Information Technology News

IBM (NYSE: IBM) and Research In Motion (RIM) (NASDAQ: RIMM) (TSX: RIM) are delivering to mainstream business professionals the full line of Web 2.0-powered IBM Lotus collaboration software and information on demand on the BlackBerry platform. The joint initiative enables customers to securely manage their communications, contacts and schedules and collaborate and network through social software, all from within the interface of their BlackBerry smartphones. This includes the general availability of the new BlackBerry Client for IBM Lotus Connections, IBM's social software for business. IBM WebSphere Portal and IBM dashboard software lets businesses build Web sites and single screen dashboard views that deliver information, applications and processes personalized to the individual BlackBerry smartphone user. The BlackBerry Client for IBM Lotus Connections helps people tap into the collective knowledge of others and find the people and information they need for the task at hand while on the go. BlackBerry Enterprise Server for IBM Lotus Notes and Domino enables access to key email and calendaring functions as well as custom applications built with Lotus Domino. The BlackBerry Client for IBM Lotus Sametime lets people access their full buddy list, send and receive instant messages, view presence information and convert an IM session to a phone call. IBM Cognos 8 Go! Mobile business intelligence software is a business intelligence solution designed specifically for the BlackBerry platform. It provides personalized secure business information in the right context to allow people to view and interact with dashboard-style reports. The BlackBerry mobile solution for the Lotus collaboration software suite is available today and the BlackBerry client software for Lotus Sametime and Lotus Connections are both now available as a free download for Lotus customers at http://www.blackberry.com/go/ibmresources, http://www.ibm.com

Posted by NewsShark at 2:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)
and tagged: collaboration, IBM, mobile, RIM, social computing, Web 2.0
Share or tag this post on: Digg | del.icio.us | Google | Yahoo | Reddit | Newsvine

Baynote, Inc. announced the availability of the Baynote Merchandizing and Editorial Console. The new management tool allows users to combine expert control with the inherent community wisdom distilled from web visitors' behaviors to optimize the delivery of product recommendations, content recommendations, and on-site search results. Baynote Recommendations and Social Search is built on a social science concept: that the collective behaviors of like-minded site visitors is the most effective way to display products and content based on a visitor's true intent. Leveraging crowd wisdom is especially important in content and product-rich "long tail" sites where manual merchandizing and editorializing is not cost or time effective. However, there are common scenarios where a merchandizing or editorial team requires the ability to exercise precise control over product and content recommendations to take into account product margin, inventory levels, promotions, breaking news, cross-channel content linking, and myriad other cases. While the new console benefits Baynote users in all vertical markets, it is particularly useful to online publishers and eCommerce businesses. http://www.baynote.com

See Baynote at Gilbane San Francisco.

Posted by NewsShark at 11:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)
and tagged: Baynote, e-commerce, search, social computing, social search
Share or tag this post on: Digg | del.icio.us | Google | Yahoo | Reddit | Newsvine

Alfresco Software, Inc. announced the release of Alfresco Enterprise 2.2, which in particular is designed to power Web 2.0 properties and online communities. New feature enhancements support the creation, deployment and update of scalable Web 2.0 sites that can be developed using any web application language. These enhancements are a result of the company's work with interactive sites in the entertainment, online gaming, sports, telecommunications and publishing industries. With this new release, companies can move beyond the traditional marketing oriented Web site to provide users with a rich and interactive site that fosters community and customer relationships around a product or service. Other enhancements in Alfresco Enterprise 2.2 include: Web Farm Deployment Configuration - supports advanced deployment rules for web 2.0 scalable, 3-tier web application architectures; Web Application Preview and Test - provides the ability to preview in-context changes to any web application, including PHP, Ruby, Groovy, STRUTS, JSF, TILES and .NET; Site Templating and Branching - enables creation of new sites from existing templates and ability to baseline major site updates by branching existing site, and; Asset Reuse - allows content to be updated and shared across web projects. Alfresco Enterprise is the certified build of Alfresco, designed for production environments in corporations and government organizations that are looking for a stable, supported application. It is certified against commercial as well as open source stacks and offers commercial Service Level Agreements (SLAs). Alfresco Community is designed to be the research "Community Lab" for new features enabling developers to access a nightly build with the latest bleeding-edge functionality. It is unsupported by Alfresco and does not include the certification, QA (quality assurance) and services for production deployment. Alfresco Enterprise 2.2 is immediately available for enterprise customers. http://www.alfresco.com/

Posted by NewsShark at 10:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)
and tagged: Alfresco, content management, ECM, social computing, Web 2.0
Share or tag this post on: Digg | del.icio.us | Google | Yahoo | Reddit | Newsvine

MindTouch announced the release of MindTouch Deki Wiki "Jay Cooke" v8.05, the latest version of its open source enterprise collaboration and integration platform. MindTouch Deki Wiki v8.05 includes finctions for internationalization/localization, search, user management, integrated scripting, automation, mash-ups, user experience and more. Specifically, this new release enhances multilingual content management. Deki Wiki v8.05 introduces a new polyglot feature that allows customers to host all languages as a single site. Now language can be specified by sections and pages automatically adapting the user interface of Deki Wiki to the appropriate language. Also, users may search across all languages and search results are prioritized by the user's default language. Lastly, Deki Wiki v8.05 supports OpenSearch. http://mindtouch.com

Posted by NewsShark at 9:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)
and tagged: collaboration, Globalization, MindTouch, social computing, wiki
Share or tag this post on: Digg | del.icio.us | Google | Yahoo | Reddit | Newsvine

eVergance and Baynote announced that the companies have formed a strategic partnership to deliver Baynote's recommendation and social search capabilities to customer service and knowledge management environments. In addition, eVergance will be reselling the Baynote social search and recommendation solution, and will be tailoring its KM optimization and search tuning services to offer consulting capabilities to the Baynote customer base. The firm will also be developing programs to integrate Baynote's social search and recommendations capabilities with knowledge management solutions, such as KANA IQ. Baynote enriches the search and navigation experience by learning from user behavior and the collective experiences of the online community. http://www.eVergance.com, http://www.baynote.com

Posted by NewsShark at 7:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)
and tagged: Baynote, eVergance, knowledge management, personalization, search, social computing
Share or tag this post on: Digg | del.icio.us | Google | Yahoo | Reddit | Newsvine

Marketbright, an on-demand emarketing solution with an integrated web content management platform, launched Brightsite, a new product that uses aspects of social networking to create a stronger bond between sales, marketing and the customer. Brightsite creates the equivalent of a B2B shopping cart for enterprise web sites. Brightsite provides a plug-and-play membership management tool for any enterprise website. Brightsite also provides the customer with a member account page with links to all events and offers they have accessed in the past, their account team, and other account-specific information, creating an easy-to-access history for new team members. Customer members also can invite their colleagues into a private, shared collaborative space. The new, interactive and personalized widgets can be easily introduced into existing web sites. Brightsite also allows greater cooperation between sales and marketing teams, allowing a customer's microsite to become a branding tool with enhanced collaboration opportunities and fresh content. With Brightsite, the marketing team will be able to blast new content, but it will look customized for the sales person's named accounts. Sales personnel will be able to review beforehand to ensure appropriateness of offers/content, to block the content, or to put a personalized note and pick and choose which items get forwarded on to their customers. http://www.marketbright.com

Posted by NewsShark at 7:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)
and tagged: e-commerce, Marketbright, social computing, WCM
Share or tag this post on: Digg | del.icio.us | Google | Yahoo | Reddit | Newsvine

SnapLogic, Inc. and WaveMaker, a provider of open source tools for rapid Web application development, announced a strategic partnership to deliver a complete open source solution for creating enterprise mashups. Enterprise mashups aggregate data from sources within and outside the enterprise, including databases, SaaS applications, SOA Web services, enterprise applications, XML documents, files and Web pages, and present it to business users via a rich, customized, interactive interface. The SnapLogic data integration framework will provide data services to WaveMaker's Visual Ajax Studio, enabling enterprise application developers to build enterprise mashups. Under the partnership, the companies will collaborate on product development roadmaps and also conduct joint sales and marketing activities. The SnapLogic data integration framework enables "Really Simple Integration," that leverages RESTful Web technology to provide agile data integration solutions for business IT groups. SnapLogic makes data from a variety of data sources available to application development tools, such as WaveMaker's Visual Ajax Studio. WaveMaker's drag-and-drop interface enables users to create database-driven Ajax Web applications without having to write complex code. The latest WaveMaker platform features reduced development time while enabling increased participation, feedback, and collaboration. Applications developed in WaveMaker can then be deployed to a Java Application Server. The SnapLogic data integration framework and WaveMaker's Visual Ajax Studio are available as free downloads. http://www.snaplogic.com, http://wavemaker.com

Posted by NewsShark at 7:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)
and tagged: integration, mashups, SnapLogic, social computing, WaveMaker, Web 2.0
Share or tag this post on: Digg | del.icio.us | Google | Yahoo | Reddit | Newsvine

The Gilbane Group and Lighthouse Seminars announced that Udi Manber, a Google Vice President of Engineering, will kick-off the annual Gilbane San Francisco conference on June 18th at 8:30am with a discussion on Google's search quality and continued innovation. Now in its fourth year, the conference has rapidly gained a reputation as a forum for bringing together vendor-neutral industry experts that share and debate the latest information technology experiences, research, trends and insights. The conference takes place June 18-20 at the Westin Market Hotel in San Francisco. Gilbane San Francisco helps attendees move beyond the mainstream content technologies they are familiar with, to enhanced "2.0" versions, which can open up new business opportunities, keep customers engaged, and improve internal communication and collaboration. The 2008 event will have its usual collection of information and content technology experts, including practitioners, technologists, business strategists, consultants, and the leading analysts from a variety of market and technology research firms. Topics to be covered in-depth at Gilbane San Francisco include: Web Content Management (WCM); Enterprise Search, Text Analytics, Semantic Technologies; Collaboration, Enterprise Wikis & Blogs; "Enterprise 2.0" Technologies & Social Media; Content Globalization & Localization; XML Content Strategies; Enterprise Content Management (ECM); Enterprise Rights Management (ERM); and Publishing Technology & Best Practices. Details on the Google keynote session as well as other keynotes and conference breakout sessions can be found at http://gilbanesf.com/conference-grid.html

Posted by NewsShark at 11:26 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)
and tagged: content management, gilbansf08, Google, Manber, search, social computing
Share or tag this post on: Digg | del.icio.us | Google | Yahoo | Reddit | Newsvine

Trampoline Systems, social intelligence for business, announced SONAR Dashboard, an "intelligent social network" for enterprises. SONAR Dashboard is Trampoline's response to market demand for a "Facebook for the enterprise". It empowers employees of large enterprises to connect and collaborate and strengthens informal employee networks across departments and geographies. SONAR Dashboard is an intelligent social network designed to increase cohesion, collaboration and innovation in large organisations. Interactive network visualisations and expertise search enable users to find and connect with the people they need at work and see the social networks and information flows operating across the enterprise ecosystem. It provides employees with individual profiles, a news feed of network activity and a contacts list. SONAR Dashboard is automatically updated through integration with employees' everyday work such as email, via Trampoline's SONAR Server. SONAR Server analyses the social networks, information flows and expertise hidden within corporate information. SONAR Dashboard is an addition to SONAR Suite, Trampoline's 360° enterprise social computing platform. SONAR Flightdeck provides organisational diagnostics for managers. SONAR Flightdeck and Dashboard are powered by SONAR Server, which analyses the relationships and expertise hidden in corporate data using proprietary social network analysis and natural language processing technology. SONAR Suite provides enterprise-class security, privacy and integration. http://www.trampolinesystems.com

Posted by NewsShark at 11:22 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)
and tagged: social computing, Trampoline Systems, Web 2.0
Share or tag this post on: Digg | del.icio.us | Google | Yahoo | Reddit | Newsvine

NewsGator Technologies, Inc. announced that it has integrated AideRSS's PostRank filtering capabilities into its NewsGator Online RSS reader to offer more relevant news and social search features to users. The partnership will enhance NewsGator's ability to provide users with an easy way to sort posts based on the attention those stories are getting across the Internet. AideRSS's PostRank is a scoring system developed to rank each article based on how people interact with stories through social tagging, rating and commenting. http://www.newsgator.com, http://www.aiderss.com

Posted by NewsShark at 9:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)
and tagged: NewsGator, publishing, RSS, social software
Share or tag this post on: Digg | del.icio.us | Google | Yahoo | Reddit | Newsvine

Socialtext announced that it has built upon its wiki foundation to launch a broad set of Business Social Software solutions. Two of them, Socialtext Dashboard and Socialtext People, extend the wiki platform for people to gain additional insight by managing their information, conversations and connections. Socialtext also launched four core Solution Areas. Socialtext version 3.0 includes Socialtext Dashboard, personalized and customizable dashboards of internal and external social software activity. Socialtext Dashboard supports third party widgets, and the OpenSocial gadget standard. Socialtext 3.0 also provides significant enhancements to its open APIs for enterprise integration. In addition, Socialtext 3.0 includes Socialtext People, social networking adapted for the enterprise. Throughout the Socialtext wiki, Profiles are made visible so at any time you can pivot to the people behind the content. Profiles and a user directory make it easy for colleagues to introduce themselves and discover implicit and explicit expertise. People can subscribe to the activity of colleagues. Groupings enable users to declare interest and expertise on their profile and other users profiles, making group forming as simple as adding a tag. The four core Solution Areas are: Collaborative Intelligence for sales and marketing, Participatory Knowledgebase for service and support, Flexible Client Collaboration for professional services, and Business Social Networks for partners and customers. The two new enhancements to Socialtext are currently in Beta and will be commercially available within a quarter. http://www.socialtext.com

Posted by NewsShark at 10:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)
and tagged: enterprise, knowledge management, social computing, Socialtext, wiki
Share or tag this post on: Digg | del.icio.us | Google | Yahoo | Reddit | Newsvine

Awareness, Inc. announced that the company is providing its customers with Facebook integration that allows members of Awareness-powered Web 2.0 communities to interact with their communities via white-label applications in their Facebook profiles. Awareness uses the Awareness Facebook Application Framework to create branded Facebook applications customized for its customers, giving them a new way to engage with their online community members by extending the reach of their communities directly into Facebook and leveraging Facebook's viral promotion features. The Awareness Facebook Application Framework is included as part of the Awareness Enterprise Social Media platform and leverages all of the enterprise social media benefits in an existing Awareness-powered community. The application also respects any security or permissioning restrictions built into the community, so it can be used for private and closed communities as well as public and open ones. The application, which will appear in the Facebook directory when registered with Facebook, is installable by any Facebook user and can be shared using standard Facebook application sharing functionality. http://www.awarenessnetworks.com/

Posted by NewsShark at 9:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)
and tagged: Awareness, collaboration, Facebook, social software, Web 2.0
Share or tag this post on: Digg | del.icio.us | Google | Yahoo | Reddit | Newsvine

BEA Systems announced the release of its BEA AquaLogic User Interaction suite of products, including new versions of BEA AquaLogic Interaction, BEA AquaLogic Interaction Collaboration and BEA AquaLogic Analytics. These new releases are designed to help companies deliver new workplace strategies via BEA's cross-platform web suite. With the new BEA AquaLogic User Interaction release, customers can create richer, more interactive profile pages, deliver customizable user experiences and multi-channel interfaces, leverage full RSS capabilities, and enable human networks to create social applications that enhance worker productivity, group collaboration and community innovation. The new release of BEA AquaLogic Interaction 6.5 delivers a social computing platform with a variety of new features that can help users harness the implicit interactions of day-to-day business - project updates, new documents, process steps, key relationships, expertise, data changes in underlying systems - that are often shared inefficiently through email. The release also introduces improved usability designed to help knowledge workers more easily share community information, find specific expertise and communicate more flexibly, by providing tools that are user-driven and community-centric, and by immersing users in a flexible collaborative experience bolstered by desktop, RSS and Web-based tools. BEA AquaLogic Interaction Collaboration 4.5 extends existing capabilities with enhanced notification options, deeper Microsoft Office integration, enhanced metadata support and general infrastructure enhancements. http://www.bea.com/

Posted by NewsShark at 7:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)
and tagged: BEA, collaboration, portal, social computing
Share or tag this post on: Digg | del.icio.us | Google | Yahoo | Reddit | Newsvine

Vignette (NASDAQ: VIGN) announced the immediate availability of Vignette Community Services and the upcoming availability of Vignette Community Applications. The new community products enable organizations to add social computing capabilities to their Web sites. Additionally, the suite of products integrates with Vignette's Web experience foundation, making it easier for customers to quickly add engaging social elements and Web 2.0 capabilities to their sites. Vignette Community Applications enables organizations to add features like blogs, wikis and forums to any Web property to better engage their target audiences. Additionally, these organizations can leverage user-generated content and peer influence to create valuable online communities. For example, a software company may leverage forums or blogs to solicit feedback from customers throughout each phase of a product lifecycle. http://www.vignette.com/

Posted by NewsShark at 9:09 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)
and tagged: collaboration, enterprise, social computing, Vignette, WCM, wiki
Share or tag this post on: Digg | del.icio.us | Google | Yahoo | Reddit | Newsvine

Zimbra, a Yahoo! (Nasdaq:YHOO) company, announced the availability of its ZimbraME (Java Mobile Edition) client and source code for businesses. Users of any Java-enabled mobile phone will have access to a complete collaboration solution. The ZimbraME client provides Zimbra Collaboration Suite (ZCS) Open Source and Network Edition users worldwide with free access to the Zimbra experience with e-mail and calendar on mass-market Java-enabled mobile phones. This extends Zimbra's reach of services to a broade range of devices available. ZimbraME is an over the air downloadable Java-based application for mobile devices that allows ZCS users to access their mail, contacts and calendars. It retains the search capability found in the Zimbra AJAX client. ZimbraME source code is available to the Zimbra community for feedback and enhancement, as well as to implement ZimbraME on the devices of their choice. Mobile devices supporting ZimbraME include the BlackBerry 8800 and 8820 series; the Motorola RAZR2; Nokia E61 and N73 handsets; the Sony-Ericsson W950i handset; and the Samsung SGH-E900 handset, adding to Zimbra's support for wireless platforms that includes Symbian, Windows Mobile, Palm and iPhone. Additionally, Zimbra supports native sync to BlackBerry handsets via the BlackBerry Enterprise Server. The ZCS 5.0 Open Source Edition is free. The commercially supported ZCS 5.0 Network Edition is available for a 60-day free trial on the Zimbra website. http://www.zimbra.com/

Posted by NewsShark at 9:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)
and tagged: collaboration, mobile, office software, Zimbra
Share or tag this post on: Digg | del.icio.us | Google | Yahoo | Reddit | Newsvine

Trampoline Systems announces SONAR Flightdeck, an organisational intelligence and diagnostics tool for managers. SONAR Flightdeck provides strategic intelligence about the informal networks that power organisations so managers can make better, more informed decisions. It brings network analysis techniques to business managers to expose the social networks and information flows contained within everyday electronic communications. Management teams are often unable to understand resident social networks because the only information available about them has been anecdotal or the result of specialised consultancy projects. SONAR Flightdeck brings the academic techniques of organisational network analysis to managers. SONAR Flightdeck automatically displays the crucial social factors at play within organisations including key opinion formers, poorly-integrated business units, emerging communities of interest, single points of failure and third-party relationships. SONAR Flightdeck is the newest addition to SONAR Suite, Trampoline's Enterprise Social Computing platform for employees and managers. SONAR Dashboard provides social computing for employees to locate experts, connect and collaborate. SONAR Flightdeck and Dashboard are powered by SONAR Server, which identifies the social networks, information flows and topics within electronic information such as email, documents and IM. SONAR Suite provides security, privacy and integration. http://www.trampolinesystems.com

Posted by NewsShark at 10:36 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)
and tagged: social computing, Trampoline Systems
Share or tag this post on: Digg | del.icio.us | Google | Yahoo | Reddit | Newsvine

IBM announced that the Lotus Expeditor software platform is extending desktop computing and Web 2.0 capabilities to mobile phones. Mobile phone users will be able to run several desktop-style applications like social networking, mashups and other consumer or business applications simultaneously on a variety of mobile phones. The new version of IBM Lotus Expeditor 6.1.2 software enables mobile application developers to create new applications and services that combine information from different sources. Key to Lotus Expeditor technology is the use of the Eclipse embedded Rich Client Platform (eRCP) application model, which allows applications to be created to span desktop and mobile devices. Lotus Expeditor software also allows people to receive software updates to their mobile phones without disruption. For example, they can receive an update to a business application while continuing to do instant messaging. Lotus Expeditor software is the underlying platform for IBM's collaboration products including IBM Lotus Notes e-mail, Lotus Sametime instant messaging and Lotus Symphony, a no-charge suite of open standards based office productivity software programs. http://www.ibm.com/software/lotus

Posted by NewsShark at 7:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)
and tagged: collaboration, IBM, mobile, social computing, Web 2.0
Share or tag this post on: Digg | del.icio.us | Google | Yahoo | Reddit | Newsvine

BrightSide Software launched its beta version of Nuospace, a business wiki for everyone. Nuospace is a Web-based, software-as-a-service (SaaS) collaboration tool for small-midsize companies enabling team members to publish and share all forms of business content in a secure community environment. Nuospace is designed with technology beginners in mind as a simple alternative to corporate intranets and shared hard drives. Nuospace support not only only documents and comments, but also includes social content such as blogs and e-newsletters as individual wiki pages. Nuospace will launch in June 2008, and will be free up to 200 megabytes with an unlimited number of users. For added memory, Nuospace will cost $50 per month. Nuospace is a Web-based, software-as-a-service application with an installed server version coming this fall. The Nuospace beta is offered for free at http://go.nuospace.com

Posted by NewsShark at 7:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)
and tagged: BrightSide Software, collaboration, enterprise, social computing, wiki
Share or tag this post on: Digg | del.icio.us | Google | Yahoo | Reddit | Newsvine

IBM (NYSE: IBM) announced new services to help organizations use collaboration and social networking to maximize employee talent and performance. The Enterprise Adaptability services include a methodology to determine the return on investment of social networking, use of large scale communications programs to jumpstart adoption, automatic identification of key talent, and social network analysis. With Enterprise Adaptability companies can learn how to embed Web 2.0 technologies into the fabric of business operations, allowing employees, partners and customers to communicate, establish new business relationships and make real-time decisions within the context of their everyday work. Enterprise Adaptability combines software from IBM Lotus Software and FileNet with consulting from IBM Global Business Services' Human Capital Management practice. http://www.ibm.com

Posted by NewsShark at 5:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks