Interwoven MediaBin helps companies to deliver a more solid customer experience by effectively managing, distributing, and publishing the thousands of customer-facing digital assets used to their promote products and brands.
MediaBin is a leader in Digital Asset Management (DAM) solution sphere. It lets marketing teams give their global sales force and business companions instant, self-service access to current, approved marketing content — including pictures, photos, logos, presentations, CAD drawings, marketing collateral, audio, video, and others.
MediaBin speeds the delivery of brand-correct, current marketing content so that internal departments and external partners can get what they need—when they need it. Marketers can speed time-to-market for marketing campaigns, product launches, and other marketing initiatives. And the more quickly sales people can get what they need, the faster they can sell and increase top-line income.
MediaBin helps organizations raise control of their brands by providing easy access to the most up-to-date, brand-approved marketing materials. Marketing and brand managers choose which content to make available to internal employees and external partners, thereby protecting and controlling the brand more carefully.
MediaBin reduces costs associated with manual processes by automating the production and distribution of marketing content. By providing constituents with self-service access, marketing personnel no longer have to spend time fulfilling content requests from the field. For example, Presentation WorkBench makes it possible to assemble custom PowerPoint® presentations in MediaBin, using brand-approved templates. This not only saves the company finances, it also frees marketing staff to work on additional marketing activities to yield further income.
2008-02-02
Digital Asset Management with MediaBin
About IBM, Web 2.0 and Microsoft. Part II
In the Carestream example, radiologists don't know their instant messaging and voice capabilities are Sametime; they just see new functionality in a familiar application.
It's a message that IBM will build on, Davis said. He said the company needs to accelerate the discussion away from the "product-centric fire-hose flow of information" and direct it to "looking at customer goals and showing [Lotus] can address them with integrated products."
Showing the breadth of its tools and integration across its software is key if Lotus wants to stand out from the pack.
The setup has begun and Lotus Connections is a prime example.
"The social software is where they can claim they are first with an enterprise comprehensive solution, and that is why they are pounding at it, " said Mark Levitt, an analyst at Framingham, Mass.-based market research company IDC. "You are seeing a lot more integration with things like Quickr, Sametime, Symphony."
Experts said the integration story is being driven in part by Microsoft's success with Sharepoint Server 2007, which is one of the foundation elements of Microsoft's collaboration and real-time communications strategy, as well as an entry point into social networking tools such as blogs and wikis.
"SharePoint Server 2007 is sweeping through the industry like no other software product that I've seen since the early heydays of Lotus Notes," wrote Burton Group Inc. analyst Mike Gotta.
"IBM is taking it on the chin right now."
He said that IBM should use its arguably superior social networking tools to switch the focus away from Sharepoint.
"IBM can use Connections to compete with Microsoft by changing the focus to social computing rather than collaboration and content," Gotta said. "IBM has to do superior and native integration between Connections and Microsoft productivity tools and integrate with SharePoint as well."
Later this year, Lotus will add replication to Connections, a feature that was always described as the crown jewel of Notes.
But Lotus's challenges are a multiheaded monster.
The introduction at Lotusphere of Foundations, appliances bundled with software to support small and midsize business, and Bluehouse, a set of services available over the Internet, shows that Lotus is playing catch-up to Microsoft and its strategy of software plus services, which includes Microsoft Small Business Server coupled with Windows Live services.
Also, the company has to find a way to make Sametime stand out. This year, it will release two new versions, including a telephony version slated to ship in the second half of 2008. However, both have a list of features and functionalities comparable to those of the other players including Cisco and Microsoft, which are quickly rising to the top of the unified communications discussion. In addition, some new partnerships with Cisco and Nortel Networks Corp. unveiled at Lotusphere are identical to those Microsoft has made.
"This has become a very competitive space," IDC's Levitt said. "And IBM is looking for places where it can claim leads."
About IBM, Web 2.0 and Microsoft. Part I
January 28, 2008 IBM's Lotus Development Corp. unit has shifted its integration, social software and unified communications story into high gear as it prepares for a Web 2.0 scuffle that likely will dwarf its past e-mail clashes against Microsoft Corp.
The Web 2.0 battle will encompass many foes beyond Microsoft, including Cisco Systems Inc., and traditional telephony vendors and online giants such as Google Inc. and Yahoo Inc. It will also produce product and vendor options that are sure to test the strategic investment skills of IT executives who told Network World in 2007 that they view collaboration technologies as "important" or "somewhat important" to their future productivity goals.
At its annual Lotusphere show, IBM hammered away at the way it will integrate its product portfolio that includes messaging, real-time communication, and new social software and rapid application-development tools.
But compared with past editions of the conference, in which Lotus seemed to be steering the course of collaboration evolution, the company now seems to be playing from behind in many areas, including messaging, Web conferencing, unified communications and software-as-a-service, while Microsoft, Cisco and others are grabbing headlines.
But IBM has its gems as well.
The company's move last year into social software with Lotus Connections and this year's expansion of the platform give it perhaps the strongest set of tools built for corporate users in comparison with those of competitors that are working with adaptations of consumer products.
In addition, the delivery with Notes 8 of the company's open-client framework built on Lotus Expeditor and Eclipse, a container for executing XML-based application components, provides client integration. This is designed for users who want to buy and run only the components they need, dictate the pace of their adoption, and retain options to fill in any gaps with homegrown software.
In addition to Notes 8, the framework is the front end for Sametime 8 and Lotus Symphony productivity applications. It will eventually front every back-end server and service so users can get functionality a la carte while maintaining a single interface.
In addition, IBM said that integrating those same servers with other clients, such as Microsoft Outlook and partner software such as Carestream Health Inc.'s imaging tools, won't lock users into the Lotus platform and will expand its range of potential sales.
Lotus last week also announced partnerships with SocialText Inc. and Atlassian Software Systems Pty. to integrate wiki technology from each vendor into Lotus Connections.
"The most beneficial part for customers is the integration," said Dwight Davis, an analyst at Ovum. "It's the fact I don't know that I am using Quickr [content management]; it's just a plug-in to my client."
2008-01-30
QuickBooks Pro for Mac Financial Management Solutions
QuickBooks Pro for Mac is a financial management solution for small businesses.
Store and organize your financial and employee data in one place with QuickBooks Pro for Mac. Save time on bookkeeping and stay on top of your finances with a single solution that lets you see the money coming in and going out of your business.
QuickBooks can help you understand how your company is doing, so you can make better business decisions. Track sales and expenses; invoices and purchase orders; inventory and sales tax from a single program. Getting set up and started is easy. The QuickBooks tutorial center offers guided interacted instruction to help you quickly learn key tasks.
With QuickBooks all your data is stored in one place, so you don't have to go through hundreds of files and papers. You can see everything at a glance: employees hours, customer contact information, outstanding and paid invoices, payment histories and future payments.
The data that is belong together is shown together, so you can find what you need when you need it. When you create an invoice - you enter a customer's contact information the first time and QuickBooks stores it and keeps track of how much they owe. When you receive a payment you can review the customer outstanding invoices and apply the payment to the right invoice. If you lock an expense to the customer, the next time you invoice them, you get remind of rebuild the expenses.
QuickBooks makes it easy to keep track the money coming in and money going out. It's great that my financial data works together. QuickBooks organizes your information, so it can be instantly accessed to make everyday accounting task easier.
2008-01-28
Extensis Portfolio 8.5.1
Extensis Portfolio 8.5.1 has been released on January 28th. The new version of Extensis Portfolio 8.5 digital asset management software family is recommended for all Portfolio, Portfolio Server, Portfolio NetPublish, and Portfolio SQL Connect users.
The updated version of this digital asset management software has implemented full compatibility for users of Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) and also the following general performance improvements for all users:
- Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) support for all components
- Additional Raw file formats added:
- Canon EOS-1Ds Mark III, EOS 40D, and PowerShot G9
- Nikon D3 and D300
- Olympus E-3
- Sony DSLR-A700
- etc.
- Enhanced metadata support and management via Adobe® Bridge.
- Support for saving and exporting Catalog Types
- Improved asset usage logging in NetPublish
- Additional enhancements to performance and stability
SCC MediaServer
SCC MediaServer is a fully integrated Text, Graphics, PDF Page, Sound, Photo, and Video storage management system, composed of an industry standard SQL relational database and incorporating free-text search technology licensed from Autonomy Corporation. Optional MediaServer modules allow to perform the following:
- management of assignments and news budgets;
- automated delivery of content to Web sites and online vendors;
- hosting of electronic Tearsheets;
- dynamic integration with Microsoft Word;
- offsite MediaServer database replication.
2008-01-03
Content DSI Digital Asset Management System
A widespread increase in the amount of electronic files that companies need to maintain has been given rise by the evolution of the Web and by the shift to digital print production. It quickly becomes challenging for companies to keep track of the following digital assets for use in publications, product catalogs, marketing collateral, Web sites, broadcasts, or other output with all of the different logos, photos, illustrations, audio clips, video clips, and other media.
Content DSI can help your company implement a digital asset management (DAM) system that enables you to organize digital files and support their use in multiple output media. digital asset management systems from Content DSI can help address critical business needs, such as:
- Providing a central repository for enterprise-wide digital assets
- Supporting multiple outputs from a single source
- Automating conversion to different formats and sizes for multiple applications
- Reducing time spent looking for existing assets
- Enforcing rights management for both internal and externally-licensed assets
Content DSI also offers a wide range of capabilities that can assist with the implementation of the system and the various business processes involved, such as:
- Data Analysis
- Data Conversion
- Data Repository Design
- Workflow Automation
- Systems Integration Services
Content DSI can also help you implement a media asset management system to help manage your digital and electronic files.
