Articles - Page 255

The Top 10 AI Tools for Small Business: From Automation to a Coordinated Team of AI Agents

matt-garrepy

Microsoft has entered the cloud computing market with Windows Azure and SQL Azure. They officially opened the door on February 1st, 2010.
Here is a brief explanation of the offering:
<blockquote>
The Windows Azure platform offers a flexible, familiar environment for developers to create cloud applications and services. With Windows Azure, you can shorten your time to market and adapt as demand for your service grows.
Windows Azure offers a platform that is easily implemented alongside your current environment.
<li>Windows Azure: operating system as an online service</li>
<li>Microsoft SQL Azure: fully relational cloud database solution</li>
<li>Windows Azure platform AppFabric: makes it simpler to connect cloud services and on-premises applications</li>
</blockquote>
According to their website, price plans for <a href="http://www.microsoft.com/windowsazure">Windows Azure</a> are as follows:
<ul>
<li> Compute = $0.12 / hour</li>
<li> Storage = $0.15 / GB stored / month</li>
<li> Storage transactions = $0.01 / 10K</li>
<li> Data transfers = $0.10 in / $0.15 out / GB – ($0.30 in / $0.45 out / GB in Asia)*</li>
</ul>
* No charge for inbound data transfers during off-peak times through June 30, 2010
Price plans for SQL Azure are, at the time of this post:
<ul>
<li>Web Edition:  Up to 1 GB relational database = $9.99 / month</li>
<li>Business Edition:  Up to 10 GB relational database = $99.99 / month</li>
<li>Data transfers = $0.10 in / $0.15 out / GB – ($0.30 in / $0.45 out / GB in Asia)*</li>
</ul>
* No charge for inbound data transfers during off-peak times through June 30, 2010
For the most current pricing visit <a href="http://www.microsoft.com/windowsazure/pricing/">Windows Azure pricing page</a>.
It will be interesting to see how well this investment works out for Microsoft. There is no doubt they have dumped a lot of money into this project.
You can learn more at <a href="http://www.microsoft.com/windowsazure">http://www.microsoft.com/windowsazure</a>
There are plenty of other <a href="http://www.peer1.com/hosting/cloud-services.php">cloud server</a> products out there as well.

Microsoft opens doors to cloud computing market with release of Windows Azure

mike-johnston

Nuxeo, the Open Source Enterprise Content Management (ECM) company, announced today the general availability of its open source Digital Asset Management offering Nuxeo DAM.
Nuxeo DAM is the latest application based on the Nuxeo open source ECM platform, Nuxeo EP. Nuxeo DAM addresses the complex and resource-intensive demands of managing the rich media assets that companies rely on. Designed to meet the creative and ever-changing needs of marketing and brand managers, as well as the custodians of digital artifacts in education, government, military and cultural institutions, Nuxeo's digital asset management software opens up new opportunities for the creators, users and consumers of rich media to take control of their critical image, video or audio content.
According to Nuxeo CEO Eric Barroca, “Nuxeo DAM has the same high level of flexibility as its underlying platform – Nuxeo EP – thanks to its extension-point, plug-in infrastructure. Thus, Nuxeo DAM can be adapted and customized to create a new kind of media-intensive content application matching ever-evolving business and creative needs.”
Nuxeo DAM is the first application of its kind to meet the currently available draft of the OASIS Content Management  Interoperability Services (CMIS) specification. Nuxeo, along with many other industry leaders such as Microsoft, IBM, and Adobe Systems, is involved with CMIS. CMIS is a proposed standard for interoperability across multiple ECM and web content management systems that is expected to be approved this year. Nuxeo EP, as the underlying ECM platform offering from Nuxeo, includes a CMIS Server, based on the latest CMIS specification, ensuring that packaged applications such as Nuxeo DAM and Nuxeo DM benefit from the interoperability enhancements.
As an open source offering, this release of Nuxeo DAM has benefited tremendously by input from the customer and partner community during the beta period which began in December 2009. Feature prioritization, open issue reporting, access to peer-to-peer support and best practice exchange ensured the public beta offering evolved quickly to meet the needs of early adopter clients.
Nuxeo DAM 1.0 – Feature highlights:
<ul>
<li>Asset Capture / Batch Import: Media file uploads with IPTC and EXIF metadata extraction; quickly upload batches of media assets; bulk tagging with metadata</li>
<li>Annotations: Annotate pictures and office documents directly from the browser</li>
<li>Intellectual Property and Rights Management: Manage attributions and expiration dates; administrators view rights to asset folders</li>
<li>Renditions: Store multiple formats of a media file for different use cases</li>
<li>Filter-based Navigation: Browse the asset repository using dynamic visual filters on metadata (by full text, content type, folder name, geographical coverage, etc.)</li>
<li>Watermarking &amp; Export of Media Files: Watermark images to ensure appropriate distribution and attribution; configure export formats; expose a unique URL for assets, to ease integration</li>
<li>Security &amp; Access Control: Control sharing and access to assets with Access Control Lists (ACLs) on folders; support complex authentication setups, user sources, user groups, etc.</li>
<li>Configurable Content Model: Quickly define and configure the right content model for assets (define metadata, controlled vocabularies, etc.)</li>
<li>Fully Browser- and Web-based: Use of web standards and technologies to provide a rich fully browser-based user experience (no plug-in/Flash required)</li>
<li>Deep Integration Across IT Ecosystem: Leveraging enterprise-class features from Nuxeo EP, Nuxeo DAM works with existing IT infrastructure applications (LDAP for user/group management, SSO for authentication, CMIS Server, etc.)</li>
</ul>
“Digital asset management is an increasingly important component of ECM deployments due to the rise of audio and video content and the need to consistently manage brand assets,” said Kathleen Reidy, senior analyst, enterprise software at The 451 Group. “The availability of DAM in an open source model potentially makes it accessible to organizations of different sizes and types.”
DAM Deployments Assured by Nuxeo Connect Digital Asset Management software deployments represent an important investment in terms of time and resources. Successful DAM initiatives reap maximum value from their platforms by ensuring that they are fully adapted to the organization's context.
Nuxeo Connect is the comprehensive subscription offering delivering high-quality software maintenance and support for the entire Nuxeo ECM offering. DAM deployments achieve a return on time and resource investment much faster when clients subscribe to Nuxeo Connect. Customers are assured of service level agreements for problem resolution, access to certified patches, value-added design, configuration, monitoring and management tools, as well as product updates in accordance with our product life cycle policy.
More info available at <a href="http://www.nuxeo.com">www.nuxeo.com</a>

Nuxeo Releases First CMIS-Enabled Digital Asset Management Application

Wolf CMS 0.6.0 final has been released to the public. This new version of the open source content management system offers a number of changes.
Changes with this release include:
<ul>
<li>Completely revamped the install sequence.</li>
<li>A page preview status was added users to preview the page before publishing.</li>
<li>HTTPS support was added for accessing the administration area.</li>
<li>CRON support was added. The term “cron” is also used as a general reference term for all manner of scheduling services. See <a href="http://www.wolfcms.org/wiki/enabling_cron_jobs">the wiki</a> for configuration details.</li>
<li>Administrative users can now “uninstall” a plugin. This removes any database tables and settings it may have added. The plugin has to support this feature.</li>
<li>Wolf CMS now supports frontend plugin controllers.</li>
<li>A new core plugin was added called BackupRestore which will allow site administrators to create a backup of all the Wolf CMS core database tables.</li>
</ul>
Screenshot:
 
Want more info? Check out the <a href="http://www.wolfcms.org">Wolf CMS website</a>.

Wolf CMS 0.6.0 Final now available

The latest release candidate of what will soon become <a href="http://www.ocportal.com">ocPortal</a> 4.3 comes with a number of new features. The most significant of these is a new importer for the popular open source CMS platforms, <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/tag/joomla">Joomla</a> and <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/tag/wordpress">WordPress</a>.
Some other features that this new release candidate bring to the table include:
<ul>
<li>HTML website importer</li>
<li>iCal exporter</li>
<li>Quiz responses CSV exporter</li>
<li>New “importer redirects”, so that when you go to import it'll easily redirect you to the correct place in ocPortal for cases when import is done natively through modules (e.g. CSV importing)</li>
<li>New Comcode ‘pulse' tag (as seen on our website, where we write ocProducts (it's configurable with parameters)</li>
<li>Added submit-URLs to the side_news block and main_forum_news block and side_forum_news block</li>
<li>Added reply counts to the side_forum_news block</li>
<li>Added new parameter to main_leader_board block, to filter out staff from the points leaderboard</li>
<li>Added CAPTCHA support to the main_contact_simple block and main_contact_us block</li>
<li>The search will now auto search for expanded day selection if it can't find results for the default days selection (and tell the user it did)</li>
<li>Allowed the download A-Z index to support ocFilter notation</li>
</ul>
This is, of course, just a sample of the full changelog which you can find <a href="http://ocportal.com/site/news/view/new_releases/43_rc3_released.htm">here</a>.

Latest ocPortal release candidate includes importers for Joomla and WordPress

Nuxeo, the Open Source Enterprise Content Management (ECM) company, announced today that it has enriched the value of its Nuxeo Connect support and maintenance offering with the introduction of Nuxeo Studio.
Nuxeo Studio, a newly released configuration and customization environment for Nuxeo open source ECM, is available as a value-added component of the Nuxeo Connect subscription service. Nuxeo Studio is available as a web-based administrative tool for Nuxeo Enterprise Platform (Nuxeo EP) and packaged applications such as Nuxeo Document Management (Nuxeo DM) or Nuxeo Digital Asset Management (Nuxeo DAM).
“Nuxeo Studio is allowing us to customize Nuxeo ECM quickly in-house without developers. We've been able to skip some time-consuming steps, which has greatly sped up development of our document management application. Nuxeo Studio also gives us closer control of any customizations and much faster turn-around on overall development,” said Camille PINET, Project Manager at IGN France International, a geographic engineering company.
With an easy-to-use graphical interface, Nuxeo Studio enables information architects and business analysts to fully configure both Nuxeo EP and Nuxeo DM to adapt to their organization's unique requirements, without extensive training. Nuxeo Studio enables technically savvy business users, solution providers, and system integrators to accelerate the time-to-value of their Nuxeo open source ECM platform-based projects.
Nuxeo Connect is the comprehensive subscription offering delivering high-quality software maintenance and support for Nuxeo ECM. Customers subscribing to Nuxeo Connect are assured of service level agreements for problem resolution, access to certified patches, value-added design, configuration, monitoring and management tools, as well as product updates in accordance with our product lifecycle policy. Beginning with approachable base packages, and scaling to premium 24/7 support levels, Nuxeo Connect adapts to the needs of its customers as their projects mature.
In addition to Nuxeo Studio, Nuxeo Connect customers have access to other premium tools and support packages that are specifically tailored to fit their requirements. The support packages target developers and operations, tiered by Silver, Gold, or Platinum service level agreements, to give Nuxeo's customers flexible, value-added options for the maintenance of their content applications.
More information about Nuxeo Connect and Nuxeo Studio is available at <a href="http://www.nuxeo.com">www.nuxeo.com</a>.

Hosted Design and Configuration Environment Now Available for Nuxeo ECM

Bitrix, Inc. (<a href="http://www.bitrixsoft.com">www.bitrixsoft.com</a>), a technology trendsetter in business communications solutions, announces Y2009 business results that demonstrate significant growth in key business indicators.
During 2009, Bitrix registered worldwide revenue growth of 32% while keeping the EBITDA at 20% and CAGR (2005-2009) at 77,8%. The global installed base exceeded 30,000 projects while the customer list was reinforced by a number of both large enterprises and SMBs from various vertical markets. In the course of the year, the company signed contracts with VTB Bank (recognized leader in the Russian banking sector), Independent Media (publisher of world-famous Cosmopolitan, Vogue and other magazines), Gazprombank, Hyundai Motor, Kia Motor, Samsung Mobile, Xerox, Panasonic, Epson, Zurich Insurance, Oranta Insurance, Royal Canin and many others.
“We see companies, especially SMBs, are turning to the Internet as a natural opportunity to compensate the traditional business slowdown and increase the effectiveness of internal communications and collaboration,” said Dmitry Valyanov, President of Bitrix, Inc. “This is an opportunity for us to offer customers competitive solutions that can boost their online presence and create highly-productive enterprise-wide workspaces.”
2009 was a very positive year for Bitrix in terms of product development. The product portfolio was improved with Bitrix® Intranet Portal, a high-end Enterprise 2.0 software solution and Bitrix® Virtual Appliance, a ready-made platform to run Bitrix products in a Cloud/SaaS environment. The company also initiated launch of a new partner program and experience great success in channel development, widening its worldwide partner network to 4,000+ resellers, VARs, wed developers, hosting companies and service providers.
Since its foundation, Bitrix has followed a course of rapid but completely organic growth driven by a discerning sensitivity to the technical and practical needs of the market. The company experienced unmatched success in the Russian market, gaining a staggering market share of 65.3% according to independent research. Despite the negative global economic background, Bitrix continues to demonstrate growth that is an order of magnitude greater than the software sector as a whole.

Bitrix Reports Record Sales in 2009

A new version of <a href="http://www.s9y.org">Serendipity CMS</a> (s9y) has been released. This is the content management system that powers this site and our sister site, <a href="http://www.linuxcritic.com">Linux Critic</a>.
Serendipity 1.5.2 was released to address the outstanding issue of SQLite installations with Serendipity. Full details on the release can be found at the <a href="http://blog.s9y.org/archives/216-Serendipity-1.5.2-released.html">release announcement on s9y.org.</a>
You can download the latest release from <a href="http://www.s9y.org">s9y.org</a> as well.

New version of Serendipity CMS available

A new version of the open-source content management system, SilverStripe, is now available for download. This release is primarily a bugfix release and according to the <a href="http://silverstripe.org/silverstripe-2-3-5-released/">changelog</a>.
For more information about SilverStripe, you can read our <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/silverstripe-cms-review/">SilverStripe review</a> or check out all of our <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/tag/silverstripe/">SilverStripe-related articles.</a>
You can also learn more by visiting their <a href="http://www.silverstripe.org">homepage</a>.

SilverStripe CMS 2.3.5 released

Power your CMS on AWS

Manage your websites & apps in the most trusted cloud.

#ffffff

A critical exploit has been found in the open source CMS, <a href="http://www.e107.org">e107</a>.
The e107 team is asking that if you know someone who is running the system or if you are running it, you upgrade immediately to prevent any potential security issues from arising.
From the announcement:
<blockquote>
We were recently informed of a very nasty exploit that, as far as we can see, affects almost all e107 0.7 releases. Everyone running e107 needs to get their sites updated as soon as possible. If you are a site owner and you are unable to upgrade for some reason (too much hacked core code), please contact me directly and I can help you with a quick-fix.
Please get the word out to all other e107ers. If you find an e107 site out there, post on their site somewhere about this upgrade.
We have also included an automatic update check in this release. It was in previous ones, but was based of sourceforge's rss feed, which they apparently don't want to fix. The new code will now check a file on e107.org, which will always contain the most recent e107 release information. If there is an update available, you should see a notice on your main admin screen. Depending on your admin theme, it may also appear in the left column of all admin pages.
</blockquote>
You can download this release from <a href="http://www.e107.org">e107.org</a>

Critical exploit found in e107 CMS

SEOTOASTER, the most advanced SEO CMS out of the box, that is also free and open source announces immediate availability of its seo website builder software in French, Spanish &amp; Portuguese. This releases covers both accents support for websites URL's, spell checking and other fields &amp; components critical to help websites rank higher with search engines for their respective languages. In addition, the website builder tool's user interface itself is now available in these three languages.
SEOTOASTER is an easy to use SEO website builder, and it is free and open source. SEO Toaster features an unique content management system or CMS architecture that grows with your business, and makes piloting SEO execution and marketing for multiple websites from a central automated web marketing location possible.
SEO Toaster represents a serious alternative to Yahoo Stores for small e-commerce websites or WordPress when used by small businesses as a corporate CMS.
SEO Toaster enables the entrepreneur, e-tailer, or local small business owner or marketer to quickly establish their Web marketing presence with a single overarching objective: Acquire top website rankings, generate leads and sales.
“I'm thrilled to announce the release of seotoaster in three important languages used by over 275 millions Internet users.” says Michel Leconte, the CEO of SEO Samba – the entity behind open source seo cms' seotoaster, and adds; “now, seotoaster unique abilities are available to entrepreneurs, web marketers, affiliates, and open source web developers in France, Spain, Portugal, but also Brazil, Mexico, Chile, Canada and the Americas in its entirety. If you're an importer or exporter located in the U.S or UK, this is an important release as well for you.”
SEO Toaster use an easy, front-end SEO CMS, where you log-in and simply surf your live website and edit content right onto the page itself, and building, importing or customizing a website theme takes as little as 30 minutes for a web designer. Unique search engine optimization features include automated re-directs; onsite SEO, onsite optimized linking, ink sculpting using Java script, and even point and click links silo building and everything is ready and easy-to-use out of the box.
Website designers, business services, product comparison and information providers affiliates can also take advantage of this language release thanks to a set of banners available in their respective language.
To learn more about SEO Toaster, please visit <a href="http://www.seotoaster.com/">http://www.seotoaster.com/ </a>

SEO Toaster announces support for multiple languages

A new version of TomatoCMS has been released.
TomatoCMS is a new open source content management with an interesting and unique look.

This new version introduces a new installer to help make the installation process a smoother experience for users.

There is also support for nested, unlimited comment levels within the system as well as the introduction of gravatars. Aside from the new features listed above, this version also contains a number of bug fixes.
A full list of changes can be found here at the <a href="http://blog.tomatocms.com/news/article/view/2/11/">release announcement page</a>.
Website : <a href="http://www.tomatocms.com">TomatoCMS</a>

TomatoCMS 2.0.1 has been released

The first alpha release of Drupal 7.x has been made available for testing.
Drupal is one of the most popular and largest community based open source content management systems available today.
The 7.x series promises some interesting changes to the CMS.
Here are a few of the changes that can be expected:
<dl> </dl>
<h4>Revamped User Interface</h4>
An incredible amount of work has gone into improving the user experience and administration interface. The new administration theme “Seven”, the overlay module, the dashboard and the configurable shortcut bar, all lead to a much more user-friendly interface. In-place editing is enabled for blocks and nodes by default, so modifying the content of a site becomes much simpler.
<h4>Custom Fields</h4>
Drupal 7 bundles in the ability to add custom fields, similar in functionality to the Content Construction Kit (CCK) module. However, fields are no longer limited only to content types; they can be added to users, taxonomy terms, and other entities. Fields also have support for translations.
<h4>Image Handling</h4>
Drupal 7 brings native image handling to core. Image fields may be added to content, and have image styles applied to them, such as scaling, cropping, and other effects.
<h4>Update Manager</h4>
Building on Drupal 6's Update module, which keeps site administrators informed when new module and theme releases are available, the new Update Manger module can also install and upgrade modules and themes.
<h4>Front-end “under-the-hood” improvements</h4>
A new render API allows for highly granular theming, core template files have been revamped to provide more semantic markup, Drupal 7 now has built-in RDFa support, includes jQuery UI and a new AJAX framework, and a new core theme “Stark” which exposes Drupal's markup directly for those who want to dive in and start theming.
In addition, Drupal 7 has several major accessibility enhancements, making it the most accessible release of Drupal to date!
<h4>Back-end “under-the-hood” improvements</h4>
A revamped database layer resolving nearly all limitations in the Drupal 6 database layer, automated testing framework, new PHP stream-based file API that supports private and public files simultaneously, revamped node access system, new hooks for more flexible system interaction, an Entity API, a job queue API, and many, many, many more improvements.
<dl> </dl>
You can download this release from the <a href="http://drupal.org/drupal-7.0-alpha1">Drupal website</a>.

First alpha of Drupal 7 is available

Alfresco Software today announced the availability of <a href="http://bit.ly/alf32cloud">Alfresco Enterprise Edition 3.2</a>, the latest version of its industry-leading enterprise content management (ECM) product.
With this release, Alfresco enables cloud-based deployments, streamlines email management and archiving and enhances team-based content collaboration. In addition, the Alfresco Enterprise 3.2 Records Management module is the only supported open source solution to have been certified to the 5015.02 standard.
“Alfresco Enterprise 3.2 brings low cost content management and collaboration tools to both commercial and government organizations, and dramatically reduces the barrier to regulatory compliance,” said John Newton, CTO and Co-founder, Alfresco Software. “Supporting the cloud and IMAP standards allows Alfresco customers to address all of their content management requirements – records management, document management, Web content management, collaboration, email archiving or digital asset management – through one value-based solution.”
This release builds on Alfresco’s ability to deliver low-cost, innovative and interoperable open source ECM solutions. New features and benefits in Alfresco Enterprise 3.2 include: Enables efficient and easy ECM in the cloud:
<ul>
<li>Multi-Tenancy – Alfresco is the only ECM system that natively supports multi-tenancy, a critical component of multi-company cloud implementations as it maximizes use of hardware and simplifies administration of multiple instances of Alfresco.</li>
<li>Cloud-deployable – Alfresco now supports multiple deployment options from traditional on-premise to full cloud deployment ranging from a simple AMI to a fully-configured, fault-tolerant and load-balanced Alfresco cluster.</li>
</ul>
Delivers enterprise-class compliance at a dramatically lower cost: 
<ul>
<li>Records Management (RM) module– 5015.2 certified, Alfresco RM enables both commercial organizations and government agencies to address the strict legal requirements associated with managing key business records. The Alfresco open source RM module (available in February 2010 via the Alfresco Enterprise Subscription as a separate module) will enable companies to manage all document content with retention ranging from lightweight to 5015.2-compliant in a single repository, at a fraction of the cost of traditional RM solutions.</li>
<li>IMAP support for email client access &amp; email archiving – Simple ‘drag and drop’ support allows users to share key email messages with colleagues and team members. Unique transparent IMAP standard protocol support provides full access to repository services without a client install and can be accessed from mobile devices.</li>
</ul>
Scalable collaborative community management:
<ul>
<li>Collaborative content creation – Enhancements to Alfresco Share make it easier for teams to collaborate and work together, extending team collaboration from the extranet environment into the cloud through scalable moderated sites, group based site membership.</li>
<li>Rich user profiles – Alfresco enables users to employ social media techniques to navigate and find important information.</li>
<li>Portlet updates – New dashboard features, such as image galleries, a new forms engine, and activities filters make it easier for end users to configure project portals to suit their needs.</li>
</ul>
Simplified, high-availability administration:
<ul>
<li>Storage policies – Alfresco enables organizations to manage the physical storage location for content based on business polices as part of an Information Lifecycle Management (ILM) strategy. This allows content to be automatically stored and moved between storage subsystems based on its business value, governance and compliance requirements and relative storage costs.</li>
<li>Monitoring and configuration tools – Based on the industry JMX standard, these tools, combined with the new Alfresco subsystems, allow the administration and reconfiguration of Alfresco without the need to stop and restart the server.</li>
</ul>
Web content management performance enhancement:
<ul>
<li>WCM authoring and deployment – Significant performance increases to improve deployment of Web site content to external web sites through highly-parallel Web site deployment and publishing. New open and flexible deployment architecture makes it simpler to deploy content to multiple delivery environments and allows easy integration into the web delivery tier.</li>
</ul>
Alfresco Enterprise Edition 3.2 is immediately available for all existing Enterprise Subscription Customers.

Alfresco Enterprise 3.2 Cuts Cost of ECM Compliance, Collaboration & Cloud Deployment

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