The Gilbane Group and Lighthouse Seminars announced that Udi Manber, a Google Vice President of Engineering, will kick-off the annual Gilbane San Francisco conference on June 18th at 8:30am with a discussion on Google’s search quality and continued innovation. Now in its fourth year, the conference has rapidly gained a reputation as a forum for bringing together vendor-neutral industry experts that share and debate the latest information technology experiences, research, trends and insights. The conference takes place June 18-20 at the Westin Market Hotel in San Francisco. Gilbane San Francisco helps attendees move beyond the mainstream content technologies they are familiar with, to enhanced “2.0” versions, which can open up new business opportunities, keep customers engaged, and improve internal communication and collaboration. The 2008 event will have its usual collection of information and content technology experts, including practitioners, technologists, business strategists, consultants, and the leading analysts from a variety of market and technology research firms. Topics to be covered in-depth at Gilbane San Francisco include– Web Content Management (WCM); Enterprise Search, Text Analytics, Semantic Technologies; Collaboration, Enterprise Wikis & Blogs; “Enterprise 2.0” Technologies & Social Media; Content Globalization & Localization; XML Content Strategies; Enterprise Content Management (ECM); Enterprise Rights Management (ERM); and Publishing Technology & Best Practices. Details on the Google keynote session as well as other keynotes and conference breakout sessions can be found at http://gilbanesf.com/conference-grid.html
Category: Collaboration and workplace (Page 49 of 97)
This category is focused on enterprise / workplace collaboration tools and strategies, including office suites, intranets, knowledge management, and enterprise adoption of social networking tools and approaches.
BEA Systems announced the release of its BEA AquaLogic User Interaction suite of products, including new versions of BEA AquaLogic Interaction, BEA AquaLogic Interaction Collaboration and BEA AquaLogic Analytics. These new releases are designed to help companies deliver new workplace strategies via BEA’s cross-platform web suite. With the new BEA AquaLogic User Interaction release, customers can create richer, more interactive profile pages, deliver customizable user experiences and multi-channel interfaces, leverage full RSS capabilities, and enable human networks to create social applications that enhance worker productivity, group collaboration, and community innovation. The new release of BEA AquaLogic Interaction 6.5 delivers a social computing platform with a variety of new features that can help users harness the implicit interactions of day-to-day business – project updates, new documents, process steps, key relationships, expertise, data changes in underlying systems – that are often shared inefficiently through email. The release also introduces improved usability designed to help knowledge workers more easily share community information, find specific expertise and communicate more flexibly, by providing tools that are user-driven and community-centric, and by immersing users in a flexible collaborative experience bolstered by desktop, RSS and Web-based tools. BEA AquaLogic Interaction Collaboration 4.5 extends existing capabilities with enhanced notification options, deeper Microsoft Office integration, enhanced metadata support and general infrastructure enhancements. http://www.bea.com/
Kentico Software and Applied Innovations a Microsoft Gold Certified provider of Windows-based Hosting solutions, announced the two companies have partnered to offer a free Web site solution for .NET User Groups. The solution, available through Kentico’s partnership with Applied Innovations, allows local .NET developer communities to collaborate between community members. Users will receive a free license of Kentico CMS Enterprise Edition (valued at $1,499) and a ready-to-use Web site template that helps .NET User Groups to share information with group members; inform members about group meetings; publish articles and presentations from the meetings; communicate in discussion forums; distribute e-mail newsletters; create blogs; share files and photos; and create member-only areas. The custom Web site template was created to meet the specific needs of .NET user groups. The template allows groups to focus on their community activities, rather than exhaust resources building a Web site. Applied Innovations will provide a free hosting account for .NET user groups to host their Kentico CMS installation. .NET User Groups can sign up for a free license and hosting at http://www.kentico.com/, http://www.appliedi.net
Zimbra, a Yahoo! (Nasdaq:YHOO) company, announced the availability of its ZimbraME (Java Mobile Edition) client and source code for businesses. Users of any Java-enabled mobile phone will have access to a complete collaboration solution. The ZimbraME client provides Zimbra Collaboration Suite (ZCS) Open Source and Network Edition users worldwide with free access to the Zimbra experience with e-mail and calendar on mass-market Java-enabled mobile phones. This extends Zimbra’s reach of services to a broade range of devices available. ZimbraME is an over the air downloadable Java-based application for mobile devices that allows ZCS users to access their mail, contacts and calendars. It retains the search capability found in the Zimbra AJAX client. ZimbraME source code is available to the Zimbra community for feedback and enhancement, as well as to implement ZimbraME on the devices of their choice. Mobile devices supporting ZimbraME include the BlackBerry 8800 and 8820 series; the Motorola RAZR2; Nokia E61 and N73 handsets; the Sony-Ericsson W950i handset; and the Samsung SGH-E900 handset, adding to Zimbra’s support for wireless platforms that includes Symbian, Windows Mobile, Palm and iPhone. Additionally, Zimbra supports native sync to BlackBerry handsets via the BlackBerry Enterprise Server. The ZCS 5.0 Open Source Edition is free. The commercially supported ZCS 5.0 Network Edition is available for a 60-day free trial on the Zimbra website. http://www.zimbra.com
Near-Time announced the availability of Near-Time Connection, an extension of Near-Time’s collaboration and publishing capabilities for mobile devices and other Web platforms. Near-Time Connection packages the functionality of Near-Time into a Widget, providing a flexible way to access content and interact with users associated with Near-Time spaces from smart phones, blogs or personalized homepage portals like iGoogle. Near-Time Connection is free to Near-Time users. Near-Time Connection gives users an interactive platform that lets them stay plugged into their Near-Time community no matter how they choose to view their content. The authoring environment, similar to that of Near-Time’s desktop offerings, enables users to remain active in their Near-Time communities when on the road or using a homepage portal. Users can embed other Near-Time Widgets, tag content for better search capabilities, and follow comment summaries, threads and Near-Time picks. http://www.near-time.com/
IBM announced new services to help organizations use collaboration and social networking to maximize employee talent and performance. The Enterprise Adaptability services include a methodology to determine the return on investment of social networking, use of large scale communications programs to jumpstart adoption, automatic identification of key talent, and social network analysis. With Enterprise Adaptability companies can learn how to embed Web 2.0 technologies into the fabric of business operations, allowing employees, partners and customers to communicate, establish new business relationships and make real-time decisions within the context of their everyday work. Enterprise Adaptability combines software from IBM Lotus Software and FileNet with consulting from IBM Global Business Services’ Human Capital Management practice. http://www.ibm.com
Mzinga announced it has acquired Littleton, MA-based Prospero Technologies. Prospero has a client base in the media, entertainment, and publishing sectors, and owns online community properties Talk City and Delphi Forums. With this acquisition, Mzinga now offers a broad suite of workplace and customer community solutions. The two companies bring together a combination of business social media technology, in-depth moderation services, and domain expertise focused on improving business processes for marketing, human resources, and customer service professionals. Mzinga’s software-as-a-service technology platform provides a suite of social media applications, flexible integration options, and enterprise-grade moderation capabilities to help ensure efficient, secure control of user-generated content. The platform allows flexibility in the way social media technology is deployed. Using “widget” technology, one or more social media elements may be seamlessly embedded into a customer’s web site, while template functionality can be used to create private-label community destination sites. Customers also have the option of crafting their own look and feel, and integrating social media features via API into their web pages or other applications. This social media technology will be integrated into Mzinga’s learning platform. http://www.mzinga.com
As I write this, someone in Halifax, Nova Scotia, is editing the entry on British Marxist historian Eric Hobsbawm. As Ben Vershbow notes over at if:book, it is weirdly compelling.
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