Month: April 1999 (Page 5 of 9)

NeoPlanet Inc., developer of the NeoPlanet “browser/portal” available free for downloading at www.neoplanet.com, today previewed a next-generation NeoPlanet 5.0 featuring support for the Netscape Gecko browsing engine and a “toggle switch” that allows users to choose between Microsoft and Netscape browsing technologies. NeoPlanet’s browser gives consumers and business users freedom of choice and the ability to seamlessly switch between Netscape and Microsoft browsing technologies while browsing Internet content and accessing Web-based applications and services using a consistent user interface.. Business users and Web application and content developers have the convenience of quickly and easily toggling between browsers. With the ability to view their Web sites in both environments they can ensure optimum viewing. Neoplanet 5.0 is the first consumer browser to implement Netscape Gecko, the next-generation browser engine first announced last December. Gecko is in full compliance with key W3C open standards, including CSS, DOM, HTML 4.0, RDF, and XML.www.neoplanet.com

A new consortium has been formed for the maintenance and continuing work of the Text Encoding Initiative (TEI). The TEI is an international project to develop guidelines for the encoding of textual material in electronic form for research purposes; until now, it had been organized as a simple cooperative effort of the three sponsors, and funded solely by grant funds. Now four universities have agreed to serve as hosts for the new consortium, and the three organizations which founded the TEI and have governed it until now have agreed to transfer the responsibility for maintaining and revising the TEI Guidelines to the new consortium. In the first five-year period of the consortium (2000-2005), the four hosts will be the University of Bergen (Humanities Information Technologies Research Programme), the University of Virginia (Electronic Text Center and Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities), Oxford University (Computing Services), and Brown University (Scholarly Technology Group).The Text Encoding Intiative is an international project to develop guidelines for the preparation and interchange of electronic texts for scholarly research, and to serve a broad range of purposes for the language industries more generally. During the ten years from 1988 to 1998, the TEI issued two sets of draft guidelines and one ‘final’ version (TEI P3). During this decade, the TEI has become the most widely used document-type definition for encoding full-text literary and linguistic resources in library collections and scholarly editorial projects. www.tei-c.org

Miva Corporation announced that the XML DTD for Miva Script is now available to the public. Miva Script is a cross-platform, XML-based, server side scripting Language. Access to Miva Script’s DTD and Commerce API means that third-party developers can create products that integrate with Miva Script. Miva Script gives developers access to advanced commerce and database features in a familiar environment that consists of HTML-like tags. In addition, Miva has developed a Commerce API for snap-in integration of payment processing systems. Developers can access these services using the MvCOMMERCE tag which can be embedded in a Web page. Any commerce service provider and third party vendor can integrate with the XML compliant MvCOMMERCE tag by supplying a shared or dynamically linked library. Miva Merchant, the company’s electronic storefront development and management system, developed entirely in Miva Script, has been organized as a series of modules that can be field upgraded to provide new functionality without any changes to the core application. Miva Merchant’s architecture lets third-party developers prepare and market specialized look and feel commerce modules. www.miva.com

Oracle Corp. announced a complete infrastructure, based on XML, for the exchange and management of information associated with all aspects of e-business. This technology offers a more flexible server infrastructure to help companies solve complex business problems such as content routing, processing and management. As part of this infrastructure, Oracle announced that it is working on message broker capabilities, which will be combined with Oracle’s Internet platform — Oracle8i, Oracle Application Server and Oracle Tools — to comprise a complete infrastructure for e-business. Specifically, Oracle announced: XML-enabled message broker capabilities; XML support in Oracle8i: available immediately in the form of an XML Parser; A new version of Oracle Application Server and a roadmap for the product that is a central component of Oracle’s XML-enabled Internet platform. The Oracle Internet platform, consisting of Oracle8i, Oracle Application Server, and Oracle’s message broker capabilities, will provide an XML-enabled server infrastructure that can interface with any e-commerce server and back-office system, including order-entry and billing applications. www.oracle.com

Infoteria Inc. announced the company has begun shipping the English versions of its high performance XML processing engine iPEX for the Linux and BeOS platforms. iPEX implements a series of XML processing functions, including Document Object Model Level 1 and Namespaces in XML as recommended by the W3C. iPEX allows software developers to reduce the cost and time of developing XML-access software. iPEX is priced at $1,800 and requires the additional purchase of developer licenses at $180 per developer. The Professional Edition of iPEX is $18,000 and includes the complete product, on-demand hot-fix support, 10 developer licenses plus the right to embed iPEX in customer applications at $1.80 to $18 per copy, depending on volume. www.infoteria.com

PC DOCS/Fulcrum, subsidiary of PC DOCS Group International Inc debuted its latest document management products: DOCSFusion 3.0, PowerDOCS 3.0, and DOCS Open 3.8 at the AIIM’99 show in Atlanta, Georgia. DOCSFusion 3.0, PC DOCS/Fulcrum’s upgraded Windows NT-based document management server, and PowerDOCS 3.0, its Windows-based client, are the latest enhancements to the company’s three-tier document management suite. DOCS Open 3.8 is PC DOCS/Fulcrum’s newest upgrade to its client-server document management product line. DOCSFusion 3.0 includes fail-over support which, through multiple physical servers acting as one `logical server’, ensures no down time if failure of any part of the network prevents a connection to a particular server. DOCSFusion 3.0’s ability to pool these multiple server resources also enables load balancing, which significantly enhances reliability, performance and scalability. The DOCSFusion server also provides support for any kind of client connection — regardless of geographic location. In addition to PowerDOCS 3.0 and DOCSFusion 3.0, PC DOCS/Fulcrum is also introducing the latest version of its client-server document management product. The new DOCS Open 3.8 is equipped with enhanced functionality such as improved full text indexing and multi-valued fields, which allow users to add more information to their document profiles. DOCSFusion 3.0, PowerDOCS 3.0, and DOCS Open 3.8 will be released on May 21, 1999. www.pcdocs.com

Lotus Development Corp. announced that it has acquired ONEStone Holding, Inc. and its workflow software technologies to enhance the ability of Lotus’ customers to develop productivity-boosting workflow applications. Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed. ONEStone’s primary product is PROZESSWARE, a workflow management system that provides businesses with the means to change from paper-based processes to electronically controlled workflow. PROZESSWARE consists of three components: PROZESS Designer, a visual development tool for defining, modeling and creating automated, controlled workflows; PROZESS Engine, the runtime component that activates, runs, and controls processes defined by the Designer; and PROZESS Viewer, a visual tool for end users that shows the current status or context of their work. ONEStone has offices in Paderborn, Germany, where all research and development takes place, and in Boston, MA, Great Britain, and the Netherlands. ONEStone customers include a broad array of Fortune 1000 corporations in the banking, insurance, manufacturing, telecommunications, government, and healthcare industries. www.lotus.com