Click2learn in conjunction with partner Recombo announced the availability of a new library of “Aspen-Ready” content developed to run through Click2learn’s Aspen Enterprise Productivity Suite without customization or integration. Housed on Recombo’s Aspen-specific Web site, the catalog of more than 3000 “Aspen-ready” courses and other learning resources is drawn from third-party content providers and spans a range of subject matter, including software training, business skills, regulation compliance and certification, as well as content relevant to specific vertical industries. To ensure that third-party content will be immediately interoperable with Aspen when it reaches Click2learn’s customers, Recombo has installed Aspen in its content integration lab and has developed tools and processes for accelerating content integration. The resulting content catalogs are mapped to Aspen’s descriptions of learner paths and competency requirements and tailored to the needs of specific industries. In addition to their ongoing content partnership, Click2Learn and Recombo share a common commitment to promoting the Shareable Content Object Reference Model (SCORM). www.recombo.com/click2learn, www.click2learn.com

XyEnterprise announced that it has released version 1.1 of its XML Professional Publisher (XPP) Web Services Toolkit. XyEnterprise also announced the availability of XPP Personal Edition, a new single-user version of its XML publishing software. Both offerings are available now. Version 1.1 of the XPP Web Services Toolkit adds functions for e-mail notification, support for SOAP attachments, improved file manipulation capability, and other enhancements. XPP users can proof, modify, and publish their documents in a browser from any location. XPP Personal Edition customers include individual users who have had prior experience with XPP at larger organizations, initial deployments in specialty publishing environments (such as STM journals or reference guides), or remote contributors working for larger organizations. XPP Personal Edition includes the XyView interactive interface with composition and editing functionality, the CITI module for generating Contents, Indices, Tables, and Illustrations, and a choice of two Hyphenation and Justification dictionaries. Other optional components (including MathML, XyDiff, EDGAR) are also available. www.xyenterprise.com

Ontopia AS Announced the Release 2.0 of the Ontopia Knowledge Suite (OKS). This major release of the OKS brings: the full release of the Web Editor Framework for building custom topic map authoring environments, extension of the query language to cover tasks that had required, either API programming or use of the Navigator Framework tag libraries, new built-in predicates now allow querying all parts of a topic map, support for import and export of RDF data to topic maps, the free-download, Omnigator, now includes support for
hierarchy visualization, and more. The OKS uses the Topic Maps model to enable the rapid development of complex systems. Using the OKS, integrators can create
representations of diverse information and knowledge models, and then access and manipulate them with a common tool set and query language. The OKS, a Java toolkit for applying Topic Maps functionality, consists of a topic map engine with scalable API, J2EE-compliant toolkits for development of editing and browsing applications, full-text search, schema tools, and persistent and scalable storage of topic maps in an RDBMS. The suite will be available from 19 December 2003. www.ontopia.net

FatWire Software announced the general availability of Content Server (CS) 5.5. This release contains DocLink, a new Content Server product that provides a simple interface for managing documents and digital assets, as well as enhancements in the areas of workflow, template creation, and platform support. DocLink is an extension to Windows Explorer that displays the Content Server hierarchy as folders within the familiar Windows Explorer interface. Users can add and update documents by dragging and dropping them between their local desktop folders and Content Server folders. The new version of Content Server allows customers to create and edit templates with Macromedia Dreamweaver. Content Server’s workflow capabilities have been enhanced to allow users to take actions on workflow groups, and users across multiple sites can participate in a workflow process. Content Server 5.5 has been enabled on two versions of Linux. For the BEA WebLogic Platform, Content Server supports Linux RedHat 7.2. For IBM WebSphere, Content Server supports Linux SuSE 8.2. Content Server 5.5 supports the IBM WebSphere, BEA WebLogic, and Sun Microsystems SunOne platforms. www.fatwire.com

Syntext, Inc. announced the general availability of Serna, a WYSIWYG XML editor. Serna incorporates on-the-fly XSL-driven rendering technology. Serna makes XML editing look and feel like conventional word processing and allows casual users and professional authors to create and maintain complex XML documents. Serna also provides full functionality on both Microsoft Windows and Linux OS. Its optimized, C++-based design makes it responsive on both platforms. Serna is capable of editing multilingual Unicode-based XML documents. The key features of Syntext Serna include: out-of-box support of industrial XML standards DocBook, DITA and TEI; on-the-fly XSL rendering (using XSLT and XSL-FO), on-the-fly document validation (based on XML Schema), XSL-FO and CALS table support, multilingual spell checking and availability for Microsoft Windows (2000, XP) and Linux. www.syntext.com

Easypress Technologies announced the availability of Atomik Xport Personal Edition, the entry-level XML export software for QuarkXPress. The new software brings ‘one-touch XML’ export to QuarkXPress, enabling anyone to automatically
create XML from their QuarkXPress documents. Atomik Xport Personal Edition comes with a set of global preferences that enable users to customise the XML export to their requirements. A fully functional demonstration version is available for download from www.easypress.com. The demonstration version is available for both Mac and Windows versions of QuarkXPress 4.1 and 5.01. A QuarkXPress 6 version is planned for 2004. Atomik Xport Personal Edition is available direct from Easypress Technologies and its resellers and system integrators worldwide. The suggested retail pricing for a single-user licence is Pounds 695, $995 or Euro 995 depending on the country of purchase. Further pricing for 5, 10, 50 and 100-user licence packs is available upon request. www.easypress.com

Visual Century, a technology company based in Barcelona, has released the new 2.0 version of its rich media asset management software ViA2 Platform. Among other new features, ViA2 Platform version 2.0 provides content-based searches of images and video keyframes using advanced shape, color and texture recognition tools as opposed to traditional textual metadata such as descriptors or keywords. Content-based image retrieval features allow the user to load images into the system and search the database for images or video keyframes similar in shape, color and texture. ViA2 Platform offers the possibility to complement content-based searches with traditional textual metadata tools (keywords, descriptions and descriptors) or filters (by date, status, type of document, etc). Equally advanced features of prior versions include asynchronous video analysis, much faster than video reproduction, which can analyze a 50 minute MPEG1 file in just 10 minutes. ViA2 Platform is distributed worldwide by Software AG and will be available from December 2003. www.visualcentury.com

Virage, Inc. announced the latest release of VS News Monitoring, a real-time monitoring and content management solution to automatically track content for time sensitive, strategically significant events. VS News Monitoring helps organizations and government agencies to automatically digitize, categorize, centrally manage, alert and distribute vast collections of news content. With this solution, organizations can process large volumes of content and provide users or analysts up-to-the-minute access and information right at the desktop. In addition, the solution automates the processing and categorizing of the original footage. The solution now manages all forms of unstructured content from the point of ingestion through real-time content access. Powered by Autonomy’s Intelligent Data Operating Layer (IDOL), video and rich media are now integrated at the center of other content types and compatible with existing systems. IDOL Server capabilities include automated retrieval, hyperlinking, categorization, alerting, profiling, clustering and personalization. www.virage.com, www.autonomy.com