This is only tangentially related to content management of course, but events like this remind me it is high time we expected our computers to do a better job of the basic things they are supposed to do.
Year: 2005 (Page 52 of 95)
I am often guilty of not keeping up with the blogs that are worth reading. I recently took to reading Dave Winer’s blog regularly, and it is a real pleasure. He has all kinds of good technical insight, of course, and has been talking a lot about podcasting lately. You could make the argument Dave is the father of blogging, so it is interesting to keep up with where he thinks things are going.
Yesterday the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) issued its
response to concerns that Sarbanes Oxley Section 404 requirements were onerous,
unwieldy, and just too expensive. The PCAOB published a policy
statement that affirmed the goals and requirements in the regulations
implementing Section 404, which requires that public companies have effective
internal controls over financial reporting and requires that an independent
auditor provides an opinion regarding the effectiveness of these controls. No
surprise there.
What was more interesting and important was that the PCAOB did acknowledge
that many first year audit efforts were inefficient and too expensive. The
important parts of the statement called for a top-down, rather than bottom-up,
approach to internal control assessment. The PCAOB also made important
clarifications about the kinds of interactions between auditors and the
companies that they audit that are permissible and useful.
Understanding this business about "top-down" and
"bottom-up" is easier if you put it in the context of how auditing
practice has developed over time. Without that big picture perspective, Section
404 and the PCAOB statements sound like a lot of accounting jargon. But, given
the perspective, it is easier to see that we are talking about some fundamental
changes–and about expense and confusion emerging from not getting the changes
right during this past year.
SilkRoad technology inc. announced the availability of Eprise On Demand. The new hosted solution enables medium-sized businesses to build Web sites, intranets and extranets leveraging content editing, personalization and workflow capabilities previously only available with their enterprise offering. Eprise On Demand provides rapid implementations of multiple Web sites via QuickForms, in-context editing capabilities, the ability to manage workflow on content approvals directly from the Website, and integration with Microsoft Word, Windows Explorer, and Internet Explorer. Eprise on Demand is now available starting at $2,900 per month. ,
Five Across, Inc. announced it has extended its technology to enable the creation of multi-page web sites. The hosted service, Bubbler, provides page navigation that is generated automatically; updates text and pages in real time; provides drag-and-drop photo, audio, and video sharing; and has a group model that provides wiki-like collaboration for authorized users. Five Across’s new technology brings the ease of blogging to business users and professionals. Users create web pages by dragging and dropping their content including digital photographs, movies, audio, and other multimedia assets, as well as business documents like spreadsheets, documents, and presentations. Five Across’s Server technology combines the content into web pages instantly. As each page is added, navigation is created automatically and added to all site pages. Content can be presented in different styles through a set of designer templates. The media-rich hosted sites are powered by Five Across’ Server, which integrates multiple network protocols into a replacement for Apache web servers. The Five Across Server transparently integrates web hosting, content management and messaging. The Five Across Workgroup Server, which includes the instant messaging and group collaboration client software, is also available to corporations for business blogging behind the firewall. Five Across offers Bubbler Hosted accounts starting at $5 per month, depending on storage and bandwidth usage. A free Bubbler 1 account is available for content contributors or for simple text blogging. The Five Across OEM Server for ISPs and other blog hosting providers and the Five Across Workgroup Server are both available immediately. http://www.bubbler.com
Whitehill Technologies Inc. unveiled Whitehill Layout Designer, the latest
product in its portfolio of document composition and data transformation software. Whitehill Layout Designer is a graphical interface for the creation of stylesheets that control the presentation of XML data. Whitehill Layout Designer can be run as a standalone application or used as a component part of Whitehill xml-Transport, the company’s data conversion and distribution software. Customers can use the tool to create customized, data-driven documents. For example, customer service teams have the ability to create customized business documents, allowing the insertion of specific targeted messages and customer data. Whitehill Layout Designer allows customers to create layouts for styled documents via a drag-and-drop user interface. These stylesheets define the presentation of XML data and enable the creation of attractive final documents. Whitehill Layout Designer creates documents by assigning the contents of an XML file to placeholders on a page and using formatting styles to give the document a professional look.
Hot Banana Software Inc. has announced the shipping of its new product – the Hot Banana Active Marketing Web Content Management Suite. The Hot Banana Active Marketing Web Content Management Suite consist’s of the Hot Banana Web Content Management Suite, and the Hot Banana Active Marketing Suite. All versions are shipping immediately, either as Hot Banana On Demand, Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) or, as Hot Banana Licensed Software. Hot Banana Active Marketing Web Content Management Suite will allow non-technical users to take ‘hands-on’ control of their online marketing and communications. All Hot Banana Active Marketing programs and campaigns can now be tracked by using WebTrends 7 On Demand Web analytics to measure results and Web site performance. Improvements to the Web site and marketing activities can then be made, such as tweaking and changing the Web content, so the campaign can be fine tuned, either while it’s in progress, or optimized in preparation for the next scheduled campaign.
ClearStory Systems announced participation in IBM’s PartnerWorld Industry Networks. ClearStory’s Radiant Enterprise Media Server (EMS), a J2EE software platform for integrating rich media into content management systems and other enterprise applications, will be ported to IBM’s DB2 and WebSphere platforms. Porting Radiant EMS to the IBM platform will also include integration with IBM Content Manager, allowing customers to store digital assets in IBM content repositories. Teaming up with IBM represents an expanded marketing and distribution opportunity for ClearStory and ActiveMedia 6.0. The IBM platform release of Radiant EMS is targeted for general release on June 30, 2005. ClearStory announced general availability of Radiant EMS 2.0 on April 18, 2005 and ActiveMedia 6.0 on May 9, 2005.
