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Weekly News Digest
July 16, 2007 — In addition to this week's NewsBreaks article and the monthly NewsLink Spotlight, Information Today, Inc. (ITI) offers Weekly News Digests that feature recent product news and company announcements. Watch for additional coverage to appear in the next print issue of Information Today. For other up-to-the-minute news, check out ITI’s Twitter account: @ITINewsBreaks. CLICK HERE to view more Weekly News Digest items.

Northern Light Introduces SinglePoint 4.0

SinglePoint 4.0 enhancements address three areas of functionality: personalization, ease of use, and system administration. For example, SinglePoint 4.0 lets each user create a personalized home page by adding the following:

• Headline feeds based on custom search queries
• Alerts delivered via email or RSS feeds
• "My Favorite" analyst research and news by topic, source, or author

Ease of use in SinglePoint 4.0 has been enhanced by offering preconfigured Expert Searches created by professional editors based on an organization’s information priorities. Also available to users is a comprehensive research vendor database, so with one click a user can ascertain, under their organization’s policies, how to acquire a piece of research to which they may not automatically have access.

For administrators, SinglePoint 4.0 offers an expanded set of usage monitoring and reporting facilities. In addition, administrators can easily communicate information of general interest to all users throughout their organizations using announcement boxes that automatically appear on each user’s home page, and they can instantly identify, assign, and change users’ research access privileges based on shifting short-term needs and organizational priorities.

Offered in a secure, hosted, user self-service portal environment, SinglePoint is customized to the precise market research and competitive intelligence purposes of each of Northern Light’s enterprise clients. SinglePoint 4.0 is available immediately. The pricing for unlimited enterprisewide access to SinglePoint is based upon the number of market research sources a company wants integrated into its portal, starting at $50,000 annually.

Source: Northern Light

TheBrain Technologies Upgrades its Information Visualization Software

PersonalBrain 4's new features are designed to make it easy to visualize, integrate, and share information. It offers more than 60 new features plus cross-platform support. Feature highlights include the following:

• Expanded Thought Views let users open and view multiple generations of Thoughts at once.
• Advanced Search retrieves all relevant documents, notes, calendar items, and Web pages with a single search command.
• HTML Export makes sharing Brains with others easy. Publishing a Brain online is a simple matter of uploading a folder to a Web server.
• Zoomable Icons and Images enable users to instantly view images that are associated with Thoughts.
• ESP Sync enables PersonalBrain to automatically move to whatever the user is working on in other programs or even browsing for on the Web.
• Outlook Integration lets users link directly to messages, contacts, appointments, and more, allowing a contextual view of their whole lives.
• Personalization enhancements include a new Themes feature that lets users change the look of their Brain to suit their mood and task.
• Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux computers are now all supported.     

PersonalBrain is offered in three editions: Free, Core ($149.95), and Pro ($249.95).

Source: TheBrain Technologies

PersonalBrain is offered in three editions: Free, Core ($149.95), and Pro ($249.95).

Source: TheBrain Technologies

Congoo Launches Social Networking for Business Verticals

In addition to ranking stories, Congoo members can now create a detailed professional profile including images, work history, education, and career experience. Members’ profiles can then gain exposure to professional users within relevant industry news channels. Congoo makes it easy for members to invite contacts and references to join the professional network and to find and communicate with other professionals. (Users will be limited on the number of emails they can send to others per month.) The combination of access to real-time news and the ability to connect with professionals from specific industries is designed to provide members with a sense of connection with each member’s industry.

Congoo provides articles from more than 25,000 news sources (newsfeeds are provided by Moreover), of which about 300 are premium content/subscription sites. Software algorithms then rank the articles into about 500 predetermined categories—and now members can manipulate the rankings. A freely downloadable NetPass toolbar lets users access a limited number of premium articles for free from Congoo’s partner sites. For more information, see the NewsBreak "Congoo News Circles Adds the Glue" (http://newsbreaks.infotoday.com/nbReader.asp?ArticleId=35755).

Source: Congoo