Collaboration: May 2009 Archives

Fluid, Inc. unveiled the next generation of Fluid Social, an e-commerce tool for connecting shoppers with the opinions of friends at the point of decision on ecommerce sites. Fluid Social 2.0 lets retailers incorporate Facebook and online chat functionality directly into the online conversion flow. Fluid Social 2.0 lets shoppers get immediate purchase validation from within the retail site and encourages shared discovery of new products by shopping with friends. In offline shopping, the opinions and validation of friends, trusted associates and experts play a significant role in purchase decisions. People go shopping together, show each other what they like, ask for and receive feedback and help each other find the right product. In the online world shopping has been a solitary undertaking where one person views one website in isolation. Fluid Social 2.0 allows people to suggest products, chat about and give thumbs up/down on products in real time via chat and asynchronously using Facebook Connect. This not only helps consumers receive immediate and personalized feedback on products and purchases, but draws new shoppers to the retailer’s site. Fluid Social’s collaborative shopping is available now in a performance-based pricing model where clients pay based upon the effectiveness of the application. Pricing starts at $12,000 annually. http://www.fluid.com

Socialcast announced it has integrated corporate email and customizable activity feeds into its Socialcast enterprise social media platform. The new features are designed to ease Socialcast into users’ existing work habits, in which email remains a critical workflow tool. Socialcast is a collaboration platform that unites real-time social messaging with traditional corporate tools to help employees securely collaborate and share knowledge across the enterprise. Socialcast’s new email integration feature allows users to post news messages, questions, and ideas to Socialcast by emailing them to share@socialcast.com. The system will also pick up file attachments, tags and links, which will be displayed inside their Socialcast community. This feature allows employees to use email as a vehicle for transporting important information into a tool more adept at fostering collaboration and rapid communication. The result is fewer carbon copy and reply-all emails as well as a growing knowledge hub created from surfacing information to a broader audience and archiving it for future reference. Another new feature released today includes custom activity streams. Users can now create various custom flows of information that show select community activity in their home activity streams. Users can create, arrange and re-arrange group activities, company-wide news, keyword activity, user activity or status updates for a Twitter-like experience. Companies and employees can sign up for Socialcast online at http://www.socialcast.com

WebNotes, a technology innovator of online research tools, announced the public availability of WebNotes Pro, a web-based highlighting and sticky note research tool for professionals, corporations and educational institutions. WebNotes allows users to add multi-colored highlights and sticky notes to web pages as they browse the web, while organizing their notes into folders for later reference. Annotated content can be shared with colleagues and clients via email or permalink, or through automatically generated reports in PDF or HTML format. WebNotes Pro also includes a PDF annotation system which provides users with full support for annotating, organizing and sharing PDF documents. WebNotes can be installed as a toolbar or as a bookmarklet, and supports all major web browsers and operating systems. Hosted user accounts securely store users’ annotated content and may be accessed from any internet-connected computer. User annotations are private by default. In addition to its Pro accounts, the company also offers a Group Solutions version for schools and small businesses that includes a dedicated web address, customized site branding and built-in user administrator tools. A free version of WebNotes is available for basic researching needs, and includes unlimited highlighting and sticky note capabilities as well as access to organization, sharing and reporting tools. The WebNotes Pro version adds PDF annotation and sharing support, multi-color highlighting and priority technical support. Pricing for WebNotes Pro is $9.99 per month, with a 50% discount available to all students. A customized Group Solutions version is also available for an additional setup fee. To begin the two-week trial at no charge, go to http://www.webnotes.net/

MindTouch announced a new Desktop Suite of productivity tools that provides one-click publishing from any Microsoft Windows application, improved drag and drop capabilities, in-place editing of Microsoft Office and rapid archiving of corporate assets in a searchable easy to share web-based environment. MindTouch's Desktop Suite of productivity tools enhances MindTouch 2009 to improve existing collaborative Intranets, interactive community extranets and documentation portals. The new Aurelia Reporter works with any Windows application and allows users to publish as MindTouch 2009 pages. As with all MindTouch 2009 pages the content is editable, indexed by a enterprise search engine, versioned, and able to be permissioned for specific users and groups from a web-browser. Now applications such as Microsoft Project, Visio, PowerPoint, Excel, Quickbooks, and many others can be quickly captured, archived, indexed by search and editable from the web-browser all while being versioned. Microsoft Word and Outlook Connectors provides users with one-click publishing from within Word and Outlook to MindTouch. The Outlook Connector enables publishing of full email conversation threads along with associated attachments. The Desktop Suite is available for commercial versions of MindTouch. http://www.mindtouch.com/

Microsoft announced that Groove is getting a new name with the coming release of Office 2010.  Groove will be known as "SharePoint Workspace 2010". From the blog post: "The name makeover is in concert with the direction the product is going.  SharePoint Workspace will provide easy access to SharePoint content (or content from any server that implements the publicly documented protocols) in an effort to provide a seamless online/offline experience. SharePoint Workspace 2010 will be easier to deploy and easier to manage, and it supports a new set of scenarios to help Office and SharePoint users be more productive.  It will also make it easier for IT folks to implement a consistent information strategy based on SharePoint technology throughout the organization. There will be changes in the way the product is delivered, as well – e.g. SharePoint Workspace (and OneNote, for that matter) will be added to the Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2010 release." http://blogs.msdn.com/groove_development_team/archive/2009/05/13/makeover-for-groove-sharepoint-workspace-2010.aspx

EPiServer announced that EventX, an events and meeting module, can be downloaded for free. EventX provides organisations with a simple tool to plan and co-ordinate meetings and events. For event organisers, EventX removes the headaches associated with managing invitations to an event and replaces the traditional excel spreadsheet. It gives a complete overview of registrations enabling these to be easily managed with booking confirmations and agenda updates issued automatically. EventX can also issue name badges with barcodes and close registration on a specific date or when an event is full. EventX can be easily integrated with CRM solutions such as those from Salesforce CRM and Microsoft Dynamics CRM. For participants, EventX enables them to sign up, cancel and update their registration for an event or meeting - and create a personal agenda for the day online. EventX is the latest open source module to be released by EPiServer for its CMS and Community customers and users. Also available are TranslationX, a quick way to localise websites, and WikiX which enables organisations to develop a personalised wikipedia on their sites. http://www.coderesort.com, http://www.episerver.com

DocPoint Solutions, Inc., a subsidiary of Quality Associates, Inc., focused on providing Microsoft SharePoint to organizations that are looking to expand employee collaboration and increase the exchange of information, announced a new reseller relationship with Easthampton, Mass.-based Atalasoft, Inc. This new partnership authorizes DocPoint to distribute, customize, and install Atalasoft's Vizit SP software. Vizit SP is a solution for viewing, cleaning up, indexing, and annotating documents within the Microsoft SharePoint Server (MOSS). The product is a zero-footprint document viewing system, which means end users can access documents without installing any software or downloading the files to their desktops. To all clients evaluating the Vizit SP software, DocPoint is also authorized to grant unlimited and free use of the Vizit Previewer. This program provides the user with fast on-screen preview images of any document stored within the SharePoint system. http://www.docpointsolutions.com

IBM (NYSE:IBM) announced the beta release of Lotus Notes and Domino 8.5.1 collaboration software, including plans to support Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync in version 8.5.1 of Lotus Notes Traveler. This capability will extend Lotus Domino automatic synching capabilities for e-mail and calendaring tools to the Apple iPhone. Although iPhone users can already access Notes e-mail via IBM Lotus iNotes ultra-light mode, the new Exchange ActiveSync support will mean push access to the software including the ability to view Notes mail, calendar and contacts data when not connected on the iPhone. IBM Lotus Notes Traveler software enables wireless push replication of Lotus Notes e-mail, calendaring, and personal information management (PIM) data on select smart phones. In addition, this beta version also incorporates the new 1.3 version of IBM's Lotus Symphony document, spreadsheet, and presentation software, and brings IBM XPages developer technology to the Lotus Notes client for off-line use. To test drive IBM Lotus Notes 8.5.1 software starting on May 15, visit http://greenhouse.lotus.com/

Ingeniux Corporation announced Cartella, an application for managing enterprise social content and online collaboration. Cartella is a unified social content management application that integrates social networking, Web 2.0 tools, analytics and content management into a single solution. The application includes modules for managing documents, wikis, blogs, rich media and social networking. In addition, Cartella leverages Microsoft ASP.NET MVC. Cartella can be white labeled as a stand-alone social content management platform for companies without existing Web CMS investments or injected into any Website using a simple Web services API. Built on Microsoft ASP.NET MVC, Cartella allows .Net developers to customize existing Cartella business social software modules or build new modules and applications on top of the Cartella platform. Microsoft .NET MVC also provides a streamlined implementation approach for Cartella similar to Microsoft SharePoint. Cartella-powered communities are developed using ASP.NET Master Pages and Web technologies like HTML and CSS. All content in Cartella is available through REST Web services, allowing social content to be "mashed" with other applications or accessed by any Website. Although Cartella can be used for a wide range of business needs, the software provides pre-built solutions aimed at addressing common requirements for collaborative intranet, extranet, and social networking sites. Available immediately, Cartella is offered as licensed software or as Software as a Service (SaaS). Pricing starts at $5,000 for a workgroup of 100 users or $18,000 for a community with as many as 30,000 members. Software-as-a-Service programs start as $1,200 per month for software, support, and hosting. http://www.ingeniux.com

Oracle announced enhancements to Oracle Beehive. Oracle Beehive delivers a range of collaboration tools including email, calendar, team workspaces, conferencing, and instant messaging on a single platform. With the enhancements, organizations using Oracle Beehive can establish more efficient communication channels to enable easier collaboration and improve individual and team productivity. Updates to the latest release of Oracle Beehive include: Web-based Team Collaboration - team workspace software that builds on an enterprise-specific security and compliance framework offers an environment for teams to manage activities and information; it includes wikis, team calendaring, RSS support, contextual search, and advanced file sharing and can be centrally provisioned or set up by the team with no portal requirement; Enhanced Web and Voice Conferencing - enables organizations to apply security and content management policies to conferencing; expanded feature set includes on-demand conference recording and retrieval; Expanded Integration with Desktop Productivity Tools - helps eliminate training costs and user adoption challenges by allowing users to take advantage of familiar software. Oracle Beehive can be deployed on premise or through Oracle On Demand. www.oracle.com

Content Circles, provider of distributed content management and collaboration solutions, announced the availability of the Content Circles Xerox DocuShare Connector. The Connector allows individuals across geographies to collaborate on projects with DocuShare users securely and in real-time, working online or offline, regardless of firewall restrictions. With the Content Circles Connector, organizations can also collaborate with customers, partners and outside agencies without granting network access to the internal DocuShare system. The Content Circles DocuShare Connector is applied by downloading the software to a computer. A licensed user of DocuShare creates a ‘Circle’ (workgroup) for collaboration, and invites others via email to join. This individual then pulls selected documents from the DocuShare repository and places them into the Circle, which will appear on the desktop of all Circle members’ computers for immediate access. Content Circles tracks which documents have been edited and who has accessed them, creating a secure audit trail for users who are off-line or outside the company, as well as DocuShare users. Content Circles recognizes documents that were originated in DocuShare and enables users to synchronize the changes back to DocuShare for others to see. Content Circle members utilizing the DocuShare Connector can also collaborate on content stored in Microsoft SharePoint, Google Docs, FTP servers, and network drives. The creation and management of Circles requires a paid subscription to Content Circles. Those invited to a Circle can join for free. The Content Circles DocuShare Connector is available immediately and for a limited time at no additional charge. http://www.contentcircles.com, http://www.docushare.com