Entopia, Inc. announced the launch of the K-Bus software infrastructure for information discovery. Entopia K-Bus leverages the business context, concepts and social activity surrounding enterprise wide content to automatically and dynamically discover and deliver relevant content and experts into the day-to-day business process. Entopia delivers K-Bus solutions for Portals & Intranets, Enterprise Search to find relevant content and experts around the enterprise, and for Research Automation to automate the research process for research professionals of all kinds including pharmaceutical R&D, market research and analysis. Entopia K-Bus is a software infrastructure comprised of a metadata server, application services and enterprise connectors that enables the creation of business knowledge applications. Functions include enterprise search, social networking, expertise identification and connectors to enterprise repositories and industry content. Entopia also announced the integration of its K-Bus software infrastructure into Microsoft Office SharePoint Portal Server 2003. Entopia K-Bus is available immediately. www.entopia.com

Duden announced the launch of its intelligent spelling and grammar checker “Duden Linguistic Engine” as a web service for software integration. The solution enables software manufacturers, for example of content management or editing systems, to integrate a sophisticated German language spellchecker into their applications and to support customers in assuring the quality of texts. The spell checker offers more than usual spellcheckers: Its syntax analysis enables the software to detect grammar mistakes as in “Sie lernte ihn beim tanzen kennen” (instead of “Sie lernte ihn beim Tanzen kennen”) or mistakes as in “Er will sie kennenlernen” instead of the correct “Er will sie kennen lernen”. The web service is offered with two licensing models on customers’ servers or hosted by Duden. Detailed information on the “Duden Linguistic Engine” is available on request. www.duden.de

Vignette Corp. announced the general availability of Vignette Application Portal 7.0, with added capabilities including increased internationalization support, support for users with disabilities and broad platform support. Vignette Application Portal 7.0 is immediately available for trial evaluation purposes at no charge. In addition, Vignette offers plug-ins for Integrated Development Environments (IDEs), which give software developers a way to develop JSR 168 portlets within their IDE of choice and deploy them within Vignette Application Portal. Vignette Application Portal 7.0 has been certified by Vignette on the Sun Microsystem Test and Compatibility Kit (TCK) for compliance with the recently adopted JSR 168 portlet interoperability standard, and customers can leverage existing portlets designed for other vendors’ JSR 168-compliant portals. In addition, Vignette Application Portal now provides support for compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act and Section 508. Vignette Application Portal 7.0, which has been verified for compliance using the federal government’s Voluntary Product Assessment Test (VPAT), allows disabled administrators to easily manage portal sites. Licensing costs begin at $75,000. www.vignette.com

RenderX, Inc. and Rascal Software announced a strategic alliance where Rascal will be extending the functionality of their products to include high-quality print and PDF output using the RenderX XEP Rendering Engine. Rascal Software has embedded RenderX’s XEP product into Veredus, Rascal’s XML-based single-source authoring solution. Veredus, designed for documentation professionals, is an authoring tool for creating complete documentation projects. Veredus customers will be able to create PDF and print output through the embedded XEP software. XEP converts XML documents into a printable form (PDF or PostScript) by applying XSL Formatting Objects styling. XEP is written in Java and supports programming interfaces for XML processing, allowing it to be integrated into such applications as Veredus. www.rascalsoftware.com, www.renderx.com

Vasont Systems announced that it has joined forces with the Gilbane Report as a general partner of the Gilbane Content Technology Works Program, an industry initiative designed to develop and share content technology best practices and success stories. Vasont Systems brings to the program in-depth content management insight and examples based on more than a decade of experience in working with Fortune 1000 companies from a variety of industries. During the Gilbane Conference on Content Management on March 24-26, 2004, Vasont Systems will be exhibiting and Bret Freeman, Vasont Systems Field Support Manager, will be a speaker on the “One Minute with a CMS Vendor” panel. www.vasont.com

Smartwebs announced a significant upgrade to its workflow system across all of the company’s Web content management products. The new workflow system now allows businesses to ensure a further layer of accuracy and accountability by requiring the review and approval of Web content before it is published to a company Web site or Intranet. This advanced workflow feature utilizes multiple levels of user roles for content creation and content approval. Smartwebs’ upgraded workflow system features an email notification to alert designated approvers of pending requests, and a content history feature which automatically creates an audit trail for accountability and compliance. www.smartwebs.com

Crown Partners announced the release of the latest suite of software products that are built for supporting large enterprise users of Documentum’s WCM Edition. The new Buldoser release offers clients a method to move content from other systems to Documentum or between Documentum Docbases. The “Web in the Box” is a product and Professional Services solution which provides for a bundle of enhancements for WCM, such as Site Identifier, Dynamic Content Factory, and WCM Wizard. www.crownpartners.com

Open Text Corporation announced enterprise-wide instant messaging (IM) for Livelink. The solution, called Livelink Instant Messenger, offers the ability to retain and track IM content, providing a record of electronic communication for legal and regulatory requirements. Once retained, IM content becomes fully indexed and auditable, so users can search in Livelink to retrieve specific information. This capability gives companies a way to capture useful content in IM and make it searchable as part of a company’s corporate knowledge repository. Livelink Instant Messenger also offers improved security over IM solutions used by consumers. Embedded in Open Text’s Livelink suite, Livelink Instant Messenger is deployed inside the firewall, and utilizes SSL to encrypt information both inside and outside the firewall. Livelink Instant Messenger will be available March 15 and works with Livelink 9.1.0 SP4 and 9.2 SP1 on all supported platforms. www.opentext.com/livelink