Hummingbird Ltd. unveiled Hummingbird Enterprise Client for Microsoft Outlook. The new Client provides an interactive, business-based view of the entire suite of Hummingbird Enterprise functionality from within Microsoft Outlook. Building on the concepts of Hummingbird’s document management client for Microsoft Outlook, Hummingbird Enterprise Client for Microsoft Outlook allows knowledge workers to interact with all their business content, applications, and processes without having to leave the Outlook client interface. A corporate banker will work with a deal management view of business content, manage an engagement, and collaborate with colleagues on complex, linked company valuation spreadsheets by sharing content in a secure collaborative deal room. A government employee will interact with all incoming and outgoing correspondence including e-mail, fax and mail through a correspondence management view. And a senior partner of a law firm will organize and view all the pleadings and correspondence related to a client matter, and also instantly generate a report with the most up-to-date information on billable hours – all from within Outlook. At the core of the new Client is a Business Solution Framework, encompassing business logic, vertical specific taxonomies, and role-based presentation rules. Leveraging the Business Solution Framework and the supplied vertical templates, organizations will be able to tailor Hummingbird Enterprise to fit their business model. Hummingbird Enterprise Client for Microsoft Outlook will be an interface option for Hummingbird Enterprise 2005, which is expected to be generally available this summer. www.hummingbird.com

ACIS Consulting Inc, a Canadian reseller and systems integrator of search solutions from Fast Search & Transfer (FAST), announced the release of RapidAnswer, a partner-designed and developed Search Derivative Application (SDA) for Self Service. RapidAnswer provides Customer Support Representatives (CSRs) with a unified point of access to all relevant product and customer-related information that may be scattered across various disparate websites, knowledge bases, document repositories, databases and CRM applications. The RapidAnswer solution leverages FAST ESP capabilities in natural language processing, rank tuning and relevancy modeling to deliver answers to customer questions. It enables call center managers to continually monitor and identify the most frequently asked questions that generate high volumes of customer support calls and to develop a knowledge base of short and concise answers. RapidAnswer is used to provide website visitors with a dynamic self service environment that quickly captures their intent and directs them to the correct and most relevant response. In addition, RapidAnswer continually tracks customer satisfaction feedback on presented questions and answers and identifies those topics that are leading to customer support calls and customer dissatisfaction. www.acisconsulting.com, www.fastsearch.com

Verity Inc. announced that Stellar Technologies, Inc. has integrated the Verity KeyView Filter Software Development Kit (SDK) into its new high speed attachment/document management module of the Stellar E-Mail Manager. Stellar Technologies is an provider of employee Internet management and security solutions. The Stellar E-Mail Manager is a module of its newly-released Stellar Internet GEM software suite that monitor, archive, block and provide real-time reporting for e-mail, instant messaging and Web browsing. The Stellar E-Mail Manager module monitors and blocks attachments to e-mails based on the business rules and policies of a global enterprise. The Verity KeyView Filter SDK allows the E-Mail Manager to extract text and metadata from a wide variety of documents on numerous platforms and can recognize over three hundred document types (.PDF, .DOC, .XLS, .ZIP, etc.), allowing users to effectively manage, evaluate and take action on high-value content. Stellar has plans to expand the use of the Verity KeyView Filter technology across its entire Stellar Internet GEM suite, applying its capabilities to the Stellar Instant Message Manager and Stellar Web Manager. In the future, the company expects to offer more managers, such as peer-to-peer, document library and VoIP data to extend consistent policy management to all data forms moving within, to and from an organization. www.verity.com

DataPower announced the availability of fully streaming XML Processing in its DataPower XA35 XML Accelerator. Streaming processing allows an XML engine to begin producing output before the entire input has been parsed and requires only a constant amount of memory, independent of XML document size. Previously, streaming processing was only possible using low-level custom programming or special-purpose languages. DataPower’s approach allows XML developers to continue using familiar XPath/XSLT standards, while seemlessly lowering latency and enabling XML documents of unlimited size to be processed. Some XML processing operations are not streamable by their very nature. For example, an XSLT transformation that reverses the order of elements in a file must necessarily buffer all of the input and wait for the last element before it can produce any output. This has also limited the development of general purpose streaming for XML processing, because of concerns that any solution would be unable to support intrinsically non-streamable operations. In a further complication, it is often difficult for a developer to determine whether a particular set of XML processing operations can be streamed, and to know how later changes may affect streamability. DataPower’s compiler technology automatically determines which operations are streamable and processes them in a fully streaming fashion. With DataPower XG4, the user is not required to learn new languages or determine which processing is streamable, and the engine allows for operations in XSLT and XPath. www.DataPower.com

Leading Edge Design & Systems (LEDS) introduces MediaIndexer, a digital media indexing tool based on MediaMiner, an engine that enables organizations to index, catalogue and annotate source files. Able to operate on Windows, Unix and Linux platforms, this engine can process digital video formats “faster-than-real-time” and can simultaneously process multiple streams. MediaIndexer extracts multi-resolution key frames from digital video and combines them with the audio track in a dynamically-generated SMIL (Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language) file for use in low-bandwidth situations. MediaIndexer can be used as a standalone engine and has the ability to automatically clip and segment video, producing results formatted in standard XML. www.media-archive.com

Web Crossing, Inc. announced a new Content Blob Management plug-in to make site content management more accessible to non-technical administrators. Administrators with no HTML expertise can create access-controlled “blobs” of content that drop into Theme cells within the standard Web Crossing Theme manager. The new Content Blob Management plug-in facilitates easy site content management and organization, and installs in a few clicks directly from the “Shop For Plug-ins” link on an administrator’s Control Panel. The new Content Blob Management plug-in requires no knowledge of HTML for elemental text-based content blobs. Creation is also straightforward for blobs that contain images and other elements. Once blobs are created, placing them on a page simply involves choosing the correct blob from a popup menu. Content blobs can also include Web Crossing Template Language (WCTL) scripting for dynamic content. Optional “blob boxes,” which include titles and location-specific layout elements, ensure that repositioned blobs consistently look appropriate to their location. Blobs automatically inherit into subfolders, or can be individually set to never inherit into a subfolder. Complete access control, including host access controls, balance usability and control of the blobs. Free for a limited time, additional information and the new Content Blob Management plug-in is available today. www.webcrossing.com/

Dozing Dogs released version 2.2 of their ASP.NET Content Management System. A new Getting Started Guide is now installed with the product and can be read offline. New administration menus and panels for all Content Management functions, from filtering and sorting your content to changing coverage, content type, visibility or using our abuse options when public membership is enabled. RSS 2.0 support has been added, plus improved HTML email and numerous small improvements, user controls and membership roles. The complete C# source code is available with the Enterprise Edition, now you can buy it separately to work with even the Personal Edition if necessary. A new Web Project source code add-on is included with the Professional Edition and can also be bought separately. They have added ComponentArt’s WebUI Suite which includes vertical and horizontal menus, tree view, nav bar, tab strip, multipage, site map, rotator and snap controls. All controls are now XHTML compliant and ready for ASP.NET 2.0 & Visual Studio.NET 2005. Works seamlessly with Visual Studio.NET 2002 onwards. www.dozingdogs.com