Persistence Software today announced “E-Nough,” a campaign aimed against the desecration of the English language and proliferation of artificial words starting with “e-.” In an effort to curb the rampant and annoying spread of “e-” words, Persistence has furthered the cause by establishing “The Society for the Preservation of the Other 25 Letters of the Alphabet.” The first 500 people to submit particularly offensive examples of “e-” words on the Persistence website (www.persistence.com/e-nough) will receive a free “E-Nough” T-shirt. In addition to compiling a list of the most flagrant “e-” violations, the web site also pays homage to the unjustly neglected French author, Georges Perec, who wrote an entire book without using the letter “e.” “Nobody wants to live in a society where all the words start with the same letter,” said Chris Keene, CEO of Persistence Software. “More vendor effort seems to be going into promoting new e-words than in helping companies deliver real electronic commerce solutions. We felt it was time that somebody took a stand and stood up for the other 25 letters of the alphabet.” The generation of Internet users now conducting business, social and personal transactions online does not need a generic moniker to collectively identify itself,” Keene continued. “Nor does it need a set of artificial marketing buzzwords beginning with ‘e-‘ to define its actions. What are needed are products and services that facilitate and improve online transactions. The ‘E-Nough’ campaign is meant as a direct challenge to the companies involved in electronic commerce to stop substituting catchy phrases for real customer successes.” Georges Perec’s French novel, La Disparition, is written entirely without the letter “e.” Its plot is full of wordplay, such as a character that cannot remember his name because it contains an “e.” Though it may be hard to believe considering the restriction under which it is written, the novel is quite engrossing. Apparently many reviewers were not even aware that a special constraint was used in writing it. After writing the novel, Perec faced a protest from the “a”, “i”, “o” and “u” keys on his keyboard that they did all the work and “e” was leading an easy life. So Perec had no choice but to write a short work called Les Revenentes, where “e” is the only vowel used. www.persistence.com.
Category: Content technology news (Page 568 of 638)
Curated information technology news for content technology, computing, and digital experience professionals. News items are edited to remove hype, unhelpful jargon, iffy statements, and quotes, to create a short summary — mostly limited to 200 words — of the important facts with a link back to a useful source for more information. News items are published using the date of the original source here and in our weekly email newsletter.
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Xyvision Enterprise Solutions Inc. has appointed Richard A. Pasewark Vice President of Sales and Marketing. Pasewark had been the company’s Director of New Business Development, responsible for developing sales and service relationships with third party resellers and integration partners including CTA, IBM, Telcordia and others. Recently, he has been instrumental in driving new product specifications and marketing programs. Prior to joining XyEnterprise, Pasewark held technical, marketing and sales positions with Adobe Systems, Frame Technology, and Datalogics. With the promotion, Pasewark will be responsible for the sales and marketing of XyEnterprise’s content management and electronic publishing technology. He will also direct the product definition and marketing communication efforts of XyEnterprise as it expands its e-enabled application solutions to new markets. www.xyenterprise.com
Excelergy Corporation announced the release of an XML standard business library for use by participants in energy choice. Excelergy is promoting “open” communications among customers, energy service providers and distribution companies in the competitive energy environment. Excelergy defined partner interface processes (PIP) for the relevant transactions (e.g. enrollment, usage, and payment) for the deregulated energy space. The XML library contains vocabularies and DTDs to enable interoperable data transactions among energy participants including suppliers and utilities. The paper “XML for Retail Energy Transactions: A White Paper,” highlighting the trading partner XML standard developed by Excelergy, is now available on Excelergy’s web site. For information on XML standard business library, a listing of the XML vocabularies, and to order a copy of the White Paper free of charge, visit www.excelergy.com
Information Architects and IllusionFusion! announced a strategic alliance to help companies build effective businesses on the Internet. The strategic alliance will combine Information Architect’s patented Java-based Metaphoria content aggregation and syndication capabilities with IllusionFusion!’s digital studios – graphics, animation, Internet, live production and sound – to develop products and programs for clients that combine sophisticated content aggregation and personalization with rich new media. iA’s flagship offering, the Metaphoria Virtual Web Server, is JAVA based Internet technology that provides powerful aggregation and syndication of any digital information from anywhere it resides, including from multiple sources. The Metaphoria Virtual Web Server enables data residing in mainframes, client server systems, web servers, Internets and Extranets to be combined and viewed from any internet accessible devise such as a PC, PDA, WebTV, Palm VII or WinCE device. The core components of the Metaphoria Virtual Web Server provides content management, syndication, publishing, e-commerce, and bi-directional Legacy and Client Server systems integration via the Web. Resource Description Framework (RDF) standard is at the core of iA’s Metaphoria Syndication Server. RDF provides a robust, flexible, and efficient platform for content syndication. www.illusionfusion.com
Enigma, Inc., announced that it has entered into a definitive agreement to purchase Inso Corporation’s DynaWeb/Text and Synex product lines. Under the terms of the agreement, the technical publishing component of Inso’s Product Data Management division will be purchased for approximately $15.5 million in cash and assumption of liabilities. The transaction will be a stock purchase between Enigma Inc. and its affiliate Enigma Information Systems Ltd. of the all the outstanding stock of Inso’s subsidiaries, Inso Providence Corporation and ViewPort Development AB of Stockholm. www.inso.com, www.enigma.com
XML Global announced the launch of a new portal site for XSLT (www.XSLT.com), providing Web developers and programmers with information on XSLT (extensible stylesheet language transformations). XSLT is a language for performing XML transformations. Through XSLT.com, XML Global intends to foster a community of XSLT users, enabling them to join e-mail groups and open forums and find the latest XSLT tools. The Web site provides individuals and companies information about the developments in XSLT and access to recent news on products and standards. XSLT.com links to related XSLT sites to highlight the contributions of others, instead of duplicating them. The site also allows developers and programmers to research upcoming conferences and available educational materials. www.goxml.com
Sun Microsystems, Inc. announced two strategic acquisitions. The acquisitions of Forte Software, Inc. and NetBeans, Inc. allows Sun to offer a full array of integrated development tools for individuals, small businesses and large enterprises. The acquisitions of Forte, based in Oakland, Calif., and NetBeans, headquartered in The Czech Republic, complete Sun’s integrated development environment (IDE) strategy. Forte provides tools for developing, integrating and deploying scalable, enterprise-class distributed applications. Forte’s products include: SynerJ, the Java technology-based IDE, Forte Fusion, the XML-based Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) environment, and Forte Application Environment, a market leading enterprise 4GL tool. NetBeans, a Java technology IDE supplier for Linux, is best known for its cross-platform NetBeans Developer Java technology IDE. The company has had more than 100,000 downloads of its NetBeans Developer product, which visually extends the Java Development Kit (JDK) and includes integrated visual design, editing, compilation, and debugging tools. NetBeans software is based on an open API, which provides an extensible platform for development of third party, customizable, modular tools for the Java platform. The current tools suite supports the Java 2 platform including JavaServer Pages, Servlet, XML, CORBA, RMI and JDBC technologies platform. A free version of NetBeans Developer IDE for the Solaris Operating Environment, Linux, Windows 98 and Windows NT are available for immediate download from www.netbeans.com/product_dl.html, www.sun.com
POET Software announced the integration of Staffware 2000 workflow with POET Content Management Suite (CMS). The integration of the two products will provide corporate and commercial publishers with higher quality content and significant cost savings through workflow-enabled XML/SGML content management solutions. POET CMS and Staffware 2000 workflow can be quickly deployed throughout the organization. The combination of POET CMS and Staffware 2000 workflow streamlines the processes that are crucial to team-based XML content publishing. While POET CMS provides large teams with concurrent management of XML content, Staffware 2000 workflow automates the tasks that connect the creation, review, translation, and production of XML content. As a result, the content publishing process is faster and more efficient, producing higher-quality content. www.staffware.com, www.poet.com
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