Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq “MSFT”) announced that it will make an offer to acquire Fast Search & Transfer ASA (OSE: “FAST”) through a cash tender offer for 19.00 Norwegian kroner (NOK) per share. This offer represents a 42 percent premium to the closing share price on Jan. 4, 2008 (the last trading day prior to this announcement), and values the fully diluted equity of FAST at 6.6 billion NOK (or approximately $1.2 billion U.S.). FAST’s board of directors has unanimously recommended that its shareholders accept the offer. In addition, shareholders representing in aggregate 37 percent of the outstanding shares, including FAST’s two largest institutional shareholders, Orkla ASA and Hermes Focus Asset Management Europe, have irrevocably undertaken to accept the offer. The transaction is expected to be completed in the second quarter of calendar year 2008. In addition to bolstering Microsoft’s enterprise search efforts, this acquisition increases Microsoft’s research and development presence in Europe, complementing existing research teams in Cambridge, England, and Copenhagen, Denmark, with new capabilities in Norway. http://microsoft.com, http://www.fast.no/
Author: NewsShark (Page 182 of 730)
In.vision Research and Trisoft have announced a partnership to integrate their products to meet the needs of content management and publishing for a variety of industries including telecom, high-tech, software, mechanical equipment and automotive. The In.vision and Trisoft partnership will use In.vision’s Xpress Author for Microsoft Word add-in to allow non-technical writers to create XML content in Word. When the non-technical writer saves the document into the Trisoft InfoShare Content Management System, technical writers will be able to incorporate the content into their documents with ease, and continue with the various review, translation, and publishing processes that InfoShare provides. http://www.tri-soft.com, http://www.invisionresearch.com
Mediasurface (UK, AIM: MSR) announced a new extension to its Morello web content management solution that adds benefits to allowing enterprise users to work together on content creation using MOSS 2007. The new Morello MOSS 2007 Connector makes it easier and quicker to find, organise and publish MOSS generated content through an enterprise web delivery infrastructure on one or more websites, intranets and extranets. Mediasurface addresses this with the new Morello MOSS Connector which integrates MOSS tools with Mediasurface’s Morello enterprise web content management solution. Automated processes keep information synchronized, ensuring that websites always display the very latest, approved version of a document whilst SharePoint users will always have direct access to information captured on the websites. In addition, the Morello MOSS 2007 Connector plugs into the generally available standard collaboration and communication services of SharePoint (called WSS), so there is no technical setup required. Users can collaborate, create and review documents, images and pages using familiar tools such as MS Word and Outlook. The connection to Morello helps ensure users know which MOSS generated content is approved for use, avoiding duplication and speeding up the publishing cycle. http://www.mediasurface.com
eZ Systems announced support for eZ Publish running on Mac OS X Server v10.5 Leopard. In addition, eZ showed eZ Flow, a new extension for eZ Publish designed for media companies who need to build complex page layouts and pre-plan publication schedules to ensure a constant flow of rich content. Among other features, eZ Flow supports delivery of content to Apple iPhones. With support for the Mac OS X Server (which recently attained UNIX 03 certification), eZ Publish enhances the platform by providing an Open Source Enterprise Content Management System that enables organizations to create websites, intranets and extranets. Because content presentation is based on a template system, eZ Publish (and eZ Flow) can serve tailored content to mobile devices by using a template tuned for the devices’ display. For example, a template customized for Apple iPhones tunes the display of content to the iPhone display size and iPhone-specific user interface elements. http://ez.no/ezpublish
SDL announced the launch of SDL Passolo 2007, the latest version of their visual software localization tool. The new version offers a full visual editing environment of the latest Microsoft localization technology Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) and localization support for all Windows development platforms such as .NET 3.0, Windows 64 bit and Delphi 2007. SDL Passolo 2007 integrates with SDL Trados 2007 to maximize the reuse of translation memories and terminology by leveraging existing Translation Memories and corporate Terminology Data Bases. SDL Localization Office suite, a combined offering of SDL Trados 2007 and SDL Passolo 2007, provide an integrated solution supporting localization projects. Direct display of source files adds context information when working on XML, Java and text files without visual support. http://www.sdl.com/
IBM (NYSE: IBM) announced new capabilities in its content classification software used to automatically categorize large volumes of enterprise information, making it easier to find, access and use in the context of enterprise content management systems. With its service-oriented architecture-based capabilities, the IBM Classification Module provides connection to the IBM FileNet P8 content management platform to tackle the categorization of unstructured content, especially content stored or arriving in FileNet repositories. It automates the process of determining whether content is important, and how it should be handled. It can also automatically classify previously unmanaged content or reclassify content already under management so it can be leveraged for business purposes such as records management. The IBM Classification Module helps users to determine the right level of automation for their business scenario, providing a balance between automation and oversight through its configurable confidence levels and workflows designed within the classification review interface. This review capability uses the IBM Classification Module’s real-time learning to provide the system with feedback in order to improve accuracy and automatically adapt to changes. IBM Classification Module is currently available from IBM and IBM Business Partners. http://www.ibm.com/software/ecm/classification
eZ Systems announced the immediate availability of eZ Publish 4.0, the latest version of its ECM product. eZ Publish 4.0 features PHP 5-compatibility. eZ Publish is freely downloadable and provides an out-of-the-box Open Source Enterprise Content Management System. The product offers development framework with advanced functionality for web publishing, media portals, intranets, e-commerce and extranets. Specifically, eZ Publish 4.0 will offer the following enhancements to the 3.x series: Complete PHP 5-compatibility, Full support for using eZ’s PHP enterprise components library, Performance improvements, Improved internal XML handling for increased performance and reduced memory usage, Updated Web site interface with new graphical design and enhancements, Improved clustering performance, Multilingual URL support, and Enhanced ISBN and multi-option datatypes. eZ Find, a new extension for eZ Publish 3.x and 4.x, enhances the search functionality on eZ Publish sites and includes features such as relevance ranking, native support for eZ Publish access rights, keyword highlighting and the ability to search sites containing millions of objects. eZ Systems also announced eZ Flow. eZ Flow helps news and media organizations to create dynamic portal pages by scheduling content publication, streaming rich content and managing revenue streams, including pay-per-view and paid content placement. Standard eZ Publish functionality within eZ Flow includes features designed to engage users, including surveys, ratings, tagging, comments, forums, polls and blogs. Multi-user, multi-role access permissions provide complete control over which users – including anonymous site visitors – can create and edit different types of content. With multi-channel exporting, site content can also be published to RSS, OpenOffice.org, Microsoft Word, and QuarkXPress. http://ez.no/
Immediacy, part of the Mediasurface group (UK, AIM: MSR) announced the launch of Immediacy Web Content Management Suite 6.0 (WCMs 6.0). New features are:
- Extended Web 2.0 functionality allows easy creation of ‘My Pages’, profiles and blogs that help to deliver the content, context and connections for social interaction.
- Immediacy WCMs 6.0 creates a platform for community-driven tags (folksonomies) and business taxonomies to co-exist.
- The new Immediacy SharePoint Connector is designed to allow non-technical users to publish accessibility compliant content directly from SharePoint.
- Improved Search Engine Optimisation generates the XHTML-validated code that search engines such as Google prefer.
- Taxonomy and Categorisation Manager employs sophisticated algorithms to extract keywords, key phrases and a summarised description from any web page or document, then automatically categorise it against a taxonomy or folksonomy.
It also includes as standard new enhancements for social networking including RSS, OpenSearch, Robot.txt, PDF output and blog capabilities. http://www.mediasurface.com
