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Thursday, May 15 2008

Originally scheduled for release Monday May 19, the newest release of Movable Type v4.15 is now planned for Wednesday May 28, 2008. Why the delay? They say all will become clear on release day. Until then, here are the enhancements in store for all you Movable Type users.

Further proof that innovation breeds more innovation, Reuters has announced that it’s making news content available to the developer community through the use of a non-commercial API. The service will be offered via Reuters Lab, a test site where Reuters can showcase some of their latest product innovations and developments and where users can discover, use and comment on products and services still in progress.

Spring is a time of change: the plants bloom, the sun stays out, and global CMS companies change their rosters. CMS super star Day Software has brought in a new CEO for the company, Eric Hansen.

Thursday, May 15 2008

Piggybacking on news from a few weeks ago, Alfresco has officially launched Alfresco Enterprise 2.2. Featured enhancements seek to support the creation, deployment and update of scalable Web 2.0 sites and are targeted toward the company’s “most advanced, interactive sites in the entertainment, online gaming, sports, telecommunications and publishing industries.”

Curious to know what’s changed and see the new look? Read on.

Wednesday, May 14 2008

Mochila, global online media marketplace innovator has launched Video Player 2.0. Poised to deliver “multiple, related videos revolving within the same player”, it aims to be an asset to those looking to improve user engagement and sustainability.

With the ability to support full-screen displays, pre-roll and translucent overlay advertising, audiences are sure to revel in engaging, high-quality videos, while publishers benefit from a free ad-supported video tool for building their business.

There’s a survey report out that ranks the best Web 2.0 development platforms by the people who actually use them. The big surprise is that Microsoft tops the list of developer platforms with providers like Google, Amazon S3 and Yahoo trailing behind. In the same survey last year, Microsoft ranked last in some areas. Wonder what has changed so quickly?

If you’re running a company that depends on eCommerce, you’re probably familiar with the hassles of working in a commodity dependent businesses where margins are tight, prices volatile, and product supply unpredictable. UK software developer Intoscape has come to the rescue with Total Commerce Management (TCM), a system that will help UK retailers manage their supply chain, monitor competitors, automate pricing and content and optimize procurement and data exchange.

Wednesday, May 14 2008

Xythos is a provider of on-premise and hosted (SaaS) document management solutions for organizations both large and small. Their hosted product has a somewhat unique history in that is was designed and developed from the very beginning as a web-based service.

The SaaS version of their document management product, launched in December 2006, is the software we’ve got in our sights today. Xythos on Demand (XOD) is a full featured enterprise document management solution, and true to its name, it is delivered as a hosted service. Join us as we poke around in the binary guts of XOD.

Tuesday, May 13 2008

Just curious, but do you think even though they are competitors, the top guns at MySpace, Facebook and Google spend all their time on Gmail chatting about when and how they’ll release the news of their latest endeavors to move towards data portability?

Or maybe they have spies in each other’s camps sending smoke signals home at night spilling the beans of latest plans to take over your data profile? Flashbacks to Pinky and Brain cartoons spill over into my daytime routine.

In either case, it’s been a busy couple of weeks with Facebook announcing Facebook Connect, then last night Google previewed Friend Connect. Now we read all about MySpace’s “Data Availability” initiative – not to be confused with Data Portability – which allows MySpace members to share their public profile with websites of their choice.

Is this the year of the “User Identity Battle”?

Bob Bickel of Ringside Networks is always sending interesting stuff to my trusty Thunderbird.
His latest exposition is a timely call to arms regarding the Social Web, and is worth five minutes of any Webmaster’s time. In essence, Bob’s argument is that some version of open social (all rights reserved, Google Corp.) is happening, and that all you Webmasters are going to be dancing in the streets when you see what this thing will do. If, that is, you wake up in time and get to grips with what it means. And part of that, according to Bob, will mean that you’re going to have to get savvy with Social Application Servers like Ringside’s.

Web 2.0 brought about the evolution of the social web. But there have always been challenges working socially on the web, especially with social marketing or social networking. The challenge is that it can be difficult to stay active socially, even just in your niche. Google is trying to change that.

Just a few weeks after private file sharing service drop.io was opened up to the public, another file sharing service, called YouPublish has been announced. Since we like file sharing and we like drop.io, we were interested to see what this new service had to offer and what makes it different from drop.io.