IM Clients, Platforms, and Services
Permessa IM Control Version 5 Announced
Permessa Corp. has announced
Permessa IM Control v5 for enterprise IM. This IM management
software is an add-on for IBM (Lotus Sametime) and Microsoft (Office Communications). Permessa IM Control is designed to
enable IT departments to have more control over archiving ongoing IM
dialogues, easy access to testing all IM services, and also to block improper communications in real-time, as the software
will immediately report policy violations.
Other new features in this version of
IM Control include controls to manage all enterprise IM services such as chat
and whiteboard sharing, the capability to archive chats with graphics and explicit
file transfers, for compliance and legal discovery.Also, the software can be
used to eliminate wasteful user behavior, such as creating unattended scheduled
meetings and leaving open idle IM windows. Permessa IM Control! v5 is expected
to be available in Q2 2008 for IBM Lotus Sametime. The company says that
Microsoft OCS availability is planned for later this year.
CatalystOffice Released
CatalystWeb launched its
flagship service, CatalystOffice, a suite of Web-based (SaaS) productivity and
communications applications designed specifically for small businesses.
CatalystOffice offers document management features designed to help businesses
eliminate the need for VPN, by access a shared workspace through an embedded
Web-based service. It also uses Microsoft Outlook synchronization as well as use
an enterprise grade IM solution through CatalystOffice IM. CatalystOffice IM is designed to
let employees take advantage of immediate communications while removing the
distractions and risks associated with using public IM solutions in a business
environment.
SpeakLike Offers HumanTranslation IM Services
SpeakLike recently demonstrated its
instant language translation for IM service. The product,
SpeakLike, integrates automated and human translation to let users to send text
chat messages through SpeakLike. A human translator checks and corrects the
text in real-time, then the people you are chatting with see it in their own
languages. Currently SpeakLike is in beta by invitation
only in English, Spanish and Chinese.
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In the coming months, SpeakLike says the
company will offer human-assisted translation chat starting at 10 cents per
message. Premium, enterprise and integrated Web services, including support for
legal and medical translation specialties, will be added later.
FriendVox Alpha for Facebook
FriendVox has launched an alpha
version of its browser-based Facebook IM client. Using
information gleaned from Facebook, the client automatically sorts your friends
into groups or you can choose to separate friend on your own. If you
want to test FriendVox IM on Facebook, you can enroll in the test program on the
FriendVox site. There is also a Friendvox Group available on Facebook for
discussion and testing.
AOL Says Its New IM Helps Hearing Impaired
While e-mail and IM have become important tools for the
hearing impaired, AOL says that the new real-time IM feature help
further deaf and hard of hearing users obtain a more natural flowing IM
experience. As we mentioned previously in IM Watch, the new real-time IM feature
within AIM lets users see each letter as it is typed, and AOL says that this new
feature lets deaf users respond and react to words as they
are typed just as hearing people would do as words are spoken in a voice
conversation, analogous to messaging with TTY. The new feature is available in the latest
6.8 beta download of
AIM.
Mobile IM News Round-up
CoPilot Offers SMS From Any Platform
Verb Exchange announced that its customers will receive global two-way
SMS text capabilities within their universal communications service,
code-named CoPilot. According
to the company, CoPilot is a total communications platform that also provides
low-cost long distance calling, IM and contact synchronization to
an international user base that can be accessed on desktop, mobile and Web
platforms. The Copilot Beta test program has recently been closed and visitors
to the Web site will find a message stating that they can expect the CoPilot
final release version "soon".
Tokiva Announces Its Mobile COmmunications Platform
In yet more beta announcements, Tokiva launched the public beta of its
mobile communications platform that offers voice, messaging and
sharing services on mobile, Web, and IM systems. Users can
register on the Tokiva Web site, create a
profile, download Tokiva Mobile software and then call any number in
the world from a mobile. The Tokiva service then calls the user back and
immediately connects the user to the called party. Tokiva also offers customers
free mobile e-mail and inexpensive international and group SMS.
IM Security & Archiving
Barracuda IM Firewall Gets New Features
Last week Barracuda
Networks., announced new features that will enable the Barracuda IM
Firewall to export complete IM conversations to a message archiving solution,
such as the Barracuda Message Archiver. The Barracuda IM Firewall
incorporates an IM server with public IM traffic monitoring, IM archiving and
policy management technologies. With the Barracuda IM Firewall all internal IM
traffic over the internal server as well as all public IM traffic over popular
public IM channels such as Yahoo, MSN, AOL, Google and ICQ cn be monitored and
logged. The newly added features will now allow Barracuda IM Firewall customers
to archive their IM traffic on a separate device, freeing up space on the
Barracuda IM Firewall and allow centralized management of both email and IM
communication. Pricing starts at $1,999 in the U.S. with no per user licensing
fees.
FaceTime Offers Security & Archiving In Single Platform
FaceTime Communications and
Mimosa Systems have partnered to create a
scalable solution for secure and compliant archival of enterprise
communications. According to FaceTime, the solution delivers comprehensive
business communications archival for business critical documents, e-mail,
calendar and contact items, public IM networks, enterprise IM networks,
professional community networks and Web conferencing. The joint FaceTime and
Mimosa offering combines Mimosa Systems' NearPoint for information archiving,
eDiscovery, continuous data protection and disaster recovery with FaceTime
Communications security products for the management and control of greynet
applications in an integrated platform.
Symantec Offer Parents IM Security At Home
Symantec has recently introduced its latest experiment from its Advanced
Concepts "lab" at the DEMO conference this week: a new type of Internet security
and monitoring software for families. Called the Symantec Family Safety
Initiative, this new product can be used by parents to restrict
children's access or let the kids surf almost anywhere they please. It also
monitors all social networking sites, like MySpace and Facebook, as well as
IM. Parents can obtain a report showing all the friends in their
child's IM friends list and also see how much time was spent chatting. In
contrast to many of the monitoring software packages available, at no point does
the child not know this is happening. There's an icon at the bottom of the screen
where the he or she can see it's running and they can click on the icon to read the
rules, so they know what features are on. See "Symantec
Readies Flexible Family Safety Software" on
InternetNews.com for more details
on this new initiative.
Research Says ...
Akonix Tracks 14 New Threats
The Akonix Systems' IM
Security Center researchers have said they tracked a total of 14
new malicious code attacks over IM networks in January. According
to the report, the new IM worms identified this month include MSNChristmas,
MSNVB, Perin and Raiodin. In addition, there were also 14 attacks this month on
P2P networks, such as Kazaa and eDonkey. Don Montgomery, vice president of marketing at
Akonix cautions that while the numbers of attacks for January might seem low,
Akonix continues to see an increase in the intensity of malicious online
activity, and anticipates it to only worsen as organizations begin to roll out
Unified Communications platforms this year.
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