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Armonk, NY — Dec 18, `07 — IBM today announced the availability of IBM Atlas for Lotus Connections, a corporate social networking visualization and analysis tool.

IBM Atlas for Lotus Connections is designed to help organizations maximize their investment in social software by answering questions such as who the key experts are on a given topic, how they are connected, and whom a user’s contacts know that they do not.

Developed by IBM Research, Atlas has four Web 2.0-based components — My Net, Find, Reach and Net. These components help users spot the important connections and the relationships between various groups and navigate their personal and corporate networks.

The Net component of Atlas provides a visual indication of the important hubs among topic experts and informal groups that have developed while working on similar projects.

My Net offers similar capabilities for a user’s personal network. For example, a salesperson can better manage and understand their social networks making sure they have connections across the right topic areas.

Reach, the social software dashboard feature in Atlas, helps users navigate the up to six degrees of separation that divide them from a colleague. The dashboard shows users the shortest path to reach an expert and ranks the expert based on the level of interaction across the network.

The Find component of Atlas builds upon core Lotus Connections expertise capabilities by taking searches beyond the corporate directory to include results based on social data such as reporting structures, blogs and communities.

Atlas is designed to work with IBM Lotus Connections, the industry’s first integrated enterprise social software platform. The latest version of Lotus Connections, version 1.02, is now available and features:

* Expanded support for operating systems such as SUSE Linux, browsers such as Mozilla Firefox 2.0 and directories such as Microsoft Active Directory, enabling businesses to deploy and integrate social software across their IT environment.
* Plug-ins for IBM Lotus Notes, IBM Lotus Sametime, Microsoft Office, Microsoft Explorer and IBM WebSphere Portal, enabling people to interact with their professional networks using their everyday productivity tools.
* A rich API based on the REST and Atom standards allow other applications to utilize the profiles, community, bookmarking, blogging and activity services of Lotus Connections.

More on IBM Atlas at IBM.

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 delivers flexible power of choice and familiar Outlook experience.

REDMOND, Wash — Dec 17, `07 —The new version of Microsoft Dynamics CRM, formerly code-named “Titan,” has been completed and released to manufacturing, Microsoft announced today.

The new version is offered under two product names: Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 for on-premise and partner-hosted deployments and Microsoft Dynamics CRM Live for Microsoft-hosted deployment. Designed with a single unified-code base for both on-premise and on-demand deployments, Microsoft Dynamics CRM enables customers to choose the right deployment model for their specific business and IT needs, with the flexibility to change deployment models over time if their needs or preferences change.

Some of the significant new benefits and capabilities of this new release include these:
• An advanced multitenant architecture that supports multiple customers per server
• Extended global capabilities including user choice of more than 25 languages and pervasive support for multiple currencies
• New business intelligence capabilities including cross-entity views and an end-user ad hoc reporting wizard
• Advanced business process automation based on Microsoft Windows Workflow Foundation
• New collaboration capabilities with Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 including real-time presence indicators within the CRM application

More at Microsoft.

Dec 12, ‘07 — Microsoft has released Service Pack 1 (Release Candidate) for its flagship Windows Vista on Tuesday, Dec 11.

Microsoft also announced shipment of Service Pack 1 for the 2007 Microsoft Office system, which includes both client and server products under the Office umbrella. More at Microsoft here and here.

REDMOND, Wash – Nov. 13, 2007 — Most of us have probably given little thought to the mental gymnastics involved when we read text in a book or on a computer screen. But every time we look at text there’s a whole lot more going on than the literal meaning of the words.

Microsoft and the DAISY digital talking books consortium are to work together on a tool for the blind and otherwise print-disabled that translates Microsoft Word documents into a digital audio standard.

The two organizations said on Tuesday the collaboration was aimed at producing a free, downloadable plug-in that would translate documents based on Open XML — the default file-saving format in Microsoft Office 2007 – into DAISY XML.

The DAISY XML file can then be processed to produce digital audio and other formats. The plug-in is expected to be available in early 2008.

The not-for-profit DAISY (Digital Accessible Information System) consortium, based in Zurich, Switzerland, was formed in 1996 by talking-book libraries to help the transition from analogue to digital talking books, and has adopted open standards based on Internet file formats.

Its members include the U.S. National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped, the Spanish National Organisation of the Blind and the Korean Braille Library.

Microsoft is campaigning to have its Open XML document format approved as an international standard, which would help it gain wider adoption by public-sector organizations. It failed to capture the necessary majority in a September vote by members of the International Organisation for Standardisation (ISO), partly due to concerns the format is not truly open but rather a ploy to lock in users.

An ISO group will meet again in February to try to agree a consensus, giving Microsoft time to lobby for more votes. More at Microsoft.

Finally Microsoft has spelled out its strategy to answer Google Docs & Spreadsheets: Office Live Workspace.

According to Mary Jo Foley of ZDNet , Office Live Workspace is, in Microsoft’s words, “a new web-based feature of Microsoft Office which lets people access their documents online and share their work with others.”

Microsoft is taking sign-ups from those interested in beta testing the English-language version of Office Live Workspace starting today. The actual invitation-only beta isn’t likely to launch for another month, according to Rajesh Jha, Corporate Vice President, Microsoft Office Live. The beta and the final versions of the service (at least for saving/accessing up to 1,000 documents) will be free, said Jha.

Office Live Workspace is not a hosted version of Microsoft Office. Instead, it is — like the rest of the Office Live family — an extension to the client-based version of desktop productivity software. Interestingly, Office Live Workspace isn’t just an extension to Microsoft Office 2007, but also third-party-developed office programs like OpenOffice, StarOffice and more, as well as Office XP, according to Jha.

More at  ZDNet…