Category: Content technology news (Page 218 of 624)

The International Press Telecommunications Council (IPTC) begins testing this month on NewsML 2 Architecture, a proposed standard for news exchange formats. Developed by a consortium of more than 40 of the world’s major news agencies and news system vendors, NewsML 2 Architecture is based on XML. The basic goal of the NewsML 2 Architecture is to provide a single generic model for exchanging all kinds of newsworthy information. Not only will this give news agencies and software developers a unified method for handling news, but it will also provide an XML framework for a future family of IPTC news exchange standards covering such diverse specialties as sports, entertainment and financial news. Under the IPTC model, text, photo, graphics, video or any combination of media types, can be bundled into packages that neatly wrap the news content, information about the content and a management layer. Senders can make the XML wrapper as simple or complex as desired, tailoring the final package to the exact needs of their customers. As with all IPTC standards, when work is completed NewsML 2 standards will be released for use without payment or royalties. In addition, it is compatible with the World Wide Web Consortium’s “Semantic Web” framework, building a universal data exchange using XML and other standard tools. NewsML 2 Architecture Version 1.0, Experimental Phase 1, will end on 15 February 2006. Although testing is generally intended for IPTC members, non-members may be invited to join. All documents and specification files for the current draft of the NewsML 2 Architecture are available at http://www.iptc.org

CambridgeDocs announced that it would provide out-of-the-box support for the DITA XML standard in all of its upcoming content migration and distribution products. DITA (Darwin Information Typing Architecture) is an XML standard that is both a set of DTD’s (Document Type Definitions) and an architecture for re-using and dynamically assembling content. Developed by IBM, DITA is widely regarded as an ideal architecture for fragmenting XML content and enabling content re-use. CambridgeDocs’ xDoc Converter product will include sample content and templates for transforming Microsoft Word content into DITA XML, including transformation into DITA topics and topicmaps. These samples can be customized to convert any legacy content, such as Microsoft Word, Framemaker, HTML, and PDF files, into the database DTD or into their own DTD-based DTD’s and architecture. The sample templates will also automatically break up DITA topics into separate XML fragments and generate a DITA topicmap for the source content. The fragmented content can then be put into an XML repository, Enterprise Content/Document Management System or other XML based publishing system. By combining xDoc Converter with the DITA Toolkit available from IBM, the fragments can then be re-displayed or re-assembled into new documents.

Centric Software, Inc., leading provider of OpenPLM for the extended enterprise, announced that it has acquired substantially all of the assets of Product Sight Corporation of Bellevue, WA, a privately held developer of product data and enterprise search technology. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Centric will immediately integrate Product Sight’s data search technology into its existing product line to offer solutions that leverage existing product data and resolve immediate, high-value product development challenges common to all manufacturers. Centric InSight searches for information in multiple sources of product data content and other enterprise data and classifies the results presenting a unified view of information sources. Centric MultiSight BOM manages global part and BOM data from multiple sources delivering different BOM views to different teams in different locations, based on their role and function in the product development process. Centric Software is now a PLM vendor with the ability to search, classify and connect to multiple MCAD, EDA, CAE, PDM, ERP, SCM and document management systems for related pieces of product data. The combination of search, classification and connectivity provides distributed product and project teams with automatic extraction and aggregation of real-time product and operational data, presenting cross-disciplinary information that enables more informed decision making. http://www.centricsoftware.com

Blast Radius announced it will include bidirectional support for XML content creation in its upcoming release of XMetaL Author and XMAX. Prior to this release, XMetaL supported the creation of content in Cyrillic and Asian languages, such as Chinese, Greek, Japanese, Korean and Russian. This release now incorporates the additional support of Middle Eastern languages – Arabic, Farsi and Hebrew. As a result of this new capability, organizations serving audiences in those languages, such as financial services, consumer goods and electronics manufacturers, can capitalize on their content assets by translating web and print materials with higher quality and consistency. Typical XML-powered content localization projects yield enormous time savings due to better efficiencies introduced with localization systems and through parallel and componentized authoring and translation.http://www.blastradius.com

Adobe Systems Incorporated (Nasdaq:ADBE) announced it has acquired the FileLine Digital Rights Management (DRM) division of Navisware, a technology company bridging computer aided design (CAD) and enterprise intelligence. The acquisition will provide new capabilities for Adobe LiveCycle Policy Server to persistently protect business critical documents in PDF, Microsoft Office and CAD formats, independent of how they are stored or delivered inside and outside the firewall. The terms of the acquisition were not disclosed. Navisware developed FileLine to provide DRM capabilities for a wide variety of document types critical to the engineering design process, such as CAD and Microsoft Word documents. These capabilities will be integrated into LiveCycle Policy Server, enabling organizations to apply policies directly to a broad range of documents such as financial, government, or engineering documents containing intellectual property for controlling how, when, and by whom the documents can be used. Additionally, managers and auditors can easily view an audit log of who accessed the document, and indications of improper usage or disclosure. This same DRM technology will help ensure that version control of documents is maintained when the document owner invokes immediate revocation or date-based expiration. Adobe LiveCycle Policy Server for applying policies to PDF documents is currently available. The new DRM capabilities for Microsoft Office and CAD documents are expected to be integrated into LiveCycle Policy Server and available in Fall, 2006. http://www.adobe.com/security

Infotrieve, Inc. announced that it had converted ArticleFinder, its online scientific, technical, and medical (STM) database with more than 26 million citations and eight million abstracts from over 54,000 journals, to a free access model. The move provides scientists and researchers, who work for corporations and are subject to different copyright regulations than their academic counterparts, with a solution for conducting STM searches across literature from multiple providers. The solution seamlessly retrieves full-text scholarly journal articles that they need on a pay-per-view basis. ArticleFinder is similar to GoogleScholar. Utilizing ArticleFinder in conjunction with the Infotrieve Virtual Library technology platform, corporate clients can also securely include their holdings and electronic journal subscriptions within user searches in order to increase the body of content that is searched and minimize duplicate purchases. While ArticleFinder searches are executed at the citation and abstract level rather than the full-text, Infotrieve does provide full-text searching with “key word in context” previews within the Life Science Research Center search solution that it offers.

SoftLogica LLC announces WAPT 4.0, the new version of its load, stress and performance testing tool for web sites, web servers and applications with web interfaces. WAPT is designed to minimize the learning curve and give the user an ability to create a heavy load from a single regular workstation. You can create a basic test scenario and get meaningful information about your performance landscape in a matter of minutes. WAPT is able to generate up to 2000 simultaneously acting virtual users for an “average” test scenario using standard hardware configuration (Pentium 4 2GHz, 512MB RAM, Gigabit Ethernet). WAPT creates a test workload which is virtually the same as the load experienced by a web site in the real world. For example, for retail sites, some users may be surfing the catalog, others searching for a specific product and submitting an order, while an administrator may be updating the catalog. Basic and Integrated Windows (NTLM) authentication methods are supported. Graphs and reports are shown in real-time, thus helping to manage the web site performance testing process. The command line interface allows you to integrate WAPT into the existing development environment. XML files are used to store test scenarios and can be modified by third party software. WAPT supports different language encodings, so you can test web sites in virtually any language, including forms and dynamic content. WAPT is designed for Microsoft Windows 98/ME/NT/2000/XP/2003. The 30-day trial version with full set of features limited to 20 concurrent virtual users can be downloaded at http://www.loadtestingtool.com

i2 Technologies, Inc., (Nasdaq:ITWO) announced that it has signed a reseller agreement with Endeca. Under the terms of the initial agreement, i2 can now offer and resell specific Endeca-powered product information access solutions to enhance the i2 Supplier Relationship Management (SRM) solutions and better support component reuse and product cost management business processes across the entire enterprise. The partnership is designed to provide current and new i2 SRM customers with the ability to deploy highly advanced and intuitive search and navigation capabilities to simplify user access to products, components and parts information. The Endeca solution will be offered to existing i2 clients as a value-added module for Guided Navigation and to new SRM customers as a bundled solution. Endeca’s approach is designed to guide users to the best products and parts options available given specific technical and business criteria, and incorporating organizational objectives like reducing hazardous materials, increasing the use of preferred parts and ensuring appropriate lifecycle properties. Guided Navigation can complement searching and browsing through automatic user prompts based on available data and the user’s unique question/search query, providing drill-down to meaningful answers, and exposing tradeoffs to help optimize decision making. , http://www.endeca.com