Design Science announced the release of MathType 6.6 for Windows, featuring support for Windows 7’s handwriting recognition feature as well as extending its support to over 350 applications and websites in areas such as education, elearning, calculation, word processing, presentation, email, blogs and wikis. Among the newly supported applications and websites are Google Docs, Gmail, Blackboard and many others. For the last year, the company has been implementing its Equations Everywhere and Anywhere! initiative, enhancing MathType to eventually work with virtually all the applications and websites used by students, teachers, professors, elearning authors, scientists and engineers. With this new release, MathType now works with over 350 applications and websites. It also features an accompanying “Works With …” web application that shows detailed instructions on how best to use MathType with each product. MathType is US $57 for academic users, $97 for non-academic users; upgrades are US $37 for academic users, $49 for non-academic users. Anyone can download MathType from the Design Science website and try it free for 30 days. http://www.dessci.com
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Alfresco Software, Inc. and RightScale, Inc. announced the availability of a joint solution aimed at speeding the deployment time and automating the scaling of Alfresco software in the cloud. Utilizing RightScale’s software-as-a-service (SAAS) cloud management platform. RightScale’s cloud management platform is aimed at enabling organizations to deploy Alfresco open source ECM quickly and create a fully-configured, fault-tolerant and load-balanced Alfresco cluster using RightScale ServerTemplates. http://www.alfresco.com/, http://www.rightscale.com/
The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) has published new Drafts of XQuery 1.1, XPath 2.1 and Supporting Documents. As part of work on XSLT 2.1 and XQuery 1.1, the XQuery and XSL Working Groups have published First Public Working Drafts of “XQuery and XPath Data Model 1.1,” “XPath and XQuery Functions and Operators 1.1,” “XSLT and XQuery Serialization 1.1” and “XPath 2.1.” In addition, the XQuery Working Group has updated drafts for “XQuery 1.1: An XML Query Language,” “XQueryX 1.1” and “XQuery 1.1 Requirements.” http://www.w3.org/News/2009#entry-8682
EPiServer announced the addition of a complete, integrated e-commerce platform to its existing web content management and community platform. Through a strategic partnership with Mediachase, the EPiServer platform will provide commerce, content and community, and is aimed to enable companies in the retail and B2B vertical markets to deliver a compelling online experience. The Mediachase .NET e-Commerce Framework (ECF) provides an agile best practices architecture, with user experience controls, loosely coupled subsystems, like catalog management, order management, customer management, merchandising, promotions, and a fully exposed .NET developer framework (API). Combined with the extensible EPiServer content management system (CMS) and EPiServer Community platform, .NET web developers can build and deploy online stores, including multi-branding, multi-language, and multi-channel capabilities. Marketing tasks are streamlined through the interface and new capabilities to correlate visitor feedback and experience with store operation and order status at every step of the process. The EPiServer and Mediachase platforms are available now. The EPiServer integrated e-commerce platform is expected in the first half of 2010. http://www.episerver.com
Content Management Professionals is pleased to announce the call for nominations to the CM Pros Board of Directors. Nominations for election to the board will be open on December 11, 2009. Nominations close on January 6, 2010. More information about the Election Timeline is available on the website. The board is seeking enthusiastic candidates to run for three seats, bringing the board to five members. To qualify as a candidate, you must be a member “in good standing” of CM Pros. This is an opportunity for anyone who is passionate about content management in its many forms to help define the future path of the organization. The CM Pros Board of Directors is both strategic and tactical. Each position may require a time commitment of up to 5–10 hours per week, including attendance at a weekly conference call meeting. To nominate yourself or someone else who you believe would make a great candidate, please see the How to Nominate page on the CM Pros website and email the Elections Oversight Committee at elections@cmprofessionals.org before Wednesday, January 6, 2010. http://www.cmprofessionals.org
Atex announced the latest release of its Polopoly Web content management system, designed to support a widget plug-in framework for adding third-party components to a website with little software development required. The new release, version 9.14, represents the latest phase of the Atex “Polopoly as a Platform” initiative, where media companies can pick and choose the applications to add to websites, aimed to give more control and flexibility over how sites are built and deployed. Software developers can create and exchange elements with other developers using the Polopoly widget plug-in model. This could help reduce the overall cost of Polopoly website development as companies can acquire new elements instead of building them in-house. Atex plans to create a “storefront” to sell and swap digital components. Atex has a plug-in available to allow connectivity between Polopoly and its A-Series Digital Asset Management system so that editors can instantly publish archive material online. Polopoly 9.14 sites can also take advantage of products offered by third-party vendors to provide fully packaged and validated integrations. Services like video streaming, social media apps, content gating, pay-per-view models, and other Internet functionalities can be added via Polopoly widget plug-ins. http://www.atex.com/
The 2009 version of the Gilbane Boston conference was held last week. It was the second one I have attended and my first as a track coordinator (I designed the Collaboration and Social Software track and made it happen.) The event was well attended (c. 1100 people) and the number of sponsors and exhibitors was up significantly from last year’s Boston conference. Many of the sessions I attended offered valuable insights from speakers and audience members. All in all, I would label the conference a success.
The Collaboration and Social Software track sessions were designed to minimize formal presentation time and encourage open discussion between panelists and audience members instead. Each session focused on either a common collaboration challenge (collaborative content authoring, content sharing, fostering discussions, managing innovation) or on a specific technology offering (Microsoft SharePoint 2010 and Google Wave.) The sessions that dealt with specific technologies produced more active discussion than those that probed general collaboration issues. I am not sure why that was the case, but the SharePoint and Wave sessions spawned the level of interactivity that I had hoped for in all the panels. The audience seemed a bit reticent to join in the others. Perhaps it took them a while to warm up (the SharePoint and Wave sessions were at the end of the track.)
Here are some other, high level observations from the entire Gilbane Boston 2009 conference:
Twitter: Last year (and at Gilbane San Francisco in June 2009) attendees were buzzing about Twitter, wondering what it was and how it could be used in a corporate setting. This year the word “Twitter” was hardly uttered at all, by presenters or attendees. Most audience members seemed to be fixated on their laptop or smartphone during the conference sessions, but the related tweet stream flow was light compared to other events I’ve attended this quarter. The online participation level of folks interested in content management seems to mirror their carbon form patterns. Most are content to listen and watch, while only a few ask questions or make comments. That is true across all audiences, of course, but it seemed especially pronounced at Gilbane Boston.
SharePoint 2010: This topic replaced Twitter as the ubiquitous term at Gilbane Boston. If I had a dollar for every time I heard “SharePoint” at the conference, I would be able to buy a significant stake in Microsoft! Every company I consulted with during the event was seeking to make SharePoint either their primary content management and collaboration platform, or a more important element in their technology mix. Expectations for what will be possible with SharePoint 2010 are very high. If Microsoft can deliver on their vision, they will gain tremendous share in the market; if not, SharePoint may well have seen its zenith. Everything that I have heard and seen suggests the former will occur.
Google Wave: This fledgling technology also generated substantial buzz at Gilbane Boston. The session on Wave was very well attended, especially considering that it was the next-to-last breakout of the conference. An informal poll of the session audience indicated that nearly half have established a Wave account. However, when asked if they used Wave regularly, only about 20% of the registered users responded affirmatively;. Actual participation in the Wave that I created for attendees to take notes and discuss the Collaboration track online underscored the poll results. Most session attendees said they see the potential to collaborate differently, and more effectively and efficiently, in Wave, but cited many obstacles that were preventing them from doing so at this time. Audience members agree that the Wave user experience has a long way to go; functionality is missing and the user interface and features that are there are not easy to use. Most attendees thought Wave’s current shortcomings would be improved or eliminated entirely as they product matures. However, many also noted that collaboration norms within their organization would have to change before Wave is heavily adopted.
Open Source: This was the hot topic of the conference. Everyone was discussing open source content management and collaboration software. An informal poll of the audience at the opening keynote panel suggested that about 40% were using open source content management software. Many of the other attendees wanted to learn more about open source alternatives to the proprietary software they have been using. Clients that I met with asked questions about feature availability, ease of use, cost benefits, and financial viability of providers of open source content management and collaboration software. It was clear that open source is now considered a viable, and perhaps desirable, option by most organizations purchasing enterprise software.
My big take-away from Gilbane Boston 2009 is that we are experiencing an inflection point in the markets for enterprise content management and collaboration software. Monolithic, rigid, proprietary solutions are falling out of favor and interest in more lightweight, flexible, social, open source offerings is rapidly growing. I expect that this trend will continue to manifest itself at Gilbane San Francisco in June 2010, and beyond.
Open Text Corporation announced that it has expanded its portfolio of ECM solutions for Oracle Applications with the introduction of new content access and accounts payable solutions. Using these Open Text offerings, enterprises can associate Oracle transactions with business content. Open Text Content Access for Oracle is a new offering that provides a single point of access to Oracle and non-Oracle data and content assets from either the Oracle user interface or from the Open Text ECM Suite to enable companies to organize and manage all content, including legacy content, in virtual folders and provide a way to archive documents. This approach helps eliminate bottlenecks and distributes workload by allowing the people “in the know” to review, approve, and enter the invoice data directly into the Open Text solution without the need for direct accounts payable involvement. Open Text is a partner in the Oracle PartnerNetwork. http://www.opentext.com/