Day: June 11, 2001

Lightspeed Interactive, Inc. unveiled Lightspeed LiveSite, an XML Web content management application that allows non-technical content authors to add, delete and edit their Web site in real time. Lightspeed LiveSite is a flexible, scalable product that enables users to dynamically share and reuse information via a Web browser. LiveSite provides multiple authors the freedom to contribute directly to the final product and the ability to share vital information with other users throughout the enterprise. LiveSite’s XML-based structure offers templates for administering content preferences, business rules, and controlled user access. This gives authorized content managers the ability to keep up with digital growth while freeing up IT resources. The combination of Lightspeed’s iENGINE platform and the LiveSite product enhances the company’s overall enterprise content management solution. www.lspeed.com

NQL Inc. announced the release of NQL Components, offering application developers access to the advanced capabilities of NQL’s Network Query Language core technology through a collection of individual building blocks, which can be used within other programming languages or environments. NQL Components are packaged as both ActiveX and COM components and can enhance applications built in virtually any language, including VB, ASP, C++, MS Office, VB Script and many other environments. The NQL Components released today are priced at $99 each. NQL plans to release more components over the next few quarters with pricing to be determined as those components are released. The NQL Components now available include: NQL Crawl, which crawls web sites; NQL Export, which allows automatic insertion of text, tables and images within MS Office documents; NQL Mail, which sends and receives email programmatically; NQL Neural, which makes it possible to create, train and run neural networks; NQL News, which reads messages from newsgroups and discussion boards; NQL Terminal, which connects to and captures responses from terminal- based systems such as UNIX server, minicomputers and legacy systems; and NQL Web, which retrieves web pages and web page headers. NQL Components are royalty-free once licensed, and come with sample VB and ASP programs. For a free, 30-day evaluation visit www.nqli.com/components/

Open Market, Inc. released Catalog Centre 3.5 and Marketing Studio 3.5. Both solutions are intended to provide solutions for companies whose e-business requires the management and delivery of specialized content for successful and productive site visitor experiences. Both new releases debut support for IBM WebSphere 3.5 and iPlanet Application Server 6. Open Market’s Catalog Centre creates easy-to-update, highly navigable content catalogs. Core to the Catalog Centre architecture is the ability to manage and present content in customizable hierarchies. Marketing Studio 3.5 is designed to enable non-technical business managers to collect data about site visitors and store it for analysis and use in developing marketing campaigns including promotions, up-sells, cross-sells, and content recommendations. Using Marketing Studio, business managers can group site visitors into meaningful segments and recommend products and other relevant content-based segment membership. The new Marketing Studio release also introduces the Analysis Connector, which enables Open Market’s Content Server 3.5 to deliver information to any reporting or analysis tool. Analysis Connector can be customized to work with third-party analysis tools, such as data analysis engines, to draw conclusions from information gathered from Web site visitors. Analysis Connector collects and stores data such as clickstream data, visitor demographics, content views, cart item information, abandoned cart information, and orders and can be customized to collect other kinds of site data. Catalog Centre 3.5 and Marketing Studio 3.5 are built on top of the WebLogic 5.1, IBM Websphere 3.5 and iPlanet Application Server 6. Catalog Centre 3.5, Marketing Studio 3.5, and Analysis Connector 3.5 are available for immediate download and on CD-ROM. www.openmarket.com

Cardonet, Inc. introduced version 3.0 of its e-catalog automation platform. The new software release provides greater flexibility and control over catalog data transformations and features a new automated product classification system that both speeds and simplifies the set-up of online catalogs. Version 3.0 is entirely web-enabled and supports content in any language. The most significant new features include: Auto-classification functionality that generates rules and recommended mappings for products and product categories between source and target taxonomies. System or user-generated keywords, find utilities, and a built-in map for UNSPSC categories and codes help to automate the traditionally time-consuming manual process. Catalog data from multiple sources is more efficiently converted into a single browsing structure organized for the most efficient buyer discovery process, and the classification of custom catalogs based on customer or channel preferences is streamlined. Integration of category-level attributes with Cardonet’s rules-driven transformation engine for the cleansing, normalization, and validation of product information. Users can apply unique rules and set default values for any attribute at any level within the catalog structure (taxonomy), enabling the same attribute to be handled differently for different categories or individual products. Other 3.0 features include web-enabled access of all major functions in the Cardonet e-catalog automation platform. The web access is supported by enhanced authorization and authentication capabilities. In addition, all catalog data is now handled as double-byte characters, allowing Cardonet to support catalog content in any language. The 3.0 release of Cardonet’s catalog automation platform is available immediately. Software prices vary depending on the specific configurations of the Catalog Manager and Channel Manager. www.cardonet.com