Month: January 2006 (Page 3 of 8)

Five New York State agencies presented the lessons learned and benefits gained from their participation in the Center for Technology in Government’s (CTG) XML Testbed. The Testbed served to assist New York State agencies in examining the benefits as well as the challenges of Web site management using the emerging technology of XML. The Testbed was undertaken in partnership with the Governor’s Office of Employee Relations (GOER), the Office of the Chief Information Officer
(OCIO), and the Office for Technology (OFT). Beginning in the summer of 2005, five New York State agencies were selected to take part in CTG’s XML Testbed and underwent six months of intensive hands-on training and workshops, which led to an XML-based Web site prototype and a business case analysis for each agency. The five participating agencies are the NYS Department of Civil Service, NYS Division of Housing and Community Renewal, NYS Higher Education Services Corporation, NYS Office of Cultural Education, State Education Department and NYS Office for the Prevention of Domestic Violence. In the second phase of the Testbed, CTG will examine the Testbed activities and the agency results to produce a set of practical guidelines and case studies that draw on the experiences of Testbed participants to provide guidance for others trying to improve the management, performance, and value of their Web sites. In addition, the Testbed will produce a sharable library of XML technical resources to be made available in the spring of 2006. More information on the XML Testbed Project can be found at:

Meadows Publishing Solutions (MPS) announced that they have released MPS Index Builder, a software module for QuarkXPress users that creates catalog indexes. Using the new software, catalog publishers can reduce the production time of creating a catalog index from hours to minutes. MPS Index Builder, compatible with QuarkXPress 6.5, is now available from MPS and its distributors. MPS Index Builder was designed for catalog-specific workflows. Index entries can be entered by hand at any time, or imported from a tab-separated text file. In addition, AutoPrice users can also extract SKU information to include in the final index. You can import existing indexes, make changes, and start tagging for the future. Index entries can also be saved, exported and shared by any other workstation. Included is a built-in batch processing feature that will process any number of individual QuarkXPress documents in a single session. www.meadowsps.com

SAXOTECH, a software development and systems implementation company serving the publishing industry, and Fast Search & Transfer (FAST), announced an OEM partnership that will bring search features to SAXOTECH’s web publishing application platform for online media sites, as well as other SAXOTECH products. SAXOTECH will integrate FAST InStream with SAXOTECH Online, its web publishing platform developed exclusively to enable the rapid flow of content from news sources to dynamic, multimedia Web sites. By integrating FAST InStream with SAXOTECH Online, SAXOTECH’s customers can realize real-time indexing of content from multiple sources, a useful service to new media sites that typically produce hundreds of new articles and online classified advertisements per day. General availability of the initial FAST-integrated, search technologies will be with the mid-2006 release of SAXOTECH Online. http://www.saxotech.com, http://www.fastsearch.com

The Gilbane Report, Lighthouse Seminars and CMS Watch announced the launch of The Gilbane Conference on Content Technologies for Government, taking place at the Ronald Reagan Building in Washington D.C. June 13-15, 2006.

Modeled after the overwhelming success of its Boston and San Francisco events, this end-user driven event will offer attendees actionable advice for managing enterprise content to meet today’s Federal requirements.

At the Content Technologies for Government Conference, topics covered will include: Enterprise content management technologies, business applications, and solutions; How to get your content management project funded; Content technologies and 508 compliance; New standards in content interoperability; Enterprise architecture and enterprise content management; Latest enterprise search and text-mining technologies: beyond the hype; Comparative approaches for using XML to manage authoritative content; How different agencies have successfully implemented records management solutions; Comparative approaches to e-mail archiving; Role of new media technologies – blogs, wikis, and RSS – in public agencies; Best practices in content governance and web operations management; and, The future of the federal government Web.

In addition to two days of conference sessions, attendees can participate in introductory tutorials on key topics. An advisory board of leading federal and industry experts will shape the final program. Information and the call for papers is available at https://gilbane.com/gilbane-conference-washington-dc-2006/

IBM announced availability of new releases of its core IBM Workplace products, including Workplace Collaboration Services 2.6, Workplace Managed Client 2.6, Workplace Forms 2.6, and Workplace Designer 2.6. The 2.6 versions of these products include more than 50 new features and functions, including enhancements to cross-platform and open standards support. IBM Workplace Collaboration Services is a single, integrated product that includes a wide range of collaborative capabilities or “services,” such as e-mail, calendaring, team spaces, instant messaging, on-line learning, Web conferencing, document, and Web content management. The 2.6 release includes user interface enhancements across all components, an enhanced document search engine, support for ODF, iCal support for calendar interoperability with IBM Lotus Notes, and a new instant messaging gateway to Lotus Sametime, which will connect communities of users between IBM Lotus Sametime and Workplace Collaboration Services. Additions to Workplace Collaboration Services cross-platform support include clustering for iSeries, DB2 Enterprise Server Edition V8.2 as a data store, and IBM Directory Integrator V6.0. Release 2.6 also provides increased scalability and performance. IBM Workplace Forms is new electronic forms (e-forms) software that can help companies streamline and customize the way business data is captured, processed, and exchanged. IBM Workplace Collaboration Services 2.6, IBM Workplace Managed Client 2.6, IBM Workplace Designer 2.6 are available immediately. IBM Workplace Collaboration Services server sells for $90,000 per processor. IBM Workplace Managed Client is $69 per user. IBM Workplace Forms 2.6 will ship in the second quarter of 2006: The IBM Workplace Forms Server will be $25,000, IBM Workplace Forms Viewer will be $188, and IBM Workplace Forms Designer will be $649. http://www.ibm.com

Keynote Systems (Nasdaq:KEYN) announced a new release of its WebIntegrity service, which incorporates dynamic navigation permitting the WebIntegrity scanning technology to move into areas of a Web site not previously accessible. Using WebIntegrity 4.0, companies can ensure the quality of content for Web site pages, including forms, checkout pages and targeted secure areas, by finding broken links, bad content and privacy and compliance issues. WebIntegrity scales with large enterprise Web sites. WebIntegrity can spider along paths that require deliberate client interaction in order to move to the next page. This new scripted option in the scan, provides extensive dynamic navigation support, deeper penetration through form and search fields, paths generated with JavaScript and forms and submissions used for navigation. Available as a hosted service or as an appliance that resides inside the customer’s network, WebIntegrity allows enterprises to run on demand or scheduled tests. Keynote WebIntegrity 4.0 is available immediately. WebIntegrity pricing for a typical 100,000 page enterprise Web site starts at $29,995 for the hosted version or $39,995 for the appliance. http://www.keynote.com