Category: Content technology news (Page 556 of 637)

The Open Group announced an agreement to serve as the certification authority for the Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) Forum’s world standard for wireless information and telephony services. For certification testing, The Open Group developed a test suite specification to ensure wireless vendors’ products are compliant with the WAP V1.1 specification. As the certification authority, The Open Group will develop and operate the certification program on behalf of the WAP Forum. The WAP Forum has a large number of specifications describing the functionality and specific coding requirements of wireless phones and other devices for WAP certification. The Open Group’s test suite measures conformance to the Wireless Markup Language (WML) application layer specifications, as well as WMLscript and WMLscript libraries. The certification test uses a WML server that delivers tests that run on the devices or phones, and performs a functionality and interoperability test at the application level. WML, an XML application, serves as the markup language for WAP devices, just as HTML is the markup language for web pages. WMLscript and the associated WMLscript Libraries define a programming language, related to the ECMAscript language used for programs to run on web browsers. The Open Group will develop additional tests for the cache model, which defines how WAP compliant phones and gateways store information. The consortium will also develop tests for the use of WAP phones in multiple languages, ensuring the phones will be able to display numerous characters sets, including Japanese, as well as the ASCII character set. www.opengroup.org

Lumeria, an infomediary incubator, announced the launch of DTD.com, a site for web software developers that combines a web repository for XML DTDs with a web-based tool for editing and creating DTDs. DTD.com offers web developers two free benefits. First, DTD.com provides the XML community with a free knowledge repository — called the DTDwarehouse — for storing and sharing DTDs and information about each DTD. Secondly, DTD.com gives away a free web-based knowledge management application, called the DTDfactory, which lets XML developers mine the data in the DTDwarehouse, create their own DTDs, validate them against industry standards, and share their knowledge of DTDs with other developers. With the goal of becoming a standard repository for all DTDs, DTD.com enables XML developers to upload their own DTDs — whether entire DTDs or suggested tags — to the DTDwarehouse to share with other developers. DTD.com will also aggregate these DTDs or tags and submit them for approval by the appropriate standards committees as a way of accelerating the standardization of XML. The DTDwarehouse is stocked with over 180 DTDs covering a wide range of subjects, from mathematics to science, government, education, and personal profiling. In addition, DTD.com supports Lumeria’s proposed new standard for personal profiling, called the Profile Markup Language (PML) — an extremely rich profile description and exchange platform, which is based on XML. PML is an open source, industry-driven, XML-based collection of standards for defining profile data. At the heart of PML is the PML DTD — the set of rules by which PML documents are created and interpreted. Lumeria created PML in a drive to initiate an industry-wide movement to enable the flow of profile information across platforms and applications, and thereby save both consumers and businesses time and money. To encourage the widespread use of XML, Lumeria gives away PML for free to all developers and sets up a database of XML DTDs by subject. To encourage the use of PML, Lumeria has made the protocol compatible not only with its own SuperProfile Identity Management system but also with the upcoming Consumer Profile Exchange (CPEX) protocol and data model. Lumeria is a member of the CPEX core working group, which includes Oracle, IBM, Vignette, net.Genesis, Andromedia, and the Sun-Netscape Alliance. www.lumeria.com

Tumbleweed Communications Corp. and Worldtalk Corporation jointly announced Tumbleweed has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Worldtalk. With the addition of Worldtalk, Tumbleweed enters the e-mail content filtering space, another rapidly growing sector in messaging. Worldtalk, which introduced its first e-mail content filtering solution in 1997, has grown its 1999 year-to-date revenue for this product family more than 180% over the same period in 1998, from $1.7 million to $4.9 million. Worldtalk’s technologies will enhance Tumbleweed’s Integrated Messaging Exchange (IME) the infrastructure companies use for both business-to-business and business to consumer online communications. When combined with Worldtalk’s WorldSecure e-mail content filtering products, IME enables customers to centrally define and enforce policies that drive new traffic across IME. Upon the completion of the transaction, Worldtalk will become a wholly owned subsidiary of Tumbleweed. Under the terms of the agreement, Worldtalk shareholders will receive a fixed exchange ratio of 0.26 Tumbleweed common shares for each share of Worldtalk common stock. The transaction is expected to close in the first quarter of 2000. www.tumbleweed.com, www.worldtalk.com

Infoteria Inc. announced its support for Microsoft’s BizTalk Framework. BizTalk Framework will appear in upcoming Infoteria products such as XML Solution Components and XML Schema Design Service such as MML (Medical Markup Language) released by the Japan Association for Medical Informatics (JAMI). Infoteria’s announcement of support today is the first by a Japanese company. www.infoteria.com

ImageX.com, Inc. announced a strategic direction that will result in the distribution of ImageX.com’s e-procurement services on Commerce One MarketSite, a business-to-business commerce portal. ImageX.com’s system enables corporations to modify, proof, order and manage custom printed business materials directly over the Internet. MarketSite is Commerce One’s business-to-business commerce portal for electronic procurement. The Commerce One Solution dynamically links buying and supplying organizations into real-time trading communities. This includes Commerce One MarketSite, which automates supplier interactions from order to payment. ImageX.com builds custom e-procurement Web sites, called Online Printing Centers, for mid-to large-sized corporations. The sites feature electronic catalogs containing customers’ branded printed materials. ImageX.com provides the ability for online ordering, management, and modification of a variety of materials ranging from office stationery to complex marketing materials. Accessible from any Internet-connected desktop computer, ImageX.com’s service provides consistent quality, locks in corporate design standards, allows for quick modification and proofing, and enables distributed ordering for businesses with offices worldwide. ImageX.com gives the customer tremendous control over the procurement process. www.imagex.com, www.commerceone.com

The e-content company, a division of Interleaf, Inc. announced BladeRunner Web, a highly scalable dynamic XML content server. Designed to host the next generation web site, BladeRunner Web reinforces the e-content company’s position by delivering an end-to-end XML content management solution that enables content creators to publish content in virtually any format to a variety of web-enabled devices. With BladeRunner Web, companies can now better leverage their valuable content and the Web to build successful e-businesses through e-relationships. BladeRunner Web is an extension of the e-content company’s XML-based content management solution. Designed specifically for the next generation Web, BladeRunner Web is highly scalable so it can handle volumes of information and a large number of Web-based transactions. A primary benefit to BladeRunner Web is that it holds a single copy of HTML or XML content from which virtually any number of presentations can be dynamically generated by simply applying the appropriate XSL style sheet. This eliminates the redundancy of having to manually re-create many versions of the content for each presentation. In addition, BladeRunner Web features a distinct set of tools including Composer/Styler which allows users to edit XML and create customized style sheets; XML Authoring for Microsoft Word, an add-on for enabling XML output from this popular word processing application; and a collection of management tools that allows users to monitor and control content operations. BladeRunner Web is scheduled for general release in the first quarter of calendar year 2000. www.xmlecontent.com

SS&C Technologies, Inc unveiled the first phase of its XE (Cross Enterprise) application platform. According to SS&C, the XE development platform utilizes Microsoft’s Distributed Component Object Model (DCOM) development strategy and Microsoft Message Queue (MSMQ) messaging services to deliver XML messages across a wide area, virtual private network (VPN) on the Internet. The XML messages contain workflow instructions, as well as content and schema description. MacLaughlin expects the Antares XE/CAMRA XE solution to be in beta by the end of the year. www.ssctech.com

Interwoven and Art Technology Group announced a significant expansion of their successful partnership based on a series of joint sales, marketing, and development initiatives. Together the companies currently offer an integrated solution of Interwoven TeamSite and ATG’s Dynamo product suite to build, maintain, and extend personalized relationships with online customers. ATG and Interwoven will continue to leverage the advantages of open standards-based architecture ensuring further interoperability, greater flexibility and more rapid time to Web. ATG and Interwoven are building on their customer-proven success and extending their collaborative efforts through new initiatives in sales, marketing, and product development. Joint marketing activities include additional physical and online seminars, as well as trade shows and other events. The companies are investing in additional joint training of their sales organizations and are also cooperating to bring the integrated solution to more customers, more efficiently and more effectively. www.interwoven.com, www.atg.com