Category: Marketing & e-commerce (Page 73 of 77)

The new version delivers enhanced XML support for improved connectivity and data integration, according to the Bedford-based developer. Version 3.1 also includes enhanced SQL functionality to deliver E-commerce applications that support vendor-specific queries on enterprise databases by ven-dors such as Oracle Corp. Currently, Progress has more than 2,000 Apptivity VARs. The company recently formed a program to enable its VARs to extend more than 5,000 packaged applications to the application service provider (ASP) model. With technology and services from Progress, numerous VARs are expected to embrace the ASP business model. www.progress.com

OASIS has agreed to participate in a focus group on Internet Standardization and E-Commerce organized by the Office of Science and Technology Policy of the Executive Office of the President of the United States. The focus group, which will be held at the White House Conference Center in Washington, DC on Tuesday, July 20, will examine how changing technological, market, and legal environments are affecting the development of standards for the Internet, electronic commerce and knowledge management. www.oasis-open.org

Uniscape announced the launch of its E-Services Translation Portal (ETP), Uniscape.com, a vertical marketplace for translation services that enables businesses to conduct multi-lingual e-commerce. Uniscape.com will enable companies to make human translation quicker, more efficient and reusable. Using Uniscape.com, companies will have the ability to work with translators anywhere in the world and offer them free use of Uniscape’s XML-based Translator Studio. The technology is designed specifically to aid the human translation process by offering access to a scalable translation memory database, workflow automation, content management, reporting and filtering technology. As the translators do their work, it is captured in a scalable translation memory database, where it can be automatically reused across a company’s future translation projects. When content is updated on a Web site or new content is created, the system automatically checks to see if the key terminology, sentences or paragraphs have ever been translated previously. Prior translations are automatically pulled from the database and translators complete the partially translated files using Translator Studio. Companies are charged a minimal transaction fee of a few pennies for each word processed, with discounts based on the overall translation volume and percentage of reuse. Workflow automation automatically routes files and communications between content producers, translators, reviewers, quality assurance and publishers; according to a company’s own business rules and objectives. Reporting capabilities enable companies to track every aspect of their translation and publishing activities. The site will be open in September. Pricing is determined by number of words to be translated and volume of reuse. www.uniscape.com

Andromedia, Inc. announced LikeMinds Personalization Server 3.0. LikeMinds Personalization Server 3.0 makes the most of every click by utilizing virtually any source of consumer behavior data — be it online or offline, implicit or explicit, real time or historical, transactional or navigational — to personalize every interaction from the first click to the final checkout. LikeMinds Personalization Server 3.0 introduces two new personalization engines: The Purchase Engine and the Clickstream Engine. The Purchase Engine enables e-commerce vendors to leverage valuable offline and/or online purchase history data to make personalized recommendations. The Clickstream Engine builds customer profiles in real-time, based on navigational data gathered as customers browse a site. This allows an e-commerce vendor who lacks purchase history data and doesn’t want to force users to fill out lengthy questionnaires to still offer personalized content and product recommendations. The new engines enable LikeMinds to learn by unobtrusively observing online navigational behavior and shopping activities and automatically adapt in real-time to changes in users’ tastes and preferences. The Clickstream and Purchase Engines complement the Preference Engine and Product Matching Engine, which were built into previous versions of LikeMinds Personalization Server. The Preference Engine leverages explicitly stated preferences. The Product Matching Engine makes recommendations based on product similarities, enabling vendors to immediately recommend new products, before customers have seen, rated, or bought them. No other personalization solution offers e-marketers so many options for leveraging consumer behavior data to personalize interactions with users on their Web sites. LikeMinds Personalization Server 3.0 requires Windows NT 4.0 running on Pentium-class PCs or Solaris 2.6 running on Sun SPARC stations or Ultra SPARC workstations, any CGI-compliant Web server, and ODBC-compliant databases including Oracle 8 and SQL Server 7.0. LikeMinds Personalization Server 3.0 is priced from $25,000 and is available immediately. www.andromedia.com

XMLSolutions Corporation announced the completion of a $3.6 million round in venture capital financing with Verticality Investment Group, LLC, a Jersey City, N.J.-based venture capital firm that invests in private technology companies. The investment, which marks the company’s first round of funding, will be used to continue the rapid expansion of XMLSolutions’ superior professional services group and accelerate deployment of the Exeter family of e-commerce software products. The Exeter family of products will be released on August 1, 1999. www.xmls.com

Bowstreet Software, Inc. announced that it will lead work to define an industry standard for describing directory service information in XML. The effort to develop a Directory Services Markup Language (DSML) builds upon work performed by Bowstreet while creating its Web Services Architecture. The DSML effort will be supported by industry leaders IBM, Microsoft, Novell, Oracle, and the Sun-Netscape Alliance to provide customers more flexibility in using and sharing directory information in XML-enabled applications. DSML provides a way to use directory information without knowing the specific data formats of each directory. End users will benefit because Web-based applications can be aware of their directory policy and profile information and adapt accordingly. Additionally, DSML enables “friction-free” eCommerce value chains to be integrated across corporate boundaries based on directory information. This capability provides an essential building block as directories play a more significant role on the Internet. Furthermore, DSML complements the goals of the Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) and helps to extend the power of LDAP to web-based applications. Bowstreet and supporting companies plan to submit a proposal to appropriate standards bodies. There is an information Web site at www.dsml.org. Additional group members are expected to be added in the future. www.bowstreet.com

Information Architects Corporation has received a Notice of Allowance from the U.S. Patent Office covering its Web application server technologies. The patent allowance covers technologies at the core of Information Architects’ (iA) Metaphoria Virtual Web Server products. Metaphoria enables rapid development of Internet products and applications for business users that require efficient access to data from multiple sources. Metaphoria enables data residing in mainframes, client server systems, web servers, Internets and Extranets to be divorced, parsed, combined, personalized and viewed REAL-TIME from any Internet accessible device such as a PC, PDA, WebTV, Palm VII or WinCE device. Metaphoria can not only let the user view selected data but it can update the data across multiple systems in real time with the click of the mouse. www.ia.com

Macromedia, Inc. announced a definitive agreement under which Macromedia will acquire Elemental Software for $24 million in a stock for stock transaction. Elemental’s products Drumbeat 2000 and eStore Builder combined with Macromedia’s products like Dreamweaver and Generator, will enable Web developers to create dynamic Web sites for e-commerce, corporate intranets and personalized content. The addition of the Elemental products to Macromedia’s Web publishing product family provides a standards-based end-to-end solution of software for efficiently creating, producing and maintaining dynamic Web sites that automate the process of linking database information to Web applications with reusable code. In the transaction, Macromedia will exchange approximately 625,000 shares of its stock for all of the outstanding equity of Elemental, for a total purchase price of approximately $24 million. The transaction will be accounted for as a pooling of interests, and is expected to close within 45 days, subject to satisfaction of customary closing conditions and regulatory approvals. Macromedia expects to take a one-time charge of approximately $3.0 million for expenses related to the acquisition in the current quarter. www.macromedia.com