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February 28, 2008

Mzinga Announces New Release of Firefly Collaborative Authoring Suite

Mzinga announced the immediate availability of its new Firefly Collaborative Authoring Suite, composed of the company's Firefly Simulation Developer and Firefly Publisher tools. Firefly 5.0, the latest version of the company's Firefly Simulation Developer tool, features enhancements to the product's three fundamental capabilities: depth and quality of the capture technology, overall instructional design and development flexibility, and an engaging end-user learning experience. Mzinga has enhanced Firefly's capture capabilities by extending support .Net, and newer coding models such as those involving doctypes. Firefly also fully supports the tabbed interface of Internet Explorer 7.0. Firefly Publisher 3.2 enables team-based authoring of interactive eLearning courses in a Web-based environment. All Firefly Publisher courses (regardless of version) now support Firefox and other Gecko-based browsers, such as Mozilla SeaMonkey, as well as the Mac OS X and Linux operating systems. Additionally, the Firefly Publisher user interface can now be localized to any language. A new Flash-based engine provides better development control of shapes and other design elements, and new configuration options allow learners to be redirected to specific locations within a course based on test results. SCORM course completion conditions can also be fully configured to address varied corporate learning standards. http://www.mzinga.com

February 27, 2008

Bridgeline Software Releases iAPPS Analytics

Bridgeline Software, Inc. (NASDAQ: BLSW) announced the release of iAPPS Analytics, the second of four planned on-demand SaaS software products unified by the iAPPS Framework. iAPPS Analytics is a web application management solution that integrates web analytics to help organizations measure and optimize their web properties. When combined with Bridgeline's web content management system, iAPPS Content Manager, iAPPS Analytics enables real-time delivery of targeted content based on user profiles and site visitor behavior. iAPPS Analytics provides deep integration within all levels of a web application, providing business users with ease-of-use through AJAX controls and desktop-like conventions such as drag-and-drop, inline content editing, and right-click context menus. iAPPS Analytics also enhances speed and productivity through dynamic segmentation and auto page tagging, as well as provides visitor behavior intelligence through a full range of reports including click-density analysis. Bridgeline offers iAPPS Analytics in both subscription and perpetual license models with prices starting at approximately $1,000 per month depending on database size and URL requirements. http://www.bridgelinesw.com

Zoho Updates Zoho Writer

Zoho Writer now supports exporting to DocX, the new Microsoft OOXML file format for Word. They already support ODF Export/Import in Zoho Writer. Currently you can export any of your documents in Zoho Writer as a DocX file. This is in addition to the already available export options - DOC, TXT, HTML, PDF, ODF, SXW and RTF. They will soon be supporting DocX import as well. They have also added a Thesaurus option (in 10 languages). Right-click on a word, choose the 'Thesaurus' option from the contextual menu to view the synonyms and related words. The current version of Thesaurus is used primarily for lookup purposes. In the next version, they plan to enhance this functionality further to replace the words with selected ones from thesaurus. Languages supported in Thesaurus: English, Czech, German, Greek, French, Irish, Italian, Polish, Russian and Slovak. We will keep adding more language options in future updates. You can also now share documents with groups, avoiding the need to enter multiple email addresses each time you share a document. To share a document with a group, click on 'Share' and select the 'Share with Groups' tab. You can create new groups in your 'My Account' section. These groups will be visible across all Zoho Applications. All Zoho Writer documents, when exported to DocX, ODF, SXW and RTF, now retain the endnotes/footnotes correctly. Headers/Footers support is further enhanced in this latest update. Full support is available when you export documents to DocX, ODF, SXW and RTF. http://www.zoho.com

February 26, 2008

Kentico CMS to Support Windows Server 2008 and SQL Server 2008

Kentico Software announced that the new version 3.1 of their Web Content Management System will support Microsoft Windows Server 2008 and SQL Server 2008. Kentico Software will release a new version 3.1 of their Web Content Management System Kentico CMS for ASP.NET in the middle of March 2008. The new version will work with Microsoft Windows Server 2008 and Microsoft SQL Server 2008 that will be launched on February 27. This news comes soon after the company announced their CMS supports Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 and Microsoft IIS 7.0 at the beginning of February. Kentico CMS will keep the support for Windows Server 2000/2003 and SQL Server 2000/2005 as well. http://www.kentico.com

Intalio Launches Worldwide Partner Program

Intalio, Inc. announced a new worldwide Partner Program to provide System Integrators (SI) with resources for implementing and integrating a complete Business Process Management System (BPMS) with their clients' existing infrastructure. The program offers three levels: Silver, Gold, and Platinum - depending on the needs of the SI. All partners receive technical and marketing support, discounts to training and consulting, and commissions. Currently, 19 System Integrators worldwide have signed up for the Intalio Partner Program, including Ancud (Germany), OpenSoft (Australia), Projeler (Brazil), and Wego (Italy). Intalio's BPMS Platform includes BPMN and BPEL industry standards; embeds a Document Management System (DMS); and integrates Enterprise Service Bus (ESB), Portal, Workflow, Business Activity Monitors and a Business Rules Engine (BRE). Partners provide the resources to help manage these complex integration scenarios for the customer. Platinum partners receive leads based on their geographic territory. Both Gold and Platinum members have the rights to redistribute the binaries of Intalio applications. All partners also receive at least one dedicated support person, access to the Intalio Partner Portal, and automatic software updates. http://www.intalio.com/blog

Zapatec Launches Enterprise-Class Web 2.0 Calendar

Zapatec, Inc. announced the launch of its AJAX Events Calendar, a single-page, multi-user solution, providing full desktop functionality in an easy-to-deploy calendaring solution. Developers can now embed the Calendar in any application or purchase it as a software package, a hosted solution or a virtual appliance deployable on Amazon's EC2 cloud. The Zapatec AJAX Calendar is available as a pluggable AJAX front-end or with either PHP or Java back-ends. It is cross browser compatible and customizable. Using the virtual appliance option, customers can have the calendar up and running in less than an hour in their own private environment. Companies get all the benefits of a hosted solution while still having full control of the product. The calendar is the first in the series of self contained modules that Zapatec offers. An email module and a contact module are due in April 2008. Pricing for the calendar starts at $2000. The Zapatec Events Calendar is available now at: http://www.zapatec.com/website/main/products/eventscalendar

February 25, 2008

Adobe AIR and Adobe Flex 3 Now Available

Adobe Systems Incorporated (Nasdaq:ADBE) announced the availability of Adobe AIR and Adobe Flex 3 software, adding to the Adobe technology platform for rich Internet applications (RIAs). Adobe AIR bridges the real-time, dynamic capabilities of the Web with the computing power and data capabilities of the desktop. Businesses that leverage the Web as a platform can use the latest Adobe RIA technologies to build and deploy more engaging applications across browsers, desktops and operating systems. Adobe is also delivering new applications built with Adobe Flex and deployed on Adobe AIR, such as Adobe Media Player, as well as Buzzword, an online word processor that has built-in collaboration capabilities. Adobe AIR enables developers to create RIAs on the desktop using the skills and Web technologies - such as HTML, Ajax, PDF, Adobe Flash and Adobe Flex - they already employ. Applications deployed on Adobe AIR have the advantages of browser-based RIAs, such as speed of development, ease of use, and access from virtually anywhere. Yet they also have the benefits of desktop applications, such as the ability to read/write local files, work with other applications on a user's computer and maintain local data storage on the desktop. Flex is a free, open source framework for building RIAs. Adobe Flex Builder 3, an Eclipse based development tool, accelerates Flex application development and includes new capabilities for deploying RIAs on Adobe AIR. Adobe Flex Builder 3 integrates with Adobe Creative Suite 3 software making it easy for designers and developers to work together. Major portions of Adobe AIR, such as the WebKit HTML engine, Tamarin ActionScript Virtual Machine, and SQLite local database functionality, are open source. Adobe AIR and the Adobe AIR SDK are available immediately as free downloads in English and offered for both Windows and Macintosh operating systems. Upcoming versions are expected to be available for Linux and other languages. The Adobe Flex 3 product line is available now in English and Japanese, and offered for both Windows and Macintosh operating systems. The open source Flex 3 SDK is available free of charge and a beta version of Adobe Flex Builder 3 for Linux is freely available on Adobe Labs. Adobe Flex Builder 3 is available as a standalone product or Eclipse plug-in, with the Standard edition priced at US$249 and the Professional edition at US$699. http://www.adobe.com

Northern Light Launches MI Analyst 2.0 Offering Deeper, Faster 'Meaning Extraction' from Market Intelligence Search Results

Northern Light launched its second major release of MI Analyst, a "meaning extraction" application designed specifically for market intelligence, market research and product research. Meaning extraction imbues a search application with an in-depth understanding of the searched material. MI Analyst 2.0 adds many new "facets" (categories of terms) by which the software can instantly analyze search results, automatically extracting meaning from internal and research documents, licensed secondary research, news stories and Web sources. Joining the previously released facets (Companies, Venture-Funded Companies, IT Technologies, IT Markets), new and expanded facets include Government Agencies, Industries, Business Issues and Strategic Scenarios. Also new in MI Analyst 2.0 is a facility to improve the value of search results based on the proximity of specified terms or phrases to each other, and more importantly, to any of the terms in any of the facets in MI Analyst. With the 2.0 release, MI Analyst expands beyond its roots in the IT sector to the pharmaceutical industry research. New facets relevant to pharmaceuticals include Human Anatomy, Diseases, Drugs, Cells, Cell Receptors, Proteins, Genes, Enzymes, Pharmaceutical Markets, Life Sciences Scenarios and Research Strategies and Therapeutic Approaches. MI Analyst can discern the tone of content - for example, assessing which market research reports and research analysts reflect a positive sentiment and which ones demonstrate a negative sentiment about a company and its competitors. MI Analyst is immediately available from Northern Light as an added-value option for SinglePoint enterprise market research portals, and as an integrated capability within Analyst Direct, Northern Light's subscription-based market research search engine. Unlimited enterprise-wide access to MI Analyst starts at $48,000 annually. http://www.northernlight.com/

Attensity Announces "VoC On-Demand" Software as a Service

Attensity announced Attensity VoC On-Demand, a new secure software as a service (SaaS) that enables users to access the company's "Voice of the Customer" (VoC) solution via the Web for on-demand customer feedback analysis. Enterprises can now extract and analyze data about their customers in Attensity's user interface and through customizable analytic dashboards. Attensity's VoC solution uses the company's Exhaustive Extraction engine to automatically identify facts, opinions, requests, trends and trouble areas from unstructured first person feedback found in surveys, service and call center notes, emails, web forums, blogs, news articles and other forms of customer contact. Attensity turns the first person feedback into "First Person Intelligence", enabling Attensity users to proactively understand and rapidly react to customer issues and requests. They also have the ability to discover product and/or service offering opportunities as well as potential areas for improvement. Attensity VoC On-Demand also offers a quick start implementation program, which includes appropriate data preparation - dictionary, domain and categorization development - to prepare data sets for extraction and output views and dashboards. Users can develop predefined analysis views, known as query templates, and dashboards tailored to the user organization's requirements. http://www.attensity.com

Zinio Announces Launch of Global Newsstand and an International Marketing Partnership

Zinio announced the launch of an online Global Newsstand; and a partnership spanning Europe and Latin America with Acceso Group, a company part-owned by both Havas Media and ISP. Zinio's new global initiative provides publishers increased reach and introduces more variety for consumers with an expanded selection of magazine titles and a choice between online or offline reading capabilities. Zinio's Global Newsstand offers magazine publishers the ability to circulate their publications worldwide, a task previously limited by constraints of print costs, distribution and inventory. Zinio aims to expand their international reach to more than 2,000 top-tier titles within the year by collaborating with Havas Media global network. Publishers who join will also have access to a new resource center that includes the ability to work closely with Zinio's Publisher Growth Services Group (PGS Group) to create tailored marketing programs, as an extension to their own resources. The PGS Group helps publishers build stronger recognition for their titles and brand while increasing a variety of circulation and advertising revenue streams. http://www.zinio.com/

Colosa Launches Open Source Workflow Solution for Small and Medium-sized Enterprises

Colosa, a developer of business process management (BPM) software that enables small and medium enterprises (SMEs) to simplify workflow through the capture and automation of paper-based processes, announced the launch of its open source solution, ProcessMaker OSS version 1.0. ProcessMaker OSS is an AJAX enabled, web-based software tool that allows private and public organizations to automate document intensive, approval-based processes across systems including finance, HR and operations. It allows users across multiple sites to create and share workflows, customize forms, manage processes, and enhance reporting. ProcessMaker OSS v1.0 is published under the GNU Affero GPL v3 open source license, so the source code is accessible to all users and modifications that meet the licensing requirements are acceptable. The software is designed with a full service-orientated architecture (SOA) and Web Services interface allowing the software to directly connect with customer relationship management (CRM), business intelligence (BI), content management (CMS), and enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems. ProcessMaker is an entirely web-based, AJAX-enabled application that is built on the open source LAMP (Apache/MySQL/PHP) stack. Users can design their own forms, documents and business rules in a modular environment within the suite. ISVs can integrate ProcessMaker with existing software to add workflow functionality. To support the new open source version of ProcessMaker, Colosa has modified the software to include features such as an interface design suitable for non-technical business owners that will facilitate communication within the open source community, including forums, wiki documentation, issue tracking, and blogs. Colosa's Enterprise version of ProcessMaker, ProcessMaker Enterprise, differs from the open source version in that it comes with Colosa direct support and some additional higher-end management functionality such as dashboards and reporting. ProcessMaker OSS is available for download at Sourceforge and both versions are available at http://www.processmaker.com, http://sourceforge.net/projects/processmaker/

Vignette Announces Three Product Releases

Vignette (NASDAQ: VIGN), announced three new product releases targeting organizations that want to deliver more personal and engaging Web experiences to their key audiences. Vignette Recommendations, Web analytics integration and an enhanced version of Vignette Rich Media Services. Vignette Recommendations helps organizations deliver more targeted Web experiences to customers through content recommendations, product recommendations and social search. Recommendations are immediately tailored to a visitor's intent rather than their past history. Central to this approach is Vignette Recommendations' ability to identify and leverage the virtual communities of like-minded visitors on any given site. By dynamically recognizing a visitor's true intent, Vignette Recommendations can guide them to the right content, product or search result. Vignette's Web analytics solution, powered by integration with Omniture SiteCatalyst, helps organizations maximize the value of their online properties. In addition to SiteCatalyst's site reports, Vignette's analytics integration helps customers identify and promote high value content and ads on media sites, optimize the mix and freshness of social sites or refine a portal or knowledge repository. Vignette is also launching an enhanced version of its Rich Media Services product module. Rich Media Services helps reduce the time it takes an organization to ingest, manage, manipulate and publish media assets, enriching the end-user Web experience without the cost or complexity of a digital asset management system. The latest version features enhanced metadata capturing, right-to-left language support and an optional desktop client that allows users to quickly and easily manipulate images and the associated metadata. Vignette Recommendations and the Web analytics integration are now available. The enhanced release of Vignette Rich Media Services will be available during the first half of 2008. http://www.vignette.com

February 21, 2008

Clay Tablet Launches SaaS Version

Clay Tablet Technologies announced the immediate availability of a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) version of its software. Clay Tablet SaaS is a scalable and rapidly deployable solution, able to connect any number of content management systems with any translation system or provider, without requiring any additional IT infrastructure, or installing any software. Clay Tablet SaaS is capable of expanding to handle any volume of translation. The Clay Tablet SaaS version also provides functionality identical to the licensed version. A typical Clay Tablet SaaS application can be as straight forward as a connection between a single content management system, such as those from Clay Tablet's CMS Partners; Oracle/Stellent, Sitecore or Refresh, with a translation software system, such as; SDL, across or Language Weaver. A more complex Clay Tablet SaaS application can include the connection of multiple content management systems, with multiple translation providers, and their translation technologies, creating an efficient and reliable content translation process. http://www.clay-tablet.com/saas/

February 20, 2008

Convio Introduces Social Media Solutions for Nonprofits

Convio, Inc. and ThePort Network announced the availability of ThePort Social Media Suite to Convio's clients to meet the diverse needs of the nonprofit community in building their own branded social media communities. With ThePort Social Media Suite, Convio's clients can integrate branded blogs and "MySpace-like" communities into their existing web sites and transform them into dynamic and engaging community portals for increased constituent involvement and communication. As a member of Convio's Fusion Partner program, ThePort Network is part of Convio's Open Initiative designed to provide choice, interoperability and technological innovation for the nonprofit community. The Convio/ThePort Social Media offering includes a: Social Networking Platform which supports creation of a private or public community for friends, family, groups and other networks built around the organization's mission. Each member has a personalized home page, newsreader, message center, media gallery and blog; User Generated Content including blogs, discussion forums, groups, and community pages; and Content Control, including moderation and filtering capabilities. The suite enables organizations to build and deploy branded Web 2.0 communities with social networking features. With the integration between Convio and ThePort, constituents will be offered single sign-on. http://www.theport.com, http://www.convio.com

February 19, 2008

Vignette Announces Products for their "Web Experience Platform"

Vignette (NASDAQ: VIGN) announced a series of new and enhanced products that will be released as part of it's Web Experience Platform to help organizations deliver online experiences. The integrated platform provides organizations the ability to deliver personal, social and multichannel Web experiences with less reliance on IT. Vignette will introduce an enhanced version of its Rich Media Services product and analytics. Vignette will also launch Vignette Recommendations, a solution that can deliver content to an individual based on their intent. Vignette is also adding social search technology which can help improve the quality of search results. In 2008, Vignette will launch two community product lines featuring social networking capabilities including ratings, reviews, polls, tagging, tag clouds, comments, usage analysis, blogs, wikis, forums and moderation support. The new products are designed to meet the needs of dynamic customer-facing Web sites that can scale to millions of users. Vignette is enhancing its process automation and interaction capabilities, enabling organizations to connect with customers where and how the customer desires. Vignette will also add a Web content caching product to its enterprise foundation. The new High Performance Delivery product delivers a combination of intelligent cache management, dynamic page caching with AJAX support and real-time caching capabilities. http://www.vignette.com/

Coveo Earns Microsoft Gold Certified Partner Status

Coveo Solutions Inc. announced that it has attained the highly regarded Gold Certified status in the Microsoft Partner Program, specializing in both ISV/Software and Information Worker solutions. Coveo now has access to specialized training and support. Coveo is already taking advantage of the benefits associated with being a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner by conducting intensive scalability testing in large scale enterprise test environments at one of Microsoft's technology centers (MTC). Test drive Coveo Enterprise Search for free at http://www.coveo.com/TestDrive

February 18, 2008

pTools CMS for Microsoft SharePoint Integrates Windows Workflow Foundation

pTools announced that it has enhanced its CMS software for Microsoft SharePoint by integrating it with Window's Workflow Foundation. Organisations can now generate content within the CMS and expose this content as web-parts for SharePoint. The latest release will be launched this March and is part of pTools alignment to Microsoft's .net applications framework. By using Microsoft's Windows Workflow Foundation with pTools CMS for Microsoft SharePoint organisations can extend core CMS functionality to enhance SharePoint web content management deployment and to integrate content management tasks within a single application user interface. It also allows interoperability of workflows within pTools CMS for Microsoft SharePoint and other Microsoft applications. pTools multi-site architecture allows re-use of content across multiple site locations from a single repository, while maintaining all the necessary workflow and compliance rules demanded of enterprise level initiatives. Content compliance within pTools uses audit trail functionality that allows pTools customers to validate all events in the life of the content developed. pTools deploys to Microsoft SQL database and enables content management professionals to use the pTools application programming interface and development tools to deliver solutions for Intranets, Extranets and Internet applications. Key features include: advanced workflow and content compliance; rapid deployment and in-built Web2.0 features; Microsoft SharePoint integration; clean code accessibility standard; pTools 'content element model'; content security marking; SEO optimisation; and multi-site content syndication. To request an online demo of pTools software, go to http://www.ptools.com/

TEMIS and ANTIDOT Partner

TEMIS and ANTIDOT, a French provider of Enterprise Search Solutions specialized in intranet and web searches, announced they have signed a technology and business partnership agreement. To address global corporations, ANTIDOT decided to embed cross-lingual search functionality into its solution to enable users to submit one single query and get multi-lingual results. ANTIDOT integrated XeLDA technology, the semantic engine from TEMIS. XeLDA's Dictionary Look Up functionality offers a cross-lingual dimension by activating the correspondence between a term in its context and the translation in the selected target languages. This new functionality enhances the Antidot Finder Suite's unstructured information search (Web, Intranet), as well as its search and navigation capabilities through structured data (databases, knowledge bases). Beyond this XeLDA-based agreement, TEMIS and ANTIDOT integrate their solutions in order to propose content enrichment solutions. Luxid Annotation Factory extracts entities and relationships from documents, using domain-specific and exhaustive annotators. Luxid Annotation Factory identifies value-added metadata like names of people, companies or locations, mergers & acquisitions, market shares, etc. As soon as documents are enriched, they are indexed with AFS search engine, which takes into account all the metadata and knowledge added to initial data. http://www.temis.com, http://www.antidot.net

February 13, 2008

Nstein Technologies Acquires Picdar

Nstein Technologies Inc. (TSX-V: EIN) announced that it has acquired Picdar Established for over 20 years, Picdar provides Digital Workflow and Asset Management (DAM) solutions to newspapers, magazine and corporate publishers. Co-founder of Picdar and principal architect of the Media Mogul product suite, Andy Heather will continue to support local UK operations, as well as contribute to Nstein's combined product strategy as VP Worldwide Publishing. Lesley Steinitz, currently Chief Executive of Picdar, will now lead Nstein's UK offices as Director of Operations (UK). Jeff Carson, who initially joined Picdar as a software engineer will continue to act as Director of Engineering, responsible for local development and technical services. Nstein has acquired all of the outstanding common shares of Picdar for a purchase price equivalent to the sum of (i) the business' enterprise value set at between $6,595,000 and $9,245,000, plus (ii) the working capital excess at closing estimated at $4,545,000. An amount corresponding to 75% of the enterprise value, namely $6,595,000 is payable at closing, and the balance of up to $2,650,000 contingent on meeting certain future revenues and EBITDA targets. http://www.nstein.com