Recently in Publishing Category
Well, we can now let the cat out of the bag. Google released Knol yesterday. Knol is guaranteed to generate lots of discussion in the blogosphere and press, especially among fans and detractors of Wikipedia. It is not really the same kind of animal as Wikipedia however, and we'll talk more about in another post, but it is something you will want to check out.
Udi Manber, was planning to announce Knol's release in his keynote at Gilbane San Francisco last month, but unfortunately, it wasn't quite ready. Fortunately, we had a back-up plan and Udi instead gave an excellent and audience-pleasing presentation on search quality.
Our Publishing Practice released a new report this week: Digital Magazine and Newspaper Editions - Growth, Trends, and Best Practices. This is an interesting study especially because it is not an area covered much, if at all, by other firms. Bill Rosenblatt, who co-authored the report with Steve Paxhia, blogged about the report yesterday. You can download the report at no charge from our new "Research Reports" page.
The new page will be the place to find a listing of our most current reports and studies. You can also find information there about Beyond Search: What to do When Your Enterprise Search System Doesn't Work, by Stephen Arnold, which we released in April (and which is not free - but a great deal!).
We have 5 more reports in the works to be published in the next couple of months, and realized we needed a home for this new series of publications. While you can find most anything on our site with our Google custom search, we have reports going back to 1993, as well as many other types of publications, and thought a new home for current reports would make for a friendlier site.
Attention: technical writers! In the spotlight next week: the availability of authoring assistance technologies that bring a living, breathing corporate Style Guide into content creation environments. Creating team-authored product support content with consistency and globalization in mind has come a long way. More on that over on the Globalization blog.
Join me on April 9th to discuss the value of translation-oriented authoring with technology provider across Systems, language services provider Argo Translation, Inc., globalization consultant Richard Sikes, and QuadGraphics, a customer reaping the benefits of authoring assistance technology in a FrameMaker environment.
The deadline for proposals for panel participation or presentations for:
Gilbane San Francisco 2008 at the Westin Market Hotel, San Francisco, June 17 - 19, 2008 is January 15.
Visit http://gilbanesf.com/ to see the topic areas we are focusing and then see how to submit a proposal.
If you've never been to one of our events and want see what we have been covering in our conference programs you can view the programs from Gilbane Boston 2007 and Gilbane San Francisco 2007.
If you have additional questions about speaking, send them to speaking@gilbane.com.
With the advent of Kindle, from Amazon, a second dedicated ebook reader device has made the news, and there's a lot to like about Kindle on the face of it. But the old hobgoblin of too many dedicated devices still reigns.
That’s what drives me crazy about Kindle. It has a built-in cell phone, but there’s no option to use it for anything else other than ordering a book. It has the ICs and jacks for playing MP3 files, but no playlist management, nor—absurdly enough, considering that Amazon is set up to sell things like music—any iTunes-like music downloading. The critical assessment of the Web browsing capability of Kindle is not fully formed, but there’s already plenty of complaint about the Kindle’s shortcomings there. Even one of the strong features of Kindle—E-ink—comes with its own drawback; while promotional copy claims that it is just like reading a page, that also means that you can’t read without a light, so better add a booklight to your pack, even as you’re carrying an electrically powered “book.” And with Kindle’s fundamental lack of support of PDF files—without question the single most widespread format for ebooks—you have to wonder, “What were they thinking?!”
A fuller discussion can be found in our Publishing Practices Blog, in Ebook Readers, Unite!
In the Global Information Age, mere information availability no longer suffices. Today's customer expectations demand relevant information that is culturally acceptable, appealing, and most important, understood. Delivering contextual, multilingual information – communications that make sense in the customer’s language of choice – is fundamental. Translation is a corporate requirement.
However, any company with a multinational revenue profile knows that fusing quality and translation is a significant challenge. Our take? Quality translation within the global content lifecycle can be elusive, but it is achievable. To learn more, download our latest whitepaper, "Quality In, Quality Out: The Value of Technology in the Global Content Lifecycle" and listen to the recording from the companion webinar hosted by Sajan.
We'll also continue the quality discussion throughout Gilbane Boston's Globalization track, particularly in the session, "Quality at the Source: Creating Global Customer Experience."
Activity for our 4th Gilbane Boston conference at the Westin Copley November 27 -29 is ramping up quickly. The conference schedule and session descriptions have been posted. The early list of exhibitors and sponsors is also available. And, online registration is open. We'll be updating the site on a regular basis from now on, usually daily, so bookmark the pages that interest you to keep up-to-date.
The recording from our June 26th webinar, "Utilizing Web CMS as an eMarketing Platform to Deliver Tangible ROI" is now available here.
During the webinar, my co-presenters from Hot Banana Software and I talked about how the Web is a critical component of marketing and sales strategies for organizations large and small. We noted that more and more marketing dollars are moving to online activities, in billions. Not many would argue with that. But we also reminded our audience that "the other side of the coin" in having more money to spend is the parallel rise in corporate expectations for ROI on that spend. Not many can argue with that.
The heat is on. Organizations want eMarketing to drive sales, period. Proving that it can – and quantifying that it does – remains the conundrum for many. As we discussed how to prove marketing ROI, we asked the audience to tell us about their eMarketing goals. Their responses clearly have accountability (read: measurement!) in mind:
We also talked about the fact that eMarketing is a dizzying challenge, given an array of emerging approaches, techniques, and technologies. Selecting the most lucrative methods is as far from a one-dimensional process as you can get. Here's a snapshot of the methods our webinar audience is using today:
It can be interesting for both analysts and technology vendors to understand the rate of technology adoption within the field -- as opposed to within the market forecast. Here's a case in point, where "2.0"-driven techniques such as social media advertising and RSS content distribution lag begin more traditional "e" methods, focused squarely around email and search.
Want to read more on Web CMS and eMarketing? Download here.
Are here.
I haven't been very good at blogging about this conference as it has been a busy Winter and early Spring. In any case, there is still time to join us, especially if you are in the Bay area. Registration is still open online as of this post, and is also available on site at the Palace hotel through Thursday. If you can only get away for one day, make it Wednesday for the keynote with Adobe, Google, IBM, Microsoft and Oracle. The technology showcase is also open on Wednesday (with a reception) and Thursday. http://gilbanesf.com/conference_grid.html
Now available! "Beyond Search: What to do When Your Enterprise Search System Doesn't Work, by Stephen Arnold
