eComPress

by Sean Hocking   March 23, 2011

Here at House of Butter we don’t usually go in for advertorials but at the moment we are taken by a piece of software developed by a 25+ year old legal software company out of Sydney called EIS (Eurofield Information Systems) who have told us about an electronic looseleaf concept that they’ve developed out in the wilds of Chatswood (Northern Sydney suburb).

They say their software simply allows users to update a publication securely whilst keeping all past addendums in a easy to view list that also allows one to refer back to previous updates and view them all at the same time on your desktop

After years of listening to complaints from legal libraries at the cost of original paper based looseleaf and now their electronic replacements we were wondering if it was time to see if legal publishers could be persuaded to adopt this or similar software for looseleaf and other updating legal information services such as legislation updaters, precedent updates and so on and so forth

And if the major legal publishers aren’t interested we’d suggest that this software could be a cost efficient way for law firms to look at developing or adding to their own publishing arm. Both for electronic publications developed for internal consumption but also as a reliable way of developing online legal information based product to sell to clients and others.

Legal associations and other organizations with a knowledge base may also see benefit in this type of software.

Alfred Papallo the founder and MD at EIS has called his product eComPress and has already placed it with organisations including the International Accounting Standards Board, the OECD, WHO, as well as Random House, the Australian Army and most importantly as the core software running the Australian Parliament, House of Representatives Practice Manual 

So…. what does eCom Press purport to do?

Papallo tells us when an online user opens an eComPress legal publication its first thought, so to speak, is always to automatically check to see if there is a new update, and permanently flags the users’ publication.

if the publication is not current eCom Press offers them the opportunity to update. This ensures that the user knows that they have the latest version of a particular document or publication on their PC or Network. 

Rather than us re-inventing the wheel with regard to their pitch here’s what Papallo has to say about his product and company and we’ll allow you to determine its useability and practicality.

He writes :

Let me take this opportunity to introduce our company, and outline some background on the eComPress technology. 

Eurofield Information Solutions is a technology company, and we have developed the ATS and Consensus award winning eComPress electronic reference publishing technology from scratch, and have designed into it some very significant advantages over other output technologies.

eComPress is a proven and cost effective tool for the secure online distribution and update of reference publications that must be available to the user offline. It is extremely environmentally friendly and quantifiably superior and more secure than PDF, HTML, MS Word and other reference publication output technologies on at least eight (8) counts including: 

Size
Speed
Search
ease-of-use
security
annotation
networkability
scalability. 

More detail on the above at the end of the article

You can obtain various White Papers, Case Studies and demonstration publications from Free Downloads on the website, and here at EIS we have also recently added four brief video tutorials that give prospective users a good outline of the capability of the eComPress technology.

Tutorial One – Navigation & MultiView Screens http://www.eis.com.au/tutorial1/Navigation%20Tutorial%201%20standalone%20HD.html

Tutorial Two – Searching http://www.eis.com.au/tutorial2/Tutorial%202%20%20Standalone%20HD.html

Tutorial Three – Copying and Pasting & Smart Table Headings

http://www.eis.com.au/tutorial3/Tutorial%20Three%20-%20Final%20version%20HD.html 

Tutorial Four - Collaborate in Context with eComPress annotations http://www.eis.com.au/tutorial4/Tutorial%204%20-%20Final%20Version%20in%20HD.html 

Outlined below is a brief description of the eight quantifiable advantages that the eComPress technology will provide users via tutorial links

eComPress advantages are summarised below:

1. Superior search capability: eComPress searching is guaranteed to find all the information in the data – precisely and quickly – every time. Every word, number and alpha-numeric is indexed and searchable, and it supports multiple wildcard (?) and (*), and logical (Boolean) searching. The powerful FAST search saves time in the field, and is ideal for mission critical environments like the courtroom where the user needs a fast response.

2. Superior annotation: eComPress offers a powerful annotation system that allows users to easily add personal and network Notes. Even better, users, authors and editors can interact in context with these notes, and they are automatically transcribed in context to new and revised publication updates. eComPress annotations do not compromise the content in any way. eComPress Notes are ideal for preserving and sharing valuable IP, and lend themselves to Collaborate in Context between users of the publication.

3. Powerful User Interface: eComPress offers a superior user interface where the content in each view is always synchronised with the Tree Table of Contents. The HitMap displays where the hits are in the content, and the HitCount tells you the precise number of hits clearly describing the most relevant sections for that search criteria. The Drag-on provides instant access to the publication on your desktop, and using the multi-view screen, up to four separate areas of the publication or library can be searched and viewed concurrently. The intuitive user interface minimises training investment, the Drag-on provides instant access to mission critical information on the user’s desktop, and the MiltiView screen is ideal for cross-referencing different parts of the content.

4. Unmatched compression: Documents are permanently compressed at a bit level to as little as 10% of the original file size including the viewer. This is lossless compression and smaller than PDF, and output from other common compression tools. The substantially reduced publication size, improves server and communication efficiency and saves on-line delivery time and cost.

5. Security: eComPress files are uniquely encrypted and are easily password protected, are VeriSign RSA 128bit code signed, and use a superior 32 bit CRC to ensure all publications are complete and not corrupted, truncated or contaminated in transit. Built-in security to provide for rights management; and protects the publisher, content and user.

6. Built-in viewer: Unlike PDF, XPS, XML or MS Word, eComPress requires no other software to view, search or annotate the content. Users don’t have to download and install reader software. This means you never have generational issues with files. eComPress viewers are secure and by being encapsulated with the content, guarantee its security as well. eComPress content is also compatible with MS Office and other Windows-based software without corruption. eComPress publications are always complete and secure and just work on receipt.

7. LAN/WAN Server: eComPress publications come with powerful multi-user server software that also provides for licensing control of the number of concurrent users. Ideal for publisher licensing, and for users to collaborate in a corporate network environment.

8. Scalable: eComPress Portfolio enables eComPress files to be strung together to build comprehensive libraries that can be updated in an ad hoc manner yet still searched contiguously. Extensible publication library facility that is ideal for large platforms or product publication libraries!