It is not a surprise news when a lot of people knowing that Google has acquired Tonic Systems, as reported by most of the blogs and online news. Tonic Systems, also known as Java PowerPoint Specialists, a company operated since 2004 and based in San Francisco and Melbourne, Australia. Most industry pundits believed this acquisition will further complement Google Docs & Spreadsheets family towards a complete Google online office suite that might roll out in the next few months. Tonic Systems’ product line consist of four (4) main products, i.e. TonicPoint Builder that used Java library to programmatically read, create and manipulate presentations, TonicPoint Transformer, an application that also use Java library to convert presentations into high quality images and PDF documents, TonicPoint Filter, a Java library to extract text from presentations with full contextual data, and TonicPoint Viewer, PowerPoint viewer application for Windows, Mac, and Unix operating system. Also, a product that called Jar Jar Links, utility that makes it easy to repackage Java libraries and embed them into an user’s own distribution. In matter of fact, Jar Jar Links is used to developed one of their popular product, TonicPoint Builder. All these products developed by using Java technologies and this well explained why they trademarked their company as the above mentioned slogan, “Java PowerPoint Specialists.”

As I visited Tonic Systems’ home page, almost all of its product pages are now redirect to Google’s “not found” pages other than the “Google has acquired Tonic Systems” landing page. While I still could accessed to its forums and view some of its online discussion posted by the users. The latest product released by Tonic Systems was TonicPoint Transformer 1.5.1, a month go. It seems that the major products that Tonic Systems working on prior to the above mentioned acquisition were TonicPoint Transformer and TonicPoint Builder. Furthermore, what interest me is their core product, i.e. TonicPoint Builder does not support Microsoft PowerPoint 2007.

Tungle, launched in June 2006 has released a peer-to-peer (P2P) meeting coordinator beta version at the Under the Radar Conference in San Francisco yesterday. According to Tungle, the response for this product is positive. It is their first product and it took them for more than nine months in developing this beta version. Headquartered in Quebec, Canada, they expand their offering geographically in North America and their first and primary market will be in the U.S. Tungle’s P2P meeting coordinator, claimed to the first meeting coordinator in a torrential manner, will enable an user to organize meetings with friends, colleagues, or anybody that use a different groupware and desktop time management systems. Though this P2P client is available for free to the public, Tungle had plans to added some premium features such as Advanced Tungle Synchronization and Advanced Tungle Suggest that priced at $10 each for a year.

“Tungle is powerful and unlike any other online calendar solution available to people today. Before a user sends a meeting request, our solution gives users a snapshot view of the times their friends, co-workers or business associates are free or busy. This makes it much easier to schedule meetings, and why this feature is so popular within corporate workgroup environments. Because Tungle transcends a single corporation or computer system, people can schedule meetings with friends, colleagues or co-workers no matter where they are or what time management or groupware solution they use. As we progress through the beta period, we will continue to add the features that users find effective - and that set us apart from the competition.” Said Marc Gingras, CEO at Tungle Corporation.

Tungle was founded by Marc Gingras, a former venture capitalist. He holds a BSc in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Ottawa, Masters degree in Management Sciences from the University of Waterloo and an MBA from INSEAD.

The other day I came across the newest version of Ubuntu, i.e. 5.10 has been released by Canonical Ltd, the commercial sponsor of Ubuntu. Ubuntu launched in October 2004. Its commercial sponsor, Canonical Ltd. is based in Europe, with employees throughout Europe, North America, South America and Australia. In fact, Canonical Ltd. is a private company founded by South African entrepreneur Mark Shuttleworth with the aimed to develop and promote softwares in a open-source environment. If you’re interested in this version 5.10, you can download it by clicking here. For some Ubuntu users that prefer to buy the DVD instead of waiting few hours in download the version 5.10, they simply can visit Amazon to buy the Ubuntu 6.10 (PC Edition) at $9.99 or Kubuntu 6.10 (PC Edition) at the same price as well. To avoid confusion, Kubuntu is another project undertook by Canonical Ltd, but the operating system is based on K Desktop Environment (KDE).

Until today, Ubuntu has developed several versions since its first inception. It has grew from a non-support model to the supported version as you can see on the download page. Ubuntu has developed the Long-Term Support (LTS) software model since version 6.06, which provides security updates for 5 years on the server and 3 years on the desktop edition after its officially release in the market. The series of Ubuntu products were favorably received by the users. Most recently, they also made a big leap forward by launching the global partner program in an attempt in gaining a foothold in the global software market. There are several partnerships such as software partners, hardware partners, system builder/OEM partners, and etc. in the program with the purpose to establish a sound network of partners for Ubuntu products throughout the world. This is a strategic move by Ubuntu in achieving the competitive advantage of being scalability and reliability.

I recently did a post, entitled “Lotus Notes 8 Coming in 2007,” and now IBM had announced the public beta for its Lotus Notes and Domino 8. According to IBM, there have been more than 12,000 downloads of this Lotus Notes and Domino 8 for a variety of platforms following the released announcement. It seems that the management of IBM have optimistic about the receptive of the corporate world towards this product. “Lotus Notes and Domino 8 delivers a high-performance work environment that natively links to other Lotus software components such as social software, collaborative content management, and unified communications and collaboration. This version allows developers to build a new class of Web 2.0 solutions and taps into the latest technologies from IBM Research.” Said Ken Bisconti, vice president of Lotus messaging and collaboration.

You can download the Lotus Notes and Domino 8 beta version by clicking here.

However, the final version of this product that proposed by IBM for release would due in the middle of this year.

I just came across an interesting article that entitled, “iRise Offers Tryouts.” This article is discuss about an application simulation developer iRise will give the new startups a 90-day trial of its software. By using the iRise software, the new startups will getting to know what an application they want to develop might look like when accomplished even before they write a single line of code. In 1995, iRise has secured $15.8 million of funding in a round from the venture capitalists led by Morgan Stanley Venture Partners. Its core products consist of iRise Studio, Server, Reader, Manager, and Connect, as shown in a diagram (click here).

iRise has recently launched an entrepreneur program as their product strategy and the executives are optimistic about the program. “iRise’s software was easy enough to use that the other founders and I were able to get up and running on it in a matter of days. We rapidly developed a lifelike visualization of multi-channel retail services, enabling us to more readily provide our solution to the marketplace. Additionally, by handing our development team a clear blueprint of what to build, we shaved significant time off the development cycle. I highly recommend that other software companies use iRise in their development process.” According to a press release of iRise.

Over the years, software companies spend high amounts each year on developing new products. Many have questioned whether the development costs should be termed as expenses or an intangible assets if the products were successfully introduced and sold to the market. Some even wonder the high software development costs could deter the funding from venture capitalists or the growth of these new startups. Therefore, with the release of the software simulation, most of the new startups will benefited from it.

Baidu has launched its newest disk search, i.e. version 2.7. It is a software that works similarly to the Google, or Windows, or Yahoo! desktop search. My sense is that almost every popular search engines have their own versions of desktop search. The Baidu Disk was designed for the purpose to helps its customers to find anything on their computers. Once an user download and run the software, it will indexes the files on the users’ PC and enabled the users to search via an interface. When I observed the product development of this disk search at Baidu, their product development cycle is pretty fast at Baidu as you can see, they have just launched the version of 2.6 in the beginning of this month, and they now have released this newest version.

As stated on the Baidu Disk help page (in Mandarin), the users do not need to uninstall the old version before downloading this newest version. In other word, this version 2.7 will overwrite the previous version. In addition, Baidu has also added the three new features that will enhance the user-experience of its users. First of all, An an user will allowed to speed-search anything on his/her PC by using the special keyboard shortcuts. Secondly, Baidu Disk has created a special function that enabled an user to categorize the search results based on the file format and the time when the file is created. Lastly, if the user has installed Microsoft Office 2007 in his/her PC, this Baidu Disk will helps in searching the files or documents that carry with the docx、xlsx、pptx extensions.

My sense is that this type of desktop search or Baidu called it Baidu Disk, is not a software that should be categorized as a “must have” in the web community. However, if an user meet his/her need by using this software, I believe he/she will be very satisfied.

I’ve just came across a social networking platform Five Across has been acquired by Cisco yesterday. However, the price has not been disclosed by both parties.

“Cisco believes the network is the platform for organizations to connect with their constituents and for individuals to connect with each other,” said Dan Scheinman, senior vice president and general manager of the Cisco Media Solutions Group (CMSG). “With the acquisition of Five Across, Cisco is taking an important step towards helping its customers evolve their website experience into something more relevant and valuable to the end-user.” According to this press release of Cisco.

I wonder how Cisco going to integrate the social networking platform into their existing product lines. As the key product for Five Across is the Connect 1.8 Community Builder, a blogging solution whereas the core technology of Cisco is routers. On a personal level, I particularly interested to know how Cisco going to manage the acquisition integration projects as it has in hands.

According to the press release of Oracle, Oracle has released the new versions of its five product lines, i.e. Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12, Oracle’s PeopleSoft Enterprise Release 9.0, Siebel CRM 8.0, JD EDwards EnterpriseOne 8.12 and JD Edwards World A9.1.

Some excerpts from the press release (The product details):

- Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12: Oracle has released 18 new products and 2443 new enhancements to help global businesses think globally for better decision-making, work globally to be more competitive and manage globally to lower cost and increase performance.

- PeopleSoft Enterprise Release 9.0: It included PeopleSoft Enterprise Human Capital Management (HCM) 9.0. PeopleSoft Enterprise Release 9 contains 2 new products and 1478 enhancements. The new release of PeopleSoft Enterprise HCM delivers enterprise-wide talent management capabilities and, like the other applications in PeopleSoft Enterprise 9, leverages Oracle Fusion Middleware to give customers a comprehensive, standards-based platform to address the challenges of disparate technologies and applications.

- Siebel CRM 8: The new release of the Siebel CRM suite offers ten new products and 366 enhancements that extend Oracle’s investment in industry-specific CRM and enable companies to propel business growth through customer-driven business transformation. The new release accelerates user adoption, enhances business responsiveness and delivers increased value to the enterprise with a new task-based user interface, enterprise search capabilities, SOA-enabled CRM and embedded intelligence driving real-time insight at the moment of customer interaction.

- JD Edwards World A9.1: The first major release of JD Edwards World in ten years, this new version offers 4 new products and 1297 enhancements that provide customers with compliance support, operational excellence, technology improvements and capabilities for global operations.

- JD Edwards EnterpriseOne 8.12: Delivered in the spring of 2006, the latest release of JD Edwards EnterpriseOne delivered 5 new products, including a new Operational Sourcing and three new modules for the food and beverage industry, as well as 291 enhancements.

In the bigger picture, one of the best offer Oracle did to its customers is: The customers have the options of upgrading the respective softwares without having to re-license their Oracle application. This may be the first time ever in the software history, but in the long term, will help Oracle win the loyalty war with the customers.

However, the above products released may not the new customers that they want to buy, I always believe most of the new customers are waiting for the new release of Oracle Database.