Category: Marketing & e-commerce (Page 44 of 77)

Mediagrif Interactive Technologies Inc. announced that it has purchased Flow Systems Corporation, a software company specializing in catalogue content management and cross-media publishing, from Nurun Inc. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed. Flow Systems’ solutions span the product information lifecycle from acquisition of product data through catalogue publishing for industrial manufacturers and distributors with large or complex product lines. Flow Systems solutions allow enterprises to build and maintain a product information database for all its catalogue publishing needs including automatic updating of e-commerce systems, Web, print and CD-ROM catalogues. Mediagrif’s content management technology coupled with Flow Systems’ cross-media and printed catalogue automation expertise, provides customers with an enterprise wide, product content management and publishing solution. www.mediagrif.com

ePlus, Inc. announced the availability of ePlus Content Framework, an extensible schema for the creation and management of eCommerce-enabled product catalogs. The ePlus Content Framework contains pre-defined product classifications, and enables users to match their business requirements by adding to or modifying the existing structure. The ePlus Content Framework provides a schema consisting of over 44,000 structured product classifications that facilitate the creation of user-friendly, intuitive, easy-to-navigate catalogs. ePlus Content classifications cover a wide range of commodities, attributes and coding to pinpoint and narrow the search for goods in a wide range of categories – from electrical and automotive equipment, to medical and hazardous material supplies, consumer goods, and more. The schema simplifies complex product information to enable easy creation of digital catalogs. Organizations can cross-reference product data with common terminology and standards such as the UN/SPSC or other pre-developed categorization scheme, ensuring standardized, reusable data. www.eplus.com

SAQQARA Systems Inc. announced availability of SAQQARA Cornerstone for the Microsoft Solution for Supplier Enablement allowing manufacturers, distributors and industry exchanges to leverage product content as a strategic and global eCommerce asset. Microsoft Solution for Supplier Enablement (MSSE) is part of the .NET Enterprise initiative. MSSE offers a fully integrated, tested, documented and supported solution that addresses the complexities of sell-side, multi-channel eCommerce. SAQQARA Cornerstone is an integral component that complements the Microsoft Solution. SAQQARA Cornerstone provides B2B suppliers and exchanges with SAQQARA ContentWorks. ContentWorks, when combined with the Microsoft Solution, enables suppliers and exchanges to build an Internet-ready product information asset by combining existing product information with internal product expertise to create cleansed, classified and attributed product information that can be published in an on-line catalog or exchanged with customers and business partners. www.saqqara.com

Adobe Systems Incorporated introduced Adobe AlterCast, a new dynamic imaging server software. AlterCast allows Web publishers to automatically generate and repurpose images and graphics within existing content management and e-commerce solutions, enabling the efficient creation of visually rich Web sites. AlterCast is built on Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator technology, while also supporting industry-standard image file formats. AlterCast automates the process of managing large image libraries. With AlterCast, graphics professionals will be able to replace text within graphics on the fly while still maintaining support for transparency, animation and layer effects.
AlterCast automatically optimizes files for delivery on any Web-enabled device, including PDAs and cell phones. By using a single image source file to generate multiple iterations, AlterCast helps reduce data storage requirements. Adobe also announced agreements with Documentum and Interwoven to integrate AlterCast with their content management systems. Adobe AlterCast is expected to ship at the beginning of 2002 in North America only. AlterCast will be priced on a per-CPU basis, with processor packs ranging from an estimated street price of US$7,500 for a one-CPU system to an estimated street price of US$60,000 for high-performance enterprise applications. www.adobe.com/altercast

Mitsui & Co., Ltd. and Requisite Technology, Inc., announced a strategic business alliance that allows Mitsui to resell Requisite’s catalog content management solutions to help drive the adoption of e-commerce and e-procurement in Japan. As a master reseller, Mitsui will market and sell Requisite’s eMerge content management system, eMerge Contract Manager, and its BugsEye catalog finding engine. Also available through the alliance will be the newly launched Requisite Supplier Hub, an interactive, collaborative environment for suppliers to create and maintain their product information and content, making that content available to buying organizations and e-marketplaces. www.requisite.xm.mitsui.co.jp

Altova, Inc. announced the release of the XML Spy 4.0 Suite. The XML Spy 4.0 Suite consists of the XML Spy 4.0 Integrated Development Environment (IDE), the XML Spy 4.0 XSLT Designer, and the XML Spy 4.0 Document Editor. The XML Spy 4.0 Integrated Development Environment (IDE) makes it easy to create and manage XML documents, stylesheets, and schemas. XML Spy 4.0 IDE provides the power and flexibility needed to work with XML content in the most sophisticated production environments. XML Spy 4.0 XSLT Designer is a new approach to automate writing of complex XSLT Stylesheets using an intuitive, drag-and-drop user interface. XML Spy 4.0 Document Editor is a word-processor style free-flow WYSISYG editor for XML documents, empowering non-technical people to create and edit XML documents. The Document Editor is available as a browser plug-in or a stand-alone application. The XML Spy 4.0 Document Framework consists of the XML Spy 4.0 XSLT Designer and the XML Spy 4.0 Document Editor, which together form an enterprise-wide content management solution for creating and deploying large volumes of XML content in production environments such as web-publishing, knowledge management or e-commerce. XML Spy 4.0 IDE and XML Spy 4.0 Document Framework together comprise the XML Spy 4.0 Suite. The XML Spy 4.0 Suite is available immediately for download and purchase from the XML Spy Online Shop. See website for complete price-list. www.xmlspy.com

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) has issued Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) 1.0 as a W3C Recommendation, representing cross-industry agreement on an XML-based language that allows authors to create two dimensional vector graphics. A W3C Recommendation indicates that a specification is stable, contributes to Web interoperability, and has been reviewed by the W3C Membership, who favor its widespread adoption. Web designers have requirements for graphics formats which display well on a range of different devices, screen sizes, and printer resolutions. They need rich graphical capabilities, good internationalization, responsive animation and interactive behavior in a way that takes advantage of the growing XML infrastructure used in e-commerce, publishing, and business to business communication. SVG 1.0 builds on other W3C specifications such as the Document Object Model (DOM), which allows for easy server-side generation and dynamic, client-side modification of graphics and text. SVG 1.0 also benefits from W3C technologies such as CSS and XSL style sheets, RDF metadata, XML Linking, and SMIL Animation, which has also advanced to Recommendation. SVG implementations are not limited to static tools. Database-driven, dynamically created graphics are a natural fit for SVG. www.w3.org/