Bluestone Software, Inc. announced that it has acquired Arjuna Solutions Limited of Newcastle, England for $13.23 million. The acquisition of Arjuna adds to Bluestone’s Internet Operating Environment an embedded, high-performance, pure Java Transaction Service. Transactioning technology is essential to ensuring the absolute completion and accuracy of business processes when a transaction is performed. Most traditionally associated with financial and telecommunications applications, a transaction engine is now increasingly required for virtually all e-business services to ensure that a company’s multiple systems, from order management to shipping to billing, are accurately updated as a single complete transaction, and that the customer is readily informed of the transaction status. Bluestone plans to embed JTSArjuna into its Total-e-Business platform, as well as offer it as a standalone product, in the fall of this year. Initially launched as a think tank at the University of Newcastle, and later funded by Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Marconi, and Nortel, Arjuna researched and developed distributed object systems for transactioning and workflow in 1989. Arjuna became an independent software company in 1998, operating out of Newcastle and London. www.bluestone.com

Inso Corporation announced that it has sold the Company’s Information Exchange division (“IED”) to IntraNet Solutions, Inc. for approximately $55 million in cash. The exact net cash proceeds to the Company and net gain from the transaction will not be finalized until both parties have agreed to the post-closing balance sheet for IED. However, based upon the Company’s preliminary post-closing balance sheet for IED, estimated transaction-related costs and income taxes, the Company’s net cash proceeds are expected to approximate $48 million, and the Company’s net gain from the transaction is expected to be approximately $38 million. www.ebt.com.

netLibrary Inc. announced the availability of the netLibrary eBook Reader, a free personal software application that users can download to their PCs to read eBooks without being connected to the Internet. netLibrary distributes full-length digital versions of publishers’ books that can be searched, previewed, and accessed over the Internet. Currently, patrons of more than 1,000 academic, K-12, corporate, and public libraries around the world have access to eBooks through netLibrary. The netLibrary eBook Reader enables those library patrons to check out eBooks from their library’s eBook collection, download them to their PCs, and read them offline. This capability is paired with netLibrary’s online eBook reading solution, which enables searching, previewing, and checking out eBooks through a Web browser and live Internet connection. netLibrary also is working to make its publishers’ eBooks available through additional eBook reading platforms such as the Glassbook readers for PCs and the Peanut Reader for Palm and Windows CE handheld computers. The netLibrary eBook Reader(TM) is available now as a free download from the netLibrary Web site. The software application requires approximately 5.5 megabytes of hard disc space, and takes about 20 minutes to download on a 56k modem. The hardware requirements for running the netLibrary eBook Reader are a Pentium 100 or equivalent processor, 32 megabytes of RAM, and 20 megabytes of free hard disk space, and Windows 95/98/NT 4.0 or greater. www.netLibrary.com

Cell Network and VIOMA AB are investing jointly in VIOMA’s Content Manager–a new concept for managing and structuring information, design and function in complex web and mobile solutions. Cell Network will be responsible for consultancy work to implement and integrate business solutions based on VIOMA’s products. VIOMA is a Swedish software company that develops dynamic, flexible Content Management solutions and mobile Internet platforms for companies and organizations. VIOMA’s main product is VIOMA Content Manager, which gives companies and organizations the possibility of assembling, structuring and controlling information of many different formats in one database. The program is based entirely on XML and Java technology. The system is independent of the customer’s graphic design and business logic, the format of the content and the distribution media, and gives the customer complete control over their information management. www.bit.se

Microsoft Corp. released a draft of the Microsoft BizTalk Framework version 2.0. This newest version of the BizTalk Framework has been redefined to be SOAP 1.1 compliant, thereby allowing BizTalk Framework XML documents to travel over a network in the form of SOAP messages. In addition, version 2.0 has been extended to include specifications for reliable server-to-server messaging, guaranteeing exactly-once delivery of business documents over the Internet. Multi-Part MIME encoding guidelines also have been added to the framework to support the inclusion of one or more non-XML attachments within a BizTalk message. Microsoft BizTalk Server 2000 will support BizTalk Framework 2.0 as the protocol for reliable interoperability over the Internet. The BizTalk Framework takes advantage of XML and MIME to provide the specifications for XML-based integration within and between organizations. The support for the SOAP 1.1 specification, which was recently submitted to and acknowledged by W3C, will allow developers to create applications and services that can be more easily integrated, independent of operating system, programming model or programming language. The new reliable messaging capabilities defined in BizTalk Framework 2.0 allow organizations to reliably transmit information via the Internet using standard transport protocols such as HTTP and SMTP. The inclusion of support for Multi-Part MIME, an alternative to inline encoding of binary information, provides guidelines for encoding and decoding of one or more non-XML attachments within a BizTalk XML message. The BizTalk Framework 2.0 specification is available for review at www.microsoft.com/biztalk

Kinecta Corporation Worldweb.net announced a joint partnership to offer content providers a fully integrated solution to manage and syndicate content in order to reach broader e-business audiences. As part of the agreement, Worldweb.net will integrate the ICE-based Kinecta Interact syndication platform into the company’s Expressroom I/O content management system. The two companies will also provide joint sales product training and co-branding of the Kinecta Interact platform to Worldweb.net customers. Worldweb.net and Kinecta worked together to tightly integrate the Expressroom I/O and Kinecta Interact solutions. This will enable any customer of Expressroom I/O to utilize the syndication components and quickly ramp up their content distribution networks. As a result, customers can immediately realize the benefits of content syndication.