Sometimes, the figurative little guy wins.  Sometimes, the figurative little guy is an XML company.  And this is both of those times, since Microsoft’s been ordered to pay i4i $200 million for patent infringement.

Many years ago, Toronto-based i4i was granted a patent related to “[s]ystem and method for generating an XML-based fault model.”  The abstract specifically mentioned Word documents, and then such documents were named many more times throughout the rest of the application.

As for the subject of legal contention, Emil Protalinski reports, “Word 2003 and Word 2007 use extensible markup language (XML) for encoding and customizing the XML in a way that i4i believes infringes on its patent.”

Now, a federal jury’s sided with i4i, and you might judge the importance of the decision in light of the fact that i4i’s website is down (think traffic overload).  With most tech-related companies, that sort of thing doesn’t happen every day.

Unfortunately for i4i (and perhaps XML pros who would look to the company as something of a hero), Microsoft does intend to appeal the $200 million verdict, so it may be quite a while before anything’s final and money changes hands.

If you don’t consider yourself too old to have posters in your bedroom (or at least the garage), the International DB2 Users Group (IDUG) has identified some people deserving of wall space.  It recently announced seven winners of its “The Search for the XML Superstar” competition.

Around 75,000 people from 25 nations submitted applications to the contest.  Brazil’s Renzo Nuccitelli won first place overall, and so seems like someone who’s really earned a place on a pedestal among XML professionals.  Nuccitelli’s email address must be a hot commodity right now as people seek advice or try to make a hire.

Otherwise, India’s Anil Mahadev was named top developer in the “Ported Application” category.  Yasuhiro Nonaka of Japan won the “Query Challenge” contest.

Then, an official release goes on to state, “Dual winners of the 2008 ‘Gadget Challenge’ competition were Ontario, Canada’s Zaidan Alaoui and Maharashtra, India’s Vibha Pandya. . . .  Rahsheen Porter, Grayson, Geo. (USA) and his video entry and Rendra Setiawan, Jakarta, Indonesia, were winners of the ‘Video Mania’ contest.”

Congratulations all around to these champs.  And the many runners-up should remember that it might not be too early to start practicing for next year’s contest.

Most people can agree that there’s a whole lot of helpful software out there.  The problem is, these programs don’t meet the literal definition “a dime a dozen.”  So XML professionals who aren’t named Gates or Buffett may want to direct their attention to XMLFox, which is free.

As explained on the software’s homepage, “XMLFox is a graphical XML editing and validation tool for creating valid, well-formed XML documents and/or XSD Schema.  It includes an XML View, XML Tree, XML Grid, and XML Script modes for editing, as well as extensive find capabilities for text and XML data.  Additional features include XML and Schema Validation, standard editing features, XSD Schema building and more.”

You may or may not be able to think of some things not mentioned there, but that list is quite a mouthful.  The program should be well-suited to an underpowered laptop or netbook that can’t handle more sophisticated programs, or it’ll certainly do the trick for someone you’re trying to introduce to XML.

Ian Harac also wrote in a review of XMLFox, “[I]t’s quick, clean, and easy to use. . . .  As a free editor which does its one job well, XMLFox worth looking into.”

Consider giving your wallet a break and XMLFox a try, then.

Microsoft Word is ubiquitous.  Pretty much every computer - even when you take Macs into consideration - has the program onboard.  So XML professionals - along with people who aren’t quite experts - may be happy to know that Quark XML Author 3.0 for Microsoft Word will soon be released.

Ayca Yuksel, a senior product manager from Microsoft, explained in a statement, “Quark XML Author enhances the user-defined XML support within Microsoft Word and allows users to create XML content easily, which eliminates many of the barriers associated with the adoption of XML.”

XML pros might be able to save shave some time off their normal routines, then, or work more quickly on computers that are unfamiliar to them.  And folks who aren’t accustomed to using XML at all might become more productive, too, thus leaving less for the traditional heavy lifters to do.

Compatibility problems shouldn’t be an issue since the new product is supposed to work with Microsoft Office 2000-2007.  Older versions of Quark XML Author for Microsoft Word have been taken into account, too.

Quark XML Author 3.0 will be made available on April 30th.

Corporations often promote themselves to consumers in one of two ways: emphasizing a rock-solid product (think Toyota) or trying to act cool (hello, Apple).  Now, XML professionals should be happy to hear that a company has entered their field with a foot in the first pool and at least a few toes in the second.

Let’s delve into the fun part to begin.  Recognize the phrase “klaatu barada nikto”?  Or how about the concept of Bruce Campbell fighting an army of skeletons?  Well, it appears that someone might be an “Evil Dead” fan, because the company - Codenomicon - has a name quite similar to that of the book featured in those movies.  Or maybe Codenomicon’s founder enjoys H.P. Lovecraft stories - even better.

As for the actual offering, a press release explains that Codenomicon “announced its flagship XML testing product allowing the industry to clearly understand the existing security weaknesses in many open source and commercially deployed products taking advantage of XML technology.”

Codenomicon’s use of Fuzzing test methodology is even supposed to let it diagnose previously unknown vulnerabilities, and considering how the recession has caused hackers to step up their game (and grow in number), that seems extremely important.

Professor Howard A. Schmidt, a former White House Cyber Security advisor and Codenomicon board member, said in a statement, “Codenomicon has found a critical focus area which expands beyond web testing, where the XML industry has an opportunity to proactively assess the security holes contained in everyday services used by the general public.”

The Dow’s down 192 points at the moment, and it’s reasonable to expect that businesses will be playing things cheap and cautious for quite some time. Just the same, at least one XML professional thinks companies’ XML-related plans can and should move ahead even now.

Jim Earley, who works for Flatirons Solutions, stresses that embracing XML is not going to require sending a company’s entire IT department back to school and then restarting the business from scratch. Instead, the process might be as simple as doing some reading on different forums for a couple of hours. (more…)

XML professionals all over the world may want to set aside a little time and prepare to get started on some new projects.  A contest called “The Search for the XML Superstar” is in progress, and people stand to gain a lot by entering.

The competition’s homepage explains, “If you’re a student, then you can leverage your entry in your job hunt.  If you’re already in the professional ranks, you can gain some well-deserved recognition for your XML skills.  Oh yeah, and there’s thousands of dollars in prizes, ranging from Wiis to complimentary technical conferences.”

Any and all thanks should go to IDUG, the contest’s sponsor.  As for more about what’s actually going on, there are five mini-challenges in the areas of videos, gadgets, queries, ported apps, and plain old XML.  One entry is allowed in each contest per month, prizes are given out, and then a points tally will determine an overall winner.

There are different start and end dates to the XML Superstar contest in different countries, though, so you’ll want to visit the official site to see how the clock’s running in your region.

Good luck if you decide to enter.  The grand prize is a Bose Wave Radio.

According to the Official Google Webmaster Central Blog, the users now no longer have to specify the Sitemap file type in order to submit a Sitemap to Google! The search engine will now automatically determine as to what type of data is being submitted… In short – Sitemap submission has now become easier!

Part of what makes the web so interesting is that there are so many different kinds of content out there. Do you use videos on your website? If so, send us a Video Sitemap file so that we can send you visitors to those videos! Do you host source-code samples? Submit a Code Search Sitemap! Here are the various kinds of Sitemap files that Google supports at the moment:

(more…)

Love the company or hate it, at least Microsoft seems to be doing a little more work.  After we documented its patching of some stuff last time, the software giant’s effort to create some format interoperability solutions is now proving fruitful.

Employee Peter Galli documented three new solutions in a Port 25 post.  “The solutions - which will improve the installation, performance and stability of translated documents - include the Open XML Document Viewer, which translates Open XML documents to an HTML Web page and allows readability on Web friendly browsers like Firefox,” he wrote.

Then there’s “the Open XML/ODF Translators Version 2.5, a document translator that improves translations between different formats through optimized templates, and which will be made available as an add-in for Microsoft Office 2003, 2007 and XP,” and “[t]he Apache POI Java SDK for Open XML gives customers and independent software developers greater choice as they create and use business applications that manipulate business documents and which are built on Java.”

Since the Document Interoperability Initiative was just launched in March, all of this represents a pretty good turnaround.  The collection may improve Microsoft’s reputation in the XML community, and should at least provide members with a few different things to look over.

Even more tools appear to be on the way, so stay tuned for further updates and additional Open XML interoperability in the future.

If you’ve been ignoring the little yellow update notices provided by Windows, now might be a good time to finally acknowledge them and do some downloading.  One of the most recent patches addresses three vulnerabilities in Microsoft XML Core Services.

Security Bulletin MS08-069 is considered critical as a whole, and versions of operating systems including Windows Vista, Windows XP, and Windows 2000 are affected.  In the text of the bulletin, Microsoft acknowledged, “The most severe vulnerability could allow remote code execution if a user viewed a specially crafted Web page using Internet Explorer.”

There is some good news, though.  First, as you probably realized, this hasn’t been headline news, and so hackers don’t seem to be pounding at the vulnerabilities from every angle.  Then, most of the employees within any given organization don’t even appear to be at high risk, as Microsoft stated, “Users whose accounts are configured to have fewer user rights on the system could be less impacted than users who operate with administrative user rights.”

Finally, the update is of course free, and so is technical support (1-866-PCSAFETY) if you need it.

Microsoft gave credit to Gregory Fleischer, Stefano Di Paola, and Robert Hansen for first reporting the vulnerabilities, so we’ll direct a nod to these gentlemen here, too.