Tiki has released updates for both current release branches: 3.5 and 4.2. Both updates include bug fixes, feature polishing, and security updates. All Tiki sites are strongly encouraged to update to the latest version to take advantage of security fixes and updates. See the download page at TikiWiki.org to determine which branch (3.x or 4.x) best suits your needs.

Coming Soon: Tiki 5

The next major release, Tiki 5, is planned for April 2010 and will include many new features including shopping cart and payment support, improved translation/multilingual support, an advanced rating and scoring system, workspaces, performance improvements, and much more. See the Tiki 5 documentation for additional information on this upcoming release. Early adopters can obtain pre-release versions of Tiki 5 directly from the SVN repository.

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The XOOPS Projects has released Alpha 2 of its upcoming XOOPS 2.5.0 release.

This new release a major redesign of the Administration module which has been AJAX-ed with jQuery. Some of the new features are breaking a new ground for XOOPS, like the visual placement of blocks, and we’re sure that the users will love them. The 2.5.0 release will be definitely the most innovative XOOPS  release in years.

Some of the major improvements/additions include new Help System for Admin and modules, MySQL Dump function, Tables Maintenance and Cache Clean-up in Maintenance, new Redirect messaging system, and Column sorting in tables. 

The focus on improved usability resulted in more visual administration using drag & drop, among them module ordering and block placement, and direct access to files for editing and folder management via a new File Manager. 

The developers also did a lot of code refactoring to use the latest XOOPS API. 

You can see a video with overview of the main new features on YouTube 

For more info and download links, please visit XOOPS Site

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A new version of mojoPortal was released today, version 2.3.3.9. The most significant change for this release is the introduction by the developers for their support in using html templates generated by Artisteer to make skins for mojoPortal. Two new skins made with Artisteer templates are included in this release as well.

The new version of mojoPortal also includes additional changes:

• Image Gallery now uses friendlier file names and you can optionally move existing Galleries below the /Data/Sites/[SiteID]/media folder to make it easy to browse gallery images from the editor.
• People often don’t notice that the forums is integrated into site search, so a search box in the forums has been added that redirects to site search and filters for forum content.
• A search feature in the Url Manager to make it easier to find an url when you have lots of them.
• FCKeditor upgraded from 2.6.5 to 2.6.6
• Using the new jQuery 1.4.2
• Russian and Portuguese resources files have been updated

Additional information about mojoPortal 2.3.3.9 can be found at mojoPortal.com.

ALEXANDRIA, VA. – Feb. 16, 2010 – Bitrix, Inc. (www.bitrixsoft.com), a technology trendsetter in business communications solutions, announces the availability of Bitrix® Virtual Appliance 1.5 for Amazon EC2, a major release of the free virtual platform that creates an optimal performance environment for Bitrix® Intranet Portal and Bitrix® Site Manager.

The software underwent a number of significant improvements to deliver customers more reliability and services while using the company’s CMS/EMC solutions in Amazon Web Services. Bitrix Virtual Appliance is based on a self-updating Fedora Linux operating system, includes the latest versions of the Bitrix web environment, and features increased system performance and optimized memory usage. Following the latest Amazon development initiatives, the software now supports all three datacenter location regions (US – Standard, US – N. California, EU – Ireland).

The release also includes the beta-version of Amazon EBS storage volume, customized especially for Bitrix Virtual Appliance. This feature allows the user to create up to 1TB of back-up copies of web projects and intranet portals, roll-back projects to a specified point in time, protect data for long-term durability and remain sure that the data is securely stored and guaranteed by Amazon.

“SaaS deployment provides a wide range of benefits connected with cost reduction and quality of service,” said Dmitry Valyanov, President of Bitrix, Inc. “It reduces expenses on high-priced hardware, IT staff and the user pays only for the actual software usage time. Moreover, customers get the service provider’s guarantee for solution availability, security and integrity.”

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Microsoft Office may be one of the world’s most widely deployed software packages.

A backstage pass…

Indeed, with a user base of 500 million, any changes or updates to the suite are significant for that fact alone.

In the upcoming Office 2010 release, there are many areas that have been retooled and refined; however, for the typical knowledge worker, the most obvious will be the user interface.  In this research brief, we will look at how the user interacts with a document through the new Navigation pane and Backstage view.

The new Navigation pane in Word enables users to move around a document, search for content, and change the structure and organization of headings.  This replaces the old Document Map and Thumbnail panes and brings those feature sets into one place along with Find.  Users browse through a document by heading, page, or search results.  Content in a section is moved around a document by dragging-and-dropping the tab for the heading.  Additionally, the outline of a document can be manipulated to promote or demote sections.  When sections are moved, all headings and subheadings automatically adjust.

Office 2010 also features a new way to manage documents, the Backstage view.  This new functionality extends across the entire Office suite.  The Backstage view appears when the user clicks on the File tab from within an application.  The view that opens up provides the user with access to tabs that show document info,  permissions, versioning, printing options, and sharing options.  The user has multiple options for sharing including e-mailing the document as an attachment or link, or via a blog post.

Backstage also includes Accessibility Checker, which allows users to identify elements of a document that may cause problems when used with assistive technologies.  These functions were previously found in various Ribbon menus and, with 2010, have been separated out from functions that are needed for actual content creation.  The goal of Backstage is to help users work with documents, processes and workflows, as opposed to when you work in the document.

Features such as presence are incorporated into Backstage, making it possible to initiate contact with document authors and to see related documents.  Backstage is extensible, meaning that it can be customized to allow for a range of application data to be brought into the view.

The interfaces for Backstage and Navigation are smooth and intuitive to use, and the concept of separating these features and giving them their own panes that group like-minded features together is a good one.  Obviously getting used to features being in a different place takes some time, but Backstage and Navigation are both positive changes that increase usability .

We will be examining other important new features and enhancements in Office 2010 in the weeks to come.

Cody Burke is a senior analyst at Basex.

Microsoft Office is undoubtedly one of the most world’s most widely deployed software packages.
Indeed, with a user base of 500 million, any changes or updates to the suite are significant for that fact alone. In the upcoming Office 2010 release, there are many areas that have been retooled and refined; however, for the typical knowledge [...]

I’ve regularly covered annual reports, earnings announcements and other financial news about software vendors. These commentaries tend to stir debate and I am frequently asked why I bother to look behind the numbers. Is it really important?

Many vendors, in particular privately-held US-based ones, don’t publicly release audited numbers. Instead they carefully select a few positive numbers to share via a press release. An example of this is seemingly successful CMS-vendor Ektron, which claims to be open and transparent, but will tell you only that their sales grew 38%. If you are willing to sign a non-disclosure agreement, they’ll share more details on profitability, but can a vendor really claim to be transparent when you need to sign a contract to get some fundamental numbers about the financial health of the vendor?

In my view financial numbers and annual reports are a great way to gain insights about a vendor. These are the numbers you should indeed care about:

• Services revenue. A good example of this is FatWire, where your local key account manager might have told you that they are very committed to their partners, when in fact services bring in about 30% of the company’s total revenue.
• New license sales. If this is down, it will tell you that the vendor is having difficulty signing up new customers. This can be a sign that an acquisition is lurking around the corner, which is what happened to Vignette as they got acquired by Open Text.
• Maintenance and support revenue. If this makes up a large part of revenue, it means that the vendor has many customers who keep using the product. If you can get hold of a renewal percentage or average customer lifetime, it will tell you something about how long the customers stay with the product.
• A break-down of revenue by product will tell you which products are really strategic to the vendor. IBM and Google are examples of big vendors, to who far from all products are equally important. This might reveal which products are likely to become discontinued. This happened with Microsoft CMS
• Cash is king. Look at the cashflow to find out whether the vendor might be facing survival problems or is sitting on a pile of cash.

After looking at a few vendors, you’ll discover that the accounting models tend to differ hugely. Some will list licence sales straight away, while others will break it down and only list it partially over a given period. Some might also divide their revenue between a corporate entity and different geographic regions, e.g. CMS vendor Sitecore. Details like this obviously make it difficult to compare the numbers.

Finally, I would say that the past decade has showed that positive financial numbers by no means guarantee that your favourite vendor will not be acquired or that your favourite product will not be discontinued. 2009 saw quite a few acquisitions, most notably Adobe’s acquisition of  Omniture and Opentext which bought Vignette. I’m sure we will see more in 2010. These might not impact customers in the short-term, but down the road, they always also have significant impact, e.g. with closed regional offices, a new partner strategy or a cut in engineering spending.

CAPSYS enables web-based document capture for KnowledgeTree’s affordable document management software

Raleigh, NC and Colorado Springs, Colo.  (January 12, 2010) – KnowledgeTree™, an Enterprise Content Management (ECM) provider focusing on affordable document management software, and CAPSYS®, a leading provider of web-based document capture and capture process management software, today announced the commercial availability of a release module that integrates KnowledgeTree’s commercial SaaS and on-site editions with CAPSYS CAPTURE™. 

The release module gives KnowledgeTree users seamless access to CAPSYS CAPTURE, a browser-based, thin client application that requires no workstation software to be installed or maintained.  The software also includes a powerful workflow and design component that allows users to tailor and manage their capture processes, without requiring programming or scripting, based on the document requirements specific to their business. Organizations can quickly deploy powerful, advanced capture processing functionality like optical character recognition, barcode recognition and forms recognition to streamline the process of characterizing and indexing documents that are then efficiently released directly into the KnowledgeTree repository.

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Alfresco Software today announced the availability of Alfresco Enterprise Edition 3.2, the latest version of its 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.

This release builds on Alfresco’s ability to deliver low-cost, innovative and interoperable open source ECM solutions. New features and benefits included in Alfresco Enterprise 3.2 are listed below.

Enables efficient and easy ECM in the cloud:

• Multi-Tenancy – Alfresco 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.
• 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.

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Six Apart announced the release of Movable Type 5 this week. Traditionally a blogging application, Movable Type 5 brings new features into the Web application that evolves it into a more rounded social publishing system. This release includes two versions:

• Movable Type 5.01 – commercial license
• Movable Type Open Source 5.01 – open source license

The goal of Movable Type 5 is to give businesses, organizations and individuals a single, unified software package with integrated website and blog capabilities.  It’s been enhanced for the easy creation, administration and management of websites and blogs – all from a single user dashboard.

Here are some of the new and improved features in MT5:

• A new user dashboard for both the website and blogs. This makes it easy for authors, editors, designers and other publishers to easily navigate between the two.

• A new theme mechanism that makes it easy to apply a new theme across a website and blogs with a single click that proliferates changes throughout the published site.

• Enhanced content management features that include revision history and new custom fields. There are five new object types for custom fields: website, blog, comment, template and asset.

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