As part of its latest campaign to position itself as a provider of tools for electronic commerce (CI No 3,408), Hewlett-Packard Co has unveiled new imaging software for the internet. OpenPix ImageIgniter appears to have been purpose-built to let buyers inspect goods bought through web catalogs. Merchants can serve images to a variety of major browsers, while viewers can select an area of an image and print only that area. The ability to track individual components of a composite image gives webmasters ever more granular reporting on what wins hits and what doesn’t. An authoring assistant works with Allaire Homesite, Dreamweaver and FrontPage, while a service manager permits local and remote administration. ImageIgniter is available for free download for the next 45 days, but only to developers of electronic catalogs for business to business or business to consumer selling, apparently. Not content with a mere product launch, however, HP had to go and throw a program in as well. ImageIgnite Your Site is supposed to encourage organizations to add zooming to their web-published photographs. Partners include Levi Strauss & Co, e-commerce vendors InterWorld Corp and Open Market Inc and authoring tool shops Adobe Systems Inc, Allaire Corp, Macromedia Corp and Microsoft Corp. There’s an online community where developers can gather and talk OpenPix to their hearts’ content. To join the fun visit http://image.hp.com.
