Tacit has released Illumio 2.1, what the company describes as an attention management productivity tool that enables employees to leverage the collective knowledge of their organization and stay up to date on the information they need to work effectively.

The new version of Illumio includes a revamped user interface, enhanced administrative functions and improved search and navigation features that make it easier for employees to quickly discover and share the information and knowledge that's critical to their jobs.

Tacit says that unique to Illumio is its ability, as a tool that sits on the user's desktop, to automatically figure out each user's interests and expertise by privately indexing a user's personal files, e-mails, contacts, Web favorites and Web history. It then uses this evolving profile to filter the incoming RSS feeds and questions, and only shows the user the content that matches his or her interests.

New features in Illumio 2.1 include:

Streamlined Q&A exchange for knowledge sharing. The latest version includes a streamlined user interface so employees can quickly ask a question and get valuable answers from others in their organization. With new cross-group functionality, questions get answered faster and more accurately while the Illumio architecture prevents anyone's personal information from ever leaving his or her computer.

Find important news and blog feeds. The software now has a built-in RSS feed search for users to easily find news and blog feeds without needing to know anything about RSS feeds or OPML. Users can get the industry, competitor and customer news that's relevant to them by subscribing to feeds based on URL or keyword.

Knowledgebase integration. The new version includes more robust reporting and administrative functionality, including the ability to export the Illumio knowledgebase to other applications. Administrators can securely import Illumio Q&A and discussions into any application that supports XML, allowing companies the ability to easily collect, organize and search on the knowledgebase created by Illumio user activity.

Share relevant content across the organization. Illumio 2.1 makes it easy to share important news, blog and wiki content with colleagues. By automatically integrating with Microsoft Outlook, Illumio recommends people to share an article with based on past e-mail interactions with them. In addition, users can quickly forward an article to anyone within the organization using Illumio's new e-mail address lookup feature.

User-created feed bundles on different topics. Using its knowledge of user's interests and expertise, Illumio 2.1 recommends additional RSS feeds to subscribe to via Illumio public groups (communities that have been created around a similar topic or affinity). By joining public Illumio groups, users can quickly subscribe to dozens of feeds on a specific topic and then participate in discussions and Q&A with other group members.

NetworkedPlanet, a vendor of information management tools and products, launched its new TMCore SharePoint Module 2.0, which enables users to take all documents within SharePoint and connect them with key business concepts. This allows any business that has implemented a Microsoft SharePoint system to enhance search and navigation by taking into account contextual information, such as the user, projects they work on, and their personal skill-set. The TMCore system manages concepts instead of text indexes, which help to qualify the relevance of the documents that search terms are found in, and delivers relevant links to other SharePoint information. The TMCore SharePoint Module 2.0 is intended to allow users to search documents laterally, on the basis of themes and concepts that link them. It automatically classifies documents by content types and tags them with key themes, and then users can enhance and refine the classification of individual documents as they work with them, making their classification of documents available to other users.

(www.networkedplanet.com, www.microsoft.com)

Coveo Solutions Inc., a global provider of secure enterprise search solutions, announced that it won a U.S. patent for technology it developed to automatically train the language model and modify the dictionary of a speech recognition engine used with its Coveo Audio-Video Search (CAVS) technology. Coveo's patented solution not only retrieves relevant audio and video, but does so by integrating smart speech recognition technology capabilities. Coveo's speech recognition training capabilities 'self-learns' by leveraging relevant contextual content related to the audio and video files, allowing it to better model the enterprise language. Working in unison with CAVS, the solution converts speech found within audio and video files into text, so that the text can be indexed to more accurately match user queries and offer a more productive search experience.

(www.coveo.com)

ClipBlast!, an internet video search and navigation platform, unveiled its new ClipBlast! Video Widget. The ClipBlast! Video Widget is an internet video search and navigation tool that resides on the desktop, enabling search, navigation, browsing, and viewing of the Video Web without having to launch a browser or visit a specific website. ClipBlast! is working with video-content providers--including MySpace, Showtime, Fox, CBS and independent producers--to create customized, branded versions of the Video Widget for specific target audiences. ClipBlast's Video Widget goes beyond pure video search, intending to help viewers personalize and discover videos, using streaming real-time indexing to alert them of the most recent and relevant videos as they come online. The Video Widget, like the ClipBlast! video search platform itself, was built as a Web 2.0 application, to ensure that viewers have access to the entire Video Web.

(www.clipblast.com)

Generate Inc., a company focused on in enabling real-time contextual information, is unveiling new technology. This new widget, called Generate gClick, is designed for publishers and media companies in order to enable their consumers to extract contextual, real-time business intelligence from any web page, with just one click. American City Business Journals intends to deploy gClick on their 40+ bizjournals websites shortly along with several other magazine, newspaper, and online media sites. gClick intends to enable publishers and media companies to make content more contextual to their consumers while driving increases in non-editorial-based advertising inventory. gClick uses proprietary extraction and matching technology that analyzes web pages to provide comprehensive information that's contextually relevant to what the user is reading.

(www.generateinc.com)

MuseGlobal, a provider of comprehensive search products and management systems worldwide, has announced the integration of the Muse Content Machine into Groxis' information management and discovery tool, Grokker. Groxis is a provider of visual search technology, and Grokker is an enterprise information management and discovery tool. The Muse Content Machine provides source management, access management, search integration, and application modules all managed within a common administrative system and networking environment that creates and maintains search products and services.

(www.museglobal.com, www.grokker.com)

Exalead, a global provider of search software for business and the web, has introduced BAAGZ, a service that brings together semantic search and social networking. BAAGZ fosters a collaborative environment where users can connect with others on the web who have similar interests-- whether hobbies, travel, music, or news-- in order to share and enhance this content with new ideas, in effect contributing to the expansion of the Semantic Web. At the foundation of BAAGZ is a search engine based on Exalead's Semantic Web search technology, Search By Serendipity, which is already available.

BAAGZ is a new form of social network that represents a live network of shared interests. These shared interests are characterized by the public content contained within individual folders, called baagz, that act as shortcuts to your favorite web sites, articles, pictures, videos, RSS feeds, and notes. In addition, BAAGZ allows its users to engage in real-time interaction with other users through collaboration and communications tools. Through these tools and the central BAAGZ dashboard, users can watch their own baagz evolve and grow through contributions from others on the BAAGZ network, as well as those they have subscribed to that are managed by other BAAGZ users. As a result, users have a visual, interactive, real-time content feed on their BAAGZ homepage.

(www.baagz.com, www.exalead.com)

The Ohio HealthCare Federal Credit Union has deployed an enterprise content management (ECM) solution to improve process efficiency and member service in its front-line operations. The Dublin, Ohio-based credit union installed OnBase from Hyland Software in the spring and has already reaped benefits from the implementation, according to a recent press release from Hyland.

Credit union employees in three branches are using the ECM solution to scan, index and archive documents such as new member and loan applications. With the old system, processing a change request from a member would take five days. A formal request for the member's original paper application would be submitted to the home office, which would then search through storage to find the document. The home office would verify the member's statement and provide the branch with permission to make the change. With all the information stored in OnBase and accessible instantly to all branches, the credit union can process the request directly now, reducing response time to 15 seconds.

Bill Butler, president and CEO of Ohio HealthCare Federal Credit Union, says, "Over the last eight years, we began upgrading our internal systems, and it became clear that imaging and document management are key components to providing the level of member service required to be a serious player and avoid the merger list ... We knew we needed to implement OnBase if we wanted to enhance our member service and pull ourselves out of the quagmire of paper-based processes."