Members of the Information and Content Exchange (ICE) Authoring Group have issued an invitation to preview plans for the ICE 2.0 specification, now under design. The meeting will be held on September 26, 2001 at the Marriott Hotel near the Moscone Center, San Francisco, CA. ICE is "an XML-based communications protocol optimized for managing the regular exchange of content and data among business partners. The first version of the ICE specification was released in 1998 and has enjoyed considerable support. An updated version ICE 1.1 was also released and it too has been incorporated into products produced by companies including Vignette, Kinecta, Interwoven, Oracle, HP, and Active Data Exchange. A reference implementation toolkit for ICE called ICE CUBES is being developed on SourceForge. Some of the current plans for ICE 2.0 include: (1) Exploration of ICE-based syndication as a Web Service; (2) Integration of the latest standards such as XML Schemas, XML Namespaces, UDDI, SOAP, PRISM, and RDF; (3) Elegant metadata implementations including PRISM an RDF; (4) Well-defined protocol extension mechanism; (5) Development of a framework for a public catalog; (6) New transport layers such as HTTP/S, SMTP, NNTP, and WAP."

From the announcement:

Originally designed for syndication of news networks, ICE is now a vital technology for value networks and Web portals, as trading partners face the need to keep one another updated with current information. Syndication using ICE technology has now become synonymous with managed content interchange since it addresses the need for automated, reliable, secure distribution and redistribution of all types of commercial and non commercial content. Now, armed with the knowledge of required enhancements and aware of a host of new infrastructure and transport layer options, the Authoring Group has decided to move to the next major version of the specification.

ICE (Information and Content Exchange) is a key industry initiative hosted by the IDEAlliance and sponsored by a group of companies who have a common interest in solving the problem of automating and managing the exchange of every type of content. The group consists of software developers and companies who distribute or consume content, whether commercially or within intranet and extranet frameworks. The ICE Authoring Group and the ICE Network are open to all companies and include companies such as Adobe Systems, Vignette, Active Data Exchange, Interwoven, Kinecta, and National Semi Conductor.