Mark Logic Corporation announced that it has partnered with Spectrum Systems, Inc. of Fairfax, Va., a provider of business process and system optimization solutions, to offer MarkLogic Server to Spectrum Systems’ General Services Administrations (GSA) schedule (GS-35F-5192G). , http://www.marklogic.com
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Onfolio, a company and tool I have used and liked, is being acquired by Microsoft. Onfolio is led by J. J. Allaire, one of the incredibly bright and hands-on entrepeneurial Allaire brothers who developed Cold Fusion. According to the Boston Globe, the entire six-person Onfolio team is moving from Massachusetts to Redmond. This is much like the case of Ray Ozzie’s Groove, where Microsoft is acquiring Allaire as much as they are acquiring Onfolio.
Also according to the Boston Globe, the Onfolio tool, which came in three retail versions ranging in price from $30 to $149, will be available for free, starting today, as part of the Windows Live Toolbar. However, I checked the Windows Live Ideas site quickly and couldn’t find it.
UPDATE: The Toolbar Beta is there now.
Vasont Systems announced that a standard Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA) setup is included with every installation of the Vasont Content Management System. Vasont’s standard DITA setup is included at no extra cost. Users can choose to install the optional DITA setup when installing Vasont. In addition, Vasont is able to support any industry-standard XML DTDs such as DocBook and S1000D. For users with complex content, Vasont also supports proprietary DTDs created to accommodate an organization’s specific business logic. Multiple DTDs can also be used in Vasont when one DTD doesn’t fit all of an organization’s content. http://www.vasont.com
Being in the conference business I naturally pay attention to what other conferences do. The back-to-back 15-30 minute keynotes at ETech were great – I can’t remember the last time I actually sat through an entire morning of “keynotes”. One downside though is that speakers are not used to this and some are unhappy about it and spend an awful lot of their valuable 15 minutes talking about how they are not going to say something because they only have 15 minutes.
Lot’s of talk about ‘attention’ here at ETech. Thinking of attention in terms of economics is fascinating and thought provoking, but I have not quite got the essence of the excitement – just saw Tim Bray who also said he was not sure he got it, and everyone at my lunch table squirmed and then said they didn’t get it either.
The last thing I want is someone managing or making money or even knowing about my attention allocation. I don’t mind some – I am not averse to sharing certain preferences and behavior – but it is mine to share or not, and mine to monetize or not. As a consumer, what is the return? I get more personalized ads? I get stats on my own behavior? I get more people and advertisers paying attention to me? I definitely am not yet interested in making it easier for others to try to influence me based on some attempt at interpreting my activity/interest – is this a matter of not just being good enough at it yet? Maybe.
Will Attention Trust make a difference? I don’t know.
I understand that some people have more intense desires to communicate everything they think and do and will buy into attention for that, but surely that is an edge group…?
Attention and its scarcity and therefore value are important to pay attention to when deveoping products or businesses – but it is not all in the user’s interest.
UPDATE:
Listened to Michael Goldhaber’s talk on the economy today at ETech. He’s the one who everyone quotes. Interesting talk, but I still don’t get it. I suppose the desire for attention might be as rational as the desire for money (although I hope not – it doesn’t seem as practical, you can’t simply bank attention over time without its value diminishing). Trading in “attention bonds” as Seth Goldstein wants, is a bit scary in that it depends on people who don’t think they get enough attention!? I thought Seth’s talk was the most enlightening on the topic.
UPDATE 2:
And this will be it for the updates. See Jon Udell’s and Doc Searls’ comments on this.
UPDATE 3:
Well, it is now 2018, and does this dated or what!
Linda Stone is talking about “continuous partial attention” a phrase she coined in 97 or 98. What is it? It is what I am doing right now, paying partial attention to Linda talking, partial to writing this blog entry, partial to those sitting around me rustling papers or not, I am also interspersing all this with thoughts of lunch, what session I will attend this afternoon, und so weiter …. We all do it.
It is not surprising. It is the way the brain has always worked (well at least for a while – remember all those cognitive science experiments in the 70s) – it is now just more explicit and we are getting better at it. Or at least some of us are; as much as I do it my daughter leaves me in the dust.
Apparently Linda has seen a backlash about the idea, but, as she said, “…continuous partial attention isn’t bad or good – it just is.”
Just as technologies are only tools that can be used for good or bad, our brain hardware can also be used for better or worse, to help or hinder. Our brain functions can be mis-used just like technology. As we get better with continuous partial attention, the result can be beneficial or rude. (e.g., easier to be rude and interrupt when you feel like it – it is not always OK) we have to learn the ethics as well as the efficiencies.
There are also some interesting challenges for product development. There are different tolerances for multi-processing, and these change even within one human unit, e.g., when you are tired vs. alert.
I’m not much of a live blogger, but I am at O’Reilly’s ETech conference, (which has already been well worth the trip), and others are covering it just fine without any help from me – for example Ray Ozzie’s talk on O’Reilly’s Radar.
ZyLAB announced the immediate availability of the ZyIMAGE eDiscovery Suite for Federal Government. An integrated document, content and records management solution, ZyIMAGE eDiscovery enables government organizations to capture, investigate, structure and disclose information in a simple, secure and efficient manner. The ZyIMAGE eDiscovery suite is built on an XML data repository and provides users with investigative tools to store, search and retrieve vital information through a standard Internet browser. All unstructured data is stored in the XML data repository, and integrated functionalities enable users to capture and add new data, analyze and collaborate on the data, and retrieve and share this data. Because of its modular structure, the ZyIMAGE eDiscovery suite is scalable and provides a solution to address the requirements of both departmental and enterprise-wide organizations. The key motivation for users engaged in eDiscovery is not to miss any archived e-mail, document, or electronic file that may have relevance to a particular FOIA request or investigative activity. Therefore, eDiscovery searching must concentrate 100 percent on recall rather than on precision. The ZyIMAGE eDiscovery suite empowers users to find the information they are looking for quickly in any format and in most languages. The ZyIMAGE redaction tools offer a full range of features, including redaction on scanned images as well as click-and-drag capabilities, multi-color redaction, synonym redactions, version control, and more. Redactions can be tagged with additional key field information, which can contain data and time stamps, exemption rules, comments or applicable legal rules, redaction creators, and additional user-defined key fields. http://www.zylab.com
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