Tag Archive for 'Pearson'

IT news - December 3, 2007

Published by Zornitsa Vodenska on December 3, 2007 in In the News. 0 Comments

Updates on: Pearson Inform, Steven Kirsch’s spam e-mail filter, Microsofts’s acqisition of WebFives, LiveJournal’s acquisition, lawsuit against One Laptop Per Child, Nvidia’s C-compiler, Toon Boom Animation’s new animation program for kids, Amazon’s launch of Askville.com

Pearson School Systems has released an update to Pearson Inform, a data analysis tool for K-12 schools. The new release, Inform 4.2, adds a new Academic Intervention Plan feature for planning individualize and group instruction. – T.H.E. Journal

Twenty-five years ago Steven T. Kirsch crated the computer mouse with optical sensor. Now he believes he has found a way to create a better trap — for spam, not mice. He founded Abaca, a company with a new approach to detecting junk mail and a claim that its product can filter out 99 percent of spam e-mail. — New York Times

Microsoft acquired WebFives, a social newtworking website for sharing photos and phone videos. After the acquisition, WebFives service will stop as Microsoft plans to implement the technology used in the website instead of maintaining the community. — Seattle Times

The owner of LiveJournal, a blogging and social-networking site, agreed to sell the company to SUP, a Russian online media company, in the latest example of deal-making in the social-networking sector. — New York Times

Lagos Analysis Corp, a Massachusetts-based hardware company, is suing the One Laptop Per Child project, claiming in a lawsuit filed in Nigeria that the group reverse-engineered a keyboard designed for foreign languages. — AHN

Nvidia has released a public beta of CUDA 1.1, an update to the company’s C-compiler with a Linux display. More than 20 universities around the world have adopted CUDA for multi-core and parallel processing programming — Campus Technology

Toon Boom Animation, a developer of 2D animation technologies, including Toon Boom Studio, this week released Flip Boom, a new animation program aimed specifically at kids. The software is based on traditional 2D animation principles, focused on teaching the principles of timing and motion in the animation process. — T.H.E. Journal

Amazon.com recently launched Askville.com, a website where users ask and answer questions, and discover answers to thousands of questions on everything from how to buy an HDTV to the best way to lose weight. Askville.com users who share their knowledge by answering questions will receive Quest Gold, which, for a limited time and while supplies last, can be redeemed for $100 or $50 Amazon.com Gift Cards. Askville.com is now available to all Amazon customers around the world. – Financial News USA

Publishers in the News — November 26, 2007

Published by Zornitsa Vodenska on November 26, 2007 in In the News. 0 Comments

Updates on: Pearson’s e-content honored, the book industry’s green efforts

Pearson has been named to the prestigious “EContent 100″ list by EContent magazine, as one of the companies that “matter most in the digital content industry.” — CNN

The book industry has set itself a target of reducing its carbon emissions by 10% by 2015. The Environmental Action Group (EAG) is also investigating the possibility of an industry-wide quality mark for books to indicate their green credentials. — thebookseller.com

Publishers in the News - November 15, 2007

Published by Erica Nielsen on November 15, 2007 in In the News. 0 Comments

Updates on: Reed Elsevier, Pearson Education

Reed Elsevier Plc, owner of the LexisNexis database, said it will meet its earnings forecast this year, helped by cost cuts and higher demand for online services. — Bloomberg 

Pearson Education has formed a new board, called the Strategic Advisory Board, to help make a shift from traditional text to technology and content learning. — The Crimson White Online

Awards in the News - November 15, 2007

Published by Erica Nielsen on November 15, 2007 in In the News. 0 Comments

Updates on: Amazon’s Best Books for 2007, and Oracle’s Titan Awards

Amazon.com posted its Best Books for 2007 listings, and in the Best Books of 2007 Top 10 Editors’ Picks: Computers & Internet category, The iPhone Book - co-authored by Scott Kelby and Terry White - took the #1 spot. Additionally, Scott’s The Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Book for Digital Photographers and The Adobe Photoshop CS3 Book for Digital Photographers both found themselves on the Best Books for 2007 in the Customers’ Favorites: Computers & Internet list, ranked at #2 and #4 respectively. All three honored books were published by Peachpit Press, a company of Pearson Education. — TMC.net

Honoring the best of the best, Oracle has awarded 17 of its channel partners its Oracle North American Titan Awards, recognizing the companies for their success in developing and implementing industry solutions based on Oracle database, middleware and application software. — ChannelWeb

Publishers in the News - November 6, 2007

Published by Erica Nielsen on November 6, 2007 in In the News. 0 Comments

Updates on: Les Echos, 4INFO, Electronic Arts

Luxury goods company LVMH has bought Les Echos, the biggest-selling business newspaper in France, from the Pearson media group for 240m euros (£167m). — BBC News

4INFO, Inc., the leader in SMS publishing and advertising, announced it has inked an exclusive publishing partnership with the San Francisco 49ers to give fans the ability to receive and access news and information about the team, games and players via their mobile phones. — Market Wire
4INFO announced that it has partnered with Maxim Digital, the fast growing family of websites and mobile properties for young men, to deliver free daily text message alerts that provide a link to Maxim’s content on the mobile web. — Market Wire

Video-game software publisher Electronic Arts swung to a fiscal second-quarter net loss, hurt by an accounting change, but shares climbed 5 percent after the company outlined a promising product lineup and said it expected to see a “great” holiday season. – CNN

Publishers in the News – October 30, 2007

Published by Erica Nielsen on October 30, 2007 in In the News. 0 Comments

Updates on: Pearson Plc, Houghton Mifflin Co., Agilix Labs, Inc.

Pearson Plc, which provides testing for nurses and business-school students, won a contract from the U.S. Department of Education to measure the progress of students and the quality of public education. From 2008 to 2012, Pearson will handle the U.S.’s National Assessment of Educational Progress. — Bloomberg

Brothers and Citi will begin syndicating this week a $7.15 billion bank loan backing Boston-based educational publisher Houghton Mifflin Co.’s acquisition of the Harcourt Education, Harcourt Trade and Greenwood-Heinemann divisions of Reed Elsevier. — Reuters

Agilix Labs, Inc., a leader in distributed e-learning solutions, today announced it has joined the IMS Common Cartridge Alliance, an organization that supports the development, distribution and maintenance of open source tools to facilitate the Common Cartridge standard. By joining this alliance, Agilix renews its commitment to support all learning content created by publishers in the Common Cartridge format, and incorporating these standards into future product releases. — BusinessWire

Publishers in the News – October 29, 2007

Published by Erica Nielsen on October 29, 2007 in In the News. 0 Comments

Updates on: Pearson, book fair in Jorhat, India, and writing e-books

Pearson, the publishing giant behind the Financial Times and Penguin books, has put another asset on the sale block as chief executive Dame Marjorie Scardino carries on sharpening the company’s focus. She is looking for a buyer for a little-known division that manufactures image scanners which process school test papers. It was bought as part of National Computer Systems (NCS) in 2000, the blockbusting £1.7 billion acquisition made at the height of the technology boom and designed to “electrify” Scardino’s education strategy. — Business Times Online

Book fair to be held in Jorhat, India with emphasis on the promotion of Assamese classics. International publishers like Oxford University Press, Cambridge University Press and Prentice Hall, too, will display their publications at the fair organized by Assam Academic Centre. — The Assam Tribune

Interested in writing an e-book? Hopefully, if you decide to write an e-book you will already have a pretty good idea of where you will market your e-book or perhaps at least realize how to market the book in general. This article outlines steps in e-book creation and gives advice to future authors. — Ibeginwithanidea.com

Publishers in the News – October 26, 2007

Published by Erica Nielsen on October 26, 2007 in In the News. 0 Comments

Updates on: BCR and Cambridge University Press Online, Publishing, LLC, Thomson Corporation and Reuters, Harcourt School Publishers and Wireless Generation, Pearson, and Thomson

BCR and Cambridge University Press Online have partnered with the Bibliographical Center for Research (BCR) to provide access to a catalog of valuable resources for every type of library patron, from public library to university audiences. — BCR

Publishing, LLC (”EMC”), an independent educational publisher, today announced it had acquired Lawrenceville Press, Inc. (”LVP”), a Pennington, NJ-based developer and publisher of computer applications and programming textbooks for the U.S. and Canadian school market. — SYS-CON

Thomson Corporation and Reuters on Thursday expressed confidence in securing clearance for the Canadian group’s £9bn ($18.4bn) bid for its London rival without major concessions as each reported better third-quarter figures than expected. –MSNBC

Harcourt School Publishers and Wireless Generation have formed a partnership to bring assessment to Harcourt’s StoryTown and Trophies curricula. — T.H.E. Journal

Education and information company Pearson Plc on Monday announced its trading update for the first nine months of fiscal 2007, reporting a 6% rise in underlying sales from continuing operations, on strong segmental performance. — RTT News

Thomson Corp. Thursday reported third-quarter earnings of $2.97 billion, or $4.61 a share, up from a year-ago profit of $419 million, or 65 cents a share. — CNN

Publishers in the News – October 25, 2007

Published by Erica Nielsen on October 25, 2007 in In the News. 0 Comments

Updates on: Pearson, Lagardere, McGraw-Hill Companies, Tribune Co., Thomson Corp.

Pearson VUE, the electronic certification and licensure testing business of Pearson, announced that it has signed an exclusive multi-year contract with Oncology Nursing Certification Corporation (ONCC) to provide test development and test delivery services for ONCC’s certification programs. — Yahoo

Arnaud Lagardere, chief executive of Lagardere SCA, denied there was insider trading in the publishing company’s sale of shares in European Aeronautic, Defence & Space Co. two months before EADS announced production delays at Airbus’s A380, the world’s biggest passenger plane. — Bloomberg

The Board of Directors of The McGraw-Hill Companies approved a regular quarterly cash dividend on the Corporation’s common stock. The dividend of $0.205 is payable on December 12, 2007 to shareholders of record on November 28, 2007. — Yahoo

Tribune Co.reported third-quarter profit that fell less than analysts estimated, easing investor concern that Sam Zell will have trouble financing an $8.2 billion buyout of the second-biggest U.S. newspaper publisher. — Bloomberg

Thomson Corp., the financial-information provider buying Reuters Group Plc, said third-quarter profit jumped on proceeds from the sale of education divisions and higher revenue from its remaining units. — Bloomberg