EBSCO Industries, Inc. (EBSCO) has executed definitive agreements to acquire the U.S. operations of RoweCom, Inc. (RoweCom) which includes the operations of Dawson, Inc., Dawson Information Quest, Inc., The Faxon Company, Inc., Turner Subscription Agency, Inc., McGregor Subscription Service, Inc., and Corporate Subscription Services, Inc. The acquisition is contingent on a number of variables, including: U. S. bankruptcy court approval, successful closure by EBSCO of its acquisition of RoweCom's European operations, and support of publishers representing at least 50% of the aggregate monetary amount paid to RoweCom by customers, which was not subsequently forwarded on to publishers on behalf of these customers. U.S bankruptcy court approval is expected by early April. EBSCO expects to receive French regulatory approval and close the RoweCom Europe acquisition in two to three weeks. The publisher support contingency could be satisfied even sooner. Following is a brief status of actions that have been taken and are underway to secure support of publishers.

Between February 20th and 24th, letters were sent to all of the publishers with whom RoweCom has a business relationship, as well as U.S. customers of RoweCom. Publishers were asked to agree to fulfill subscriptions to their publications for which a RoweCom customer paid RoweCom, but for which the publisher did not receive payment. In exchange for agreeing to send issues, publishers are to receive the equivalent of the RoweCom customer's claim on the bankrupt RoweCom estate to the extent of the value of the subscriptions they have agreed to fulfill. Customers who had paid RoweCom for journal orders but payment was never forwarded to publishers, were asked to agree to participate by assigning their bankruptcy claims to publishers agreeing to participate. RoweCom customers would only be agreeing to exchange their claims to the extent that publishers agree to fulfill issues.

In order for a customer to take advantage of the offer or a publisher to participate, they must sign the 'RoweCom Prepaid Order Agreement' letter and return the signed letter to the following address: RoweCom Prepaid Order Return / c/o Kurtzman Carson Consultants LLC / 5301 Beethoven Street, Suite 102 / Los Angeles, CA 90066. The letters have a requested return date of March 15, 2003. The communication process is being managed by Kurtzman Carson Consultants, LLC. (Kurtzman). As publishers sign on to participate, Kurtzman will be posting the names of the participating publishers to their Web site. Once publishers and customers have responded, the responses will be cross-matched to determine the exact publications publishers have agreed to deliver to each participating customer. These details will be supplied to participating customers. Likewise, publishers will be supplied details of the journal orders they have agreed to fulfill and the associated customers to receive these journals. Most continuing RoweCom clients can expect to be supported by existing RoweCom customer service staff with regard to their orders.

(http://www.ebscoind.com), (http://www.faxon.com), (http://www.kccllc.net/rowecom)

Venetica, a provider of content integration software, has secured $7.0 million in Series A funding from Charles River Ventures and General Catalyst Partners. The company, which is already profitable, will use the investment in the areas of sales, marketing, and engineering. Venetica's flagship product, VeniceBridge, is designed to provide a consistent, bi-directional point of access to content regardless of how or where it is stored. VeniceBridge also makes distributed content appear as if it lives in one virtual repository created for a specific purpose or business context.

(http://www.crv.com), (http://www.generalcatalyst.com), (http://www.venetica.com)

Fast Search & Transfer (FAST), a developer of search and real-time alert technologies, has unveiled a cleaner and more streamlined look to its search site, AlltheWeb.com. In addition to offering AlltheWeb users a new interface on the site, banner ads have been removed, and a new URL investigator tool has been added to the site. The URL investigator tool is designed to enable webmasters and end users to obtain detailed information about a particular Web site or a Web page by entering its URL into the search box. For example, when "www.fastsearch.com" is entered, the resulting page will contain information such as a site description, the language it is written in, the size of the document located at the specified URL, the list of subdomains for the site, some statistics about the URL, and the list of topics in which the site is found. AlltheWeb delivers search results from over 2.1 billion Web pages and integrates them with breaking news results from thousands of news sources and hundreds of millions of image, video, audio, and software files. Other features of AlltheWeb include advanced linguistics, categorization techniques, and support for over 49 languages.

(http://www.alltheweb.com), (http://www.fastsearch.com)

The CMO Council, a global affinity network of authority leaders in technology marketing, seeks input and perspective regarding alternative online payment options.  The "More Gain, Less Pain" Payment Poll sponsored by PaymentOne, EContent and Javelin Strategies & Research will address strategic online payment and billing options for ISP's and Content Providers. The CMO Council is seeking industry professionals to participate in this nationwide news making poll. Participants are asked to rate the state of their existing payment processing infrastructure and the effectiveness of customer revenue optimization. The "More Gain, Less Pain" Payment Poll also identifies strategies to attract and retain online customers and what improvements companies would like to see in their billing, settlement and collections process. Participants will receive a  free copy of the findings of this online payment survey. All individual responses are private and will be used only at an aggregated level.

(http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.asp?u=85071166919)

Mosaic Sales Solutions, specializing in field marketing solutions, has chosen Centra, a provider of application software and services for real-time enterprise collaboration (RTEC), in an effort to improve service programs, field support, and Web communication for its brand partners. Mosaic replaced teleconferencing with Centra's voice-over-IP enabled Web conferencing application for use as a training and communication solution for the company. Brand partners now use Centra to communicate online with their network of partners and with the Mosaic field teams who represent their products. CentraOne brings together voice, video, data, and graphics in interfaces for Web conferencing, meetings, and virtual classrooms that can be deployed onsite or accessed through a secure ASP. Centra integrates with existing infrastructure to help organizations align enterprise IT strategies with business processes and Centra's solutions are available in 13 language editions and in 29 countries worldwide.

(http://www.centra.com), (http://www.mosaic.com)

Fastclick, an advertising network and online advertising service, has chosen Mirror Image Internet's instaContent Delivery service in an effort to increase the speed and enhance the management of online advertising campaigns for its AdServer application. Fastclick extends its advertising services via the Internet with the AdServer product, a Web-based application designed to enable advertisers and publishers to serve, manage, and optimize their online ad campaigns. Fastclick implemented Mirror Image's instaContent service to deliver rich site content at the fastest rates possible to its AdServer customers. By offloading origin servers and scaling the capacity of Fastclick's existing infrastructure to better meet fluctuations in demand, the Mirror Image solution is intended to enable AdServer customers to bypass Internet congestion to customize and track ad campaign content in real time.

(http://www.adserver.com), (http://www.fastclick.com), (http://www.mirror-image.com)

Two Internet retailers, envi.con KG of Berlin and GiantChair, have announced that they will offer German and French language editions of Palm Reader eBooks, Palm Digital Media, Inc. The eBooks include titles from publishers such as Bertelsmann, the parent company of Random House; and Hachette, parent company of Virgin Megastore. Palm Digital Media is a publisher and distributor of eBooks for handheld and desktop computers. envi.con KG, a retailer of software for the Palm OS in Germany, has launched its online bookstore with more than 200 titles from Bertelsmann/Random House, including titles from German authors such Peter Scholl-Latour, Richard von Weizsacker, and Felix Huby. Also available are translations of titles from U.S. authors such as Nora Roberts, Sidney Sheldon, and Minette Walters; and classic literature from authors that include Franz Kafka, Edgar Allen Poe, and Heinrich von Kleist. GiantChair, Inc., a provider of book catalog management tools and eBook distribution services to publishers in the U.S. and Europe, has just launched PalmLivres.com, a site dedicated to offering French language Palm Reader eBooks from French publishers. Current and forthcoming titles include selections from Hachette, computer and management book publisher Eyrolles, and Gerald de Villiers' "SAS" collection of action/adventure thrillers. In addition to selling eBook titles from book publishers, PalmLivres.com also is offering collections of articles and editorials from Le Monde, the French daily newspaper.

(http://ebooks.pdassi.de), (http://www.palmdigitalmedia.com), (http://www.palmsource.com)

Singingfish, Inc., a Thomson service, and audio and video search engine, has announced the availability of a Paid Inclusion program for advertisers' audio and video content. The program will be available through Internet marketing and consulting firm Marketleap of San Francisco, California. Singingfish research shows that over 20% of all Web search queries are best satisfied with audio and/or video results. In an effort to satisfy these needs, Singingfish indexes tens of millions of streaming media files in categories that include music, sports, news, TV, radio and business. Paid inclusion allows an advertiser to pay for streaming media files they select to be indexed by the Singingfish search engine. While this does not guarantee placement, it does allow their content to appear in the search engine's results for relevant queries. Singingfish Paid Inclusion gives advertisers two links: the stream itself and an associated  "landing page." The benefit of Paid Inclusion is that the advertiser has total control over the landing page and can revise them as needed.

(http://www.marketleap.com), (http://www.singingfish.com), (http://www.singingfish.com/paid-inclusion)

QL2 Software (formerly Caesius Software) has released WebQL version 2 for information extraction from the Web and other unstructured data sources. Its flagship product, WebQL, is designed for corporations in the life sciences, travel, high tech, telecommunications, and energy industries for business intelligence, competitive intelligence, knowledge management, and business activity monitoring applications.  WebQL version 2 offers many new features, including: notation based on ANSI standard SQL including support for joins, grouping, sorting, and set operations; fully-featured IDE includes syntax highlighting editor, graphical data flow monitor, and real-time delivery of results; and standalone or server deployments for Windows, Linux, and Unix. The new version also offers integrated extraction and navigation techniques to simplify the development and maintenance of applications; support technologies for parsing and extracting unstructured, semi-structured, and structured data; input and output of all common file formats--HTML, XML, PDF, DOC, CSV, TAB, images, databases, proprietary email formats, etc.; and integration options such as Web services, Web browser, command line, GUI, ActiveX, and APIs for various languages. WebQL version 2 is available for immediate shipment from QL2 Software and authorized distributors and resellers. Prices range from $7,900 per year for a single processor license to $100,000 per year for an unlimited usage single location license. Low cost licenses are available to educational institutions and charitable organizations. No charge evaluation licenses are available to software developers.

(http://www.ql2.com)

MSNBC.com and La Opinion Digital, the online division of the La Opinion Spanish-language newspaper, have entered into a content sharing agreement that incorporates Spanish language local news content into the MSNBC.com affiliate network of Web sites. The announcement was made by Uli Haller, MSNBC.com VP, business operations and director of the local affiliate program and Mary Zerafa, director of La Opinion Digital. The agreement between La Opinion Digital and MSNBC.com is the latest in a series of agreements to provide more in-depth local news coverage on MSNBC.com. This deal increases the reach of the MSNBC.com affiliate network of 108 local TV stations, 84 local newspapers, 5 local cable news operations and 2 local radio stations which provide local coverage throughout the U.S. It is also intended to provide greater informational choices for Hispanics as well as MSNBC users.    

(http://www.laopinion.com), (http://www.local.msnbc.com), (http://www.msnbc.com)

Ingeniux Corporation, a provider of Web content management and publishing systems, has announced the implementation of Ingeniux CMS for the new J2EE 1.3 based LIFELines Services Network (LSN), a distributed Web-based platform currently being used for www.lifelines2000.org and soon to be used for www.lifelines.navy.mil and www.lifelines.usmc.mil. LSN is the official source of Quality of Life (QOL) information and services for the Department of the Navy, serving reserve and active duty Marines, sailors, veterans, and family members around the world. The LSN Platform is a platform for deployment of Web-based content and consists of an Oracle 9iAS Portal and Ingeniux CMS. The content management solution created by the LIFELines group combines an Ingeniux CMS front end, an Oracle 9iR2 database content repository and middle-tier 9iAS (Application Server), a taxonomy system accessed directly through Ingeniux CMS, and an imbedded Ingeniux client within the Oracle 9iAS portal. Content is cross-indexed for publication to multiple areas of the LSN platform. As a result, LIFELines expects to increase the frequency, quality, and quantity of information published to the site.

(http://www.ingeniux.com), (http://www.lifelines2000.org), (http://www.lifelines.navy.mil), (http://www.lifelines.usmc.mil)

In an effort to extend the reach of its hosted content management system, CrownPeak Technology has unveiled AdvantageMail, an email campaign solution designed to provide customers with interface components for rich media email creation, publishing, and management, all incorporated into CrownPeak's Advantage CMS. The AdvantageMail system draws on a partnership with EmailLabs, a provider of email marketing technology solutions. CrownPeak's AdvantageMail system enables customers to integrate Web site workflow with both email and site content. Advantage CMS customers can create, design, and publish an email to their subscription database, or a segment thereof. Simultaneously, the system can update the site, create a customized landing page, or automatically create an updated archive of the newsletter listing. The synthesis of the two companies' respective technologies is intended to give CrownPeak customers the ability to manage their email campaigns from the Advantage CMS interface. Users can run their rich-media email through workflow like any other document. When ready to publish, the system feeds the HTML, text, and versions into an EmailLabs system for distribution and tracking. The AdvantageMail system produces real-time reports on email publishing, auditing and other workflow related indicators.  Through the partnership with EmailLabs, users can now also generate reports on user activity, bounces, unsubscribes, and reply handling. For those enterprises interested in commercial email campaigns, AdvantageMail also provides slotting interfaces. Commercial campaigns can generate reports based on demographics so that customers can obtain data on which portions of their email lists have been fulfilled and how often.

(http://www.crownpeak.com), (http://www.emaillabs.com)

Kamoon Inc., a software provider of management solutions, has announced the acquisition of privately-held software company ActionBase, a provider of project and process execution management software. The ActionBase product will be incorporated into the Kamoon Connect suite of expertise management solutions, under the product name of Connect Actions. Connect Actions will allow organizations to manage execution across organizational boundaries through "virtual communities" formed around projects, meetings, or other business activity. The acquisition expands the Kamoon Connect solution by enabling knowledge workers to track results, tasks, decisions, and action items that flow from the knowledge sharing process. After the acquisition, Kamoon Connect now has the capabilities to: identify "experts" based on what people have actually done as well as what they have written; support ad-hoc teams as well as formal teams and communities; support knowledge exchange in the context of knowledge worker processes; and create re-usable knowledge about processes as well as questions and answers.

(http://www.kamoon.com)

iMarkup Solutions Inc., a provider of Web-based collaboration and workflow solutions for digital content and document management, has announced the general availability of iMarkup Document Review Server (DRS) 3.0. DRS is designed to address the needs of business users collaborating on documents and provide a way to distribute, collaborate on, annotate, and review documents throughout all stages of the document review process. Version 3.0 includes a new workflow engine that enables users to define both structured and ad hoc workflows, designate privileges for users within the review and approval process, and the ability to customize workflow to meet company-specific requirements. A Web-based workflow builder, designed for business rather than technical users, enables document actions to be prioritized with due dates for an entire workflow, including tasks within that workflow, providing notification when tasks have been completed. The Document Review Server can also be self-administered, allowing users to create workgroups, invite users into their workgroups, and set permissions. Version 3.0 features four major enhancements: workflow administration and reporting facilities--support both parallel and serial reviews; support for user groups--allows users to be grouped according to organizational structure; review groups--enable business users to manage review environments; and a graphic representation of workflow--indicates workflow progress, tracks the time that a document is in review, and offers a workflow report. As with previous versions, during workflow, versioning, and review cycles, shared documents are stored on the Document Review Server and accessible to all appropriate users. Markups, notes, and annotations made by the reviewers can be displayed either by one reviewer at a time, a subset of reviewers, or by all simultaneously. The iMarkup Document Review Server is available on Windows NT/2000/XP running IIS. Introductory pricing for the product starts at $10,500 for ten users.

(http://www.imarkup.com)

Recommind, Inc. has announced the availability of MindServer 2.1, its unstructured data management (UDM) solution for information retrieval and categorization. Available immediately, MindServer 2.1 features several new tools, as well as technology enhancements designed to boost its accuracy and relevance. MindServer identifies concepts that describe a document, regardless of the language or subject, enabling knowledge workers to find relevant information quickly and easily. MindServer 2.1 features text extraction, an automated approach to identifying and highlighting or extracting entities such as personal names, organizations, places, dates, and phone numbers. Additional enhancements include categorization tools that enable automated or interactive classification and taxonomy management, and a GUI-based set of administrator tools that facilitate set up and tuning.

(http://www.recommind.com)