Kentico Software announced the release of Kentico CMS 5.0 for ASP.NET. The new version is aimed at enhancing enterprise-level performance and scalability for large sites along with usability changes and a new Widgets technology. It can handle a database of 100,000 pages and 1,000,000 site members. It also comes with support for SQL Server Replication which, together with existing support for Web farms, allows for high availability and scalability. Kentico CMS 5.0 also comes with improvements in the user interface, including personalization of dialogs based on user roles or support for bulk operations with large number of pages. The new Widgets technology allow content editor to insert dynamic functionality into the page or build completely new page layouts without developer’s help. Kentico CMS 5.0 for ASP.NET can be downloaded as a free 30-day trial or it can be trialed on-line through Kentico Virtual Lab. www.kentico.com/
Month: January 2010 (Page 6 of 7)
Contegra Systems and dtSearch announced a faceted search add-on for dtSearch Developer Customers. Faceted search enables dynamic filtering of search results by attributes. Built on the dtSearch Engine APIs, Contegra Systems’ Kaleido Search now makes faceted search available to content-rich applications and e-commerce sites. Kaleido Search offers the ability to group search results by facet, the ability to “expand and collapse” facet selections, on-demand summaries of selected facets, and more. Kaleido Search enables these faceted search features in the context of comprehensive solution for online data access that is customizable to suit any site. The dtSearch Engine can index over a terabyte of data in a single index, as well as create and instantly search an unlimited number of indexes. The software offers more than 25 search options, including Unicode support covering hundreds of international languages. Proprietary file format support highlights hits in popular file types. A built-in Spider supports searching of local and remote, public and secure, dynamic and static web data, with WYSIWYG hit-highlighted displays. The dtSearch Engine API supports .NET, Java, C++, SQL, etc., including native 64-bit Windows/Linux support. http://www.contegrasystems.com, http://www.dtsearch.com
Jease, a content management framework based on open source Java technologies, has added support for the Perst object-oriented, open source embedded database system from McObject. When used with Jease, Perst becomes the persistence engine for highly customized, content- and database-driven Web applications that leverage the productivity and efficiency of working with “plain old Java objects” (POJOs). Jease (the name combines “Java” and “ease”) provides building blocks for developers with even a little Java experience to assemble Web applications tailored to specific needs. The goal of Jease is to offer a flexible content management framework rather than a full-blown content management system. Other open source software components used by Jease include Apache Lucene for full-text indexing and search, and the ZK Ajax + Mobile Java framework. Perst and Perst Lite are part of McObject’s family of small footprint, high performance embedded database software products. The eXtremeDB in-memory embedded database from McObject is used in devices including MP3 players, industrial automation solutions, digital TVs, telecom/network communications equipment and military/aerospace technology. Perst is available for Java and .NET, including Java ME and .NET Compact Framework. http://www.jease.org/, http://www.mcobject.com
FatWire Software announced that its FatWire Content Server fully integrates with Google Analytics to help customers measure and track the success of their FatWire websites. FatWire customers can download the integration module free of charge from FatWire to automatically generate Google tags and feed data directly into Google, for out-of-the-box monitoring and reporting. The integration will enable FatWire customers to use Google’s free analytics package to measure and optimize online content and campaigns, providing a better understanding of website effectiveness, including traffic, usage patterns and visitor behavior. The FatWire Analytics module, which is natively integrated with Content Server, provides granular tracking of content assets for specific customer segments and across dynamic, targeted web pages, enabling optimization of content on a granular level. Google Analytics provides complementary capabilities for tracking and measuring website and user behavior at a site and page level. With this packaged integration, customers can now combine FatWire’s platform with Google Analytics, thus providing a combination of page, behavior and granular content analytics. http://www.fatwire.com
eZ Systems announced the immediate release of extensions for eZ Publish 4.2. eZ Publish Style Editor is a brand new extension providing a tool to change the overall look and feel of an eZ Publish-based website. Webmasters are able to switch in a ‘visual edit’ mode while managing sites featuring eZ Flow or the eZ Publish Website Interface. The visual edit mode provides a user interface for managing the look and feel of a site’s pages by editing the Cascading Style Sheet (CSS) and Images used by the site. This extension is immediately available as certified software, and supported as an add-on to ez Publish Premium. The eZ XML export extension helps you manage the content you provide to 3rd-party content platforms. It gives you control over which content is exported, the XML export format with support for XML Schema (XSD) and XSLT post-processing, and a configurable set of delivery options in order to industrialize and automatize the content delivery. This extension is also immediately available as certified software, and supported as an add-on to ez Publish Premium. Teamroom is a collaboration solution based on eZ Publish. Make your team members’ lives easier with simple management of teamroom members, information sharing, an open collaboration workflow, event and team document management, and confidentiality levels for your teamrooms. Teamroom is packaged as an extension, and available as a beta in the contribution area for eZ Publish extensions. Teamroom will have an official release in conjunction with the 4.3 release of eZ Publish. http://ez.no/
WordPress announced the release of WordPress 2.9.1. This release addresses a handful of minor issues as well as a rather annoying problem where scheduled posts and pingbacks are not processed correctly due to incompatibilities with some hosts. Download 2.9.1 or upgrade automatically from the Tools->Upgrade menu in your blog’s admin area. http://wordpress.org/development/2010/01/wordpress-2-9-1/, http://wordpress.org/download/
By Ted Treanor, Senior Publishing Consultant
Publishing predictions for 2010 abound. As a digital publishing pioneer and visionary, Ted Treanor has been well positioned ahead of the curve, with a unique vantage point to see what’s in store for the industry. At this tipping point, publishing convergence of print and digital has collided with mainstream. Let us know what you think of these predictions.
Let’s see if 13 predictions will be lucky for publishing.
- New eReading devices will proliferate. The market is responding like the California gold rush. Not only will there be new companies launching in 2010, but big electronics firms will have their products. CES will be a haven for digital reading, which will astound everyone.
- Pricing experimentation will take center stage.
- Digital sales channels both retail and distribution will grow rapidly.
- The ePub standard (IDPF.org) will strengthen as an international industry standard. ePub will compete with PDF for the top format for commercial content.
- The big surprise this year will be the number of large recognized companies that will strategically target the digital publishing eReading and content space. At least one major communications infrastructure company (possibly wireless) will stake a claim through a publishing partnership. Other prime segments will be computer manufacturers and printer manufactures.
- Trade associations will scramble to stay relevant in their attempt to lead members through this time of convergence of print and digital.
- Content workflow using XML technologies will become standard for single source production to multiple print and digital editions.
- Publishers will attempt to build direct relationships with their reader customers…not very successfully in 2010.
- Technology and services companies will further enable authors for self-publishing and in their sales goals. At least one big name author will experiment in self-publishing in 2010.
- eCatalogs will become a standard tool in selling content to booksellers, librarians, etc..
- Digital galleys will gain in popularity.
- E-content will be grafted into print in innovative ways.
- New ebook data reports and ebook directories will become ‘must-have’ resources. Gilbane Group has a series of three publishing transformation reports planned in 2010.
Follow me on Twitter @ ePubDr
The growth in web-centric communication has created a major focus on content management, web content management , component content management, and so on. This interest is driven primarily by increasing demand for rich, interactive, accessible information products delivered via the Web. The focus is not misplaced but may be missing part of the point. To be specific, in our focus on the “management” part of CM, we may be missing the first word in the phrase…. “Content.”
It’s true that the application of increasing amounts of computer and brain power to the processes associated with preparing and delivering the kind of information demanded by today’s users can improve those products. But it does so within limits set by and at costs generated by the content “raw material” it gets from the content providers. In many cases, the content available to web product development processes is so structurally crude that it requries major clean-up and enhancement in order to adequately participate in the classification and delivery process. As the focus on elegant Web delivery increases, barring real changes in the condition of this raw content, the cost of enhancement is likely to grow proportionally, straining the involved organizations’ ability to support it.
The answer may be in an increased focus on the processes and tools used to create the original content. We know that the original creator of most content knows the most about how it should be logically structured and most about the best way to classify it for search and retrieval. Trouble is, in most cases, we provide no means of capturing what the creator knows about his or her intellectual product. Moreover, because many creators have never been able to fully populate the metadata needed to classify and deliver their content, in past eras, professional catalogers were employed to complete this final step. In today’s world, however, we have virtually eliminated the cataloger, assuming instead that the prodigious computer power available to us could develop the needed classification and structure from the content itself. That approach can and does work, but it will require better raw material if it is to achieve the level of effectiveness needed to keep the Web from becoming a virtual haystack in which finding the needle is more good luck than good measure. Native XML editors instead of today’s visually oriented word processors, spreadsheets, graphics and other media forms with content-specific XML under them, increased use of native XML databases and a host of rich content-centric resources are part of this content evolution.
Most important, however, may be promulgation of the realization across society that creating content includes more than just making it look good on the screen, and that the creator shares in that responsibility. This won’t be an easy or quick process, requiring more likely generations than years, but if we don’t begin soon, we may end up with a Web 3 or 4 or 5.0 trying to deliver content that isn’t even yet 1.0.
