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Weekly News Digest
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May 15, 2014 — 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.
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NoveList Plus Incorporates Audiobook Recommendations
NoveList, a division of EBSCO Information Services, added audiobook recommendations to NoveList Plus, its library reading recommendation database. To enhance the recommendations, NoveList created appeal language: a way to describe audiobooks that is used for searches and listen-alike recommendations (e.g., tags for “sound effects” or “read by the author”).The audiobook recommendations section provides lists of suggested titles and listen-alike titles, as well as audiobook samples and professional reviews from sources such as AudioFile magazine. Title search options include audio length, format, and characteristics (using the appeal language). “It used to be such a challenge for librarians to answer patron questions about audiobooks. Our customers started asking us if we could help them discover audiobooks the same way that we were doing for print titles, and this release addresses this need,” says Duncan Smith, NoveList’s VP. Source: EBSCO Information Services
Splice Machine Releases Hadoop RDBMS as a Public Beta
Splice Machine, provider of the only Hadoop RDBMS (relational database management system), launched the system as a public beta. It replaces traditional RDBMS systems with a cost-effective, scalable transactional SQL (structured query language) database platform on Hadoop that analyzes Big Data by going beyond Hadoop’s batch analytics heritage.Combining Hadoop’s technology, HBase’s real-time computing power, and the full features of an RDBMS, Splice Machine enables its customers to power applications and operational analytics that support interactive data queries that are updated in real time. Source: Splice Machine
dinCloud Introduces New Storage Solution
The new dinStorage S3 cloud storage solution from dinCloud helps hundreds of applications that are compatible with the S3 software protocol leverage cloud storage with dinCloud’s S3 servers via the internet, dinTransport, or select Equinox data centers.dinStorage S3 encrypts and continually stores three copies of data without charging any data transfer fees or limiting storage capacity. dinCloud executive VP and CTO Mike L. Chase says S3’s various drawbacks, especially its heavy transfer fees for restores, led the company to create dinStorage S3 as a solution that “provides economical storage, wide application compatibility, and unlimited bandwidth usage.” Other features include the ability to create multiple S3 storage accounts, securely reset S3 credentials, and configure per-GB storage pricing using an admin interface. Source: dinCloud
Thomson Reuters Celebrates 50 Years of Citation Indexing
The Intellectual Property & Science business of Thomson Reuters announced the 50th anniversary of the Science Citation Index (SCI), the precursor of its current research platform Web of Science.More than 6,900 research institutions and hundreds of governments around the world use the Web of Science to access scientific literature resources. Its anniversary website features videos, podcasts, a timeline, and other information about the evolution of the SCI/Web of Science since it became commercially available in 1964. To celebrate, Thomson Reuters will update its user interface, expand its content, and add open-web access for subscribers. Source: Thomson Reuters
Kobo Partners With Aquafadas for Digital Magazines
Kobo agreed to use Aquafadas’ Cloud Authoring digital publishing platform to create digital magazines for its eMagazines store. So far, Kobo has converted 200-plus titles and more than 7,000 issues on Cloud Authoring that Kobo now offers to customers in North America, the U.K., France, and Italy.eMagazines are available across any device or platform: online, on a Kobo device, or via Kobo’s Android or iOS apps on other devices. “By using Aquafadas Cloud Authoring to convert magazines into digital-friendly versions, all publishers need to do is provide Kobo with their magazine PDF files, which have already been created. The entire conversion process takes place behind the scenes and in the cloud,” says Aquafadas CEO Claudia Zimmer. Source: Aquafadas
NISO and OAI Publish Results of ResourceSync Project
NISO (National Information Standards Organization) partnered with the Open Archives Initiative (OAI) to publish the American National Standard report, “ResourceSync Framework Specification,” which describes capabilities that a server can implement so third-party systems can remain synchronized with the web’s evolving resources. Created as part of the NISO/OAI ResourceSync project funded with support from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and Jisc, the report is designed to develop a new open standard for real-time web synchronization.“Since Web resources are continually changing, this proliferation of content yields the challenging problem of keeping services that leverage a server’s evolving content synchronized in a timely and accurate manner,” says Herbert Van de Sompel, co-chair of the ResourceSync Working Group. “Our two-year collaborative effort resulted in a specification that can be used to meet this challenge for a wide variety of use cases. This was possible by devising a modular specification and by grounding it in protocols that are already widely adopted.” Source: NISO
New Context and CPLANE NETWORKS Team Up
Systems architecture firm New Context partnered with CPLANE NETWORKS, an OpenStack virtual network provider, to help enterprises and cloud service providers optimize the use of OpenStack’s open source software for cloud computing.New Context’s OpenStack life cycle management system and automation suite complement CPLANE NETWORKS’ Dynamic Virtual Networks (DVN), which delivers an OpenStack network performance and scalability solution. According to Daniel Riedel, New Context’s founder and CEO, the partnership is a response to the demand for responsive services. “The industry must move from system configuration to service construction. It’s about making IT services easy to consume at a lower cost,” he says. Source: New Context
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Brandi Scardilli
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