Google has announced its acquisition of DoubleClick, which provides online ad serving and management technology to advertisers, web publishers, and ad agencies. Google will pay $3.1 billion in cash, and DoubleClick will become a wholly-owned subsidiary of Google. Closing is subject to customary closing conditions, including requirements to get all necessary consents and approvals under applicable antitrust laws. DoubleClick currently has approximately 1,200 employees and Google says it anticipates working with the DoubleClick team, post-close, to integrate the companies efficiently and in a timely manner. Google expects that DoubleClick will operate independently until its integration plan is finalized. The deal is expected to close later this year.

(www.google.com; www.doubleclick.com)

Dow Jones & Company has entered into agreements to acquire eFinancialNews Holdings Ltd., a private U.K. company, for net cash consideration of £26.1 million, subject to a working capital adjustment. Based in London, eFinancialNews is a diversified media company serving the financial services industry, primarily in the City of London and the U.K. Its flagship operations include the weekly Financial News publication and eFinancialNews.com Web site, a subscription-based service. The company also publishes Private Equity, a weekly publication focused on the European private equity sector, and offers training and events for people in investment banking, asset management, private equity and trading. Approximately 54% of 2007 revenue is estimated to come from non-print sources.

The net cash consideration represents approximately 10.1 times 2007 estimated EBITDA (including 2007 cost synergies). The acquisition is expected to have no impact on Dow Jones EPS in 2007 and be accretive by 3 cents to 5 cents in 2008. The transaction, which is subject to regulatory approvals and other customary closing conditions, is expected to close in the second quarter.

(www.dowjones.com; www.efinancialnews.com)

INTENT MediaWorks, a provider of technology for the distribution of licensed digital media content and advertising via the Internet, has announced it has closed $10 million in Series B funding, led by Greycroft Partners, SoftBank Capital, Bertelsmann Digital Media Investments (BDMI), and Allen & Co. The additional capital will be used to support product development, infrastructure build-out and marketing.

INTENT, co-founded by Les Ottolenghi and Glenn Martin, enables providers of digital entertainment to deliver licensed music, video, film, games and software via the Internet across multiple distribution channels. INTENT's digital platform makes digital music and video available to people using open P2P applications, Web sites, social networks, blogs, and IPTV.

(www.intentmediaworks.com)

Xerox Corporation has unveiled the latest version of its DocuShare enterprise content management (ECM) software. With DocuShare 6.0 and DocuShare CPX 6.0, Xerox provides two distinct ECM products on one unified technology platform: DocuShare for basic content services and DocuShare CPX for advanced content and business process management. Both products support users at varied levels, such as guest, read-only and full DocuShare or CPX, all from a single server, with the ability to upgrade users instantly to a new level without installing any additional software.

DocuShare 6.0 has been optimized to meet a wide range of customer needs, from small to medium businesses to larger enterprises. Key new features include: Improved scanning and production-level imaging capabilities, which enable customers to securely process and store the continuous, high-speed submission of content such as medical records, insurance applications or loan documents.

Additional features, previously available only in CPX, are now featured in DocuShare 6.0. They include secure, managed blogs and wikis with "What You See is What You Get" (WYSIWYG) editing capabilities; enhanced -mail support where email content from any email system can be directly sent into DocuShare; and integration with Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) and Web portal systems compliant with Java Specification Request (JSR) 168.

The entry-level U.S. list price for a complete DocuShare 6.0 system starts at $3,600 and a DocuShare CPX 6.0 system starts at $36,000.

(http://docushare.xerox.com)

The Board of Directors of Nstein Technologies has announced the appointment of Luc Filiatreault as president and chief executive officer of the company, effective April 23, 2007. Prior to joining Nstein, Filiatreault worked in the Information Technology industry for close to 20 years. In 2005, he received the prestigious "Top 40 under 40" award presented by Toronto's Globe and Mail.

Filiatreault was co-founder of the Informission Group, which grossed over $100 million in sales before being acquired by Quebecor in 2000. Shortly after Quebecor's acquisition of Informission, which was renamed Nurun, Filiatreault became President of BellZinc, a subsidiary of Bell Canada. In 2002, Filiatreault incorporated NordTech Aerospace, a publicly-traded aircraft maintenance, repair, and overhaul company in Canada that has been renamed ExelTech Aerospace. He still serves as a director for ExelTech. In June 2006,. Filiatreault returned to the Information Technology industry as president and CEO of PG Mensys Information Systems, a provider of computerized management solutions for municipalities. PG Mensys was acquired by Harris Computer Systems in March of 2007.?

Filiatreault is a director of Nurun (since 2002), ExelTech Aerospace (since 2002), and Optosecurity (since 2005), and he is the Chairman of the Board of Inerlogic. As of April 23, 2007. He will replace Mario Girard as director on the Board of Directors of Nstein, and current director Mr. Michel Lozeau will replace Mario Girard as Chairman of the Board until Nstein's Annual General Meeting scheduled for May 23, 2007.

(www.nstein.com)

Arxan Technologies Inc., a provider of security solutions designed to protect software applications, has announced a deal aimed at further strengthening the battle against piracy of digital media including films, videos, and television programs during the production and post-production process. Thomson will integrate Arxan's software anti-tamper, anti-piracy technology into Thomson‘s NexGuard, its digital rights and media management suite of tools specially tailored for the professional entertainment environment. 

The addition of Arxan technology fortifies the security of the NexGuard protection suite, which already offers encryption-based access control, watermarking, and forensic data solutions to manage and secure storage, transfer, and viewing of digital content across multiple post-production, production or content distribution facilities within a company and among producers, agencies and other adjunct personnel. Arxan safeguards software applications from unauthorized changes, reverse engineering and code-lifting. Arxan provides durable security through its patented Guard technology, which enables software applications to actively prevent, detect, and react to piracy and tampering attacks. By associating tamper resistant hardware, such as smart cards, and tamper resistant software, NexGuard offers best-of-breed content protection for entertainment professionals.

(www.arxan.com; www.thomson.net)

Day Software, a provider of global content management and content infrastructure software, has announced the availability of Communique 4.2 and Content Repository Extreme (CRX) 1.3.1, a native JCR (JSR 170) standard compliant enterprise content management solution and Java Content Repository.

These latest releases of Communique and CRX contain key enhancements that are directed toward improving usability for all users--authors, administrators, and developers--and improvements scalability and performance designed to further facilitate all tasks related to the content life cycle in a global enterprise. Specific enhancements include active clustering of author instances, SAP portal integration and synchronization with Day's connector products providing an easy start to connect to third party repositories by using JCR connectors.

Applications developed that leverage the industry standard API can run on any JSR170 compliant repository, which represents a revolutionary shift in the content management industry. Previously, companies found their content locked away in proprietary legacy repositories. This new standard, of which Day spearheaded with the support of industry leaders, is focused on the customer by allowing them to access and use their most valuable information. Communique 4.2 ships with and runs natively on Day's innovative Java Content Repository (JCR), CRX.

Key Enhancements include: Synchronization with Day's Legacy Repository Connectors; Clustering of Author Instances with CRX; the addition of a Japanese User Interface; and an Add-On: Portal Adapter for SAP Portal 6.0.

(www.day.com)

A survey by Infosecurity Europe of 291 companies found that 93% of companies believe that instant messaging (IM) and Voice over IP (VoIP) usage is moving faster than corresponding security. Further, according to interviews Infosecurity Europe conducted with a panel of 20 Chief Security Officers (CSOs) of large enterprises, IM is now prevalent in organizations with large volumes of financial transactions being carried out over IM in some organizations. Another concern is that as IM allows encrypted data traffic, it could be an undetectable source of data leakage.

The view on VoIP is that although there has been some adoption, it is not yet a widely deployed technology in corporations, although it was being used a lot by traveling executives. The story is very different in the SME area where many have rushed to take the opportunity to reduce costs. Infosecurity Europe found that there are similar security issues relating to VoIP regarding encrypted traffic and also the potential for SPIM to clog VoIP communications and cause similar problems to those caused by SPAM in email.

(www.infosec.co.uk)

News Corporation, NBC Universal and Comcast Corporation have announced a comprehensive distribution agreement in which Comcast's Comcast.net and Fancast.com will serve as key distribution sites for News Corp. and NBCU's recently announced online video venture. Under the agreement, Comcast will also provide available non-exclusive content for domestic distribution on NBCU and News Corp's site from Comcast Networks, including E!, Style, G4, Versus and Golf Channel and will become the venture's first non-equity content provider.

In addition, the companies announced the new online video venture will utilize media management and video distribution technology from thePlatform, Inc., a Comcast subsidiary and a leading provider of broadband and mobile video publishing solutions. Distribution across Comcast sites will include Comcast.net, and Fancast.com, a new entertainment site launching this summer that will enable users to view video as well as search, discover and manage both TV and movie content.

NBC Universal and News Corporation's recently-announced video site will launch in the summer with thousands of hours of full-length TV programming, clips and movies, representing premium content from more than a dozen networks and two major film studios. The new venture's content will be distributed via some of the most-popular sites on the Web, including AOL, MSN, MySpace and Yahoo. The new NBCU/News Corp. joint venture will have offices in Los Angeles and New York. Permanent management and corporate branding will be announced shortly.

(www.comcast.com; www.nbcuni.com; www.newscorp.com)

Adobe Systems Incorporated has announced the immediate availability of Adobe Creative Suite 3 Design Premium and Standard editions and Adobe Creative Suite 3 Web Premium and Standard editions. Also available for purchase are new versions of the following standalone Adobe creative applications: Adobe Photoshop CS3, Adobe Photoshop CS3 Extended, Adobe InDesign CS3, Adobe Illustrator CS3, Adobe Flash CS3 Professional, Adobe Dreamweaver CS3, Adobe Fireworks CS3, and Adobe Contribute CS3. These new Adobe CS3 applications and Adobe Creative Suite 3 editions are available as Universal applications for both PowerPC and Intel-based Macs and support both Microsoft Windows XP and Vista.

The expanded Creative Suite 3 family also includes Adobe Creative Suite 3 Production Premium, a complete integrated post-production solution for video and rich media professionals, and Adobe Creative Suite 3 Master Collection, which combines all of Adobe's new CS3 design and development applications in a single box. Both of these Creative Suite editions are expected to ship in the third quarter of 2007.

Estimated street price for the Adobe Creative Suite 3 Design Premium edition is $1,799, $1,199 for Creative Suite 3 Design Standard edition, $1,599 for Creative Suite 3 Web Premium and $999 for Adobe Creative Suite 3 Web Standard.

(www.adobe.com; www.adobe.com/go/creativesuite)

A group of scholarly societies is uniting to create more direct access to their collective content. In June, thirteen of the world's leading science and technology societies will launch scitopia.org, a free federated vertical search portal that will enable users to explore the research most cited in scholarly work and patents in a single click.

Scitopia.org will aggregate the entire electronic libraries of the leading voices in major science and technology disciplines. More than three million documents, including peer-reviewed journal content and conference proceedings, spanning 150 years of science and technology will be searched through this dedicated gateway. Founding partners include:

• American Geophysical Union (AGU)
• American Institute for Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA)
• American Institute of Physics (AIP)
• American Physical Society (APS)
• American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE)
• American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME)
• The Electrochemical Society (ECS)
• IEEE
• Institute of Physics Publishing (IOP)
• Optical Society of America (OSA)
• SPIE
• Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE)
• Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM)

Other organizations will be invited to join as the project progresses.

Visitors to scitopia.org will be presented with a simple, but function-rich interface. They will be able to search for full text articles using a fielded approach, for example, by article title or author name. Searches will be narrowed to gather very specific publisher content or broadened to scan the complete databases of all the partners. Search results will include the article's title, authors and citation. Once a piece of content is selected, the user will be directed to the publisher's digital library site to access the full text. Researchers at institutions with subscriptions to the content will be automatically authenticated and will be able to click through to it. Members of partner societies may also be able to access full text, depending upon the association's membership policies. Pay-per-view options will allow others to purchase as many articles as they choose.

As a federated search, no new subscriptions will be needed to use Scitopia.org. For example, a subscriber to a single journal published by SIAM could access the content via scitopia.org or through the SIAM web site. Additionally, because scitopia.org links directly to each society's digital library, searching will access real-time information, providing the most current research.

(www.scitopia.org)

For More information, please see this story in ITI's NewsBreaks:
http://newsbreaks.infotoday.com/nbReader.asp?ArticleId=35885

Origin Digital, Inc., a global video applications service provider, has announced a partnership with OmniBus Systems, a provider of comprehensive broadcast automation and content management solutions. Leveraging OmniBus' iTX solution, Origin Digital's new Broadcast Odaptor provides a platform that allows broadcasters to bring new channels and programming to air, minimizing costly up-front investment in additional physical playout and automation infrastructure. The on-demand platform integrates web-based controls to manage channels from any location, enabling broadcasters to quickly launch new programming or utilize the system as a back-up for business continuity.

Origin Digital's Broadcast Odapter offers a broadcast playout infrastructure for a fully-hosted broadcasting service. The service integrates OmniBus' iTX solution, which powers all the necessary operations, including digital media management and ingest, scheduling and playout, commercial insertion and branding, and transmission control across multiple platforms from a single source.

iTX is controllable from a virtual interface, providing Origin Digital's customers with web-based access to every function they need to enhance their operations with extra channels. Additionally, new broadcasters can easily launch new cable, terrestrial, IPTV or mobile TV channels.

(www.omnibus.tv; www.origindigital.com)