Vasont Systems announced the release of Vasont 10, the latest version of its single-source content management system. Vasont 10 will be unveiled at the Gilbane Conference on Content Management in Boston, MA, on November 29 – December 1, 2005. Vasont transactions can now be processed up to six times faster on corporate networks due to Vasont 10’s enhanced server-side processing on the Oracle server. Vasont utilizes the most current version of Oracle, 10g. Digital asset management capabilities have been added to Vasont 10. Users can simply drag-and-drop multimedia components, in a wide variety of file formats, from their desktop into Vasont. They can be viewed in the Vasont File Explorer several different ways, including thumbnail, detail, or list views. Vasont 10 provides users with the ability to capture, organize, and search unstructured documents and structured component-level content together in the same database. Users can now drag-and-drop entire unstructured documents from their desktop directly into the Vasont repository. The new Pointer Log in Vasont 10 manages modular reuse in a similar way that Vasont’s Global Change Log manages component reuse, giving users control over the implementation of changes to reused content. The Pointer Log tracks and time-stamps all changes made to referenced content and tells the user exactly what changes need to be approved for a particular pointer/reference. http://www.vasont.com
Year: 2005 (Page 12 of 95)
In our informal survey of enterprise use of blogs and wikis, the most popular application that organizations are using blogs and wikis for was “knowledge management”. While our survey is a far cry from what a rigorous market research effort would be, the results are in sync with what we and others are hearing from companies. I recently heard from Rod Boothby, who is leading an effort with Ernst & Young to build an internal enterprise blogging system to support knowledge sharing, and has written an essay based on his findings while building the business case for the project. I have just read the 37 page essay, Turning Knowledge Workers into Innovation Creators, and it is a great tool for describing the benefits of enterprise blogging to senior management. Rod is publishing sections of the essay on his blog at www.innovationcreators.com.
MoonLite Vision, Inc. introduced bizBaron, a new content management software solution which incorporates an online store, online appointment scheduling, subscription content, memberships, and community forums within one application. The release of bizBaron provides web merchants, whether a service provider or seller of goods, a one-stop non-technical solution for their Internet commerce needs. Merchants can purchase bizBaron for use on their web server, or elect to use bizBaron-provided web hosting. bizBaron is currently only available in the United States.
Jon Udell wrote yesterday that we should really be getting beyond the office document format debate swirling around the Massachusetts decision, because all heavy footprint authoring applications are headed for oblivion in our increasingly net-software-as-service world. (David Berlind also weighs in on the death of fat clients apps.) Tim Bray is skeptical because “… authoring software is hard.” While my view of the ODF debate is much closer to Jon’s than Tim’s, I agree with Tim’s caution here. While my coding skills were never in the league of either of these guys I have spent a lot of time working on authoring software, and more importantly, collecting requirements from users. Admittedly this was well before the Web existed, but what hasn’t changed one bit, is the need for authoring software to meet a staggering array of complex user requirements. Authoring software has to be flexible and extendable to meet the always unanticipated user needs. Authoring software is hard, and differing formatting and integration requirements will keep it that way.
Note that extending software functionality is not unrelated to extending the encoding of the content, which reminds me that…
Ironically, the reason I agree with Tim here is exactly why I disagree with the ODF decision: extensibility should be the first requirement of a government decision on an open document standard, and ODF looks uncomfortably like a limited implementation. From a practical point of view, scope is critical, but as Jon says, “In theory, governments should mandate standards, not implementations.” Perhaps the way to think about it is that governments should mandate standards (XML) but adopt implementations (form OASIS and Microsoft and perhaps others). Realistically there will be multiple versions (implementations) of each anyway, so a single implementation will never be enough.
SchemaLogic, provider of enterprise metadata and taxonomy management software, and WAND Inc., provider of industry vertical product and service taxonomies, announced that they have joined forces to deliver a comprehensive taxonomy solution to global 2000 companies. The partnership will offer customers taxonomic content, coupled with a platform to view, manage and disseminate the taxonomies to their search and content management applications. WAND taxonomies coupled with SchemaLogic taxonomy management empowers customers to rapidly deploy an “out-of-the-box” taxonomic solution that matches their business domain. SchemaLogic offers the framework to manage and use metadata, taxonomies, vocabularies and schema across multiple systems to improve the way information is organized, accessed and shared across large enterprises. , http://www.schemalogic.com
Bitform Technology Inc. announced the availability of Bitform Extract SDK, a software component for high-performance access to the contents, including text, metadata and content structure information, of the most important file types used by global organizations. Cross platform support and a flexible API make Bitform Extract SDK a tool for a broad range of solutions that need access to file content. Target applications include analysis and inspection for security and compliance solutions and text extraction for indexing, categorization and other search, knowledge management and content management processes. On the surface, content extraction can be confused with “text filtering”. It’s a relatively simple task to develop a program that opens files and treats every element inside as text. This approach can produce impressive performance figures with regard to gigabytes of files processed per hour, but precision and accuracy suffer tremendously. Complex binary file formats such as Word, Excel, PowerPoint and PDF contain thousands of internal structures that can either be bypassed by a simple text filter – thus causing incomplete analysis of content – or can be incorrectly treated as text – thereby producing false positives. Bitform’s approach of completely modeling supported file types and taking into account the unique structure of specific formats produces high precision with performance that meets market needs in multiple application segments. For security, policy and compliance applications, Bitform Extract SDK can be combined with Bitform’s metadata and hidden information inspection tool, Bitform Secure SDK, to provide a comprehensive content extraction, inspection and remediation solution. Bitform Extract SDK is available immediately. http://www.bitform.net
Information Mapping, Inc. (IMI) announced it has acquired XML technology to be integrated with Content Mapper, a front-end MS-Word-based authoring tool that generates XML and links with Enterprise Content Management (ECM) Systems. Scheduled to launch later this month, Content Mapper offers a Word-based authoring environment, round trip editing from Word to XML and back again, integration with ECM systems, meta-data tagging, import of legacy documents, flexible publishing and XML output. http://www.infomap.com
Mediasurface launched the latest version of its content management suite (CMS) v5.3, introduced Instant Site, a new feature which enables the creation of websites in minutes. Mediasurface v5.3 also incorporates enhancements to its Morello Smart Client. Business users can select templates, page layouts and component pages, and in less than 10 clicks Instant Site can build a brand new fully managed site, which adheres to corporate branding and accessibility standards. Mediasurface’s Instant Site feature enables IT to supply business users with a framework of components such as FAQ pages, a search facility, or even whole sets of pages, for example: a newsroom or newsletter with homepage, discussion areas, feeds and links pages. Mediasurface v5.3 now also includes a content classification tool. The new Taxonomy Browser enables editorial users to identify and select the right keywords and phrases to ensure content is always tagged correctly. It includes a searchable tree-structured representation along with predictive typing and identification, and an intelligent ‘suggest’ feature to help users find the preferred term. The system can also be configured to work with multiple taxonomies such as the Integrated Public Sector Vocabulary or Government Category List. Mediasurface v5.3 increases support for managing multiple websites, allowing the user to track content throughout the entire business operation. Content can be shared across all internet, intranet and extranet sites. By using the new Content Tracker, an impact analysis can be carried out on changes to content that is shared across these sites. Mediasurface v5.3 is now available as a free upgrade to existing Morello customers.
