I have a new post over at EMC’s Community site, "Preserving Electronic Public Records: Lessons from the Washington State Digital Archives." This is part of our ongoing series for EMC on the use of ECM and XML in the public sector.
Month: August 2009 (Page 1 of 2)
We have been very pleased with the interest in our new report, Digital Platforms and Technologies for Publishers: Implementations Beyond “eBook.” We have had hundreds of downloads already, the vast majority of which are senior people in the publishing industry. This tells us that the timing for the research is good and that interest is strong, and we are thinking about what to do next with this topic.
One idea we have thought about is helping publishers think through their eBook strategy. If our research (and other recent research) is correct, many larger publishers are jumping in with both feet, but some larger publishers, many medium-sized, and perhaps most smaller publishers are staying on the sidelines or testing the waters with pilots and low-cost and low-impact tests with third parties. Perhaps these efforts are part of developing a strategy? Perhaps some of you think the market is too nascent?
An eBook strategy would necessarily be multi-faceted, and would include input from sales, marketing, editorial, production, fulfillment, and others with a stake in the process. It would need to be informed by good market data, and with good understanding of what technology and channel partners can truly offer publishers. It would also need to be pragmatic, balancing the capabilities of your organization with a realistic assessment of the market opportunities you have.
We’d like to gauge interest in this kind of offering through the following simple poll. Just one question, and no requirement to log in or register. If you would like to talk in more detail about this idea, please email me with any questions.
Google has announced an upgraded suite of GSA Connectors for the Google Search Appliance (GSA)- including connectors to integrate offline company data with information stored in the cloud. GSA Connectors connect the GSA with content management systems and other repositories, so that users can find the information they are looking for in unified search results. With the upgraded Google Search Appliance Connectors, the connector framework is simplified so that it can search content stored across various databases. One of the featured GSA Connectors is for Salesforce, enabling the GSA can search content in Salesforce, providing sales, marketing, and customer support personnel access to the information they seek regularly. In addition, new updates and features have been made to the connectors for SharePoint, Livelink, FileNet, and Documentum. Specifically, the SharePoint connector supports batch authorization and multiple site collection, and has added 64-bit Windows support. Additionally, the Google Search Box can be implemented within SharePoint, which would be powered by the GSA, giving results from databases outside of the SharePoint system. Multiple connectors now support more recent versions of content systems, such as the Documentum v6.5, or the FileNet v4. www.google.com/enterprise/search/gsa.html
Atex released an update to their Web content management system, Polopoly 9.13, which integrates with their Text Mining engine to automatically tag, and categorize content. A new Polopoly widget also allows content to be “batch categorized”, which enhances the search results for end users, while providing internal users with a discovery and knowledge management tool. Instead of editors applying relevant categories manually, the text mining engine will now do it automatically. Editors can instruct the engine to analyze a piece of content and suggest relevant categories based on the text, and receive suggestions based on the metadata and IPTC categorization. With Polopoly 9.13, classified content is automatically placed in dynamic lists based on metadata selections in the repository. These lists can automatically serve up older stories with links for related content, which are placed in context alongside the current articles. Interested users could be encouraged to “read more” or “find similar” stories based on information from the articles they are viewing. Publishers can even create new pages based entirely on archived content that’s been categorized by metadata. http://atex.com
IXIASOFT has announced the availability of version 2.6 of its DITA CMS solution. DITA CMS is a content management solution enabling technical communicators to author, manage and publish their DITA content efficiently. The solution’s flexible search tool enable users to find and reuse their DITA topics, images and maps. New features include saving search queries and the exporting of search results. The DITA relationship table editor now has drag and drop capability for creating relations between topics, as well as a relationship overview feature for finding items a topic is linked to. Other new features include– a dependency view (“where-used” feature); the ability to use an external diff tool (in addition to the built-in tool), for xml-aware comparison; drag and drop interface in the map editor for creating maps from search results; and the ability to run certain tasks in the background while the user continues on a different task. http://www.ixiasoft.com/
If you’re like me and have been thinking about CMIS (Content Management Interoperability Services), but need some use cases to help you conceptualize it better, Laurence Hart has put together a very useful presentation. He welcomes comments.
As usual, Robin Cover has a great list of resources here.
Kentico Software released a new version 4.1 of Kentico CMS for ASP.NET. The new version comes with a enterprise-class search engine as well as user productivity enhancements. The search engine enables web content to be searchable to assist visitors in finding information. The search engine provides search results with ranking, previews, thumbnail images and customizable filters. The site owners can dictate which parts of the site, which content types and which content fields are searchable. The search engine uses the Lucene search framework. The new version also enhances productivity by changing the way images are inserted into text. The uploaded images can be part of the page life cycle. When the page is removed from the site, the related images and attachments are also removed which helps organizations avoid invalid or expired content on their server. Other improvements were made to the management of multi-lingual web sites. Kentico CMS for ASP.NET now supports workflow configuration based on the content language and it allows administrators to grant editors with permissions to chosen language versions. Content editors can see which documents are not translated or their translation is not up-to-date. http://www.kentico.com/
Ken Brooks is senior vice president, global production and manufacturing services at Cengage Learning (formerly Thomson Learning) where his responsibilities include the development, production, and manufacturing of textbooks and reference content in print and digital formats across the Academic and Professional Group, Gale, and International divisions of Cengage Learning. Prior to his position at Cengage Learning, Ken was president and founder of publishing Dimensions, a digital content services company focused in the eBook and digital strategy space. Over the course of his career, Ken founded a Philippines-based text conversion company; a public domain publishing imprint; and a distribution-center based print-on-demand operation and has worked in trade, professional, higher education and K-12 publishing sectors. He has held several senior management positions in publishing, including vice president of digital content at Barnes & Noble, vice president of operations, production, and strategic planning at Bantam Doubleday Dell, and vice president of customer operations at Simon & Schuster. Prior to his entry into publishing, Ken was a senior manager in Andersen Consulting’s logistics strategy practice.
This interview is part of our larger study on digital publishing.
