I am thinking of reviving this blog yet again. I’ve been part of the System Integrator industry for a long time and have seen it from close quarters. I believe there is much hype, too many myths as well as a lot of FUD about SIs. I also think there’s a serious lack of "balanced" [...]
Auctori:city, a web content management system designed for municipalities and built for SEO, is a sponsor of the National Association of Government Webmasters (NAGW) National Conference which will be held at the Millennium Hotel in St. Louis, Missouri September 22-24, 2010.
A silo of the search engine optimization friendly web content management system, Auctori, an innovation of Unidev, the Auctori:city solution provides cities with the opportunity to strengthen their Internet presence and their overall brand reputation by giving users a professional city website design and the power to maintain their web content in real-time.
“We are looking forward to attending this highly anticipated conference and introducing Auctori:city to the NAGW community,” said Andrea Bemis, Brand Manager, Auctori. “Our unique CMS integrates controls that give individual departments the power to edit components of their website, such as news, community calendars and business directories, making the general maintenance of a city website very straightforward and less time consuming for webmasters.”
CMS Made Simple© “Geek Moot” Conference
CMS Made Simple hosts its annual conference, “Geek Moot”, in Amsterdam September 15th – 17th
PHILADELPHIA – CMS Made Simple© (“CMSMS”), an open source content management system, is hosting its annual international conference, “Geek Moot”, scheduled to take place September 15 through 17, 2010, in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Geek Moot is the official international conference for the CMS Made Simple content management system platform. CMS Made Simple founder Ted Kulp will be presenting “The State of CMS Made Simple” on September 16th; also celebrating the recent milestone achieved of generating 1 million downloads.
Attendees of this conference will consist of CMS Made Simple users of all expertise, including technology firms, marketing and advertising agencies, web designers, developers, and other users and fans of the platform.
September 15th, the first day of activities, will be filled with pre-conference educational workshops discussing various topics facilitated by experts in their respective fields. These topics will consist of “Advanced Design Integration, “Instant Modules”, SEO & CMS Made Simple”, “A Beginner’s Walkthrough of CMS Made Simple”, “jQuery”, and “CMS Made Simple Extensions”.
September 16th & 17th are going to be information-packed conference days, full of sessions discussing topics such as the much-anticipated launch of version 2.0, current and future marketing efforts, e-commerce, mobile, modules and development, front-end users, flash video, along with time for Q&A with members of the development team.
Registration for Geek Moot Amsterdam is only €150. All attendees will be able to attend two full days of sessions and lunch will be provided. Register at http://geekmoot2010.eventbrite.com/. All workshops are priced individually.
To learn more about “Geek Moot” Amsterdam 2010, please visit http://geekmoot.com/2010/.
“We’re entering a new era of the web. To the ignorant masses, this transition will go largely unnoticed; they’ll enjoy increased usability and convenience, with more robust functionality and more relevant data at hand. And they’ll mostly just take it for granted.
However, for web designers, front-end developers and data system programmers, we have a lot of work to do.”
-Laura Scott, PINGV, HTML5 + RDFa = time to get rid of that 20th century furniture, August 23, 2010
Here is an interesting concept that is well articulated in a new book, The Learning Layer by Steven
Flinn. Recently, I had an opportunity to
speak with Steve about this marriage of aspects of Web 2.0 and artificial
intelligence (aka adaptive systems) that can have useful applications within
the enterprise.
Steve is the CEO of ManyWorlds,
a firm that conducts R&D in the area of next generation systems
and business processes and provides practical applications of this work to
organizations. He was an executive at Royal Dutch Shell where he held a variety of positions including Chief
Information Officer and Vice President of Strategy and Strategic Alliances.
Steve has a background in economics, mathematics and computer science.
Steve noted that use of personalized responses
based on user behavior has been pervasive on the consumer Web through such
things as Amazon’s recommendations.
However, this technology has been applied much less within the
enterprise. He feels that this is
ironic since behavioral information available within the enterprise can generally be much richer than out on
the Web. You have a more clearly defined set of users and many more
interactions to data mine, along with more related teams who collaborate and
generate more behavioral data. I
would certainly agree with the difference in the quality of information on user
behavior and also add that many Web 2.0 applications such as wikis work better
within the trusted environment of the enterprise. This seems to be another
case.
The Learning Layer approach takes this
personalization several steps further. Not only are personalized
recommendations provided to individual users based on their behavior and the
behavior of others, but the system feeds these recommendations back to itself
to continuously adapt on an automated basis. Steve said that the technology is
currently available to do this, it just needs to be properly applied.
For example, a system managing content might make
recommendations for related content based on a user’s profile and actions. Using the Learning Layer approach, it
would also keep track of all user behavior and feed this back into the system
on a regular basis. The relationship between two sets of content may become
stronger or weaker depending how it is currently being used. The same logic can be applied to the
connections between people to see the ebb and flow of connections.
The approach can be applied to work flow and here
it gets even more interesting in my opinion. Just as old school knowledge
management created more direct business value when aligned to business
processes, I see the same thing happening here. Let’s take the example of a property casualty insurance
underwriter. After the system takes in enough actions to be able to
differentiate the skill level of users, it is ready to go.
Now if an underwriter with no experience in
underwriting laundry mats, for example, starts to work on one the system
recognizes this. It also knows the steps that an inexperienced underwriter
should take when working with laundry mats and provides these process steps. It
can also recommend a person who is slightly more advanced than the user who can
offer guidance. If the user has middle level experience, then the process steps
can be tailored to that level. In the meanwhile the system is observing the
ongoing user behavior on an aggregated basis and making adjustments in the
proper process steps for everyone at all levels.
The technology is around to create this type of
system. I can see the value and wish I had this capability when I designed
knowledge management systems for underwriters in the early 90s. Call centers that deal with complex
topics would be another great target area. You need to have enough complexity
to warrant this type of intervention and then enough users to generate useful
data for the system to apply.
We also discussed the concept of learning value
that Steve raises in the book. He took the concept of value of information from
decision analysis and applied it to learning. In decision analysis people
calculate the value of having certain information to help with decisions. The
same concept can be applied to learning.
When undertaking an activity there is the direct value and the value of
the learning derived from the undertaking. This often translates into the
amount of uncertainty that can be eliminated by the new knowledge and its
effect on actions. Steve noted that learning only has real value if it changes
behavior (i.e., decisions). If
people will still do the same thing regardless then nothing is gained. That
sounds simple but it is often overlooked.
I like this approach. I think it does extend the
possibilities of enterprise 2.0. If we can create data rich environments
through the transparent interactions within enterprise 2.0 then we have
expanded the learning opportunities. Then if we can use this expanded learning
to better guide individual behavior we have taken it a notch further. Now if we
can turn this learning back on the system to auto-generate changes within the
system itself, we have taken things another step further. I think the data gained from the
transparency of enterprise 2.0 is a large piece of the value. Here is an
approach to make better use of this transparency.
Content management system to celebrate at its annual “Geek Moot” conference in Amsterdam in September
PHILADELPHIA – The developers of CMS Made Simple© (“CMSMS”), an open source content management system, announced that it just hit one million downloads as of August 12, 2010. The content management system (CMS) will celebrate this milestone at its annual conference, “Geek Moot,” scheduled to take place September 15 through 17, 2010, in Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
The CMS Made Simple website, which was recently redesigned with an enhanced user-interface, will soon launch an Alpha version of the much anticipated 2.0 version of the platform.
“We are pleased to see how fast new users have adapted to utilizing the updated platform,” said Ted Kulp, creator of CMS Made Simple. “One of the biggest challenges we previously had was that a portion of the audience associated the platform with having the ability to only create simple websites because of its name. However, the reason behind the name is that the platform is much simpler to use compared to almost all of the open source content management systems currently on the market.”
CMS Made Simple is also great for end-users. Having an extremely user-friendly admin panel, CMSMS distinguishes itself from most other platforms in the market by making it very easy to update, create and modify content without having any technical knowledge of how the backend of a website works.
BOSTON, Mass. – Webiva, an open source Ruby on Rails content management system (CMS) designed to compete with the likes of Drupal, Joomla, and WordPress, today launched a new Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) hosting platform. Webiva.com allows web professionals to build websites on a load-balanced, backed-up and replicated cloud without the hassle of installing and maintaining a Ruby on Rails installation.
“Webiva has been absolutely critical to the growth of our business. We reviewed dozens of platforms to adopt, and have found nothing that compares in quality to Webiva,” said Jonathan Karush, CEO of Liberty Concepts, the nation’s largest provider of campaign websites to U.S. congressional candidates. “It has powered some of the nation’s most recognizable advocacy campaigns over the past two years.”
Built from the ground up with a designer’s and a developer’s needs in mind, Webiva is a web 2.0 open-source website building system (WBS) that allows web professionals to build custom websites that look and operate the way they want them to. Based on a Ruby on Rails framework from a software perspective, Webiva does its best to build on the concepts and methodologies that Rails creates. It has an extensible module system that allows additional functionality to easily be dropped into the system. Webiva offers support for forums, e-commerce, social networking other mediums needed by web professionals building top-of-the-line websites.
“Until recently there were two CMS options: a blog engine that’s user-friendly but limited, or a full-stack CMS that’s powerful, but complex to manage,” said Webiva Partner and Developer Pascal Rettig. “Webiva offers the best of both, a Rails-based system with the accessibility of a blog engine and all the features of a big CMS on the back-end.”
With 18 years of combined web development experience, Pascal and Martha Rettig are the inventive developer-designer team behind Webiva’s creation. They have been using the system for more than four years. Every feature available on Webiva was added in response to a specific requirement that arose during its use. Key benefits to web professionals using Webiva include:
By Tony Mobily, Editor-in-Chief, Free Software Magazine
Tony Mobily
I am typing this as I am finally connected in shell to my Android phone. The prompt reminds me that it’s based on the Linux kernel (it’s free), the Dalvik virtual machine (it’s free), and free libraries. Millions of Android devices are shipped every day, each one is a Linux system. Today, it’s a phone. Soon, it will be tablets: Android 3.0 (coming out at the end of the year) will finally be very suitable for tablets. Apple alone will have to face fierce competition on pretty much every front. Microsoft… who? They are more irrelevant every day. I should be happy, right? Well, sort of. Looking back at how long it took me to get this shell prompt makes me worried. Very worried. We are heading towards a world where we no longer own the hardware we buy — and there is no point in having free software if you can’t own your hardware.
Upgrading my Hero
HTC Hero
This is the long story. In August last year (2009) I bought my HTC Hero. Mind you, I bought it. I didn’t get it with a lock-in carrier plan — I own this little white box, including its funny chin added by engineers who probably drank too much. When I bought it, it came with two things: Android 1.6, and a promise from HTC that the update for Android 2.1 would come out “soon”. Just to be exact, my HTC was the “Telus” version — I paid $100 more for it, because it works on Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) at 850Mhz, which happens to be the insane, non-standard frequency that ex-monopolist Telstra uses for its 3G data plan.
HTC has historically made smartphones based on Windows Mobile. In order to turn Windows Mobile from a bad joke to something that is actually usable, HTC developed Sense. Sense can be summed up as a bunch of custom modifications to the phone’s user interface. When HTC got their hands on Android, they must have had two pretty scary thoughts: the first one was that Android by default came with a very good UI which didn’t need the kind of tweaking Windows Mobile needed. The second one was that they had to come up with something in order to give HTC some competitive advantage. So, they ported Sense to Android — which makes it a little bit sluggish, it’s totally not necessary, but it’s there and it does improve in several departments (the keyboard being one of them). This has some implications. The main one is that when a new version of the Android system comes out, HTC needs to apply Sense to the new version, test it, and make sure that it works. This takes a lot of time and effort. So, as a result, at this point the Telus HTC Hero still runs on Android 1.6. Yes, that’s incredible. HTC and Telus keep on telling customers that it’s not their fault, Telus hasn’t requested it, HTC hasn’t released it yet, and so on.
(And if you thought that Motorola would be any different, you are out of luck: they have Blur instead of Sense, and they are about as responsive as HTC in terms of upgrading their phones to Android 2.1).
So, here I was: I needed to update to Android 2.0 or 2.1, since I needed to share my Internet connection while travelling. And couldn’t. I will say it again: I couldn’t. The phone was like Fort Knox. I wasn’t “root” on my phone: I was a normal user. The only privilege I had, was that I could use it. I couldn’t boot from another operating system. I couldn’t see the file system. I couldn’t do and see anything other that what HTC decided I could do or see. The story goes on with me spending hours, and hours, and hours getting my phone “rooted”.
It went more or less like this:
Yes. That is right: I had to hack into my own computer/phone in order to do what I wanted to do with it.
So, where do you go?
I couldn’t tell you “don’t buy HTC”, for two reasons.
The short-lived Nexus One Android-Powered Smart Phone From Google
[Note: Google recently stopped selling the Nexus One, which came “rooted” (meaning that you could easily install your version of Android on it as you like).]
Basically at this point when you buy an Android phone, you have to hope that the very keen Android-hacking community has come up with a way of hacking into your own phone — or you are royally stuck with whatever the phone came with.
So, right now if you buy a laptop and you want to run GNU/Linux on it, you have to worry about what piece of hardware won’t work on it (I have two laptops, on one the microphone and the fingerprint login won’t work, on the other one the external speakers won’t work). If you buy an Android phone, on the other hand, you have to hope that it’s actually possible to hack into it and install whatever you like on it.
(I am not an Android developer, but I think it’s possible to purchase a “Dev” device from HTC, which allows you to flash a ROM. However, that’s not good enough. You shouldn’t have to spend more money on a developers’ device on order to do whatever you like with a smart phone).
Free software becoming meaningless
Android is indeed free software. You can get it, download it, run it on an emulator, change it, redestribute it, etc. However, mobile phone makers are locking everything in, so that you can’t actually use this software in any useful way — unless you are willing to spend hours hacking your own device.
I am not sure people realize the gravity of this situation. It’s as if a company sold you a laptop with GNU/Linux preinstalled, but that hardware didn’t have any way to chose which device it will boot from, and you didn’t have the root password.
If you think “big deal”, think again.
For example, being simply a user you cannot:
That last point might not affect many people, but the other ones definitely will. And I am sure there is plenty more.
My proposed solution
When I write articles like this, I always make sure that I have at least one suggested solution (otherwise I will end up sounding like a grumpy old man who doesn’t have anything useful to say). My solution is very simple: forcing hardware producers to sell their phones with a boot loader, in order to install your own custom ROM. This could be done in such a way so that if you do access your boot loader, you lose your warranty (although this would be insane). There could be a per-device password, or whatever way that will basically differentiate you from “common” users who don’t feel the need to actually own their own devices.
This should be done forcefully. This means that they shouldn’t have a choice. It should be done by law, or by contract (in the software license maybe?).
Otherwise, in the long term, we might end up having this great piece of software, and nowhere to run it. Now, that would be ironic.
[Note: "Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article is permitted in any medium without royalty provided this notice is preserved and appropriate attribution information (author, original site, original URL) is included". The original article can be found here.]
I
have covered SkillSoft before as they were moving in this direction (see SkillSoft Introduces More Web 2.0 Features with
SkillPort® 7.0 Learning Management System). Now SkillSoft has announced the launch
of inGenius, a social learning platform layer that enables
customers to securely enable their employees to find, create and share
knowledge assets and expertise with their colleagues as they leverage the
extensive SkillSoft library of on-demand learning assets. I was very interested
in this new move so I spoke with Pam Boiros of SkillSoft about
their offering.
Pam first went through several trends that helped
to prompt them to make this move.
Learning has become more social and the interest in peer learning has
increased. I certainly agree with these observations. I have always been a
proponent of social and peer learning through such methods as simulation-based
learning going back to the 80s. It is great to see the rise of social computing
providing a much richer platform for this approach.
There is also the move from learning as an event
to learning as a continuous process. This was one of the reasons I first got
involved in knowledge management in the 90s and now the line between learning
and KM is becoming even more blurred for good reasons.
To address these trends and take advantage of the
new capabilities that social computing and social networks can bring to
learning, SkillSoft’s Books24×7 division introduced inGenius. It enables social
learning by extending the value of expert information and infusing it with the
knowledge and expertise of an organization’s own employees. Unlike many
stand-alone social networking applications, inGenius is built on SkillSoft’s Books24×7
on demand content collections containing more than 25,000 titles — digital books from leading publishers, analyst
research reports, and white papers — as well as 1,300 videos of thought
leaders and practitioners. Below you can see a inGenius home page.
inGenius
enhances SkillSoft’s core learning assets with a feature set that enables
learners to leverage content assets as seeds of discussion and to add community
content (“co-content”) including notes, comments and ratings that add a unique
layer of context and relevance, specific to their organization. It further
enhances the social learning experience with opportunities to build connections
and allow sharing between learners. inGenius also enables learners to discover
knowledgeable colleagues by searching social profiles. Here is sample profile
page.
inGenius
is a free add-on to the Books24×7 offering. People can set up their own profile with recommended titles and
comments on works. They also have implemented the following model used by
Twitter so people can see the activities of those they respect. The activity
stream contains auto-generated updates based on activities such as adding
comments, rather than manually created tweets. You can click on a link in the
update to see the actual comment in the context of the relevant learning
material. I think this is a good approach for their content focused approach.
Here is a sample activity stream.
When
you do searches for content you now get additional returns on the people who
have commented on this content or recommended it, putting a great social
context to search, another good move. The addition of social
networking capabilities to a learning library makes great sense and SkillSoft
has done a great job with this release.
Web content management software vendors are constantly working to differentiate themselves in the crowded marketplace. For buyers, one of the less helpful ways is when they introduce new terms to replace existing ones. At the moment the current buzzword is “experience management”. Does this mean you now need to convince management about yet another term?
No, experience management is really just new marketing talk by proprietary and expensive vendors for a content management system. Experience management has been mentioned on and off for the past decade or so and is currently pushed strongly by several CMS vendors such as Day (soon Adobe), FatWire, Sitecore and Vignette (now Open Text). The problem with experience management, sometimes called web experience management or customer experience management, is that it really just describes the standard requirements for a system to power a website in 2010.
Experience management certainly describes nothing that you should not be able to expect from a Web CMS. Different vendors have put different angles on the buzzword, but I’ve yet to see a buyer who had a budget specifically for experience management or have issued a request for proposal for an experience management system. User experience covers most of it and is an established field and a recognized industry term, so why not use that instead?
A recent example of how the term has been used is from the Adobe acquisition of Day to quote Rob Tarkoff, senior vice president and general manager, Digital Enterprise Solutions, Adobe:
Adobe’s acquisition of Day represents a key milestone in our efforts toward delivering best-in-class customer experience management solutions to enterprises and governments worldwide
In an industry plagued by too many failed projects, we don’t need new confusing terms to replace ones we already have. Every so often a discussion occurs among industry pundits around whether we need to change terms, mostly in attempts to get senior management to realize what they are missing out on. A recent example: It was suggested in 2009 to deprecate the term “intranet” as it carried to much “dead weight” . Terms such as personalisation and portal have also been hot or declared dead from time to time.
To my surprise, the term web experience management has actually made it onto Wikipedia. A quick look at the history page, reveals that the page was created by a FatWire employee. Perhaps no surprise, that the references on the page link to FatWire articles on the AIIM and KM World sites. Also, a search on Google for web experience management brings up Vignette, FatWire and Sitecore right after the Wikipedia page.
Vendors will always be pushing their own agenda and not necessarily in a language you understand. If you as a customer want to fix web content management, ask your vendor to use terms that you understand and generally focus more on executing projects and delivering quality software and less on coming up with new marketing terms.
As always, let me know if you agree or disagree. You can also add a comment on the “experience management” Wikipedia page, which I think has more industry impact and many more readers than this blog.