MadCap Software unveiled its roadmap for a complete, native XML software family designed to solve all of a company’s documentation and authoring demands. The MadCap family will include five new products– MadCap Blaze, MadCap Press, MadCap Team Server, MadCap X-Edit, and MadCap X-Edit Express, as well as enhanced versions of MadCap Analyzer, MadCap Flare, MadCap Lingo and MadCap Mimic. The integrated MadCap family will provide companies with a solution for developing and delivering content in print, online and on the Web in their language of choice. The entire MadCap product family is based on a common native XML architecture to provide a complete workflow solution, from authoring and multimedia creation; to collaboration, reporting and analysis; to translation and localization. The MadCap family features twelve integrated products for content development and delivery, collaboration, and localization. The solutions are based on the same XML architecture with Unicode support that drives MadCap’s main product, Flare, a native XML multi-channel, single-source content authoring solution. All products also utilize MadCap’s XML user interface, which enables users to take advantage of XML without writing code. The beta version of Blaze is now available as a free 30-day trial release, which can be downloaded at http://www.madcapsoftware.com/
Category: Publishing & media (Page 35 of 52)
Adobe Systems Incorporated announced that Microsoft has licensed Adobe Flash Lite software, Adobe’s Flash Player runtime specifically designed for mobile devices, to enable web browsing of Flash Player compatible content within the Internet Explorer Mobile browser in future versions of Microsoft Windows Mobile phones. Microsoft has also licensed Adobe Reader LE software for viewing Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF) documents including email attachments and web content. Both Adobe products will be made available to Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) worldwide, who license Windows Mobile software. Adobe Flash Lite and Reader LE availability for Windows Mobile phones will be confirmed later. http://www.adobe.com
Near-Time announced the availability of Near-Time Connection, an extension of Near-Time’s collaboration and publishing capabilities for mobile devices and other Web platforms. Near-Time Connection packages the functionality of Near-Time into a Widget, providing a flexible way to access content and interact with users associated with Near-Time spaces from smart phones, blogs or personalized homepage portals like iGoogle. Near-Time Connection is free to Near-Time users. Near-Time Connection gives users an interactive platform that lets them stay plugged into their Near-Time community no matter how they choose to view their content. The authoring environment, similar to that of Near-Time’s desktop offerings, enables users to remain active in their Near-Time communities when on the road or using a homepage portal. Users can embed other Near-Time Widgets, tag content for better search capabilities, and follow comment summaries, threads and Near-Time picks. http://www.near-time.com/
Looking ahead to our conference in San Francisco, there are a number of sessions related to XML and content management, as well as some broader sessions on SaaS and content management platforms. David Guenette and I are working with Frank on the Content Technologies & Strategies (CTS) track as well as the Enterprise Publishing Technology (EPT) track. At this writing, we have the following sessions on tap (and you can see the whole grid here).
CTS-1: XML Strategies for Content Management
XML is fundamental to content management in two important ways–in how the content is tagged and structured and also in how content management systems interact with each other and with other enterprise applications. This session looks at how successful organizations make the best use of XML to support critical business processes and applications.
CTS-2: Enterprise Rights Management: Best Practices & Case Studies
As content management systems proliferate, so do the requirements for better and more sophisticated protection of that content. Simply stated, traditional protection is not enough–content needs to be protected persistently throughout complex business processes. Enterprise Rights Management platforms are answering these challenges, and this session uses case studies to help explain how this technology can help you meet your requirements.
CTS-3: SaaS – Is Software as a Service Right for You?
Software as a Service is exploding. Every day brings new offerings, new approaches, and new adopters. While content management SaaS offerings were once limited to Web Content Management, there are now SaaS offerings for document management, ECM, globalization, and XML-based component content management. This session looks at the big questions about SaaS and discusses whether SaaS might be right for you.
CTS-4: Platform Pros & Cons: SharePoint vs. Oracle vs.
Documentum vs. IBM
The long-predicted content management platform wars are upon us. Activity is everywhere–the introduction of SharePoint 2007, Oracle’s acquisition of Stellent, and EMC’s continued aggressive acquisition strategy, and IBM’s acquisition of Filenet. Will we all end up using one of these four platforms, and if we do, would this be a good thing? This session will offer the vendor, user, and industry perspective on this dominant issue.
CTS-5: Financial Content Collaboration with XBRL & RIXML
If you follow XML in the financial services arena, you undoubtedly know about XBRL, the emerging standard for financial data reporting that is really taking hold at the SEC and the regulatory agencies of EU countries. But a lesser known but equally intriguing standard is RIXML, the Research Information Exchange Markup Language. This session looks at these standards and the implications for the lifecycle of financial content.
EPT-1: Enterprise Publishing with XML (DITA)
June 2008 marks the third anniversary since DITA 1.0 was approved by the OASIS Technical Committee, and it is very safe to say that no XML-based publishing standard has had such rapid and far-ranging uptake. This session looks at some emerging uses of DITA while also discussing some of the positive business impact enjoyed by companies who have already adopted the standard.
EPT-2: Multi-Channel Publishing – How to Do It
Multi-channel publishing has become a mandate for nearly every organization. With the explosion in mobile devices, the mandate is becoming more complex. But along with this complexity comes opportunity to serve more users and more applications. This session offer case studies and practical advice for implementing multi-channel publishing to support your business objectives.
EPT-3: Digital Publishing Platforms: Magazines, Newspapers &eBooks
Amazon’s Kindle may be getting all of the publicity, but there is an explosion in new devices, technologies, and products for digital publishing–with implications for every traditional publishing medium. What are these new technologies, and what opportunities do they present to publishers? Hear from publishers and technologists, as well as some of the results of the Gilbane Group’s extensive research into how these technologies are reshaping the digital publishing landscape.
eBook followers will remember that Oprah endorsed eBooks early on, even choosing one of the early eBook readers as one of her Favorite Things. Now she has caused a bitstorm around an eBook version of Suze Orman’s book Women and Money.
The Oprah touch doesn’t just work for traditional books. More than 1 million copies of Suze Orman’s “Women & Money” were downloaded after the announcement last week on Winfrey’s television show that the e-book edition would be available for free on her Web site, , for a period of 33 hours.
“I believe `Women & Money’ is the most important book I’ve ever written,” Orman said in a statement released Saturday by Winfrey. “So this was not about getting people to buy the book, but getting them to read it, and that was the intention behind this offer.”
The download offer “has built excitement for Suze’s book across all formats,” Julie Grau, the book’s publisher, said in a statement.
Are you investigating technology for protecting your company’s high-value documents and other intellectual property? Is better content security on your company’s plate for 2008? Need to know the current state-of-the-art regarding enterprise rights management?
Gilbane Group is conducting a survey of companies that are investigating, adopting, and using rights management solutions for high-value enterprise content (contracts, HR policies, product strategies, regulatory compliance certifications, and so on). The results will be included in our upcoming study on Enterprise Rights Management: Business Imperatives and Implementation Readiness.
We are seeking input from IT, content management, and IT security professionals across multiple industries (excluding consumer media companies, which are outside the scope of this study). Some familiarity with enterprise rights management (ERM) or information rights management (IRM) is necessary (i.e., respondents need to have at least heard of the term).
The survey is online and takes about fifteen minutes to complete. In exchange for participation, qualified respondents will receive the aggregated survey results and the executive summary of the analysis. Respondents who fill out the survey in full and provide a valid email business address are also entered into a random drawing for a free one-hour phone consultation with the Gilbane ERM analyst team. Take the survey now. Contact us if you have any questions about the research or qualifications to take the survey.
Steve Paxhia noted during a meeting the other day that the kindle is indeed still on back order, though as far as we know there are no definitive numbers out on how many they have actually sold. Still, unless there are extraordinarily problems with their manufacturing or supply chain, they have to be producing and selling a healthy number of them. In another meeting last week, someone actually said, “I will read that on my Kindle on the flight back.”
Then today, via Slashdot I learn that science fiction publisher Tor is giving away free eBooks in association with the launch of their new website. Science fiction is another market, along with romance, that has been good for eBooks, and this kind of wide-scale marketing strikes me as a logical next step.
UPDATE: Evan Schnittman of Oxford University Press is making maximum use of his Kindle and thinks it beats the SkyMall catalog any day.
- Over at eWeek, Jim Rapoza looks at the most overhyped technologies of the century, and XML isn’t one of them.
- At IBM developerWorks, Elliotte Rusty Harold speculates on the future of XML. He’s bullish on XQuery and Atom, and he declares the end of markup-centric editors.
- Speaking of being bullish on Atom, check out Mochilla’s Atom-based API for premium content.
- Geoff Bock sends along news that Microsoft’s push to get OOXML as a standard is being scrutinized by the EU.
- Also on the OOXML front, IBM and Microsoft seem ready to go toe to toe. More perspective here and here.
- Have you ever thought you should be able to take DITA-encoded content and pump it through InDesign? You are not alone.
- If you follow the Apache Software Foundation or other technical listservs at any level of interest, you just have to try Mark Logic’s MarkMail application where you can ask questions like, “Who from Microsoft chimes in on the XML schema list at the W3C?“.
- I’m not the only one to think that part of Microsoft’s interest in Yahoo is driven by Yahoo’s impressive efforts in wireless technology, which have XML at their core.
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