News Briefs and Product Shorts

• WorksRight Software yesterday announced its PER/ZIP4 address verification software for OS/400 has been recertified by the United States Postal Service. PER/ZIP4 compares the addresses that a company has for its customers with the USPS's database of nine-digit ZIP codes. By maintaining the USPS's Coding Accuracy Support System certification for its product, WorksRight ensures its customers can continue to receive a discount on bulk mailings. Additionally, PER/ZIP4 helps to save its customers money by preventing them from paying postage for letters sent to bad addresses, as well as eliminating the associated printing and handling costs, and the cost associated with the USPS's job of handling returned mail. WorksRight charges $3,300 for a one-year, unlimited-use subscription for PER/ZIP4 on a single OS/400; subsequent software subscriptions cost $1,650.
  
  

• Infinium Software is planning to hold its first ever Hospitality Summit in Las Vegas, Nevada, this summer for its clients in the hotel and casino businesses. The two-day event will include two tracks of education for users of Infinium's human resources, financials, and other industry-related software; a chance to pick the brains of Infinium's software executives during the Executive Forum; product demonstrations; and the Infinium President's Reception, which will be co-sponsored by IBM, Cognos, Computer Configuration Services, and others. The Hospitality Summit will be held August 1 and 2 at the University of Nevada Las Vegas' International Gaming Institute.
  
  
• Using a browser to quickly retrieve OS/400 spool file documents is the latest addition to the electronic forms software offered by inFORM Decisions, the California-based company that took shape earlier this year after the demise of FORMation mg. Several key employees at inFORM Decisions, including President Dan Forster, are former employees of FORMation mg. The new archive engine, known as iView, offers the capability to capture spool files with user-defined bursting conditions, search indexes, and sorting sequences. Documents and reports are stored in Adobe PDF format directly on the iSeries host. iView is an add-on module to inFORM's iDocs electronic form/check software, but it can also be used as a stand-alone form/report archive-distribution solution with other e-form products on the market.
  
  
• T.L. Ashford, the Kentucky-based manufacturer of barcode labeling software, has announced it now supports the Zebra Technologies wireless printer model QL 320. The QL 320 is a direct thermal mobile printer that is used in shipping and receiving, product identification, and price labeling. With Ashford's Barcode400 labeling software, users can remotely access data from their iSeries and AS/400 servers for use in the hand-held bar code printer.
  
  
• Quadrant Software is sending two lucky people on a free trip to Italy as part of a contest associated with the release of the company's Formtastic Fusion5 suite of document management software for OS/400. The winner of the five-day, fully paid Italian get-away for two will be randomly selected from the list of people who fill out the registration form on Quadrant's Web site. The contest, which began April 12, will continue through August 9, and the winner will be announced by August 16. Quadrant said the key enhancement with Formtastic Fusion5 is that it has combined five products, including DesignPRO, SmartMAP, VersionManager, IntelliDOC, and Synchronizer, into one suite. And about that connection between Italy and OS/400 forms management utility? "Italy has inspired the world's best engineers and designers," said the company's president, Gary Langton. "We feel that Formtastic Fusion5 will do the same for administrators looking for the best way to handle mission-critical documents."
  
  
• Retail software giant JDA Software Group, which gains a good chunk of its annual revenue from its OS/400-based Merchandise Management System, has won the Retail Application Developer award for back-office computing from desktop software provider Microsoft, the Scottsdale, Arizona, company announced last week. JDA won the RAD award for its Store Portal product, which integrates with Merchandise Management System and JDA's Unix and Windows equivalent, ODMBS, and provides store-level managers and associates with access to inventory position, price checks, transfer requests, and purchase orders from anywhere in the store. Microsoft was impressed by the extent to which Store Portal integrated its .NET technology. In other JDA honoraria, the Arizona Software and Internet Association has named JDA Chief Technology Officer Scott Hines as its Leader of the Year for 2002.
  
  
• After surviving a rough 2001, UniComp is re-emerging as a provider of solutions for the retail industry. Earlier this month, UniComp launched a redesigned Web site and issued a statement saying the company would streamline is operations and consolidate its subsidiaries under the UniComp name. The goal, says Chief Executive Officer Stephen Hafer, is becoming a one-stop source for retailers in need of hardware and software such as interactive kiosks, transaction processing software, printers, terminals, and pin pads. "One of our primary objectives over the last several months has been the positioning of UniComp, as a well known provider of retail systems and solutions targeting the multi-trillion-dollar retail industry," stated Hafer in the announcement. Over the last 12 months, UniComp has weathered a bitter dispute with California Software for rights to OS/400 and S/36 migration software and a failed merger with ROI. The company has moved its operations from Marietta, Georgia, to Asheville, North Carolina.
  
  

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