Quark Inc. announced the release of QuarkXPress 7.1, the new Universal upgrade to the desktop design software. The latest upgrade adds performance enhancements, making the design software more responsive. Quark made performance improvements in several areas — including text selection, clipped images, and flattening features. Each feature has received a performance boost, resulting in faster production times. In addition, the Universal upgrade has provided performance improvements throughout the application. A fully functional 30-day evaluation version of QuarkXPress 7, including the new Universal release for Intel-based Macs, is available. To purchase or upgrade to QuarkXPress 7.1, visit the Quark Web site at http://www.quark.com/71update
Day: January 9, 2007
Dick Harrington is the CEO of Thomson. During a December investor’s conference presentation, he clearly described Thomson’s future strategy. Their vision is to be the leading provider of workflow solutions to business and professional customers. Their goal is to develop “must-have” products with high utilization and renewal rates. I would assume that a recurring revenue model is also preferred. As they create technology to leverage their content, they find that they achieve greater leverage and higher margins. This is a very sound strategy.
His decision to divest Thomson Learning aside, it would seem that there are excellent opportunities awaiting College and Educational publishers who employ similar strategies. Students, professors, teachers, and parents could all benefit from tighter integration of enabling technology and multimedia including simulations with more traditional text based materials. Many publishers are already finding success with next generation products that offer customers their choice of media options combined with technology that helps this group of professionals do their jobs better. The key is to focus on customer needs and creating innovative new products rather than creating new media versions of existing products. These new products also have the potential to be licensed for specific terms and usages rather than be sold outright. This model would likely accelerate revenue growth and yield better margins.
We’ll strive to provide examples of successful ventures in later posts…
Pegasystems announced the latest version of its award-winning SmartBPM Suite. Enhancements focus on providing business users with better access and more precise control over their business processes. New features include Flex-based interactive business visualization, complex business decisioning support, insurance-specific capabilities to manage multi-channel, multi-state policies and rules, SOA integration testing, AJAX and Flex automation, and accessibility features to support all users. The release also adds new accessibility support to meet the requirements imposed by the Americans with Disabilities Act, the Disability Discrimination Act (UK) as well as other accessibility requirements in the EU.
Mediasurface and Google have signed a distribution agreement in which Mediasurface will bundle the Google Search Appliance with Morello, its web content management system enabling the two organisations to provide web content management and corporate search facilities in one offering. As part of the agreement, an interface between Morello and the Google Search Appliance has been developed; enabling Morello to use the Google Search Appliance to deliver highly relevant search results. Mediasurface can now deliver the same Google search experience while searching content managed by Morello on public websites and intranets. The security model within Morello is fully maintained; a search will only retrieve and display content relevant to the access privileges of the user. The integration between Morello and Google Search Appliance ensures that a richer and relevant set of content is delivered than would have been available previously by adding in metadata such as the original content author, the date the content was first published, keywords, and so on, which is held separately within the CMS. The Morello content author can create “keymatch” terms that relate to an item of content and enabling certain content to appear at the top of a search result. Morello and the Google Search Appliance can now group and manage information for specific audiences so if, for example, someone searches for technical data on a product, they can select the technical collection and avoid the brochures. http://www.mediasurface.com
