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Lead Stories:

XML drives the Humvee
When Word-to-XML conversions get nasty

Other News:

DCL on the move
Blackberry, Crackberry - the latest scourge on the London Stock Exchange?
E-records cut patient contact costs down from $60 to 25 cents
XML strikes a chord with MusicXML
U.S. Navy Seabees get wired with new 50 website portal
Content management market showing strong growth

Asides:

Signs & notices to drive you up the wall (literally)

Plus:

Popular articles from recent issues

Alert!!! Arbortext/DCL Webinar - Next week

Bringing Your Content into the 21st Century - with XML

(Wednesday, February 12th, 2004, 11am - 12pm ET.)

Includes: Business benefits of XML; cutting costs with content reuse; ROI from migrating your unstructured content, and more...

Register today - http://www.arbortext.com/html/power_hour_3.html

Lead Stories:

XML drives the Humvee

Feb 4, 2004, DCLnews Exclusive

In an exclusive interview with DCLnews, Brian Travis of Architag goes into the issues of printing from XML and reveals that the popular mark-up language is the driving force behind the Humvee... More.

When Word-to-XML conversions get nasty

Feb 4, 2004, DCLnews Exclusive

Mike Gross, Chief Technology Officer at Data Conversion Laboratory, Inc., reveals five ways your conversion engine can get broken when converting MS Word documents to XML. (First published in CMSWatch magazine). More

Other News:

DCL on the move

Feb 4, 2004, DCLnews Extra

From March 1st DCL is moving to new, larger offices. These are just across the Long Island Expressway - a quarter mile from our current location.

The new address will be:

61-18, 190th St, 2nd Floor, Fresh Meadows, NY 11365.

Phone numbers and e-mail addresses will remain the same:

Telephone: 718-357-8700
E-mail: mailto:info@dclab.com

Blackberry, Crackberry - the latest scourge on the London Stock Exchange?

Jan 25, UK Independent

According to news reports a new highly addictive drug is circulating around London's stock exchange - the BlackBerry handheld. The popular device, from Canadian firm Research in Motion, allows you to pick up e-mails on the move and is referred to by stock exchange wags as the "CrackBerry." So addictive has it become that one London-based corporate financier recently said that, at a meeting, he made everyone put their BlackBerries on the table so they couldn't check their e-mails serupticiously.

Freeing people from the need to sit at a PC to deal with a growing mountain of e-mail is the reason the BlackBerry is such a hit with executives, both in London and all over the world.

The device allows people to fill up "dead time," letting them sift through emails on trains or at airports, and means they can stay in contact out of hours without having to be glued to a PC screen. The popularity of the device is also another sign that the big trend of the future will be the ability to publish content and data to multiple platforms, which will allow people to access data and messages anywhere.

Discover more:
UK Independent (Subscription)
Albany Times Union (Free)

E-records cut patient contact costs down from $60 to 25 cents

Jan 28, Good Housekeeping

In an address on healthcare in January, George Bush called for the widespread use of e-records. He pointed out that medicine might be modern with its great new discoveries, but that it is ancient in how records are kept.

"When you're still writing records down by hand and sharing information through files, it's not exactly a modern system," he said. "And we believe a lot of medical errors can be saved as a result of the use of proper technology -- and there will be cost savings to be had as well."

Dr. Peter Kongstvedt, vice president of the managed care practice for Cap Gemini Ernst & Young, echoed this point in an interview with United Press International. "The more you can go to e-claims or automate, the cost goes down substantially." Kongstvedt said studies show companies have found every patient contact costs $60 if done on paper, $10 by phone, $2 through an automated system and 25 cents online.

Most hospitals and other health facilities are beginning to embrace technology and are investing millions of dollars in systems to allow in-house, or system-wide, electronic record sharing and also to bring medical information online, making it easier for physicians and medical staff to coordinate and manage patient care from outside the healthcare facility.

Mark Gross of DCL comments: "Medicine is the next frontier in which we will see the kind of productivity improvement that has revolutionized many industries - but, in terms of record-keeping, has passed the medical world by. Considering that medicine is one of America's (and probably the world's) largest industries, mechanizing the humdrum parts of this industry will have major world-wide impact." More.

>>> Don't miss next month's issue of DCLnews when we interview Landen Bain, a medical industry expert, who is working with the HL7 standard to digitize and facilitate the sharing of medical records and information.

XML strikes a chord with MusicXML

Feb 4, 2004, DCLnews

XML, the computer language that lets you publish data from a single source, is everywhere these days. Besides being used in technical publishing, it powers newspaper sports and advertising pages . Now there's MusicXML. Two years since its initial release, the MusicXML music notation document type has reached Version 1.0. MusicXML is an XML-based musical score format developed by Recordare and has been adapted by virtually every major maker of music notation software.

Various products are being developed that use MusicXML. One is the MuseBook, an electronic music stand that displays MusicXML scores and automatically turns the page for the performer. Korean pianist Choong-Mo Kang used a MuseBook score in his December 2003 performance of Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier II at the Seoul Arts Center Concert Hall.

DCL president Mark Gross comments: "Music is a natural for XML with the constant need to transpose and make available music for different instruments and in different arrangements. Musical notation itself is a very scientific approach to indicating some very complex relationships, and many of the attributes attributed to XML are exactly what's called for in music."

Discover more about MusicXML at:
http://emusician.com/ar/emusic_xml_music/
http://www.musicxml.org/xml.html

Also see:

Finance XML
http://www.dclab.com/dclnews0601.asp#story2

Advertising XML
http://www.dclab.com/dclnews0507.asp#story4

Sports XML
http://www.dclab.com/dclnews0412.asp#story2

U.S. Navy Seabees get wired with new 50 website portal

Jan 28, 2004, DCLnews

The Navy Seabees have launched a new public Internet site (http://www.seabee.navy.mil), along with an internal Intranet called "Seabee Operations Portal" - consisting of nearly 50 Web sites. The public Internet site also features a new, password-protected private section that allows the Seabees to make information, not appropriate for public consumption, rapidly available to Seabee family members.

Both operations use Content Management System (CMS) software, which means non-technical Seabee content authors may now directly add, edit and delete site content without the need for Seabee technical staff to do the final, manual content posting to the site. Workflow processes ensure no content is published that is not approved by an authorized source.

Navy Seabee battalions were formed during World War II to provide engineering and construction support to attacking forces in combat areas. The name, "Seabees," is derived from the term "construction battalion" (CB's) which was used to describe these first fighting construction units.

Seabees served with assault forces in almost every major invasion in World War II, typically going ashore with or directly behind the first wave of troops. The Seabees built roads, airstrips and harbors, often while under fire. More recently, the Seabees played important roles in Operation Desert Storm and Operation Iraqi Freedom in which they built vital facilities including airfields, Marine camps and ammunition depots. The new Internet site is part of a series of ongoing technology upgrades designed to help the Seabees more efficiently communicate with the public as well as Seabee battalions around the world. More.

Content management market showing strong growth

Jan 12, Silicon.com

The market for enterprise content management systems looks set to grow strongly over the next three years, according to research from Meta Group. Compound annual growth of 15 per cent is forecast, with the market being worth $2.3bn in software and a further $7bn in services by 2007.

Charlie Brett, the lead author of the METAspectrum In Depth report on the subject, said consolidation in the market - arguably its key characteristic last year - will continue and around 60 per cent of Global 2000 organizations will have standardized on a strategic ECM framework by 2005.

The market has seen all types of organizations embrace the software, which used to be the preserve of "content rich" companies such as online magazines and newspapers. Taking their lead from the media, firms recognized that they could make sizable cost savings by streamlining the way they manage content, such as technical documentation and service manuals. They also saw the potential of being able to publish material from a single source and deploy it to the web, handhelds, and to CD-ROM and print mediums. More.

Asides:

Signs and notices to drive you up the wall (literally)

Feb 4, 2004, DCLnews

Imagine trying to make sense of the instructions below (they were spotted on signs and notices around Britain and the U.S.):

Seen during a conference:
For anyone who has children and doesn't know it, there is a day care on the 1st floor.

In an office:
After tea break staff should empty the teapot and stand upside down on the draining board.

>>> Read more

Plus:

Popular Articles From Recent Issues

Feb 4, 2004, DCLnews Extra

Converting to XML - seven bad things that might happen
http://www.dclab.com/xmlconversion_sevenbad.asp

Converting tables to XML: Top 10 challenges and pitfalls
http://www.dclab.com/xml_table_challenges.asp

Content re-use - the killer app
http://www.dclab.com/content_reuse.asp

DCL FAQs
http://www.dclab.com/dclfaq.asp

Quark to XML
http://www.dclab.com/QuarktoXML.asp

Converting from PDF - avoiding the pitfalls
http://www.dclab.com/converting_from_pdf.asp