Category: Content technology news (Page 524 of 638)

Sequoia Software Corporation announced agreements with OfficeMax.com, biztravel.com, and 401Kafe for integrating their Web-based services with Sequoia’s XML Portal Server (XPS). Collectively, OfficeMax.com’s office products and services, biztravel.com’s full-service online travel capabilities, and 401Kafe’s online benefits planning information fall into the category of “populist applications” because they are useful to the broadest range of corporate users. By integrating these online applications within XPS, Sequoia is ensuring its customers’ employees will be more enthusiastic about adopting the portal as their primary point of interaction with corporate content. This in turn will drive overall use of the portal, increasing the return on the corporate investment. Sequoia has signed a letter of intent with biztravel.com to integrate the biztravel.com service with XPS. The relationship is intended to give XPS end users immediate access to tools for planning, booking and managing travel arrangements. Based on an agreement with mPower, the parent company of 401Kafe.com, Sequoia will offer its customers integrated access to the 401Kafe site as a content component of XPS. 401Kafe is a community resource for 401(k) participants, providing news, articles, FAQs and discussion forums designed to enhance an individual’s ability to grow the value of their 401(k) investments. www.biztravel.com, www.OfficeMax.com, www.sequoiasoftware.com, www.401kafe.com

SoftWired’s iBus messaging technology will power Xerox Corporation’s wireless-based product, MobileDoc. Xerox’s software application was designed specifically to allow people to fax and e-mail documents of various size, remotely, from any mobile device including cell-phones, personal digital assistants, and pagers. MobileDoc will initially support Motorola’s PageWriter 2000X and TimePort P930 interactive devices, and the Nokia 9110 Communicator. By integrating iBus/MessageBus with technology developed at the Xerox Research Centre in Cambridge, U.K., MobileDoc allows people to browse through large document libraries via wireless devices. Documents can be sent to any fax or e-mail in the world. Professionals can easily send up-to-the minute contracts, pricing proposals or any other document to customers and clients within minutes. The iBus is deployable as part of every inter-networked Java device from wireless PDA’s, pagers and mobile phones to personal computers, delivering information in real time and with reliable multicast. www.xerox.com, www.SoftWired-inc.com

Birdstep Technology AS, an international vendor and developer of Ultra Small Footprint database technology, announced a unique solution to an increasing problem faced by the growing mobile computing industry. The Birdstep solution is a database that supports XML to increase processing power and storage capacity on handheld devices. An example is an XML-database of a 42,000 word Norwegian-English dictionary implemented on a PDA running Windows CE. The Birdstep database requires only 12MB of space to handle the dictionary, while traditional database systems supporting XML may need up to three times as much space. Birdstep’s patented atomisation techniques store and manipulate the XML-structures within the actual database. This technology differs from most vendors that provide relational or flat file databases that are not able to provide multilevel XML support. Birdstep’s technology allows for native XML representation within the physical database itself. As such, Birdstep’s support for XML becomes an integrated part of the handheld’s database system, versus approaches that only provide an XML-layer on top of the flat file or relational technology. In addition, Birdstep technology keeps the whole XML-structure – or tree – persistently across disk and memory, a detail of importance when manipulating large and complex XML-documents. www.birdstep.com

Netscape Communications announced that Netscape Gecko will be used by IBM, Intel, Liberate, NetObjects, Nokia, Red Hat, and Sun Microsystems. These companies will use the cross-platform Netscape Gecko browser engine to extend the Web from the traditional desktop computer to a wide range of Internet devices such as set-top boxes and browsing appliances. Designed to power Internet devices across many platforms and devices, Gecko is a key component of the “AOL Anywhere” strategy. In another announcement, Netscape also said that Netscape 6, its new Gecko-driven Internet browser would be available to the public within the next 25 days. Netscape also announced the availability of XUL (pronounced “zool”), the XML based User interface Language, a new XML application that makes it easy to develop a cross-platform user interface. XUL, the XML-based User Interface Language, uses XML to describe the features, objects, and layout of a traditional desktop application user interface. XUL lays out the user interface elements across all platforms by using these common Web standards: HTML, XML, CSS, the W3C DOM, and JavaScript. http://home.netscape.com/browsers/gecko/whitepaper.pdf, http://home.netscape.com

The ICAP Forum of Internet companies today announced the completion of the first draft of a protocol aimed at enabling Internet e-services. The new protocol, Internet Content Adaptation Protocol (ICAP), leverages the Internet’s infrastructure and increases the intelligence and flexibility of networks. ICAP will be submitted to the Internet Engineering Task Force’s (IETF) Web Replication and Caching (WREC) working group as an Internet draft at the next WREC meeting. The proposed standard allows enterprises, content providers and ISPs to seamlessly conduct e-services such as Web page reformatting, targeted Web advertising, virus scanning, content filtering, data compression and language translation from any Internet access device. The ICAP Forum is hosted by Akamai Technologies and Network Appliance, and is joined by content delivery service providers, application developers, and Internet infrastructure companies. Forum members participating in the development of ICAP include: AdForce, Advertising.com, Allaire Corporation, Anystream, Appliant, Inc., BroadVision, Capella, Cidera, Cobalt Networks, Compaq, Direct Hit, DoubleClick, eBuilt, Ecliptic, eColor, Engage, Entera, Finjan Software, Fresher Information, Frictionless Commerce, Gomez, Google, Idiom, Idini, iKnowledge, InfoLibria, Ingeniux, iWeb.com, Izar, Kanda Software, Lionbridge Technologies, Mirror Image Internet, Navisite, Network Associates, Novell, N2H2, Oki, Open Market, Optibase, Oracle Corp., Pandesic, Predictive Networks, PictureWorks, RuleSpace, Secure Computing, SightPath, StarBurst Software, Symantec Corp., Trend Micro, Inc., Vignette Corporation, Websense, and WWWhoosh. Instructions on how to participate in development of the protocol are available at www.i-cap.org. With the first version of ICAP now complete, the Internet community is invited to prototype e-services offerings using ICAP and provide feedback on the protocol at comments@i-cap.org. Central to the ICAP concept is a simple, yet powerful, open protocol that enables communication between edge content devices (i.e. Web caches and Internet content delivery servers), and application servers that modify content and then deliver it to Internet access devices. For example, when a Web cache receives a request from a cell phone browser, the cache will deliver the requested content to an application server that adapts the content for display on the cell phone. The cache serves the page, and caches it for subsequent cell phone browsers. This allows a very high degree of flexibility on the types of services that can be offered at access points while maintaining the high performance and integrity of the access servers. www.i-cap.org

Bowstreet announced the Bowstreet Business Web Exchange, an open Internet community where companies can find, acquire and customize other companies’ “web services” from the Exchange, as well as publish web services to it to build their businesses. Bowstreet is replacing the traditional model of building custom B2B applications – coding line by line with a simpler approach. Line-of-business managers will visit the Exchange to find, obtain, exchange and publish web services, which are complete business processes wrapped in XML. Without technical help, managers will snap these web services into their B2B web systems to automate the creation of dynamic and customized business webs, or B2B web marketplaces. Business managers can blend and customize the web services they acquire, then deploy them in unique combinations to customers, partners and suppliers. Each web service contains all of the publisher’s terms of use, allowing companies to expand their market reach and commercial horsepower without in-depth negotiations. As a result, companies can scale their business relationships as quickly as they can conceive of new business models and mutually beneficial relationships. With XML-based web services, companies can now instantly connect their back-end systems with partners’ systems, automating their business processes over the Internet without IT help. In addition to creating custom web pages, web services can send output such as stock prices, catalog data or custom flight information to pagers, wireless phones and computer systems. Each web service will contain all the instructions, code, documentation, templates and usage examples a web service consumer needs. Bowstreet also announced Business Web Factory 2.0. A special, free Marketplace Edition of the Bowstreet Business Web Factory will be available on the Bowstreet Business Web Exchange to get companies started publishing, obtaining and deploying web services at no cost. www.bowstreet.com

The first ebXML Initiative Technical Specifications have been released for public comment. The ebXML Requirements Specification is available for download from the ebXML web site at www.ebxml.org. This ebXML Requirements Specification represents the work of the ebXML Requirements Project Team. It defines ebXML and the ebXML effort, articulates overall business requirements for ebXML, and defines specific technical infrastructure requirements that will be addressed by the various ebXML Project Teams in preparing their deliverables. The document includes general guiding principles for the development of other ebXML Technical Specifications. Major requirements are identified in the specification. The specification is available for the full ebXML Work Group and all interested parties in the general public. Comments should be emailed as plain text in the body of the mail message or as an attachment to Mike Rawlins, ebXML Requirements Project Team Leader at rawlins@metronet.com or Mark Crawford, ebXML Requirements Project Team Editor at mcrawfor@mail.lmi.org. The review period closes 27 March 2000. The specification will undergo a second cycle of revision and review prior to the expected final approval. The ebXML vision is to create a single global XML framework solution. It is a joint effort of the United Nation/CEFACT organization and OASIS. Participants represent 14 countries, 83 companies, government agencies and several national and international standards organizations. More than 500 people around the world participate via Internet mailing lists. Following the public comment period, the final Requirements Specifications will be approved by the full ebXML Plenary during its meeting in Brussels 8-12 May 2000. Full details about the ebXML Initiative, its project teams and meetings is at www.ebxml.org, www.uncefact.org, www.oasis-open.org

Companion B.V. released an update of their main product Companion 2.0. The main new feature in this update is the add-on Companion Publisher which can be installed separately on the machines of content contributors. Companion 2.0 and Companion Publisher provide a comprehensive environment for database publications without the need for a specific and expensive application server. Companion makes it possible to create pre-generated database-driven web sites. Companion provides three Database Query Wizards and several specialized Companion tags to include database content in static pages, e.g. one specific field, a list of fields, all records, or a selection based on an SQL query. Companion facilitates content publication from ODBC and Access databases. For publication Companion retrieves the specified content from the database(s) and inserts it into the files that are uploaded to the web server. Companion Publisher enables content contributors to publish new database content, for instance new press releases or new product information, without the help of the web developer. Web developers control which templates are shown in Companion Publisher. A simple user interface allows the content contributor to start and stop the publication of templates. By choosing a Project Profile the author can choose to publish to a test location before the final release. Companion 2.0 is geared at professional, technically skilled users and early adopters. Companion 2.0 departs from the current paradigm in web development of editing source files directly — Companion introduces a separate layer, enabling a component-based approach of script management. The following prices are applicable: Single user license: $199 (introductory price, normal price $349); Five user license: $945 (normal price $1675); Ten user license: $1875 (normal price $2975). www.companion.nl