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KMWorld Magazine has named the OpenText ECM Suite 2010 a “Trend-Setting Product of 2011” along with business process management (BPM) offerings from OpenText Metastorm and OpenText Global 360. Multiple OpenText products have been named to the KMWorld list of trend-setting products over the years, and in recognition of the company’s ongoing innovation KMWorld last year inducted OpenText into its Hall of Fame.

KMWorld’s Trend-Setting Product awards were first launched in 2003. This year, more than 800 products were assessed by KMWorld’s judging panel, which consisted of editorial colleagues, analysts, system integrators, vendors, line-of-business managers and users. All products selected demonstrate identifiable technology breakthroughs that serve the vendors’ full spectrum of constituencies, especially their customers.

“We’re consistently impressed by the level of innovation and product excellence OpenText has demonstrated year after year,” said KMWorld Editor-in-chief Hugh McKellar. “That said, we take a fresh look at every product in compiling this list, and once again OpenText’s ECM and BPM offerings stood out as true trend-setters in knowledge management.”

OpenText products named to the KMWorld list included:

OpenText ECM Suite 2010 – Representing the largest innovation effort in the company’s history, the latest release of the OpenText ECM Suite is the industry’s most comprehensive, fully integrated ECM solution suite. It adds wide-ranging new functionality linked through numerous integration points covering 90 products and modules, and spanning compliance, portals, enterprise information archiving and mobility.

OpenText Metastorm – The latest OpenText Metastorm software, enhanced by extensive Social BPM capabilities, delivers a complete business transformation platform for enterprise and business architecture, business process analysis, and business process management to help companies outperform their business goals. It helps organizations close the gap between strategy and execution and includes support for requirements gathering, design, deployment and optimization of complex business processes.

OpenText Global 360 – By tapping into all the advantages of the cloud, OpenText Global 360 introduces enterprises to collaborative process discovery driven by friendly wizard-based guides based on BPM best practices and extensive research. Using Global 360, organizations can design Microsoft Visio® process models and simulations, develop a reusable knowledge base, inform stakeholders of the latest discovery efforts, and track projects milestones and deadlines.

“If there’s one thing you can count on in the knowledge management market it is rapid change, and to stay relevant as a vendor continual innovation is a must,” said Lubor Ptacek, Vice President, Strategic Marketing and General Manager for the Microsoft Solutions Group at OpenText. “Therefore, it is important for us to always be pushing forward with new product capabilities and driving innovation that helps our customers, and this award reflects that commitment.”

Destiny Media Technologies Inc. is pleased to announce that a provisional patent application was filed on August 17th for a new invention that renders video to web browsers on all computers and devices, including mobile, without requiring advance support or permission from that device or manufacturer.

Because there is no standard format for online video, content owners currently have to provide a separate version of their media file to support each device and operating system.  This transcoding process is labor intensive and expensive and requires multiple copies of the exact same content to be stored redundantly in different formats.  Compression artifacts are cumulative, so transcoding causes a progressive loss of quality with each successive generation, known as digital generation loss. Destiny’s invention provides a cacheable, cross platform standard compatible with all web servers and browsers, saving up to 90% on bandwidth costs, while ensuring a nearly 100% playback rate without any effort from the consumer.

Comments company CEO, Steve Vestergaard, “The summer of 2011 has seen a flurry of activity surrounding the so called “smartphone patent wars” being waged in the US and elsewhere.  Some of the largest technology companies in the world have been buying up patent portfolios and stepping up their efforts to enforce their IP rights against their competitors, so we’re very pleased to file an application for an invention in the space which we believe will be very valuable commercially.

Online video for mobile is growing rapidly, but because of a lack of standards, it’s costly for publishers to create content that works cross platform.  Either customers don’t have the right CODEC or plug-in player installed or their device doesn’t provide support for that format at all.  The proposed HTML 5 standard, which will eliminate the need for maintaining and updating plug-ins, will make the process somewhat easier for consumers, but video producers will still be required to create multiple copies of the same video in proprietary formats to support various browsers.”

Popular video players such as Windows Media Player, Quicktime and Flash are implemented in different versions for each operating system and CPU and in the case of mobile, can require that they are explicitly supported ahead of time by the device.  In a heartfelt letter posted to Apple’s website in April 2010, Steve Jobs, the founder of Apple, explained why he will not allow the most popular video format, Flash, on iPhones, iPods and iPads.  Flash also doesn’t play on Windows Phone 7 and Android 2.1 or less devices.

Destiny’s invention will enable publishers to create a single high quality video which will confidently play on any device and operating system that can access a web page.  A commercial version of Destiny’s solution is expected to be released by the end of the year.  Destiny’s current streaming video solutions, branded as Clipstream®, require Java to be included as part of the browser, so although they are cross platform, devices which don’t support Java, such as the iPhone and iPad do not support them.  This new solution will work on all operating systems and devices.

Florida-based security and identity management solutions provider AuthenTec and Toronto’s QuickPlay Media Inc.,  have announced a partnership that will see QuickPlay using AuthenTec’s DRM Fusion™ Server to integrate QuickPlay’s OpenVideo™ platform with Microsoft PlayReady®. The integrated offering will enable content owners and mobile operators to securely stream video on demand (VOD) content directly to media tablet devices while ensuring compliance with entertainment industry DRM standards.

“We are excited to add AuthenTec to our growing ecosystem of technology partners,” said Wayne Purboo, CEO of QuickPlay Media. “By working with AuthenTec as one of our DRM partners, QuickPlay is able to provide customers with a high quality VOD streaming service for tablets that cost effectively meets the stringent security standards of leading content providers.”

“Our DRM solutions allow QuickPlay to offer content providers direct yet secure access to a growing number of tablet users with a cost-effective service that supports current and future multimedia standards,” said Dr. Simon Blake-Wilson, Vice President of AuthenTec Embedded Security Solutions. “We are pleased to further expand our leadership in DRM and content protection through this unique partnership with a market innovator and leader like QuickPlay.”

AuthenTec’s DRM Fusion Server and Agent support Microsoft PlayReady, Windows Media DRM, Open Mobile Alliance (OMA) and DECE UltraViolet standards. The Agent is available as a downloadable application for both Android and Apple iOS-based smartphones and tablets. As an embedded solution, it is available on Android and many other embedded platforms for mobile phones, set-top boxes and other OEMs. AuthenTec also offers an end-to-end media security solution through its DRM Fusion Server for carriers and network service providers. AuthenTec’s DRM Fusion Server handles the entire DRM process from content protection, rights creation, rights and condition management to license generation and delivery.

AuthenTec’s complete security offering includes fingerprint sensors, identity management software, hardware IP, and encryption software for mobile and networking applications. AuthenTec’s solutions ensure security and user identity from the client to the cloud, and are deployed by the world’s leading companies including Alcatel-Lucent, Cisco, Fujitsu, HBO, HP, IBM, Motorola, Orange, Samsung, Siemens, and Texas Instruments among many others.

Just one month after Payfirma’s iPhone Virtual Point of Sale App was released in Canada, the Company is now proud to announce the release of its Blackberry Mobile Payment App for Canadian merchants to accept credit card on their Blackberry devices instantly.

“Payfirma’s mission is to bring efficient payment technologies to all Canadian businesses, large and small,” noted Michael Gokturk, CEO and founder of Payfirma, “now consumers and merchants can accept payment for goods and services on their Blackberries anywhere with a cellular or WIFI signal – thereby increasing their sales efficiencies and improving the overall checkout experience.”

Payfirma’s payment apps let any business or consumer accept all major credit cards securely on Blackberry & iPhone. Users can swipe or manually input a credit card, authorize the transaction within 5 seconds and email a receipt of the transaction directly from the app to the customers. All transaction data is encrypted and fully secure through Payfirma’s PCI compliant facilities.

Merchants and developers can also integrate directly to Payfirma’s mobile settlement and authorization gateway, which enable any mobile application to add a hosted, secure mobile checkout solution.

“The next release of our mobile apps will enable users to link their settled funds from the phone directly to an NFC (near-field communication) chip within the phone itself,” continues Gokturk, “enabling the smartphone to be used as an e-wallet and using it to pay for goods and services wherever NFC devices are enabled.”

The app is offered for free and users must have a valid Canadian merchant account to process live transactions. Opening a merchant account with Payfirma is easy, and can be opened directly within the app itself, or on the Company’s website.

For the first time ever anyone with a computer, web camera and projector can create an interactive environment. Po-motion allows advertisers, teachers & event planners a cheap, simple way to engage their audience. Transform a blank floor or wall into an interactive scene that changes when people walk past or over it.

“We created Po-motion with the desire to make interactive projections affordable and easy to set up for everyone” said PO-MO Inc. Artistic Director Meghan Athavale. “It’s been really encouraging to see how our users have embraced the software. Most of the new features we add to the software are ideas submitted through our feedback form.”

Once users have downloaded the free software from the Po-motion site, they can use one of the eight scenes that come bundled with the software to bring their floor or wall to life. Additional content can be purchased online, with themes ranging from seasonal holidays to special events like weddings.

“We’re always adding new scenes” said Curtis Wachs, programmer and co-creator of Po-motion. “Our users often request custom content and we do our best to deliver it. Some ideas are a one time use while others are made available to the whole community.”

In September 2011, Po-motion will be launching the first of a series of online tools to allow users to customize and build their own interactive floor and wall scenes.

A new iPhone application developed by Gaptel Innovative Solutions called Stoon Ride allows Saskatoon transit bus riders to view all bus routes, stop locations and times for the city of Saskatoon. In order to strive to give users up to date bus route and stop information, this app will from time to time utilize user’s data plan to obtain such info as needed. Although Stoon Ride is not an official product of Saskatoon Transit, the data was obtained from the public domain of the Saskatoon Transit site.

Features of the Stoon Ride iPhone application include:

• view all buses and their schedules
• search by stop number
• search stops by street name
• add your stops and bus routes to favorites
• read up to date information from the city of Saskatoon on City Tweet
• view downtown route map
• instantly report bugs and provide feedback about the app
• information on how to contact Saskatoon transit
• automated data refresh and the ability to manually refresh data for greater accuracy

“Your bus riding experience will never be the same again,” said Soji Oyenuga, CEO of Gaptel Innovative Solutions Inc. Available in the iPhone App Store, Stoon Ride iPhone application gives transit riders the ability to know what bus, which stop and when (time); in the palm of their hands. Similar app for android and blackberry smart phone will be launched soon.

Scribendi.com has launched an editing and proofreading WordPress Plugin that allows blog posts to be seamlessly edited before users hit the publish button. Blog writers can simply download the plugin and submit their documents to be edited by Scribendi.com’s professional editors in as little as four hours.

“We’re thrilled to be able to launch this plugin, as we’ve always wanted to be able to reach out to bloggers and provide a fast, easy way for them to get their blog posts revised,” said Chandra Clarke, President of Scribendi.com. “The plugin, and the dedicated blog editing and proofreading service, provide a way to do that.”

Chatham, Ontario Scribendi.com has tightly integrated their system into the WordPress dashboard, investing weeks of development and testing into making their services easy to access without leaving the user’s site. The WordPress plugin provides a firm quote in seconds, securely places an order, and even automatically picks up the completed order. Then it shows all of the suggested corrections right inside the user’s WordPress revision history, providing the full benefit of professional editorial support while retaining complete creative control.

“As blog writing and self-publishing continues to grow in popularity, we have to be innovative and create new ways for clients to easily access our services,” said Clarke. “The document revision industry has changed, and we are leaders in revolutionizing this industry.”

Scribendi.com understands that blogs represent the writer, or the company that endorses it, and any errors can detract from the content and damage credibility. Their editing WordPress Plugin eliminates errors and ensures that all blog posts receive attention for the right reasons—not for grammatical or spelling errors that have gone viral.

This editing plugin allows blog writers to have their posts professionally edited on the fly. Scribendi.com has changed the way writers connect to editors, making editing more accessible to writers using the Internet. The WordPress Plugin connects directly to Scribendi.com’s blog editing services.

Fresh off the heels of a successful launch of ePhone for the BlackBerry Playbook™, Comwave introduces ePhone as a web-based Adobe® Flash® video phone. Users can access their ePhone from any computer in the world with an internet connection. “ePhone is an incredible value that every laptop should have,” says Yuval Barzakay, President. “In the boardroom or in the dorm room, ePhone turns your laptop into a regular phone.”

Customers receive their own phone number so even people from landlines and mobile phones can call ePhone users. Comwave ePhone also includes free local and long distance calls to almost 60 countries for only $20 per year. All you need is a PC or Apple® Mac computer with an internet connection to log into ePhone to make and receive calls and no software is required to install. Additionally, Customers can make unlimited Video Calls to other ePhone users absolutely free.

Customers can sign up for a 3-Day Risk Free trial and enjoy 100 minutes of free calling to almost 60 countries and unlimited talk between other ePhone users. Once the free trial has expired, Customers will have the option to continue for only $20 per year.

ePhone includes:

• Your own telephone number
• Unlimited Free Incoming calls from anywhere in the world including landlines and mobile phones
• Unlimited ePhone-2-ePhone voice or video calling
• 250 Free Minutes per month to call almost 60 countries. Calls that exceed the 250 free minutes will be charged at low rates guaranteed lower than Skype™
• No monthly bills or fees, just a one-time annual payment

Research In Motion has officially announced BBM™ Music, a new BBM (BlackBerry® Messenger) service for socially connected music fans. BBM Music is an easy-to-use cloud-based service that enables social and viral music discovery by allowing users to build an evolving, community-based music library that is shared amongst their BBM Music friends. The size of the music library continues to grow as new friends join the community and each user can select music from a catalog with millions of songs from leading music companies – Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment, Warner Music Group and EMI.

“More than 45 million customers already love the social communication benefits delivered through BBM and we are thrilled to be extending the experience into a uniquely social and interactive music service,” said Mike Lazaridis, President and Co-CEO at Research In Motion. “We have partnered with leading music companies to provide a ‘full track’ music sharing and discovery experience that will provide users with quality music on demand and allow them to connect with friends on a whole new level.”

Key features of BBM Music include:

• Music made social – BBM Music is a cloud-based, social music service that allows you to share and discover music with your friends, creating a continually evolving music library:
  • Build a personal music profile with 50 of your favorite songs. You can refresh your profile by swapping out up to 25 songs each month.
  • Invite your BBM friends to subscribe to BBM Music and to join your BBM Music Community.
  • With each friend that is added to BBM Music, you grow your music collection since the songs from the profile of each BBM Music friend are available to you at any time.
  • Up to 50 tracks from your personal profile are shared with your BBM Music Community, and each member of your community shares up to 50 songs from their profile with you.
  • Enjoy a truly social community-based music experience – the more friends who join your community, the more songs you can listen to.
  • Easily discover music that your BBM Music friends are listening to, and comment on your friends’ songs and playlists.
  • You can create multiple playlists from music in your profile as well as all of your friends’ profiles, and with one click you can shuffle the entire collection of music from your BBM Music Community. You can even see which friend contributed each song while it plays.
  • Within your BBM Music app, you also see a visual timeline that shows the recent updates of all users within your community. It gives you a chronological view of community updates, including who added new friends, which songs were added or removed, which playlists were created and what comments were made by your BBM Music friends.
• Listen to Full Tracks – BBM Music subscribers can listen to full tracks from their friends’ profiles – not just previews.
• Offline Listening – Music can be saved to smartphones for offline listening, allowing users to access songs even when they don’t have wireless coverage.
• Topping the Charts – Keep track of how many friends are listening to your tracks.

Omnifone, a premier cloud music service provider, is providing RIM with a back-end solution for the BBM Music service that provides content management, music hosting and reporting functions based on Omnifone’s award winning technology. As part of RIM’s proprietary service, Omnifone’s back-end solution helps facilitate the delivery of a full music catalog to BBM Music users and comprehensive compensation reporting for copyright holders.

“A major component of online music continues to be about community, and the ability to discover new artists and music through word of mouth,” stated Rob Wells, President of Global Digital Business for Universal Music Group. “BBM Music dynamically and elegantly integrates the excitement of this social music discovery process with a high quality music service, enabling tens of millions of BlackBerry users to experience new music and to share those experiences with their friends virtually anywhere and at anytime.”

“We are pleased to be partnering with Research In Motion on their BBM Music service. RIM and its large base of BlackBerry Messenger users represent an exciting platform for expanding the reach of commercial digital music around the world,” stated Thomas Hesse, President, Global Digital Business, U.S. Sales and Corporate Strategy, Sony Music Entertainment. “The combination of a premium music solution and instant messaging will enable viral music discovery and emphasize the social power of digital music. It also offers an effective way of serving younger consumers by integrating music into the fabric of an important hub of their digital activity.”

“A dynamic social music experience is a powerful way for our artists to connect with fans and also for fans to discover music by interacting with each other,” said Michael Nash, Executive Vice President, Digital Strategy & Business Development, Warner Music Group. “Addressing more than 45 million BlackBerry Messenger users with a service tailor-made for its mobile community, BBM Music has the opportunity to reach a broad and engaged audience.”

“We are very excited to work with Research In Motion to bring our artists’ music to BBM’s huge and very loyal user base,” said Mark Piibe, Executive Vice President of Global Business Development at EMI Music. “BBM Music’s unique social discovery experience offers fans a great new way to discover music, share their favorite tracks with their friends and build a stronger connection with the artists they love.”

“The widespread adoption of mobile devices provides the perfect foundation for consuming and sharing music. Brands that want to deliver a unique interactive experience must create services that are mobile, social, and contextual,” said Maribel Lopez Principal at Lopez Research and Constellation Research Group.

A closed beta trial of the BBM Music service is starting today in Canada, the United States and the UK. The BBM Music service is expected to be commercially available to customers later this year for a monthly subscription of $4.99 USD in Australia, Canada, Columbia, France, Germany, Indonesia, Italy, Malaysia, Mexico, Netherlands, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Spain, Thailand, Turkey, UAE, the United Kingdom and the United States. Pricing may vary by country and will be announced upon availability in each country. Data charges may apply if music is downloaded over wireless networks in conjunction with limited data plans. Check with your network operator for the terms of your data plan.

Notesolution.com, an online note sharing platform for post-secondary students is about to launch its free service to over 20 universities across Canada. Notesolution is a Toronto based start-up, originally exclusive to the University of Toronto, but now with over 10,000 active users sharing 12,000 study documents.

“From Facebook to Foursquare, people are looking to their peers for the best source of information. Notesolution is the next natural progression for this concept of social learning” says Jack Tai, CEO and co-founder of Notesolution. Notesolution believes the future of education should revolve around the concept of peer-to-peer learning and will be releasing Notesolution 2.0 later this week.

Notesolution.com currently holds the largest collection of university notes in Canada. Students share their own study guides, lecture and textbook notes to earn credits which they use towards downloading notes from their peers. Students earn credits every time their notes are downloaded and can also exchange the credits for gift cards through Notesolution’s reward program. The Notesolution reward program encourages students to take quality notes.

“We believe that experience is the best teacher, so why not learn from the experiences of fellow students? Notesolution is a gateway for students to exchange study materials with each other, connecting and enhancing their university life.”  said Kevin Wu, COO and co-founder of Notesolution.