Information Technology News: Office software Archives

Adobe Announces New Acrobat Connect Pro

Adobe Systems Incorporated (Nasdaq:ADBE) announced a new version of Adobe Acrobat Connect Pro, the company's Web conferencing and eLearning solution. Acrobat Connect Pro includes new features for Web conferencing such as options for archiving and editing recorded online meetings; new presence capabilities that can allow federation with instant messaging (IM) clients; and compliance and usage reporting tools. eLearning enhancements include break-out rooms to let students in virtual classes initiate separate conversations online; rapid authoring of video-based content; integration with Learning Management Systems (LMS) from Blackboard and SumTotal; and tools that track and organize online classes. Users also can easily tailor training sessions or meetings that help capture participants' attention and increase knowledge retention, resulting in an online learning experience remarkably similar to an in-person class. Combined with the new version of Adobe Presenter, also introduced, Acrobat Connect Pro can enable users to hold online meetings that incorporate Adobe Flash Player compatible presentations. Adobe Presenter can give you the ability to turn Microsoft PowerPoint presentations into multimedia experiences that include video, narration, animations, interactivity and advanced quizzes. New capabilities in this release include question pooling and randomization, easy-to-work-with video, and the ability to publish presentations to mobile devices or within PDF files. Acrobat Connect Pro is expected to be available by the end of May 2008, on a hosted or on-premise basis. It will be available in English, French, German, Spanish, Dutch, Italian, Brazilian Portuguese, Japanese, Korean, and simplified Chinese. http://www.adobe.com/

Kapow Rolls Out OnDemand Enterprise Mashup and Web Harvesting Service

Kapow Technologies introduced Kapow OnDemand, giving companies the ability to create enterprise mashup applications that provide structured "web intelligence" in a matter of minutes. The company's new hosted service is designed to be the fastest way to deliver real-time data from the web into Excel spreadsheets. Kapow OnDemand is based on the Kapow Mashup Server. Kapow OnDemand provides access to the underlying data sources and services to be mashed up. In addition to Excel spreadsheets, companies can also import web data into existing applications and IT infrastructure via XML. In conjunction with the Kapow OnDemand announcement, the company unveiled Kapow Connector for Excel. When used in combination with Kapow OnDemand or the Kapow Mashup Server Web 2.0 Edition, Excel users can find and execute web services that deliver data directly to their spreadsheet. The Kapow Connector for Excel automates and extends the value of spreadsheet-based applications, and makes it feasible to collect and analyze web intelligence in real-time at the user's desktop. Analysts can automate the combination of massive amounts of market data related to competitive pricing, product mix analysis or financial metrics. Kapow OnDemand includes a Robot Designer to construct custom web harvesting feeds and services in a flexible role-based execution runtime. Additionally, a full set of tools is provided that allows monitoring and managing a portfolio of services and feeds to provide Kapow OnDemand site administrators with control and insight into their OnDemand environment. Kapow OnDemand is available now. Product pricing is based on a flexible subscription offering starting as low as $3,400 per month. http://www.kapowtech.com/

Google Starts Launch of Offline Access to Google Docs

Google announced they are rolling out offline access to Google Docs over the next few weeks, starting with a small percentage of users. According to a post on the Official Google Docs Blog: "With Google Docs offline (powered by Google Gears), I can take my little piece of the cloud with me wherever I go. Once enabled, I have a local version of my document list and editors, along with my documents. As long as I have an Internet connection, every change I make is saved to the cloud. When I lose my connection, I sacrifice some features, but I can still access my documents (for this initial release, you can view and edit word processing documents; right now we don't support offline access to presentations or spreadsheets...). Everything I need is saved locally. And I do everything through my web browser, even when I'm offline ... When my connection comes back, my documents sync up again with the server. It's all pretty seamless: I don't have to remember to save my documents locally before packing my laptop for a trip. I don't have to remember to save my changes as soon as I get back online. And I don't have to switch applications based on network connectivity." Offline access is only available in English for now. They're working on offline access in other languages. It will also be available to Google Apps users soon, and domain administrators that want it now can opt-in via their control panel. http://googledocs.blogspot.com/2008/03/bringing-cloud-with-you.html

DocsCorp Integrates with Software-as-a-Service Provider NetDocuments

DocsCorp announced it has significantly expanded its integration capability to include NetDocuments, a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) provider. NetDocuments, a vendor of SaaS document, email and collaborative document services, provides legal, real estate, financial and health service professionals with instant access to their "work" (documents, emails, projects etc) no matter where they are. Documents are stored in a repository that users access through their browser. Integration with pdfDocs Desktop means that NetDocuments users will be able to "pull down" documents to their local system, convert them to PDF and "push" them back as new or related documents. Alternatively, users can save documents into NetDocuments as PDFs direct from MS Word. DocsCorp plans to extend its integration within the next couple of months to help NetDocuments provide a feature-rich, efficient and secure document service to its clients. Some of the features earmarked to be included in the next release will be the ability to save a document back into NetDocuments as the current or new version of an existing document. http://www.netdocuments.com, http://www.docscorp.com/

ThinkFree Announces Upgraded Online Office Service

ThinkFree announced a new version of their online office suite to be available April 7th, 2008. They will now open their new ThinkFree Manager service (previously known as ThinkFree Premium) to everyone for free. Customers will now be able to use the ThinkFree Office suite online/offline when creating or editing documents. Previously only a select number of people were allowed to use the ThinkFree Premium service. Other major new features include: Hierarchical Documents Planning - a way of organizing many documents through subfolders and tree hierarchy features; a 'Workspace' to collaborate with other users - to be able to collaborate with people, share documents, and manage on-going projects through the 'Workspace'; and 'Quick Edit' mode has been replaced with a new 'Web Editor' based on WYSIWYG-XHTML technology (What-You-See-Is-What-You-Get). This will allow you to edit documents without installing any other applications onto your machine. http://www.thinkfree.com/

Lawson Software Unveils Lawson Smart Office, Linking Microsoft and Lawson Capabilities

Lawson Software (Nasdaq: LWSN) introduced Lawson Smart Office, a personalized user interface that allows users to directly access Lawson and Microsoft applications and update data pervasively and instantly across the applications. Lawson is bringing together Microsoft productivity, mobility and collaboration tools, such as Microsoft Excel, Outlook, Word, PowerPoint and Groove, with Lawson enterprise applications and business intelligence capabilities. Lawson Smart Office places the business software user at the center of the "information workplace" and the multiple processes they work with. Smart Office helps people access the information they need, when they want it, in the context required, combined with the analytic and Smart Notification capabilities of Lawson Business Intelligence. It also promotes greater collaboration and real-time information sharing across various business applications. Lawson developed Smart Office around the Microsoft Windows Presentation Foundation, to support any business processes using Microsoft applications. http://www.lawson.com

Zoho Writer Expands Offline Advantage to Windows Mobile

Zoho announced that Zoho Writer supports both online and offline access from Internet Explorer Mobile (IE Mobile), the Microsoft browser for mobile devices running its Windows Mobile operating system. Zoho support for the open source Google Gears means its customers can work with their Zoho Writer documents from Window Mobile devices, regardless of network availability. With Zoho Writer running on IE Mobile, Zoho expands the mobility of Zoho applications beyond the iPhone, which the company supports through iZoho. Like iZoho, the applications available under IE Mobile will eventually grow to include other Zoho applications. Today, Zoho users running IE Mobile will have read-only access to their Zoho Writer documents, in both online and offline modes. Going forward, Zoho will make read/write functionality available both online and offline. http://www.zoho.com

Daybreak ICS Announces eCapture for SharePoint

Daybreak Intellectual Capital Solutions, Inc. announced eCapture for Microsoft SharePoint, a new addition to Daybreak's eCapture Suite of distributed document capture and delivery solutions. eCapture for SharePoint is tightly integrated out of the box with Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS), enabling users to capture and deliver documents directly into selected SharePoint repositories. eCapture for SharePoint is built on a modular platform that consists of the core capture engine and SharePoint plug-in, making it easy to capture, process, and deliver documents into the target repository. In cases where SharePoint is being utilized in addition to other enterprise content management systems, eCapture Suite provides the ability to deploy multiple plug-ins for other ECM systems in conjunction with the SharePoint plug-in, giving users the ability to capture and deliver documents into multiple repositories from a single interface, without having to toggle back and forth between applications. Configurable document profiles enable users to define document metadata capture and destination repositories. Metadata capture is automated via zonal or full text OCR, and supported file formats include TIFF, PDF, and searchable PDF. Index field mapping with the target repository is completely automated as well with no requirement for custom release scripts or export modules. eCapture for SharePoint pricing is based on a concurrent licensing model with no page count limitations. Product availability is scheduled for Q208. http://www.daybreakICS.com

Ascentium Releases Two Tools in the New Microsoft Search Community Toolkit

Ascentium Corporation announced the release of two search tools: Search Center Branding Removal and ASP.NET Search Controls, respectively. The tools are part of a larger Search Community Toolkit on CodePlex, the Microsoft open source project hosting web site. An official Microsoft Search Server 2008 partner, Ascentium worked with the Microsoft product team to develop tools that enable the global search community to build search solutions. Posting the new tools on CodePlex makes them available to a global community of experts and those seeking to learn more about how to leverage the Microsoft enterprise search platform. ASP.NET Search Controls will facilitate quick search enablement capabilities for any .NET application that interfaces with Search Server 2008 and/or Office SharePoint Server 2007. The Ascentium-sponsored search tools and other components of the Search Community Toolkit are intended to help teams save time creating search interfaces and to increase the quality of search experiences and results. http://www.ascentium.com, http://www.codeplex.com/sct

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

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

Atlassian Partners with EditGrid to Expand Features of Hosted Wiki

EditGrid, the online spreadsheet, is now available to customers that use the hosted versions of Confluence, the enterprise wiki from Atlassian. The EditGrid Plugin for Confluence allows for real-time collaboration of spreadsheets within Confluence Hosted or Confluence Enterprise Hosting. With EditGrid, users can create or insert spreadsheets into Confluence pages. They can also edit the spreadsheet collaboratively. The resulting spreadsheet is saved as an attachment within the Confluence pages in Microsoft Excel format, allowing Confluence to manage the revision history. Some of the features of the EditGrid plugin include: Real-time updates - allows multiple users to see dynamic changes to a spreadsheet; Remote data update - retrieves live financial data on the Web and stores it in a spreadsheet; Import and export: accepts file formats such as Microsoft Excel, CSV, HTML, Gnumeric, Lotus, OpenOffice and assigns fine-grained access control; and Live chat - enables multiple users to discuss changes from within EditGrid, no need to switch to another chat application. EditGrid is free for Confluence Hosted and Confluence Enterprise Hosting customers, and it is available starting today. For more information please visit, http://www.atlassian.com, http://www.editgrid.com

Morello Announces SharePoint Server 2007 Connector

Mediasurface (UK, AIM: MSR) announced a new extension to its Morello web content management solution that adds benefits to allowing enterprise users to work together on content creation using MOSS 2007. The new Morello MOSS 2007 Connector makes it easier and quicker to find, organise and publish MOSS generated content through an enterprise web delivery infrastructure on one or more websites, intranets and extranets. Mediasurface addresses this with the new Morello MOSS Connector which integrates MOSS tools with Mediasurface's Morello enterprise web content management solution. Automated processes keep information synchronized, ensuring that websites always display the very latest, approved version of a document whilst SharePoint users will always have direct access to information captured on the websites. In addition, the Morello MOSS 2007 Connector plugs into the generally available standard collaboration and communication services of SharePoint (called WSS), so there is no technical setup required. Users can collaborate, create and review documents, images and pages using familiar tools such as MS Word and Outlook. The connection to Morello helps ensure users know which MOSS generated content is approved for use, avoiding duplication and speeding up the publishing cycle. http://www.mediasurface.com

Microsoft Announces Offer to Acquire Fast

Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq “MSFT”) announced that it will make an offer to acquire Fast Search & Transfer ASA (OSE: “FAST”) through a cash tender offer for 19.00 Norwegian kroner (NOK) per share. This offer represents a 42 percent premium to the closing share price on Jan. 4, 2008 (the last trading day prior to this announcement), and values the fully diluted equity of FAST at 6.6 billion NOK (or approximately $1.2 billion U.S.). FAST's board of directors has unanimously recommended that its shareholders accept the offer. In addition, shareholders representing in aggregate 37 percent of the outstanding shares, including FAST's two largest institutional shareholders, Orkla ASA and Hermes Focus Asset Management Europe, have irrevocably undertaken to accept the offer. The transaction is expected to be completed in the second quarter of calendar year 2008. In addition to bolstering Microsoft's enterprise search efforts, this acquisition increases Microsoft's research and development presence in Europe, complementing existing research teams in Cambridge, England, and Copenhagen, Denmark, with new capabilities in Norway. http://microsoft.com, http://www.fast.no/

Drawloop Technologies Launches LOOP Exchange - a Way to Share Files on the Web

Drawloop Technologies announced the launch of LOOP Exchange - a new web portal offering a simple way for people to web-enable Microsoft Office documents for file sharing. LOOP Exchange allows for the dynamic capture of data and delivery of customized documents without exposing the original files. On LOOP Exchange, you can securely upload any Microsoft Excel, Word and PowerPoint document or group of documents to build Dynamic Document Packages (DDPs) and share them as web-based solutions. These files are organized and securely uploaded to LOOP Exchange, where they are converted into web forms that anyone can complete to create their own customized documents, without exposing any of the formulas or other confidential information from the original Microsoft Office files. Since LOOP Exchange is part of Drawloop, it leverages LOOP's core document-building capability, so users can easily add any PDF, JPG, HTML, XML, Text, BMP, GIF, PNG, Publisher and Visio files to their Dynamic Document Package and deliver the solution as a single PDF. LOOP Exchange is available for free to anyone with a web browser. Enhanced paid services and delivery options are also available for Dynamic Document Packages on LOOP Exchange. LOOP Exchange is available at http://www.loopexchange.com, http://www.Drawloop.com

Zoho Adds Editing to Writer Offline

Zoho announced users can now view and edit Zoho Writer documents in offline mode. The new editing functionality supplements the read-only capabilities initially offered in Zoho Writer's offline mode. To work offline, Zoho users log on to Zoho Writer and click the “Go Offline” link at the top of the Zoho Writer screen. First-time offline users are prompted to install Google Gears, the browser plug-in, if it is not already installed on the local machine. Once Google Gears is installed, the user restarts the browser, logs back into Zoho Writer, and clicks "Go Offline." Zoho Writer then automatically downloads personal and shared documents based on the sort order selected in the Zoho Writer main page. More or fewer documents can be downloaded by clicking on the down arrow next to the "Go Offline" link. Next, users are automatically redirected offline, to http://writer.zoho.com/offline, where they can view, edit, and save their documents using Zoho Writer's browser-based interface. Users who have previously used Zoho Writer's view-only offline mode will have editing capabilities automatically enabled the next time they click "Go Offline." To return online, users click "Go Online." Zoho Writer then prompts users to synchronize their offline and online documents. http://www.zoho.com, http://www.adventnet.com/

Zoho Refreshes Zoho Writer

Zoho announced key updates to Zoho Writer. The company's online word processing application now provides access to pagination, headers and footers, a 43-language spell checker, and other new features. The latest enhancements to Zoho Writer include features designed to encourage enterprise adoption and improve multi-language support. Users can view their document in discrete pages by clicking on the 'Page View' link. Meanwhile, Zoho now recommends using the 'Print Using PDF' option for printing Zoho Writer documents. This option overcomes the browser-based printing limitations users sometimes experience using the older 'Print Preview', 'Print' option. Users can define headers and footers from the 'Page Setup' link or the 'Page Setup' icon in the Zoho Writer toolbar. The headers/footers that are defined will appear when the document is printed. They will also be intact when the document is exported to PDF/DOC. The enhanced spell checker now supports 43 languages. Regardless of which language was used to write a document, users can now spell check the content in that language. The spell check setting is made at the document level, so each document can be spell checked with a different language. Additional enhancements include: improvements to import/export of .doc files; public documents can be downloaded or sent to others by email in different formats; users receive an email notification whenever comments are made to their public documents; and Zoho Writer user interface is now available in Chinese. http://blogs.zoho.com/, http://www.adventnet.com/

Team and Concepts Announces EditGrid Excel Plus

Team and Concepts, the developer of EditGrid announced the release of EditGrid Excel Plus, a new plug-in that streams data from EditGrid to Excel in real-time. EditGrid Excel Plus was created to bridge the gap between Microsoft Excel and EditGrid by allowing offline and online spreadsheets to work together in a whole new dimension. EditGrid users can now stream real-time data into Excel, and publish data online from Excel with just one click. Such capability opens up possibilities not previously available to Excel users in the financial and other data-intensive industries. For example, a current user incorporates real-time price data on EditGrid into an analysis spreadsheet on the desktop.EditGrid’s next development of EditGrid Excel Plus will be to enable the real-time update feature between two or more Excel spreadsheets. EditGrid users can register for the private beta program of EditGrid Excel Plus. EditGrid Excel Plus currently only supports Microsoft Excel 2003. Support for additional Excel versions will be available soon. http://www.editgrid.com/

NewsGator Announces NewsGator Social Sites for SharePoint

NewsGator Technologies, Inc. announced the general availability of NewsGator Social Sites, an add-on to the NewsGator Enterprise Server (NGES) that enhances the social computing capabilities for Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 and Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services 3.0. NewsGator Social Sites enables discovery of what colleagues within an organization are doing and making connections between people. NewsGator Social Sites is a collection of site templates, profiles, Web parts and infrastructure that integrates directly with SharePoint Server 2007's existing architecture and security models. Social Sites works in conjunction with NGES to make SharePoint 2007 an Enterprise 2.0 destination. Administrators can bring in RSS feeds from outside of SharePoint Server 2007. Users can mark items as read, filter by tags and subscribe to the underlying feeds with one click. With one-click subscriptions for all SharePoint Server 2007 feeds, users can keep up with updates or changes from their desktop, e-mail client or mobile device. The "Social Sites" rollup view also facilitates content discovery in SharePoint by showing the most active users as well as "colleagues," allowing users to quickly assess the most popular content, feed trends and tag clouds. By clicking on a link for the content author or tagger, the user sees an in-line profile with their contact information, blog and wiki entries, articles and feeds that they read, tag and recommend. NewsGator Social Sites 1.1 is currently available. http://www.newsgator.com

Zoho Adds Database & Reporting Application

Zoho announced Zoho DB. Zoho DB is an online database and reporting application that blends database functionalities with visual data analysis. Zoho DB lets users easily create, share, and collaborate on database applications and reports. Highlights of Zoho DB include: Familiar spreadsheet-like user interface for simple data manipulation and navigation; Support for data import/export from a variety of spreadsheet formats, including .xls, .csv, and .tsv files; Drag and drop-based reporting and visual analysis, with support for creating charts, pivot tables, summary views, and table views; SQL (Structured Query Language)-based querying of databases; Understanding of SQL queries/dialects from multiple databases - Oracle, SQL Server, DB2, Sybase, MySQL, PostgreSQL, Informix, and ANSI SQL; Databases, tables, and views can be shared in read-only or read-write modes for collaborative development and analysis; Professional looking reports can be created and embedded into a Website with copy/paste of code; and Scalable database with access from anywhere, anytime. Zoho DB differentiates from Zoho Creator largely in its backend flexibility and its data visualization capabilities. Zoho Creator gives users flexibility in designing the user interface, prompting users to describe it as the Web equivalent of Microsoft Access combined with Visual Basic. Zoho DB offers similar flexibility in its ability to manipulate and analyze the backend data. http://w

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Information and content technology industry news reported bythe Gilbane Group NewsShark team. Comments are welcome and are moderated.

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May 5, 2008

Adobe Announces New Acrobat Connect Pro

April 22, 2008

Kapow Rolls Out OnDemand Enterprise Mashup and Web Harvesting Service

March 31, 2008

Google Starts Launch of Offline Access to Google Docs

March 30, 2008

DocsCorp Integrates with Software-as-a-Service Provider NetDocuments

March 25, 2008

ThinkFree Announces Upgraded Online Office Service

March 18, 2008

Lawson Software Unveils Lawson Smart Office, Linking Microsoft and Lawson Capabilities

March 4, 2008

Zoho Writer Expands Offline Advantage to Windows Mobile

Daybreak ICS Announces eCapture for SharePoint

March 2, 2008

Ascentium Releases Two Tools in the New Microsoft Search Community Toolkit

February 27, 2008

Zoho Updates Zoho Writer

February 26, 2008

Zapatec Launches Enterprise-Class Web 2.0 Calendar

January 15, 2008

Atlassian Partners with EditGrid to Expand Features of Hosted Wiki

January 8, 2008

Morello Announces SharePoint Server 2007 Connector

Microsoft Announces Offer to Acquire Fast

December 13, 2007

Drawloop Technologies Launches LOOP Exchange - a Way to Share Files on the Web

November 27, 2007

Zoho Adds Editing to Writer Offline

November 15, 2007

Zoho Refreshes Zoho Writer

October 22, 2007

Team and Concepts Announces EditGrid Excel Plus

October 17, 2007

NewsGator Announces NewsGator Social Sites for SharePoint

October 4, 2007

Zoho Adds Database & Reporting Application

Information and content technology industry news reported by
the Gilbane Group NewsShark team. Comments are welcome and are moderated.