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Weekly News Digest

April 9, 2009 — 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. CLICK HERE to view more Weekly News Digest items.

Lyrasis Launches, Formed From Merger of PALINET and SOLINET

Lyrasis, the new regional membership organization for libraries and information professionals, officially launched the new organization and its new website (www.lyrasis.org) on April 1 (no fooling!). Formed by the merger of two well-established networks, PALINET and SOLINET, Lyrasis represents more than 4,000 member libraries and cultural heritage institutions across the U.S. and beyond. The group also unveiled its new brand identity, which includes a logo, tagline (Advancing Libraries Together), and vibrant organization colors.

The boards of PALINET and SOLINET approved a recommendation to merge in October 2008.The boards approved legal documents and resolutions for the member vote in December 2008.Voting representatives of both organizations approved the merger with a yes vote of more than 95%. The results of the vote were announced at special membership meetings in February 2009. Lyrasis will maintain operations at both the Atlanta and Philadelphia locations.

Showcasing programs and areas of expertise from both networks, features of the Lyrasis website include the following:

• A catalog of more than 900 product and service offerings
• An expanded variety of classes and events and training tracks with enhanced search capability
• Access to My Lyrasis for member-only pricing and functionality (SOLINET members will use their My SOLINET login and password for access to My Lyrasis.)
• Full-site search capability by keyword
• Spotlight of current offers, promotions, industry news, and conferences
• User-friendly navigation

Source: Lyrasis

Maponics Releases Spatial API for Local Search and Mapping

Maponics, LLC (www.maponics.com), a provider of highly local geographic data, announced the official release of the Maponics Spatial API (application programming interface; http://api.maponics.com). Now, even businesses with small or nonexistent geographic data management capabilities can offer cutting-edge, web-based local search and mapping, without making significant GIS (geographic information system) infrastructure investments. Businesses can now have access to neighborhood, ZIP code, and carrier route boundary data that they don't have to host or manage.

infoUSA.com, AccuData, Trulia, Pitney Bowes MapInfo, Dominion Enterprises (eNeighborhoods and Homes.com), Zip-Codes.com, and Citysearch are among the industry giants for which Maponics' data improves local search and mapping. Most Maponics data sets are now available for quarterly data delivery in common file formats or through the Maponics Spatial API.

Drawing on the available data sets, the specific queries supported by the Maponics Spatial API include the following:

• List of neighborhoods, ZIP codes, or carrier routes closest to a location point
• Neighborhood, ZIP code, or carrier route in which a latitude and longitude point or typed address falls
• List of neighborhoods, ZIP codes, or carrier routes within a city, state, or radius
• Neighborhood, ZIP code, or carrier route boundary (ready to map latitude and longitude points) surrounding a given address or location point
• Many more, including custom data retrievals related to neighborhoods, ZIP codes, and carrier routes

Source: Maponics, LLC

Dow Jones Expands VentureSource Database

"With the expansion of VentureSource, we are furthering Dow Jones's mission to help customers make better business decisions by providing them with the world's most comprehensive news and business information," said Scott Schulman, president of Dow Jones Financial Information Services. "VentureSource users can now identify and review early-stage and pre-venture opportunities with comprehensive investment information on thousands of angel-, incubator-, government-, and university-backed companies in a number of innovative emerging fields, including clean technology and biotech."

With the addition of these data assets, VentureSource now provides in-depth details on some 84,000 individual financing rounds involving more than 39,000 companies and 13,000 investors in every industry and at every stage of development throughout the U.S., Canada, Europe, India, Israel, and Greater China. Customers of the Library House database have all been migrated to VentureSource accounts.

Source: Dow Jones Financial Information Services

Essentia Enhances Its Community Building Platform

The new version of Essentia's flagship solution features a range of enhancements including support for Mercurial distributed version control and Mantis BT collaborative tracker with Twitter Support; enterprise search for large distributed repositories as well as integration with Google Search; single sign-on; community metrics and user activity via Google Gadgets, RSS, and personal pages; as well as numerous user experience and functional enhancements.

Enterprise support for search and single sign-on provides closer integration between the communities and corporate dot-com sites, internal knowledge repositories, and enterprise business systems to ensure seamless access to desired information across community and enterprise boundaries. Essentia's security and access control framework handles user, data, project, and site-level security and administration around search.

The new version of EssentiaESP is available immediately in standard, premium, and unlimited configurations for both hosted on the cloud and on-premise deployment with an annual subscription. All subscriptions include full access to source code, regular product updates, and 24/7 email-based technical support for installation and production.

Source: Essentia

Open Text Acquires Vizible Corp.

Open Text Corp. (www.opentext.com), a provider of enterprise content management (ECM) solutions, announced that it has acquired Toronto-based Vizible Corp. (www.vizible.com), a privately held maker of digital media interface solutions delivered via a publishing platform that enables cutting-edge syndication and analytics. The addition of Vizible expands Open Text's fast growing set of digital media solutions, which helps companies manage rich media content such as video, audio, graphics, and photography.

Vizible's solutions will give Open Text a strong set of digital media solutions that fit today's social media applications, providing unique capabilities to marketers and advertisers, as well as media and entertainment organizations looking for new ways to extend the value of their intellectual property in a social media world.

Vizible's solutions provide the ability to create a rich, 3D navigation experience for traditional media and the ability to deliver content across a range of display devices. The presentation of content is driven by rules that users can personalize so that each viewer's experience can be different. Vizible's solutions tie in well with the ever-changing world of multiplatform content consumption across the web-via cell phones, PDAs, and web browsers-and the need to provide a consistently superior experience to viewers, no matter where or how they're accessing content.

The Vizible solution also allows customers to easily syndicate their rich media content to consumers, business customers, or supply chain partners using an open-standards platform. Using Vizible, for example, a company can create rich media widgets that can deliver videos, photos, or other branded content. Companies can use the solution to offer easily embeddable, branded rich media content on a wide range of sites, from partner or retailer sites to Facebook and blogs. As customers syndicate their content, they are also able to maintain control and leverage an inherent set of analytic capabilities Vizible offers in its solutions.

Open Text will add the Vizible team to the company's digital media group. Vizible employees will remain in the Toronto area at Open Text's Richmond Hill, Ontario, office.

Source: Open Text Corp.