Dear All, Welcome to the December 2008 newsletter, our regular update on developments at Third Light and news about changes and improvements made to the IMS product. This month, we are delighted to release a wide range of new features related to the IMS search engine and meta data modules, newly extended support for PDF and EPS formats, and a complete re-launch of the IMS download tools. Features mentioned below are free of charge, and will be released on 11 December 2008. Please follow the instructions at the end of this email if you prefer not to receive our newsletters (unsubscribe). Platform Maintenance on Wednesday 10 December 23:00 Many of the changes we are announcing this month are related to a substantial change in the way that IMS meta data is stored. In order to deliver these upgrades, we will be briefly suspending our hosted service at 23:00 on Wednesday 10 December 2008 for approximately 30 minutes. During this time, a service message will be displayed. IMS Appliances and Virtual Servers are not affected by this change. We appreciate that any disruption to your service should be as short as possible. During this maintenance work we will also be applying new performance upgrades to databases, and running annual maintenance checks on systems which must not normally be stopped. Our coordinated plan for this work will allow us to complete a range of important tasks and restore service swiftly. We are grateful for your understanding and patience. Local times: UTC / GMT (Greenwich Mean Time): 23:00 10 December 2008 CET (Central European Time): 00:00 11 December 2008 EST (Eastern Standard Time): 18:00 10 December 2008 PST (Pacific Standard Time): 15:00 10 December 2008 AEDT (Australian Eastern Daylight Time): 10:00 11 December 2008 Custom Meta Data fields (IMS Appliances) IMS currently includes the common meta data fields defined by IPTC (for example, Caption, Keywords and various other data). These may be edited with the Picture Editor and are imported automatically when they are discovered in incoming files. On IMS Appliances, the ability to define custom meta data has now been added. This allows additional fields of your own choosing to be created. For example, when storing a collection of aircraft photos, you might have a "Manufacturer" and an "Aircraft Registration" field. Any new custom meta data fields added are fully searchable and can be used in Smart Folders (see below). To add new meta data fields, simply open the Configuration -> Custom Meta Data menu in the administration console. Search Engine and Smart Folder upgrades The IMS search engine has been expanded to include all meta data fields on the General and Advanced Search forms. This includes, for instance, the full range of IPTC fields (such as "City" or "Credit") and any customised meta data fields that are added to IMS Appliances (as above). It is possible to enable or disable any field on the Configuration -> Search Preferences form. The settings for General and Advanced search are separate, for extra flexibility. Smart Folders now include the full range of all meta data fields and can be configured to search on any combination of meta data available. Smart Folders can also use the more sophisticated 'Match' search, ie. the natural language search method that is used by the General Search engine. When performing an 'exact matches' General Search on IMS Appliances, if the search returns no results but part of the search would return a result, then IMS will now include a message indicating that results have been obtained using part of the search. For example, if an exact match for 'Apple Pie' is performed but no results are found, IMS will propose a set of results using the word 'Apple'. This feature is also connected to the Controlled Vocabulary tool, as a way of correcting mis-spellings. New Download Tool IMS contains several download systems, which are now to be combined into a single interface which is simpler to use, and offers greater functionality regarding cropping. Here is a summary of the changes being made. The download icon has been changed to the green arrow pointing into a tray icon, and the blue diskette icon has been removed. When viewing a picture: Clicking the download button opens a form showing the thumbnail of the image. A list of defined sizes will be provided in a pull-down list. The user can drag a crop area around to choose a creative fit. The size of the selected download type is outlined in red (distinct from the choice of crop). The download is constrained to the actual aspect ratio of the download type and a live preview of the actual image that will be downloaded is displayed during cropping. If the 'Advanced' download option for the user is enabled, IMS will also provide the ability to resize, convert between formats or change colour space prior to downloading. It will also display the output size in a variety of metric, imperial and technical units. When viewing thumbnails: Checkboxes next to each thumbnail can be used to download more than one file at a time. Two buttons appear in the tool bar: 'Download ZIP' which downloads the source files, as in the existing IMS, and 'Download Wizard'. The Download Wizard option shows a form with all of the images' thumbnails. A list of defined sizes will be provided in a pull-down list. The longest edge of each image will be matched to the chosen download type. The chosen type applies to all of the images. If the 'Advanced Download' option for the user is enabled, IMS will also provide the ability to manually resize, convert between formats or change colour space prior to downloading. A progress bar will be displayed while the images are prepared and delivered as a single ZIP file. In all cases, the new download options are intended to be self-explanatory, by offering a more intuitive starting point while also delivering more sophistication to cover more extended download and resizing possibilities. Expiry dates on user accounts If required, a user (or group) may now have an expiry date defined. This option appears on the main User Options panel when creating or editing a user or group. Expired accounts are grayed out on the Manage Users page, and an attempt to log in with an expired account will display a message explaining that the account has expired. Additionally, on the Site Options -> Global Site Options page, an email alert about accounts due to expire can be configured to be sent up to 2 weeks in advance to the site support email address. Miscellaneous Changes The following changes will be live on 11 December. 1) Download wizard options include colour space - When defining a new download option in the Tools -> Download Wizard page, the option to set the colour space has been added. This is intended to allow the download type to force files into a particular colour space. A good example is a download intended for use on the web, which must use the RGB colour space at all times. 2) Keyword phrase support - When entering keywords, it is now possible to define a keyword phrase (such a "Eiffel Tower"). To do this, enclose the keyword phrase within quotation marks. Commas, semi-colons and spaces are treated as keyword separators except within quotation marks, where they will be included in the keyword phrase. When keywords are defined within IMS as phrases, they are written back into the meta data records in your files as phrases, allowing external tools such as PhotoShop to interact correctly with this new function, and are hyperlinked as phrases from the Picture Console. IMS imports keyword phrases accurately. 3) Signature photos watermarking - The signature photos feature in IMS is the slideshow feature which may be displayed on the login screen of IMS sites. A new checkbox option labeled 'Watermark signature photos' has been added to the Site Options -> Front Page Options page. This feature allows the signature photos to be displayed with or without watermarks according to your preference. 4) PDF and EPS content are now resizeable and paginated - On IMS Appliances, support for PDF and EPS resizing and conversion has been added. IMS also includes support for multi-page PDF files and animated GIFs as part of this upgrade. VAT rate of 15% from 1 December 2008 From 1 December the rate of VAT in Great Britain and Northern Ireland is 15%. This change has been accommodated in IMS and in our invoices within the tax areas affected, as follows: - All Third Light invoices for our services, including card payment services, from midnight, 1 December 2008 are taxed at 15% until 31 December 2009; - Any registered VAT business using our e-commerce services has automatically been changed to 15% VAT, and net prices in your price plans have been increased so that gross prices remain unchanged. If you wish to pass on the VAT cut to your customers, you must adjust your price plans manually. - e-Commerce fees relating to November 2008 were delivered at the 17.5% rate and will be charged accordingly. We indicate a filing date of the last day of the previous month on our e-Commerce statements, to clarify the tax period used. Considering an upgrade? If any of the 'Appliance only' features mentioned are of interest, please do feel free to get in touch to discuss an upgrade. Our Virtual Server pricing is designed for growing businesses wanting to use the complete feature set of IMS for an affordable price, and upgrading is easy if you are already using an IMS subscription site. Please see: http://www.thirdlight.com/ims/prices Holiday Opening Hours We will be closed on the following dates: 24, 25, 26, 31 December 1 January On 29, 30 December we will operate a reduced service, providing platform maintenance and priority support functions only. Our office fully re-opens on 2 January 2009. From everyone at Third Light, we thank you for your loyal custom and we wish you a Happy Christmas, and a Prosperous New Year! With regards, Third Light Ltd. http://www.thirdlight.com/ 'Third Light' is a trademark of Third Light Ltd.