Inclusion Technologies, Inc. announced release of the Intra.Net Information Management System 4.4, with enhanced tools for improving organizational effectiveness. With a new set of tools for managing common business processes, customers can now establish routing mechanisms that match organizational work flows, view document change histories, and rate them for easier approvals and distribution. Version 4.4 offers administration tools and low maintenance requirements that make it possible for individual departments, administrators, or resource managers to set up the Intranet and manage their own content, calendars, contacts and access privileges. Inclusion Technologies provides its secure platform as both a licensed product for use within customer data centers, and as a fully scaleable ASP solution for immediate deployment. www.inclusiontechnologies.com

Quasar Technologies has launched GetReady, a content management system that provides cross-media publishing capability, and plans to market it worldwide. GetReady provides visual search, a knowledge engine, automatic table management, intelligent workflow, interactive editing workspace, full IPTC and Metadata support as standard. For text and image editing, the product integrates with Adobe InCopy, InDesign, Graphics Server GoLive and Photoshop, relying on InDesign for layout and design. www.quasar-tech.com

Applied Semantics, Inc. launched AdSense, which dynamically generates advertisements comprised of conceptually relevant search terms and pay-for-performance search results targeted to real-time web content viewed by an online user. AdSense is powered by Applied Semantics’ CIRCA technology, a semantic engine that understands and extracts the key concepts on any web page. The foundation of CIRCA rests on the use of an ontology of millions of concepts and relationships between concepts, enabling it to ‘read’ any web page and build a profile of the key meanings on the page. CIRCA makes it possible to match the key concepts on any web page with the most relevant advertiser in real-time. AdSense crawls web pages, determines key meanings represented on the pages and selects the most effective pay-for-performance search terms. AdSense integrates into any online advertising media type and size, replacing existing advertising displays without the need to redesign or reformat web pages. www.appliedsemantics.com

Progress Software Corporation and eXcelon Corporation jointly announced they have signed a definitive agreement pursuant to which Progress Software will acquire eXcelon in an all-cash transaction for a purchase price of $3.19 per share or approximately $24 million in the aggregate. The acquisition has been unanimously approved by the boards of directors of Progress Software and eXcelon and is subject to the approval of eXcelon’s stockholders. The acquisition is expected to close within 90 days, subject to satisfaction of customary closing conditions. All of the directors, certain officers and the largest stockholder of eXcelon, holding approximately 9% of eXcelon’s outstanding common stock in the aggregate, have entered into stockholders agreements with PSC agreeing to vote in favor of the merger. www.exln.com, www.progress.com

Percussion Software announced a technology integration partnership with Advanced Software, Inc. (ASI). Percussion will embed ASI’s DocuComp comparison engine into the next release of Rhythmyx Content Manager, expected in early 2003. DocuComp, best known as the popular “compare documents” feature in Microsoft Word, will enable Rhythmyx users to simplify the content review, localization and approval processes involved with authoring and publishing Web content. This will reduce the time needed to process content modifications and approvals as well as improve the workflow efforts of content creation teams. The DocuComp comparison engine uses sophisticated pattern matching techniques to compare any two versions of a file, reporting inserted, deleted, replaced and even moved text. ASI’s DocuComp comparison technology operates in cross-platform application environments and is accessible through a C, C++ or Java application programmer’s interface. Licensees can embed the DocuComp technology into any web-based enterprise application to compare HTML, XML or SGML. www.docucomp.com, www.percussion.com

Adobe Systems Incorporated announced the Adobe Document Server, which enables enterprise customers to automatically generate and customize Adobe PDF files and forms. Adobe Document Server is built for easy integration with existing ERP and CRM systems, Content Management Systems, document management systems, and databases. The software lets companies automate document creation and assembly for technical manuals, brochures, proposals and policies, as well as create custom electronic forms with pre-populated fields, and produce business reports that contain charts and graphs dynamically generated from data in a database. With support for APIs for Java, Perl, COM and Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) environments, programmers can develop scripts for automating the creation of Adobe PDF documents. Adobe Document Server also supports Extensible Style Language Formatting Objects (XSL-FO). Adobe Document Server is expected to be available by the end of 2002, with pricing starting at US$20,000 per CPU. www.adobe.com/products/server/documentserver/main.html

Banta Integrated Media announced new functional enhancements to its B•media enterprise Digital Content Management software platform specifically designed for catalogers, publishers and marketers. Bmedia 3.1 allows users to publish entire data directories or single assets by selecting a publishing target to send Bmedia content to. New administrative tools simplify the management and maintenance of complex corporate security, permissions and access models. An administrative interface makes it easy to set up complex publishing routines. Thumbnails and previews are automatically created upon check-in of QuarkXPress documents, providing users with visual validation of spreads and layouts. Whiteboarding has been enhanced to enable users to “pour” whiteboards into open QuarkXPress documents to automate page composition and preserve and reuse static elements. User-defined tag names can be applied to text in metadata fields to pass style information QuarkXPress and Web documents. Complex, multilevel keywords have become much easier to manage and use and keywords can be supported in multiple languages. In addition to standard reporting capabilities, users can capture attribute information about any selected asset(s), creating a reusable file for viewing, printing, and Web display. www.banta-im.com