Marketbright, an on-demand emarketing solution with an integrated web content management platform, launched Brightsite, a new product that uses aspects of social networking to create a stronger bond between sales, marketing and the customer. Brightsite creates the equivalent of a B2B shopping cart for enterprise web sites. Brightsite provides a plug-and-play membership management tool for any enterprise website. Brightsite also provides the customer with a member account page with links to all events and offers they have accessed in the past, their account team, and other account-specific information, creating an easy-to-access history for new team members. Customer members also can invite their colleagues into a private, shared collaborative space. The new, interactive and personalized widgets can be easily introduced into existing web sites. Brightsite also allows greater cooperation between sales and marketing teams, allowing a customer’s microsite to become a branding tool with enhanced collaboration opportunities and fresh content. With Brightsite, the marketing team will be able to blast new content, but it will look customized for the sales person’s named accounts. Sales personnel will be able to review beforehand to ensure appropriateness of offers/content, to block the content, or to put a personalized note and pick and choose which items get forwarded on to their customers. http://www.marketbright.com
Year: 2008 (Page 22 of 36)
Amazon’s front page today is announcing that the Kindle is back in stock. They also provide a link to Jeff Bezos’ annual letter to Amazon shareholders, which is dedicated to his thoughts about the Kindle. Nothing earth shattering, though I do think he tries to get to the heart of the question about why someone would buy a Kindle when they already own both a Blackberry and a desktop or notebook computer. After the obligatory reference to Gutenberg, Bezos writes:
Lately, networked tools such as desktop computers, laptops, cell phones and PDAs have changed us too. They’ve shifted us more toward information snacking, and I would argue toward shorter attention spans. I value my BlackBerry–I’m convinced it makes me more productive–but I don’t want to read a three-hundred-page document on it. Nor do I want to read something hundreds of pages long on my desktop computer or my laptop. As I’ve already mentioned in this letter, people do more of what’s convenient and friction-free. If our tools make information snacking easier, we’ll shift more toward information snacking and away from long-form reading. Kindle is purpose-built for long-form reading. We hope Kindle and its successors may gradually and incrementally move us over years into a world with longer spans of attention, providing a counterbalance to the recent proliferation of info-snacking tools.
This is an interesting way to position Kindle or any eBook reader–the competition isn’t the other devices per se but the habits these other devices have accommodated. This is true, I suppose, but I still think that devices will emerge that support both kinds of information consumption–the short form and the long form. What’s missing in Kindle, interestingly, are some features that would make “information snacking” also possible–and useful. As David Guenette pointed out, the Kindle could have readily added MP3 support (“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.”) Plus the idea of paying to read a blog that is otherwise free on the Web is just silly.
So we are still left with, as David calls it, the “additional device conundrum.” I have been using an eBook reader lately, and enjoying it, but there are limitations with that one and what I can read on it. I want to be able to read, at minimum, books, magazines, newspapers, blogs, general web sites, and a wide range of personal content including but not limited to Word, HTML, PDF, and XML formats. I want it to be brain-dead easy to download and access new content. As David points out, I also want multimedia. And I want a level of interactivity to include links, forms, and feedback. I want it to be cheap, powerful, and sturdy, and I want the reading experience to be superior to my notebook computer in terms of size, weight, portability, and readability. In other words, I want something like the Kindle in form factor that behaves much like a really good notebook computer.
Is that too much to ask?
The deadline for submitting proposals for the Gilbane Boston conference, December 2 – 4, 2008 is June 15. See: https://gilbane.com/speaker_guidelines.html
Our April 16th webinar on translation-oriented authoring hosted by across Systems was an excellent 360 degree view of its value from a consultancy, language service provider, and end-user perspective. Thanks to Richard Sikes from LocFlowTech, Inc., Peter Argondizzo from Argo Translation, Inc., and Amy Karls from QuadTech for and a job well done! Access the recording here.
As Sikes noted in his opening remarks, decisions that get made in one part of an organization often show up as costs in another area. This is particularly true of translation and localization costs. Those who create and translate product content (user guides, operator manuals, quick start guides, online help, and the list goes on…) understand the downstream effect of decisions made under pressure all too well.
According to Karls, demand for multilingual product support content consistently is increasing, but timelines and resources are most assuredly not. Isolated story? We think not. Check out the webinar poll on the number of language outputs required from our audience, largely technical documentation folks.
Now check out the range of tools our audience is using to create product support content.
I believe there is not a single technical writer who intends to create inconsistencies or confusion for their translator counterparts. But stuff happens. Like “hurry up” pressure. Like “we lost our editor” pressure. Like “who’s got the latest version of the Style Guide pressure.”
According to Argondizzo, translation-oriented authoring has numerous advantages, among them:
- Unlocks never before utilized value of translation memory database for writers
- Strengthens partnership with language service provider and writers
- Provides content creators with a different perspective of translation memory usage
- Easy to understand and track savings
- Time saved by author not rewriting text
- Consistency for additional reuse in other channels
- Regulatory concerns in rewriting text that already exists
I wholeheartedly agree. Check out the webinar recording. The advantages of “assistance” is demonstrable and impressive, whether one calls it authoring assistance, translation-oriented authoring, or controlled authoring.
I’ve been intrigued by MadCap Software and their aggressive push into the documentation tools space. We just got an in-depth series of presentations on their products, and I certainly came away impressed. Mary Laplante is quoted in a related article over at EContent Magazine.
The holy grail in translation is the speed versus quality dilemma. That creates controversy. Here’s what we’ve noted after posting our Multilingual Social Networking Alert citing Facebook’s crowdsourcing effort:
- Article: Facebook asks users to translate new versions for free
- Video: Facebook’s Spanish Translation Misses the Mark
- Blog: No, Getting Users To Translate Facebook Into Other Languages Isn’t Exploitation
- Article: Facebook’s Community Translation: Savvy or Just Cheap?
No doubt that these references are the tip of an iceberg. How to say “poke” in different languages is clearly not the only conversation going on. And BTW, here’s Facebook’s Translation Application.
The Gilbane Group and Lighthouse Seminars announced that Udi Manber, a Google Vice President of Engineering, will kick-off the annual Gilbane San Francisco conference on June 18th at 8:30am with a discussion on Google’s search quality and continued innovation. Now in its fourth year, the conference has rapidly gained a reputation as a forum for bringing together vendor-neutral industry experts that share and debate the latest information technology experiences, research, trends and insights. The conference takes place June 18-20 at the Westin Market Hotel in San Francisco. Gilbane San Francisco helps attendees move beyond the mainstream content technologies they are familiar with, to enhanced “2.0” versions, which can open up new business opportunities, keep customers engaged, and improve internal communication and collaboration. The 2008 event will have its usual collection of information and content technology experts, including practitioners, technologists, business strategists, consultants, and the leading analysts from a variety of market and technology research firms. Topics to be covered in-depth at Gilbane San Francisco include– Web Content Management (WCM); Enterprise Search, Text Analytics, Semantic Technologies; Collaboration, Enterprise Wikis & Blogs; “Enterprise 2.0” Technologies & Social Media; Content Globalization & Localization; XML Content Strategies; Enterprise Content Management (ECM); Enterprise Rights Management (ERM); and Publishing Technology & Best Practices. Details on the Google keynote session as well as other keynotes and conference breakout sessions can be found at http://gilbanesf.com/conference-grid.html
Click here to find out.
