies to protect the ownership rights of the document, which is delivered in Windows versions of PDF. eMatter documents are expected to be available in Macintosh and UNIX versions in early 2000. Downloaded eMatter files have a persistent security wrapper that ensures that content is protected even if it is redistributed; only users who have purchased the eMatter file will be able to read it. If a copy of the eMatter file is opened on a different computer, the new reader is offered the option to purchase the work. www.fatbrain.com
Electronic content is definitely getting more respect these days. Fatbrain's publishing model is certainly something we will see more of. It is almost too easy to publish — we published all this year's Gilbane Reports on Fatbrain in about an hour, and they were available in less than 24 hours (and this was on a weekend!). The only downside to this model as it proliferates is that there will be even more bad information published along with the good.
Computer Sciences Corporation announced support for a new e-commerce framework specification developed by CommerceNet. CSC will support the eCo Framework (http://eco.commerce.net) both internally and through an ongoing client education and awareness program. These efforts are being coordinated by CSC's e-business practice which focused upon building excellence in XML technology and establishing best practice information architectures by working with clients and industry organizations. The eCo Interoperability Framework provides a single common protocol through which eCommerce systems can describe themselves, their services and their interoperability requirements. The eCo Framework Working Group, which developed the specification, includes key industry players such as 3Com, American Express, American Power Conversion, ASC/X12, Berkeley National Lab, Cisco Systems, Commerce One, Compaq, CSC, Ontology.Org, GEIS, Harbinger, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Intel, Intuit, ISO, Microsoft, Mondex International, NEC, Netscape, Novell, Royal Bank of Canada, Sun Microsystems and UWI.com, as well as experts in XML, OBI, OFX, OTP, XML/EDI, RosettaNet, and CBL. http://eco.commerce.net
It may seem strange to some that something associated with CALS would still be relevant, but the CALS table model was adopted by most authoring tool vendors, and there is a lot of table content marked-up accordingly.
This is important and welcome news for Lotus customers (and potential customers). Lotus has been noticeably quiet about XML, and has to make it easy to integrate Domino into Microsoft environments. This announcement shows they are paying attention.
Harbinger Corporation announced expansive new corporate-wide initiatives that bring XML to the forefront of its Internet E-Commerce strategy. First, Harbinger will launch an on-network XML translation service via its E-Commerce portal along with an online XML document repository that is being developed by Harbinger for its EC Resource Center (www.harbinger.net). Harbinger also plans to support XML in future releases of its suite of TrustedLink translation software. Finally, Harbinger announced that it has formed an alliance with OnDisplay, an e-business technology leader, to integrate their state-of-the-art XML products into certain of Harbinger's products. In conjunction with these initiatives, Harbinger is working with international non-profit organizations, including UN/CEFACT and OASIS, to standardize XML business specifications and is supporting other collective efforts such as the Microsoft BizTalk Framework to drive the adoption of XML in Electronic Commerce. Harbinger plans to roll out an on-network XML translation service this December that will be available to customers using harbinger.net. The service, which automatically translates EDI documents to/from XML and will process native XML transactions as well, promises to facilitate translation and mapping in Internet electronic trading, while helping companies speed the implementation of new E-Commerce applications. The on-network service is currently in limited production tests. Harbinger also announced as part of its XML initiatives that it has entered into a significant alliance with OnDisplay. Through the relationship, Harbinger will incorporate OnDisplay's e-business technology within its overall XML strategy, as well as within its data rationalization and content management offerings through Harbinger's Catalog Solutions Division. The relationship additionally includes joint marketing and delivery of catalog content solutions by the companies. www.ondisplay.com. www.harbinger.net.
The most evident trend at Internet World in NY this month was that everybody was claiming to fill the gap between e-commerce presentation & shopping cart systems and back-end enterprise and support systems. We are headed for a new level of "coopetition" since the only way most suppliers can provide a complete system is with partners. This is a more natural approach for a middleware vendor like Bluestone than for some others.
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