Adobe is releasing the latest edition of its Digital Publishing Suite. Version 24 includes expanded device support and analytical capabilities, among other upgraded and new features.
Compatibility with New Tablets, Browsers
In recognition of the increasing popularity of tablet computing, Adobe now makes Digital Publishing Suite (DPS) apps developed for iPad2 by Single Edition, Professional and Enterprise users automatically compatible with the new iPad Mini. Adobe is also preparing for the scheduled November 20 launch of the 8.9-inch Kindle Fire HD by allowing DPS apps to be compatible with the device as long as developers create a 1900 x 1200 folio.
Furthermore, any DPS-created content socially shared by a reader can be viewed on Internet Explorer 10 on Windows 8 web browsers. And readers of DPS-created content using iOS devices can download a folio and perform other tablet-based activities outside the app while the folio downloads, as long as the app is updated to R24.
Analyze This
App usage analytics for Site Catalyst users provide data such as number of times an app is opened, how long readers use it, number of days it is read and times of peak usage. Site Catalyst users can also analyze URL data such as how many readers click on hyperlink overlays associated with a URL and web content overlays, as well as how URLs are opened (i.e., via browser, app, etc.).
New analytical capabilities also provide insight into reader data such as type, model, OS, manufacturer and screen size of reading device, as well as the type and carrier of the device connection used.
Let It Flow
Workflow enhancements allow designers to simultaneously update multiple articles, resume publishing after an error from the point of failure rather than the beginning and select folio orientation in advance. In addition, error messages include links to relevant Knowledge Base articles.
Adobe ‘Leans Heavily’ on Digital Publishing
The Next Web feels Adobe is “leaning heavily on its digital publishing efforts” with this latest update of Digital Publishing Suite, as well as other recent DPS activity such as the Single Edition which does not require coding, released earlier this year. The Next Web also endorses Adobe’s embrace of iPad mini apps with version 24 of DPS, citing observers who predict “the iPad mini will become the most popular model, leaving the larger version for more specialized use cases.”
Fending Off App Press
While an IT provider as established as Adobe doesn’t have to seriously worry about being pushed out of the way, Adobe may have the challenge posed by App Press in the back of its mind as it unveils the latest, greatest iteration of DPS. In June, App Press, the provider of a Web-based CMS designed to enable the creation of code-free iOS and Android apps, positioned itself as a direct competitor to Adobe DPS.
Promoting its platform as having no software to install and a user interface that resembles Photoshop, App Press is clearly targeting users who seek convenience and flexibility in developing iOS and Android apps. The vendor touts its signature platform as providing app developers with a “blank canvas” where they can upload content layers with touch-enabled functionality. “Hotspot layers” allow links within the app or to external sites with linear or non-linear navigation.
Ultimately, App Press will likely be used by more artistic designers while Adobe DPS will remain the favored tool of more corporate enterprise designers, but even an artist might like access to detailed analytics and streamlined workflow.
For this week’s Mobile App of the Week our focus is on the LinkedIn iPhone app. This app version of the business social networking site gives users the ability to connect with their LinkedIn contacts and manage their profile on the go.
When users first click on the app and have signed on, they’re directed to the app’s home page where they can choose to go to their LinkedIn profile, groups, inbox or see updates. From there, users can browse their contacts, make new connections, update their status, edit their profile and see what they’re contacts are up to through the news feed.
Requirements
The LinkedIn app is a free download from iTunes. It's compatible with the iPhone, iPod touch, iPad and has been optimized for iPhone 5. Users must have iOS of 4.5 or higher.
As was mentioned, users have access to all of the features they have on the web version of LinkedIn, as well as a few mobile only options. Some of these features include:
Being able to view and recommend jobs.
Updating and editing your profile.
Read suggested industry news of the day.
Users can search based on a job title or keyword to see all their contacts that relate to that search.
Receive suggestions on who should be part of your LinkedIn network.
Ability to enable and receive push notifications.
Users, upon their initial sign in with the app are promoted to sync their calendar with their account. If a user chooses this option, LinkedIn says that the information isn't stored within their server and notes that users have the ability to opt-out or eventually sync their calendar by changing their settings.
Final Thoughts
As a basic app, the LinkedIn app is merely a mobile version of the LinkedIn website. With this in mind, there isn't much that sets it apart from the site, besides being more compact.
This app would be useful for those who need to have their LinkedIn profile and contacts on hand in meetings or when they’re away from the office. If you’re not someone who spends a lot of time away from the office or uses their LinkedIn profile as a essential business tool, than you shouldn't bother with it.
In the new version of Paper released last week, you mix colors with your fingers, like it's paint--only somehow more beautiful. This one magical feature burned a year of development time, resurrected the work of two dead German scientists, and got Apple's attention.
Colors can inspire mood, convey attitude or create instant associations in people’s minds, making it a powerful tool for branding. But the team behind Paper for iPad saw that as a major business problem: traditional software works with color in ways that are faithful to the way machines display color, but totally unintuitive to users. They believed the corporate world could produce better digital art if it only had human-centric tools, and in the second version of Paper, they sought to invent one.
How steep is the learning curve for making beautiful graphics? Answer that question yourself by firing up any graphic design program. Open the color picker, and choose a color midway between yellow and blue. Any kindergartner will tell you the result should be green--but no matter what machine or software you're using, you'll get a drab gray. Already your artwork sucks.
“There’s no such thing as a bad color, just bad color palettes,” says Andrew Allen, co-founder and designer at FiftyThree, the New York developers who built Paper for iPad. “These traditional color pickers like those in Photoshop or Illustrator don’t offer you any help,” says Allen. “They say, here are 16 million options—you choose.”
To fix color, FiftyThree would need to ditch the color picker and go on a year-long creative goose-chase to create an intuitive, touch-native and wildly simple replacement. The result would be an Apple Design Award and a center-stage demo at Apple’s iPad Mini release. But why does reinventing something so basic take award-winning design?
First, there’s the legacy: the color picker has existed in computing in one form or another since 1973. Reinventing a new interface would mean going against a paradigm shared by almost every design tool out there from Adobe to Zoho; the color picker may suck, but we’re accustomed to it.
First the team focused on the most obvious problem: the interaction. They created a mixer to replace the picker. “Andrew’s insight was that a mixer could be a far more friendly tool than a picker, and just as flexible if executed properly,” says Matthew Chen, the iOS engineer and sometime studio artist who led the development of Paper’s second version.
But it quickly became clear that the mixer was not going to offer a good experience unless it could blend colors in beautiful and intuitive way. The building-blocks of computational color, which are known as color-spaces, were fundamentally broken when it came to mixing colors.
“In searching for a good blending algorithm, we initially tried interpolating across various color-spaces: RGB, HSV and HSL, then CieLAB and CieLUV. The results were disappointing,” says Chen. “We know red and yellow should yield orange, or that red and blue should make purple--but there isn't any way to arrive at these colors no matter what color-space you use. There's an engineering axiom: do the simplest thing that could possibly work. Well, we had now tried the easiest possible approaches and they didn't feel even remotely right.”
So why was it worth a year of development and brainstorming to fix this intractable color-mixing problem? The FiftyThree team says it’s about giving your big features--in their case, the watercolor brush, the marker, the pencil--room to grow and improve. Without fixing the color dilemma, the rest of the app couldn't improve.
“We put a lot of effort into building scaffolding around the actual product,” says Allen. The goal, he says, is for interactions to disappear. "To make that happen, you need a product’s design and engineering to work in harmony: neither can stand out above the other.” The team knows they’ve hit the mark when an intermediate user can create expert-level work in far less time than they'd expect.
What vaulted FiftyThree over a hot pile of math was a major insight gleaned from two dead German scientists named Paul Kubelka and Franz Munk. In 1931, they published a paper called Ein Beitrag zur Optik der Farbanstriche, or "a contribution to the optics of paints," which showed that this color-space question predated computing by several decades. The paper laid out a “theory of reflectance” with an equation which could model color blending on the physical experience you have with the naked eye. That is, how light is reflected or absorbed by various colors.
Today, computers store color as three values: one for red, green and blue, also known as RGB channels. But the Kubelka-Munk model had at least six values for each color, including reflection and absorption values for each of the RGB colors. “While the appearance of a color on a screen can be described in three dimensions, the blending of color actually is happening in a six dimensional space,” explains Georg Petschnigg, FiftyThree's cofounder and CEO. The Kubelka-Munk paper had allowed the team to translate an aesthetic problem into a mathematical framework.
Moving from a three-dimensional color-space to six dimensions was the difference between old drab color-mixing and absolute realism. “What creates the shades you see between paints is this interplay of absorption and reflection,” says Petschnigg. “Compare red nail polish to red ink: both are red, but the nail polish will be visible on black paper because it reflects light. The ink won’t be, because it absorbs light.”
Mimicking the six-dimensional color-space created results that were too similar to real life. “We were reproducing all of the idiosyncrasies of real-world color mixing,” says Chen, “and color mixing is a tricky process that painters master only with practice. In a way, we had gone from blending that wasn't realistic enough to blending that was too realistic.”
But finding a single algorithm that could model these physical attributes in an intuitive way would take an enormous multivariate calculus and neither Chen nor Petschnigg knew if there was a solution. It seemed the team was no closer to solving the original business problem. A distinctive palette is crucial to knockout branding, but finding one was still difficult with the new tool. So the team team began hacking the way the colors blended: they abandoned their algorithmic approach and set about teaching the iPad how humans like their colors blended.
Petschnigg and his team manually selected 100 pairs of popular colors and eyeball-tested how they should blend. Chen built a custom iPad app to exhibit different blends of the same colors, allowing the user to select the transition that looked right to them. By testing amongst their team, they eventually settled on 100 sets of mathematically arbitrary--but perceptually pleasing--color transitions. They used those 100 datapoints to build a framework that would allow the iPad to take educated guesses when it came time to blend colors that weren’t within the 100 hand-tuned pairs.
Below are the first two functional prototypes of the color tool, one on a black background and one on white. That crumpled, curved line linking the two colors? In a traditional color picker that'd be a straight line leading through white, not green. The series of curved paths between colors that Chen ultimately chose might look haphazard to the algorithmic brain of the iPad, but the user experience would look perfectly reasonable to the person using it. (The interaction itself would take four more prototypes, but more on those later.)
“We’re forcing similar colors to blend in similar ways, which is not true in the real world, where pigments with different chemical compositions might appear similar but have very different blending behaviors,” explains Chen. “We wanted to have exacting control over exactly what shades of color the blending passed through when mixing from one color to another, so that the blending doesn’t hurry through some shades on the way to others.” Below, feedback on the prototype shows this tester thought the sixth version was the most natural-looking transition.
After they had nailed the mixing paths for their 100 pairs, Chen added a number of post-processing steps then taken to ensure even blending across transitions of hue, saturation and luminosity. “In the end, blending colors in the mixer should just feel simple and natural,” he says. “Ideally, no one will realize all of the hoops we jumped through to get there.”
So why exactly do computers see color so differently than human beings? Below, Petschnigg provides an illustration of very simple color blending in RGB space. The formula here describes a linear blend between a foreground Color Ca, background color Cb, a blend factor alpha in the range of 0-1, and the output color, which we’ll call Co.
In computing, all colors are expressed as RGB triplets. “We learned in elementary school that yellow and blue when mixed turn green,” says Petschnigg. “However when you plugging in the values to this equation, you get a different result: Gray! Mathematically speaking, Yellow (1,1,0) and blue (0,0,1), blend to the triplet (0.5, 0.5, 0.5) which is gray. This is because RGB only describes a point in a color spectrum, not how colors would behave when they blend.”
Perfecting the interaction took more work, even after the team discovered its blending solution. “No one had done anything like the Mixer before,” says Allen, “so we had to do more prototyping than any previous tool to vet out the design and refine the interaction.”
The goal was perceptual consistency. “One complete spin produces the same amount of change, regardless of whether the colors were on opposite ends of the spectrum or neighbors,” says Allen. “The real genius of the Mixer is that it helps you create the right color. If you have a palette with a yellow and a red and you mix them to create purple, that specific purple will work harmoniously with the ingredients, because it came from those colors.”
Allen defined the interaction with a series of four prototypes built in HTML and run in the browser, as seen in the slideshow below. Each prototype Allen built helped Chen, the iOS developer, refine the programmatic approach in the following ways:
For the first prototype, the team wanted to know if the core mixing gesture worked as an interaction. "It worked wonderfully!" says Allen. "But controlling the color via traditional Hue-Saturation-Brightness values didn’t. So we began to experiment with ways of mixing between two colors."
In the second prototype, they explored blending between colors. The team considered the differences between color-spaces like RGB, and more perceptive color-spaces in which hue, saturation, and lightness changes are perceptually even. "Clearly, perceptive color was the right approach, but it took a much deeper dive with engineering to build and refine our own blending model," says Allen.
The third prototype was all about giving the user feedback. This motion prototype, which is not interactive but plays back like a GIF, explores how feedback on that act of blending is communicated.
The fourth prototype added secondary features. In the final version, the team brought all their previous learning together and began to examine how the selection model worked with the palette for saving and moving colors. Source : fastcompany[dot]com
Microsoft isn't the only company making an announcement surrounding the newest version their Windows Operating System. Box has also announced that they have designed a new version of their file managing app — specifically for Windows 8.
More Than a File Manager
Earlier this year, Box announced a new app for the Windows Phone, but with the launch of Windows 8 they are expanding on what their product can offer Windows users.
The new Box app was announced in conjunction with the launch of Windows 8 today, while Simon Tan, Box’s Product Manager of Mobile elaborated on the details in a blog post. Tan confirmed that the new Box Windows app would have all the features of its predecessors, such as being able to manage individual files and folders, adding collaborators by email and working with colleagues through document collaboration.
The Windows 8 version of the app will include a variety of features to enhance the user experience. They include:
A Semantic Zoom feature allows users to avoid using the ‘pitch to zoom’ technique, as they can see all of their files and folders with an easy to read summary, where they can pick a file by letter, date or size.
Files can be easily managed with either a sibling folder tree tool or hierarchy drop down tool.
Files and folders as links can be shared via a Windows 8 Share charm.
Box is part of a cloud file system, which allows users to not only create, upload and download files into other sources, but also is a ‘file source and file target.” As a source and target, information or files from other apps can be stored or opened in Box.
Not only can files be edited within Box, but any changes made outside of the app to a file will automatically be saved to the Box version when it's opened with the app.
Box can be linked with Live Tiles,so that any updates to the Box system are seen on the start screen, while individual file and folders can be pinned to tiles.
Box for Windows 8 is currently available in English, French, Italian, German, Spanish, Dutch, Portuguese, Russian and Chinese. Other languages will follow when the app is updated.
Security Features
The security features available for Windows 8’s version of Box are similar to those available to mobile users; they include SSO login support and a passcode lock.
Vyre has announced the launch of On Brand 2.4, the newest version of their Brand Asset Management (BAM) Solution. This updated version of On Brand, which started as a tool used to help users manage digital content on mobile devices, has a variety of new features designed to make the SaaS based system more efficient and easier to use.
Vyre, whose marketing automation solution product, Unify, is being used to improve content management has brought a variety of new features to On Brand, its brand management solution. These new features include, advanced reporting, more support for devices that have HTML5 video, such as tablets and mobile devices, streamlining and UI enhancements, documentation and updated help guides.
Reporting
As with other versions of Vyre On Brand, version 2.4 provides users with the ability to configure reports and comment on how digital assets are being used and to export the information to other places, like Excel. Now, users can also base their reports around their creative workflow projects. These projects can be filtered by type, date, users, activity and brand, while users can also also choose what information can be displayed to themselves and other users.
HTML5 Video
Vyre recognizes that there are more users who use iOS and Android devices, such as smartphones and tablets. With this new update, it’s easier for users to play video (in all of the major web browsers) on devices that use HTML5.
Creative Workflow
With On Brand 2.4 the Creative Workflow module has be updated to allow users to manage their projects more easily and efficiently. Updates include:
More administrator rights for administrating projects.
Filtering by brand to add users to projects.
User profiles can be linked project members.
Revisions no longer need a project manager’s approval.
General efficiency updates to project overviews, activity listings, brief management and the viewing and filtering of projects.
Multi-brand Enhancements
Users are now able to manage brands more easily, with a simpler system that provides more brand support. Clients now have a choice between single branded On Brand, multi brand and tailored On Brand, with customizations.
Users can create sub-domains, which can be managed and used within the system by both clients and partners.
Products and clients can have their own sub-page (for example: brandname.company.com).
Sub-brands, including individual brand users, assets, articles, taxonomy and permissions can now be quickly created within the system.
Help Guides
An online help site has been added to On Brand to help with users problems and questions about the system. Help Guides include both short videos, on each area of the system and text guides.
Apple unveiled a smaller version of its magic tablet, the iPad Mini. It's 7.9-inches and will start at $329. Should you buy one?
This article will be updated throughout today with the latest news, funny tweets, bon mots and geeky specs surrounding Apple's "Little" event in Cupertino. It turns out that Apple will also offer a live video stream for you to watch along with me.
The iPad Mini has been announced--that's the correct name--and it's everything you heard (and maybe a bit more). What can you do with an iPad Mini that you can't already do with an iPad? Apple's senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing Phil Schiller asked that on stage, and many of you have the same question. His answer: Hold it in one hand. "Fantastic for kicking back and reading a magazine," says Schiller. Power user tip: You can download Fast Company for your iPad right here.
The iPad Mini is 7.2mm thick. That's about as thin as a pencil. It's only .68 lbs -- that's 53% lighter than the fourth generation iPad. As light as a pad of paper. Comes in black and white. The resolution is 1024x768 and it's 7.9-inches diagonally.
There is no retina display on the Mini. But a lot of the other leaks proved accurate.
Should you buy an iPad Mini? Think back to when the first iPad came out... a lot of people didn't think a tablet computer would have a place next to their iPhone and Macbook. A lighter, thinner iPad might seem extravagant, but turn out to be quite handy--even though the Kindle Fire, Windows Surface and Nexus 7 are all likely to be less expensive.
But the real question is, should you buy one of the 10 million iPad Minis currently being produced by low-wage Chinese labor? I had a dream that Fred Armisen liveblogged this event in his SNL "Tech Talk" character of a Chinese factory worker (see the video below).
Hey look!
My bed is made from scraps from Mac notebook casings. Oh, and tears.
As it turns out, Apple's Chinese manufacturing partners, including Foxconn, treat workers fairly well when compared with many other industries. That hasn't stopped the obsessive world of tech-news from telling you otherwise, as The Awl proves in this finger-wagging story about the "the media's thriving Foxconnomy." Which is to say that you don't need to feel guilty about wanting an iPad Mini, but maybe the media should feel bad for making you want one.
Now don't you feel a whole lot better about wanting a smaller iPad?
There was a lot more hardware--even more than expected--announced today along with the iPad Mini. The iMac refresh was the most unexpected, while the 13-inch MacBook Pro with retina was the most obvious.
Those 13-inch MacBook Pro with retina display hits I found earlier on Google? That was the first hardware announcement during today's event. This is a serious laptop: 20 percent thinner than the previous 13-inch Pro, and four times the number of pixels. At 2560x1600 this screen has about double the number of pixels on my HDTV.
Resolution alone doesn't make the image work. This also has 29 percent higher contrast ratio, and 75 percent reduced glare with a 178-degree viewing angle.
It's available starting today for $1699. The old 13-inch MacBook Pro stays in the store for $1199.
Here's a surprise that wasn't on the rumor mill: A brand new iMac.
This is an incredibly thin computer, and Schiller rightly spends a lot of time talking about just how much engineering--"friction stir welding"--went into making it so slim. It's 45 percent thinner display. There are two sizes available. The 27-inch model is 2560x1440--note that that is still less than the 13-inch MacBook Pro--and a 21.5-inch model with 1920x1080.
The iMac will also have a new "Fusion Drive." It's 128GB of flash storage fused into a single volume with a HDD that is 1TB or 3TB (that's a lot of space).
A refreshed Mac Mini lineup matches the specs that were leaked earlier this morning. There are three models:
2.5 GHz dual-core, 4GB RAM, 500GB Hard drive for $599
2.3 GHz quad-core, 4GB RAM, 1TB Hard drive for $799
Server: 2.3 GHz quad-core 4GB of RAM, 2TB Hard drive for $999
How can I turn the Mac Mini server into an Apple TV?
Another surprise: the fourth generation iPad. It's largely the same but the components have been updated to include a new A6x processor for improved CPU performance (2x the speed of the version in your now-outdated iPad that's less than a year old). 10 hours of battery life. 16GB hard drive with wi-fi for $499 and 16GB with Wi-Fi and Cellular for $629.
What was missing from today's announcement? Scott Forstall, the senior vice president of iOS Software at Apple, who was expected to make the iTunes 11 update official (or perhaps add some new details).
Enterprise-based searching always wants more. And dtSearch, a supplier of enterprise and developer text retrieval software, is offering more — with the recently announced version 7.70 of its product line.
The new release features enhanced document filters, and APIs for OEMs that provide data parsing, conversion and extraction.
Indexed Search In Under a Second
DtSearch, which began providing text retrieval in 1991, offers a product line of enterprise search and developer text search products.
The search products’ spider can search local/remote content and static/dynamic web content, and it can reach across public/private sites, including support for log-ins and forms-based authentication. More than a terabyte of text can be covered in a single index, including directories, databases, online data and emails, and an unlimited number of indexes can be created and searched. According to dtSearch, that indexed search time is under a second, even across terabytes.
The document filters have supported a wide range of file formats and data types. In addition to all office productivity documents (Microsoft Office, OpenOffice, RTF, PDF and others), major email formats, compression formats such as ZIP and RAR, and Web-ready data such as HTML and XML/XSL, the filters are also built for dynamic data, including PHP, ASP.NET and all major databases.
Increased Search Support for Multi-Level Documents
Version 7.70 extends that support to images in Word (.doc/.docx), Powerpoint (.ppt/.pptx), Excel (.xls/.xlsx), Access (.mdb/accdb), RTF, and email files such as Thunderbird (mbox/.eml) and Outlook (.pst/.msg). These formats are shown as highlighted hits in context, and there’s also support for documents created by the Japanese word processor, Ichitaro.
The new release also increases the product’s support for documents and images that reside in multi-level nested configurations. This means it can find and display images in an email file, for instance. The company said that it can also find and display images in a PowerPoint file that has been embedded in a Word document attached as a zipped file to an email.
For developers, a new “object extraction” API allows for navigation through an embedded object’s structure, as if it were a hierarchy, and for extraction o09:31:00f any object.
There’s a new enterprise social collaboration product out. The New York City-based Unison Technologies has unveiled a new version of its service, a quick-to-launch social network based around virtual rooms.
The company, which also has an office in St. Petersburg, Russia, is led by CEO Manlio Carrelli and CMO Rurik Bradbury, who founded and sold corporate email hosting company Intermedia. They’ve told news media that their goal is to “fix how people communicate at work, in a way that email can’t.”
Focused Around Rooms
Unison's service is aimed at small- and medium-sized businesses, runs on Windows and Mac computers, Android devices and the iPhone, and is also available as a Web app.
One of its key selling points is that it can be up and running in five minutes, with conversations focused in “rooms” instead of being sifted through streams of updates – a combination of a physical space metaphor with a virtual social network.
A user might create a room for a particular project or team, for instance, for posting documents, updates or comments.
By entering a room, a user can see who’s there at the time and view the communications between individuals or among the group. Questions and documents can be posted inside the room, issues can be discussed in groups, room occupants can IM or use voice/video chat, and rooms can be open to anyone or closed to room members only. Conversations in each room update themselves, without page refreshes.
Users can easily create a room for a project or team.
External people, such as clients or suppliers, can come into a room, but they will only see content for which they’ve been given access. When you @mention someone, they get an alert about the referring comment. To find rooms where you were mentioned, click News in the side menu.
Room access controls allow users to determine how much content is shared within the group and with external people.
'Rooms' Reduce Clutter
Compared to other enterprise collaboration platforms, Unison said that it is the “only enterprise social network that is simple to set up and simple to use.” Its distinguishing characteristic, the rooms, is intended to create a communications workspace for each project or team, instead of the streams and groups that other business-focused social networking services offer.
By segregating teams and projects into analogues of the physical world’s use of meeting rooms, and by pushing a message directly to a non-room user, the idea is to avoid cluttering a user’s intake of information.
The enterprise social collaboration space is booming with revived versions of established tools, such as Chatter, Salesforce's continuing social reinvention of its business platform, and a crop of new and newly-acquired companies, including Campfire, Convo, Socialcast (now owned by VMware) and Yammer (owned by Microsoft).
The Unison service uses a “freemium” business model, in that a simple social network is free, while a premium version, which adds administrator controls for adding and removing users or administering room ownership, will be available in fourth quarter at an as-yet-unannounced price.
Dwolla cuts credit cards out of transactions. But why does that make payments cheaper?
Here’s the short version of how Dwolla works: It transfers money directly from your bank account to the bank account of someone who you want to pay. For free--if the transaction is less than $10. And for $.25 if it’s more than that. That is less than a credit card company would charge you.
But wait. Aren’t credit cards essentially just moving money from bank account to bank account, too? Shouldn’t they run into about the same fees for doing so? Get ready for the long answer.
“That 16-digit card number, when it’s left behind, or when it’s used at all, one, the fees to essentially move the money can't really go away, because they have to support that infrastructure, and a huge part of that infrastructure is not necessarily the reduction of fraud on the front end, it's already a loss baked into the entire cost of the whole network,” Dwolla founder and CEO Ben Milne said at a meeting in New York City this August. “You just can’t remove it. It’s not coming out.”
A credit card transaction isn’t simple. It’s a complicated process (I often imagine a Rube Goldberg machine) involving players you’ve never heard of that have functions such as “merchant service provider” and nonsensical charges such as “acquirer processing fee.” Dwolla cuts all of this out with the credit card number.
Huh?
“It’s like if you have a landline phone, you can’t not use the copper in the wall,” Milne says. “If you want to reduce the cost of copper, you need to use a wireless phone. You remove hardware. You remove infrastructure.”
It took Milne, he admits, years of seriously geeking out to figure out how payments work. If you don’t have that long, this infographic helps.
Movable Type, the popular blog software, has released version 5.2, with added support for cloud computing environments.
Movable Type is a popular open source content management and online publishing platform for creating blogs and websites, and it is free for redistribution, use or modification.
Revised Rich Text Editor
First released in 2001, Movable Type was designated as free software under the GNU General Public License in 2007. There are now more than a thousand plugins available for the platform, and it is used by such sites as BarackObama.com, Oracle’s blogs, NBC Universal and BritneySpears.com.
New features in version 5.2 include a revised rich text editor for web pages and blogs, which is designed to be more customizable, browser-friendly and AJAX-friendly.
Version 5.2 can be used under the nginx+PSGI environment, providing support across a range of server environments, including cloud computing virtual servers, CMS servers or content servers. The update also enables collections of blogs to be managed in a multi-blog environment, such as combining data from multiple blogs via the enhanced template language.
A user dashboard now helps to centralize functions commonly used by admins, authors and moderators. There is a new revision history of such CMS objects as blog templates or entries, improved AJAX-based sorting and searching features, and an enhanced list management framework for dealing with large amounts of data.
Authenticated SMTP, Browser Support
With new sitepath restriction, a System Admin can limit the publishing of content to the part of a given file system that is used by the Movable Type server. Email notifications can be sent with authenticated SMTP, and custom fields’ performance has been improved in order to provide faster rebuilds of custom field data.
The update officially supports the Google Chrome browser, starting with the latest version, Internet Explorer 8 and 9, and the latest versions of Safari and Firefox.
Other changes include a mandatory requirement that a system email setting be defined and, if it hasn’t been, the system will prompt for a system email address. A starting day of the week can be set for the calendar by the user, so that each week starts with that day. If none is set, Sunday is used as the default.
Six Apart's acquisition in 2010 left many wondering what would happen to Movable Type where it didn't really seem to fit into the plan, but it has remained an active open source solution with an active community. Japanese subsidiary Six Apart KK has taken over complete responsibility for the web content management system and we are finally seeing more updates as a result.
The recent beta of SharePoint 2013 brought with it a new version of its sister product: Project Server 2013. Project Server is built on top of SharePoint, and is designed to extend the capabilities of Microsoft Project for large scale enterprise project management.
Project Server 2013 brings with it several new features. Most obvious of all is adoption of the new Windows 8 UI, as seen in SharePoint 2013. One of the biggest functional changes is the integration with Office 365, now that Project Online is part of Microsoft’s cloud offering.
The new Azure Workflow Server, a big part of SharePoint 2013, also makes an appearance here. This does mean any existing workflows will be incompatible and need rebuilding. However it also means users now have the option of creating workflows directly in SharePoint Designer 2013 and deploying them to Project Server.
Reporting has also seen a raft of new features. Chief among them is support for oData feeds, meaning Project Server data can now be accessed via URL. This should provide a lot more flexibility for solutions in the future.
Smaller Scale Project Management
Project Server is a fully featured product, but one that can prove too much for some organizations. SharePoint 2013 features a brand new Project Site template that can be used for smaller scale project management activities. Site information, such as tasks, can be aggregated to a specific user's MySite, and the sites can be used in complete isolation of Project Server if required. If later Project Server integration is required, than tasks from the project sites can be pulled across.
Of course you could just use standard SharePoint features to manage your projects. SharePoint features task lists, Gannt views, site templates and custom lists — all of which can be used to create your own bespoke project management tool.
Third Party Add Ons
As you would expect with the SharePoint community, numerous third party products also exist that attempt to improve on SharePoint’s inherent usefulness as a project management tool.
Bamboo Solutions are well known as one of the biggest suppliers of web parts and add ins for SharePoint. As you would expect they have a number of products aimed at helping project managers. These range from simple web parts to fully featured "solution accelerators."
One of their most popular web parts is the "Task Master" (US$ 1495), a turbo charged replacement for the standard SharePoint task list. Those familiar with Microsoft Project will recognize the Gantt timeline display, task properties (start and end dates, resources, predecessors, etc.) and color coded views.
Task management is obviously a huge part of any project manager's day to day job. Task Master provides all the tools to manage tasks (and resources, and in fact whole project plans) directly with SharePoint. Whilst expensive for a single web part, it is a fully featured configurable component that many will find extremely useful.
Another useful tool, fulfilling a slightly different purpose, is the "RiskMatrix" webpart from TeamImprover (US$ 200). This lightweight tool focuses, as the name suggests, on managing and displaying risks. A risk log or matrix is now a recommended part of many modern project management methodologies, especially when dealing with larger/more expensive projects. The reason given is that highlighting risks as early as possible gives the best possible chance of dealing with them successfully.
RiskMatrix is a simple but effective tool, using standard SharePoint lists to enter risks, and assign them high/med/low Impact and Probability scores. A bright graphical, color-coded matrix is then created, clearly indicating areas for immediate concern — red risks being bad. The component’s simplicity makes it an ideal candidate to work alongside other similar products, or as part of a user's own Project Management dashboard.
Editor's Note: Chris has written before about what to expect with SharePoint 2013:
Chris Wright is the founder of the Scribble Agency, a technology copywriting agency based in London. He writes extensively on SharePoint, web trends, and general IT topics, both in print and on the web. He is also a feature writer for Web Designer magazine and SmartPhone Essentials, and a regular contributor to nothingbutSharePoint and CMSWire.
Alkacon Software's OpenCms released version 8.5, a major update that includes inline editing, Solr integration and adoption of CMIS standards.
It's been a year since OpenCms version 8.0.2 came out, and that was only an incremental update. For those eager to view the latest version, there are free demos available and because it is open source, the entire system is ready for download now.
Major Update
One of the main hightlights of OpenCms 8.5 is the inline editor, an edit in place option that speeds up quick page edits with a simplified, non-technical interface. Additionally, the form based content editor, the more formal tool, has been rebuilt to be faster to use. When content is saved into a page, there is no longer a confirmation required as the info is saved directly.
Inline editing allows for quick edits without going through the dashboard.
There's a new undo option for all changes done on a page that hasn't been published, and an option to edit content directly from the clipboard favorites. Even the text editor itself is new (based on CodeMirror). Version 8.5 is backward compatible to all prior 8.x and 7.x versions. For those using OpenCms Enterprise Extensions, to use OpenCms 8.5, OCEE v3.5 is required. OCEE must be updated first to run the new OpenCms version.
CMIS Standard + Solr Integration
Solr integration is good news for enterprises who are going the open source route and want to include a solid search infrastructure. As for the included CMIS standard, it shows the OpenCms community is serious about adopting accepted practices regarding document management using Web protocols.
CMIS is a valuable tool for creating interoperability between data repositories, and its adoption here is important. It's all the more relevant becuase there is already talks underway to adopt a new standard called the Web Experience Management Initiative.
This new OASIS initiative kicked off discussions in April, and as it moves forward, more vendors will no doubt take notice. The OpenCms community is an active one, so if they aren't already following along, they likely will be as WEMI gets closer to adoption.
TIBCO, makers of Spotfire analytics has released version 5 of its simplified system for making data based decisions, building predictive models and perhaps finding that key insight that could be ground breaking.
Spotfire 5 Features
Spotfire 5 has been rebuilt to provide faster data visualization, predictive modeling and scalability.
"These capabilities are exactly what enterprises are looking for to be able to discover the value hidden in their data," Lars Bauerle, TIBCO Spotfire VP of product strategy said in a statement.
Spotfire 5 is meant to capture data from multiple sources and offers custom reports and dashboards, but also do that in a faster, more intuitive way. Because Spotfire integrates with Microsoft, Oracle and Microsoft SQL Server Analysis Services cubes, version 5 can take advantage of its in-memory system for faster parsing of large data sets.
All that means is for those systems that are more closely connected to Spotfire (unlike systems that must be accessed remotely, for example), data can be indexed faster and with less compute power than with previous versions. That is good for scalability and speed.
Spotfire 5 interactive analytics is a good fit for the high tech manufacturing, retail, life sciences, and financial services industries.
Additionally, because Spotfire does not require a deep knowledge of business intelligence to know how to use it, companies can set the system up faster and begin using it across departments even faster.
Data Evolving, Companies Responding; Mostly
This month, CMSWire is focusing on how companies can improve customer experiences using the right data and proper strategies. Because so many analytics packages are only really good at either reporting static information or simply providing complex stats, Spotfire 5 is positioned to battle on both of these fronts. TIBCO promises an analytics platform that is dynamic, and not overly complex to use.
That means people across enterprises could benefit from any insights found, and those findings could be implemented faster to provide real action. As with any enterprise undertaking, it's wise to think long and hard about taking on a new analytics package, and remember to have some clear goals already set out.
Developers who have been thinking about building enterprise level apps now have a chance to use the same tools the big boys use because Oracle has released a free version of its Application Development Framework.
It's called ADF Essentials, and it's a Java platform that provides a ready to use base upon which new apps can be built and integrated into legacy systems.
Build UIs and Reusable Components
ADF Essentials includes tools for easily building advanced UIs and reusable components with common design patterns. It does not feature tools like a granular security layer, declarative customization, integration with Oracle SOA Suite and Oracle ADF Mobile like the full Oracle ADF does. However, ADF Essentials will be supported in a future Oracle Enterprise Pack for Eclipse release.
ADF Essentials is a core tool for building multi-channel apps that access a variety of data sources and business services.
Oracle OpenWorld Looms
Oracle's yearly trade show OpenWorld starts Sept. 30, so this a good chance to get started with ADF and then hit the conference with some big ideas and well thought out questions. OpenWorld has several tracts, one of which is the JavaOne section that is tailored to developers and Java technologists.
Hasan Rizvi, Oracle senior VP of product development will be giving a keynote on Java product strategy that should be a good overview for those just getting started with the company's developer tools. Additionally, Judson Althoff, Oracle senior VP, will be giving a Java market strategy keynote that could be a good source for new app ideas.
For more in depth sessions, check out Tim Ellison, senior technical staff member, IBM UK, and his take on some of Java's real world compatibility issues. Also, try the GlassFish Unconference to meet some of the leading minds on Java EE and GlassFish open source server. GlassFish Server Open Source Edition is how Oracle ADF Essentials is deployed, so this session would be very advantageous for any new ADF developers.
Microsoft plans to release a new version of its Lync communications platform that will be compatible with Windows 8 and Windows RT-based devices. Lync 2013 will be available as both a mobile app and desktop client.
Delivering the Full Lync Experience via Mobile Device
The new Lync app, slated for release at the end of October 2012, will be optimized for touchscreen devices (which at this point covers virtually any mobile device released in the last few years) and provides integration of voice, video, telepresence, IM and online Lync Meetings. Using the H. 264 SVC (Scaling Video Coding) standard, Microsoft says Lync Meetings will be delivered to devices of varying screen sizes without “heavy transcoding.”
In addition, the new mobile app will deliver VoIP and video to Windows Phone, iOS and Android devices and be compatible both Lync Server 2010 and Lync Server 2013.
Connecting to Skype, Office
Microsoft also plans to connect Lync to the Skype VoIP service, which it purchased in May 2011. Lync users will have full access to Skype users, including “seeing” their availability and directly communicating with them via IM, phone call or telepresence.
Furthermore, connections between Lync and Microsoft Office will enable activities such as presence information, click-to-communicate capabilities and social network integration. In addition, Office users will have direct access to Lync communications and meetings directly from Office documents, and the new SharedOneNote feature will let Lync Meeting attendees all share and work from the same iteration of a note created in Office.
Microsoft Lync Joins the ‘Elites’
CRN is gung ho about the upcoming revamped version of Lync, stating that “Lync's embrace by both customers and the channel thrust Microsoft into the elite class of unified communications (UC) providers, where it competes head to head with Cisco, Avaya, Siemens Enterprise Communications and a number of smaller vendors.” Considering the general acknowledgement of Cisco as the leader in unified communications, placing Microsoft in the same UC category is high praise indeed.
Billion Dollar Baby?
Microsoft released Lync in November 2010 with much fanfare as the new family brand of products formerly known as Microsoft Communications Server, Microsoft Office Communications Online and Microsoft Office Communicator. The brand also includes Microsoft Lync Web App and Microsoft Lync Online. As a single platform, it integrates instant messaging, presence, audio, video and web-conferencing with a single interface that can be linked with Microsoft Office, Microsoft SharePoint and Microsoft Exchange.
At the time of release, Kurt DelBene, president of the Microsoft Business division, indicated that Microsoft was hoping that Lync will be a billion dollar business in much the same way that SharePoint has been. A billion dollars is a lofty goal, even for Microsoft — but the upcoming revisions to Lync, particularly on the mobile side, should bring it at least a little closer to the hopes and dreams expressed at its birth.
Kentico has released version 7 of its ASP.NET based Web CMS
Kentico has been working to integrate its fledgling electronic marketing system, Kentico EMS, into its CMS platform, and now the entire system is ready for the cloud.
Cloud Based Customer Experience
Kentico is trying to stay ahead of competitors by merging two powerful, but often underutilized systems. Content management and marketing, if used properly, are obviously key for many companies. But so often, organizations either don't take advantage of the systems or they don't take the time to learn about them in the first place.
Traditional CMSes have, of course, made things simpler on the content side, and now Kentico is positioned as a customer experience solution for those who need this kind of dynamic SaaS-based platform in a .NET environment.
Kentico's automated marketing system in v7 includes A/B testing for E-mail Marketing campaigns, integration with Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+, SEO improvements, Salesforce.com and Data.com connectors and support chat.
Social media sites with posting and/or integration capability in Kentico 7.
Simplified Admin and Mobile Access
Building mobile websites or even converting websites to look better on mobile devices is easier with v7. There are emulators that can show what a site will look like on iOS or Android devices, for example. Mobile detection and responsive behavior features are also included.
For admins, there's a new feature for accessing editing tools without going through the dashboard. Admins can log in to a website and use a simplified interface instead of the Kentico Desk (dashboard). This includes access to those admin tools from a mobile device; great for quick fixes away from the office. Additionally, there is a new visual workflow designer for adapting document options like conditions and timers with a drag-and-drop tool. No programming necessary.
Simplified editing tools for admins.
Support for Latest Microsoft Technologies
As a .NET based system, Kentico 7 has build in support for Visual Studio 2012, Microsoft .NET Framework 4.5, Windows Server 2012 and Windows 8. If Windows 8, Windows Phone based smartphones and the so called Surface tablet ever take off, Kentico could see much wider adoption rates with this kind of adaptive technology. That's assuming a lot, but even if Microsoft's mobile arsenal underwhelms, Kentico 7 looks to be a fine option for building websites with Microsoft based development tools.
The open source content management system Umbraco may have dropped version 5, but the refocus on version 4 has brought some nice improvements and a number of bug fixes.
The free, ASP.Net-based Umbraco is designed for building websites — from small campaign or brochure sites to large media-based sites — and complex Web applications.
Umbraco, which bills itself as a “priceless CMS at the cost of virtually nothing,” was first released in version 2.0 in 2005, which was also when the first developers conference, called CodeGarden, was held. Unfortunately a turn in the wrong direction resulted in dropping the next major version of the Web CMS to go "back to the basics".
“The early days of Umbraco was the result of a wonderful collaboration between three guys in Copenhagen,” wrote one of those guys, Niels Hartvig, on the Umbraco blog. He added that, “almost eight years later — I’m smiling again” because of the new release.
Focus on the Editor Not the Developer
Umbraco 4.9 features a revised editor, easier integration of third-party videos and images, and a new media library. In addition, the new version includes more than 50 “big” bug fixes, incorporated from submissions by over 20 contributors.
The application now supports HTML5 uploads to the media section, and there’s a new folder content overview that can be filtered and from which common actions can be applied to media items.
The Media button in the Rich Text Editor now supports the oEmbed standard in its embedder, and the code editor for templates, scripting and XSLT templates has been upgraded. Creating and inspecting relation types can now be conducted from the backoffice.
Umbraco 4.9
Umbraco Gets Its Focus Back With a Little Help
Hartvig said, “September 2012 feels like October 2004 on steroids.”
He also noted that, in the past quarter, the number of improvements submitted by external contributors for the Umbraco core is higher “than any other quarters combined.”
Umbraco said that, for this Microsoft platform, it is in the top five most popular server applications and among the ten most popular open source tools. Umbraco HQ is the privately-owned commercial entity that provides support, a bug-fixing warranty and productivity-enhancing add-ons for the open-source product.
Umbraco HQ said the application is used by over 110,000 active websites, including the Davis Cup, Heinz, Peugeot, Hersheys and Microsoft’s Official ASP.NET website. HQ is based in Odense, Denmark, and maintains offices in Bellingham, Washington and Southport, Australia.
IBM is unveiling version 4.0 of its Connections social business platform, featuring new social capabilities as well as support for open standards.
Connections 4 Delves into Twitter/Facebook Territory
A new microblogging feature allows Connections users to attach files their personal status messages and also tag them with searchable Twitter-style hashtags. Status updates also can be reposted and “liked.” These features make Connections postings more like both Twitter and Facebook postings.
Earlier this week, Web publishing platform WordPress started offering VIP users Twitter-like instant blogging functionality through its new Liveblog Add-on. The add-on is designed to make WordPress competitive with Twitter as a means of providing quick, real-time commentary and updates, and IBM appears to be gearing up Connections as an alternative to Twitter and Facebook for business users, as well.
Social Analytics, Communities Updated
Existing Connections social analytics capabilities have been strengthened with system-wide metrics that make more than 100 new reports available and trend-tracking functionality. Updates to Connections Communities include a new view called “Recent Updates” which provides a centralized place to see what is happening in a community, a community activity stream that provides access to approved third-party applications and a wall for status updates (another Facebook-like feature).
In addition, this release introduces new support for open standards such as ActivityStrea.ms, OpenSocial and OAuth2.
Connections 4 also offers mobile support and starting September 20 will give users the ability to have access to and manage their mail and calendar content directly from IBM Connections. IBM supports IBM Lotus Domino and Microsoft Exchange environments.
Meeting Market Expectations
With its new version of Connections, IBM may overcome criticism of the platform leveled by industry observers such as Josh Dormont of the Collaboration for Good blog, who in a post earlier this year opined about what he saw as shortcomings of Connections. Although Dormont said “only organizations with heavy-handed IT departments were going to love (Connections),” he added that Connections benefits from “agile, constant improvement and a deep focus on building tools to meet business needs.”
Dormont went on to say that considering its resources IBM should deliver a better social intranet solution out of the box and negatively commented on Connections as a “networking platform first and a collaboration platform second,” compared to Salesforce, which created its CRM collaboration platform before launching its Chatter networking platform.
The latest version of Connections includes significant upgrades to both networking and collaboration functionality, so it will be interesting to see how the blogosphere — and customers — react.
Twitter has officially released version 1.1 of its API. Initially announced in August, the updated API has stricter authentication policies and developer rules of the road, among other new features.
Twitter Toughens Up
In version 1.1, Twitter is requiring applications to authenticate all of their requests with the API. Twitter says this step will prevent abusive behavior and help it to further understand how categories of applications are using the API so it can better meet the needs of developers.
At this time, all authentication requires user context, but in the coming weeks Twitter says it will release support for a form of authentication not requiring a user context.
Twitter also updated its developer rules of the road, placing regulations against activities such as publishing private user information, resyndicating data and performing “surprise” actions not initiated by users. And all applications replicating the core Twitter experience, usually called "clients," will have some new restrictions placed on them, including a 100,000 user token limit.
There are also new display requirements (which were previously suggested guidelines), dictating things like display of the tweet author avatar and how text is displayed. Other changes include support for JSON only, discontinuing support for XML, Atom and RSS, which Twitter says are “infrequently” used.
Rate limits in version 1.1 of the API are divided into 15 minute intervals, which is a change from the 60 minute blocks in version 1.0. Additionally, all 1.1 endpoints require authentication, so no longer will there be a concept of unauthenticated calls and rate limits. Search will be rate limited at 180 queries per 15 minute window for the time being, but Twitter says it may adjust that over time. According to Twitter, developers will “now be able to query the API on a per endpoint basis a lot more than (they) previously could.”
Show Me the Money
Although Twitter is stressing that the new changes will help eliminate abuses and make Twitter app development a more structured and orderly process, not all observers are convinced its motives are entirely pure. Last month, CMSWire columnist Stephen Fishman wrote that,
Twitter really does not care whether (solo developers) make money. Twitter cares whether Twitter makes money. In order for Twitter to make money, Twitter needs consumers to engage with Twitter on the Twitter site as much as possible. Twitter's value prop to developers is a free, functional and highly available micro-bloging platform that can easily be integrated into your site.”
Fishman also said the new API is directly aimed at “data scrapers” whose primary goal is to extract Twitter data for their own benefit.
Resyndication Rules Could Cause Problems
According to Mashabale Tech, new restrictions on resyndicating data appear to mean that information contained within a tweet — such as a URL — cannot be sent to another service using a third-party client. Mashable says this “could be problematic for social news aggregators such as paper.li, Postano and RebelMouse” and “have a much larger impact on the entire Twitter ecosystem,” including mainstream applications as well as third-party developers and power users.
Ultimately, Twitter is probably in a position to enact whatever API rules it likes and ride out any developer backlash. As Fishman states in his article, “If (Twitter’s value proposition) is not good enough, build and market your own platform and see how much money that makes you.”
OmniUpdate, a popular Web CMS in higher education, has released version 9.16, and it includes tidy updates to the site cloning tool and a few add ons to the built in source editor.
Any faculty, staff or student intern who might be using the OU Campus software in their day to day activities might be happy to know there aren't any major changes to the system.
Auto-tag Completion for HTML, XSL; Theme Options
Small though the changes to version 9.16 may be, there's a little something here for everyone. For HTML editing, there's improved auto-tag completion for quickly inserting the closing tags on a command. Additionally, whether the text editor or HTML editor is being used, it's now easier to save content quickly. OmniUpdate calls this a save-in-place feature and it's meant to make for rapid updates.
There's also new theme options for using a pre-made design in a website layout. Think of these additions as a tune up rather than a full scale Web CMS rebuild for OmniUpdate.
Site Cloning, Syntax Highlighting
Reusing content is one of the best time savers in IT, and it's with this in mind OmniUpdate has simplified the site cloning tool. It should now be easier to use over again the files and folders on a staging server.
That way, new websites can be set up quickly and efficiently. Additionally, syntax highlighting has updated so changes in HTML text can be more easily understood, and mistakes easier to identify.
Earlier this year, OmniUpdate released v9.15, and it included filtering and tagging updates, and new schedulded publishing options. These granular updates may not be sexy, but for the people using the tools everyday, they are the kinds of changes that simply make things easier to use.
Just looking at how frequently OmniUpdate makes these changes shows it is likely working closely with its customers and listening.
Those 13-inch MacBook Pro with retina display hits I found earlier on Google? That was the first hardware announcement during today's event. This is a serious laptop: 20 percent thinner than the previous 13-inch Pro, and four times the number of pixels. At 2560x1600 this screen has about double the number of pixels on my HDTV. 
Alkacon Software's 
Microsoft plans to release a new version of its 
Twitter has officially released version 1.1 of its API. Initially