Virage plans to market and distribute BBN Audio Indexer. The BBN product will be integrated into Virage’s SmartEncode collection of products designed to provide comprehensive encoding and indexing capabilities. The BBN Audio Indexer is a speech recognition and language-processing product that transcribes and categorizes the content of video or audio broadcasts into computer text while the broadcast is being aired. This creates a high-level structured summarization of the spoken language that can be searched and browsed through many different features such as the names of people, places, organizations, and topics mentioned in the transcript as well as the identities and locations of the speakers in the recording. Users of the product will be able to monitor the
content of news broadcasts around the world. www.bbn.com, www.virage.com

Texterity, Inc. announced its support for MobiPocket, a software and technology company that enables the reading and secured distribution of electronic text across all existing OS platforms. Support for the MobiPocket format expands the capability of the TextCafe Logisitics Service to enable automated creation, distribution, and secure distribution of MobiPocket eBook files. Texterity has also entered into an agreement with MobiPocket to license the MobiPocket server, enabling Texterity to offer direct secure distribution of electronic content, in addition to automated distribution to MobiPocket, Franklin Electronics, and other MobiPocket retailers. Texterity support for MobiPocket format and the MobiPocket server supports the recent launch of the Texterity E-Galley service. This service provides conversion of publisher’s ready-to-print PDF galley copies into multiple eBook formats. The MobiPocket solution, as a part of TextCafe Logistics Solution, is available immediately. www.mobipocket.com, www.texterity.com

SDL plc announced that it has acquired Language Partners International (LPI), for an undisclosed sum. With this acquisition, SDL will form a new Desktop products Division led by Brian Briggs, former CEO of LPI. This new division will be focused exclusively on product sales and operate autonomously from SDL’s localization services divisions. In addition to responsibilities as Vice President of the new SDL Desktop Products Division, Briggs will continue as general manager of LPI, serving its customer base as a wholly owned subsidiary of SDL. www.languagepartners.com, www.sdlintl.com

Tumbleweed Communications Corp. introduced Tumbleweed Secure Guardian OneChannel, a software solution suite that enables companies to develop a single, secure channel for all e-communications with customers and/or partners. Now companies can offer their customers and partners a convenient, trusted and branded online vehicle to communicate business-critical information safely. OneChannel is the first bundled suite offering under the Tumbleweed Secure Guardian framework and contains options for customers to use all of Tumbleweed’s solutions for extending the network. Solutions include Secure Messenger, Secure Statements, Secure Redirect and Secure Public Network. At the heart of Secure Guardian OneChannel is the Secure Inbox, a central online location where a company can deliver, manage and receive critical customer communications on an encrypted server. The Secure Inbox offers a single, personalized point of interaction for each customer and can be easily integrated into a company’s existing portal solution. Base pricing starts at $40,000 for a suite of 4 CPUs. www.tumbleweed.com

Canto announced that Cumulus 5 has received a major upgrade to version 5.5. New features include a Palette View Mode, improved IPTC support, so called Server/Client Asset Transfer, as well as numerous other features. Cumulus 5.5 includes a variety of other user-requested features such as the ability to print contact sheets, sorted lists with type-ahead functionality, an improved slide show feature, the ability for HTML output to consider the orientation of thumbnails when publishing assets to the Web, availability of the “Convert to” file format conversion functionality in the Single User Edition now as well. The Single User Edition will sell at $99.95, the Workgroup Edition will sell at $995 for the server (Mac OS, Windows) or $1995 for the server (UNIX – IRIX, Linux, Solaris) and $295 per client for Windows and Mac. Pricing for the Enterprise Edition is available on request. Cumulus 5.5 will be available as downloads on Canto’s website under in early February. www.canto.com

Actuate Corporation announced a strategic OEM agreement with Banter Inc. Banter has embedded the Actuate Information Delivery solution within Banter Self Help and Reply applications to provide customers an in-depth look at client service and client communications activities. As an integrated solution within the Banter Self Help and Reply applications, Actuate delivers in-depth analysis into what is happening within a business. The Actuate Information Delivery solution can be used to track customer trends and message volumes. The Actuate reports allow business units within an organization to track the effectiveness and productivity of specific departments or groups of agents.www.banter.com, www.actuate.com

OASIS issued an open invitation for public input on the creation of its XSLT/XPath Conformance Test Suite. XSLT and XPath are W3C Recommendations that provide the ability to define a set of rules to transform XML data into a variety of presentation styles, such as human readable reports (HTML) or other XML vocabularies. Organizations and individuals that have created test files for XSLT processors are encouraged to submit their work to the OASIS XSLT/XPath Conformance Technical Committee, which plans to corroborate submissions and publish an amalgam test suite for public use. Formal submissions from both IBM/Lotus and Microsoft have already been received by the OASIS XSLT Technical Committee. To conform to the OASIS framework, submitters must catalogue their test file collections according to OASIS published document models, and they must employ available validation processes that utilize XSLT and XPath. Complete submission guidelines are posted on www.oasis-open.org/committees/xslt

Enigma Inc. announced general availability of its Component Information System (CIS). The new software enables operators of capital equipment to resolve the problems of managing and maintaining equipment from multiple vendors by aggregating and integrating diverse maintenance and repair content. This streamlines the support chain by unifying all of the technical information associated with various pieces of equipment as a single, unified, application including operation and maintenance manuals, service bulletins, illustrated parts catalogs and operator defined best practices. In addition, CIS aggregates maintenance and repair content from multiple suppliers, regardless of format, into a single application where revisions can be more simply managed, best practices can be integrated and information search times are drastically reduced across the maintenance environment. The resulting application streamlines access to critical support information which helps decrease maintenance cycle times. www.enigma.com