Author-it Brings Fuzzy Logic to Locally-Stored Content

By Angela Natividad | Published Oct 3, 2007

Author-it, which specializes in authoring, publishing, localization and web content management, has released Author-it 5.0, which includes a strange new product called Author-it Xtend.

In short, Xtend is an “interactive authoring memory” tool that enables collaborators to reuse and share knowledge in an organization.

In and of itself, that doesn't sound super-different from the collabo-craze everybody's getting into, including Microsoft (whose new SharePoint Light could use a little more heft).

But Xtend has a trump card. It takes advantage of a process called intelligent “fuzzy logic,” which matches content stored in a central location to what a user is typing. This way, users can see what articles contain their queries, or further refine the request. Certain content can also be restricted to a privileged set of eyes.

“Fuzzy logic” is the type of innovation that rears its head every once in awhile, shortly before vanishing under the sea again. It's useful, but as a headlining feature it has largely been a wash.

That aside, v5.0 of Author-it also boasts new publishing profiles and templates, as well as better functions for customization and publishing. It currently runs strictly on Windows Servers and Windows-based PCs - so for those of you on a Mac, you're out of luck.

But hey, Author-it ain't all bad. If you're already an Author-it user and you have an existing maintenance agreement with the firm, you get an automatic update. Isn't that sweet?