The Gilbane Advisor

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The Small Web, or Web 1.0

Since a year ago at The Gilbane Conference on Content Management in San Francisco I named the big-screen iPod as the “next big thing in Content Management,” I feel empowered to comment on Tuesday’s news from Apple.

It’s no surprise to me that Al Gore and Steve Jobs are buddies, (though it’s hard to know what “buddy” means in that particular class). Both have an uncanny knack for getting people excited about ideas (easy computing, global warming, the Internet, digital music, etc.) that are not particularly unique, and seem almost inevitable once presented on bigger-than-life rear-projection screens. I kept thinking of all the Rocket eBooks, Palm Pilots, brick cell-phones, and tablet-PC devices littering the road to Macworld Expo in San Francisco. Apple’s own Newton is there, as well.

It was in either 1997 or 1998 that I went to a Scitex event in Dayton Ohio and watched a video of the “Scitex of the future.” All I remember is some guy climbing on the side of a mountain with a hand-held device in his hand. He was simultaneously doing all these cool things like talking to someone on a picture phone, analyzing scientific data, calling up a topographical map and sending his location to the helicopter pilot hovering above. And believe me, if Scitex “got it” then it was pretty obvious. Of course we want one device to do everything. And of course we want it to be small, easy-to-use and cool—qualities a company like Scitex could surely not deliver. But Apple will.

Unchained Melodies and Spreadsheets
The traditional business community will look at the iPhone the way it always looks at Apple products. “Not enough security.” “Won’t work with my (fill-in-the-blank).” “Too expensive.” “A consumer product.” But of course we all know it’s the beginning of a massive change in computing. There are millions of people chained to desks that should be out in the world, talking to customers, interacting with employees and smelling the roses. And doing email, and reviewing inventories, and working out who’s going to work the night shift. They don’t really need a big computer, and it would be a hell of a lot more productive not to give them one. And yes, those solutions exist now, but there’s something about Apple that makes the concept seem realistic.

So doesn’t true mobile computing change how we present information? It certainly should. I fear the easy internet capabilities of this next-generation hand-held device will give everyone a cop-out for not doing the work. The Web for a large desktop screen and the Web for an iPhone are considerably different. Only the transmission of the Web has become mobile, not the content, which is currently designed for people sitting in chairs, completely dedicated to the information at hand.

So while the digiterati are all talking about Web 2.0 or the Semantic Web, I say what about the Small Web? What does it mean to make your network available and fully functional to people with 3.5-inch screens as the window? You think it’s tiresome waiting for a Flash animation to load now? See what it feels like while you’re standing in line at the Airport.

Small is Beautiful
We need less information. Everybody knows that. We save too much, we have access to too many things, we over-protect and over-value meaningless drivel that was once thrown out at the end of most days or certainly most years. We carry around Gigabytes of “stuff” like we may need it at any moment. It will be refreshing to see companies struggle with down-sizing information the way they have down-sized everything else. But down-size they must! (Maybe we should issue “word credits” the way they issue “carbon credits”—spew out too many words and you have to trade with a bunch of Buddhist monks so it evens out.)

This is good news for the creative community, where less-is-more has always been the thing. And good news for those designers who have strong print aesthetics–mobile design has more in common with print than with the Web. You don’t approach designing a 3 x 5 postcard the same way you do a letter-size brochure.

Now is the time to start lobbying for more staff, pitching to clients and start working on new self-promo pieces. The eBook has finally arrived, only it sings and dances, too. What a great new format. It requires new design techniques, of course, but most exciting, it requires editing. There will be focus groups and usability studies, but they will only confirm the obvious—people on the move want billboards, not encyclopedias.

Oh oh. Didn’t we fire most of the editors a few years ago? Time to ride through all the brew-pubs and Starbucks in the land shouting “Come back. We need you! You matter again!”

No Time to Waste
I would fight for my company or my clients to have an iPhone-specific Web site up by June, and to have all PDF downloads available in a special iPhone-optimized format at the same time. Don’t take a “wait and see” attitude. Take a chance—it’s not even a very big one. Start re-designing your information and it’s architecture for this format. It’s different and it matters.
Oh yeah. And hire a couple of kids right away. Any will do.

Quark Releases QuarkXPress 7.1

Quark Inc. announced the release of QuarkXPress 7.1, the new Universal upgrade to the desktop design software. The latest upgrade adds performance enhancements, making the design software more responsive. Quark made performance improvements in several areas — including text selection, clipped images, and flattening features. Each feature has received a performance boost, resulting in faster production times. In addition, the Universal upgrade has provided performance improvements throughout the application. A fully functional 30-day evaluation version of QuarkXPress 7, including the new Universal release for Intel-based Macs, is available. To purchase or upgrade to QuarkXPress 7.1, visit the Quark Web site at http://www.quark.com/71update

Content and Workflow Combined Yield Increased Value

Dick Harrington is the CEO of Thomson. During a December investor’s conference presentation, he clearly described Thomson’s future strategy. Their vision is to be the leading provider of workflow solutions to business and professional customers. Their goal is to develop “must-have” products with high utilization and renewal rates. I would assume that a recurring revenue model is also preferred. As they create technology to leverage their content, they find that they achieve greater leverage and higher margins. This is a very sound strategy.

His decision to divest Thomson Learning aside, it would seem that there are excellent opportunities awaiting College and Educational publishers who employ similar strategies. Students, professors, teachers, and parents could all benefit from tighter integration of enabling technology and multimedia including simulations with more traditional text based materials. Many publishers are already finding success with next generation products that offer customers their choice of media options combined with technology that helps this group of professionals do their jobs better. The key is to focus on customer needs and creating innovative new products rather than creating new media versions of existing products. These new products also have the potential to be licensed for specific terms and usages rather than be sold outright. This model would likely accelerate revenue growth and yield better margins.

We’ll strive to provide examples of successful ventures in later posts…

Pegasystems Introduces SmartBPM Suite v5.2

Pegasystems announced the latest version of its award-winning SmartBPM Suite. Enhancements focus on providing business users with better access and more precise control over their business processes. New features include Flex-based interactive business visualization, complex business decisioning support, insurance-specific capabilities to manage multi-channel, multi-state policies and rules, SOA integration testing, AJAX and Flex automation, and accessibility features to support all users. The release also adds new accessibility support to meet the requirements imposed by the Americans with Disabilities Act, the Disability Discrimination Act (UK) as well as other accessibility requirements in the EU.

Mediasurface Integrates Google Enterprise Search into CMS

Mediasurface and Google have signed a distribution agreement in which Mediasurface will bundle the Google Search Appliance with Morello, its web content management system enabling the two organisations to provide web content management and corporate search facilities in one offering. As part of the agreement, an interface between Morello and the Google Search Appliance has been developed; enabling Morello to use the Google Search Appliance to deliver highly relevant search results. Mediasurface can now deliver the same Google search experience while searching content managed by Morello on public websites and intranets. The security model within Morello is fully maintained; a search will only retrieve and display content relevant to the access privileges of the user. The integration between Morello and Google Search Appliance ensures that a richer and relevant set of content is delivered than would have been available previously by adding in metadata such as the original content author, the date the content was first published, keywords, and so on, which is held separately within the CMS. The Morello content author can create “keymatch” terms that relate to an item of content and enabling certain content to appear at the top of a search result. Morello and the Google Search Appliance can now group and manage information for specific audiences so if, for example, someone searches for technical data on a product, they can select the technical collection and avoid the brochures. http://www.mediasurface.com

Atlassian Adds Clustering to Confluence Wiki Software

Atlassian Software Systems announced the availability of the newest version of Confluence, the enterprise wiki. Confluence 2.3 offers users an optional clustered configuration, Confluence Massive, that provides unlimited scalability, together with exceptional performance and reliability, for large deployments of the wiki. Confluence Massive provide the performance required for organisations with tens of thousands of users, or for those businesses with mission-critical applications that require high availability. Confluence 2.3 contains dozens of other new features and improvements, including a People Directory, which allows users to easily find other Confluence users’ profiles and personal spaces; an activity-tracking plugin that generates statistics on application usage; and a WebDAV client plugin. Atlassian selected Tangosol and their Coherence product to deliver the clustering capabilities of Confluence Massive. Confluence 2.3 is available for evaluation and purchase. Release notes, pricing and licensing information are also available online. http://www.atlassian.com

Intalio Signs New OEM Partners

Intalio, Inc. announced that it has signed OEM agreements with Diamelle and OperMIX for the embedding of Intalio|BPMS, its standards-based Open Source Business Process Management System (BPMS). Diamelle Technologies will embed Intalio|BPMS into its solutions in order to support the deployment of complex identity and access management processes, while complying with strict auditing and compliance requirements that are demanded by its financial services customers. OperMIX will use Intalio|BPMS to deploy custom business processes on top of Salesforce.com AppExchange and provide real-time integration with third-party applications such as SAP R/3 and mySAP Business Suite.http://www.diamelle.com, http://www.opermix.com, http://www.intalio.com

The Enterprise Search Challenge

Enterprise Search has been an illusive dream for too many organizations for too many years. Search technology is ubiquitous but the “holy grail” for most organizations is to be able to find all content within the organization through a single query interface. My instinct is to give a chronology of search over the past four or five decades to guide your understanding of why enterprise search has remained so “out of reach.” I could also describe the ways in which search technologies have evolved and morphed with hundreds of functions and thousands of features. It would certainly help explain why the typical company has a daunting task narrowing its options but it would probably not quicken the selection process.

For now, one view of the current market segmentation is a starting point. Sue Feldman, Research VP, Content Management and Retrieval Solutions at IDC, gave the audience a high level view of the market in a session at Gilbane Boston 2006. She placed enterprise search technology into three big buckets: Appliances and Downloadable Search, Enterprise Search (software) Platforms, and Application Specific Search embedded with other software. She then broadly described the features and functions that characterize each major type. If you have grown up with search in your professional life for over 30 years as I have, it makes perfect sense that this is what we have come to in the market but differentiating the options is a step far less clear-cut.

After the sessions, 15 conference-goers joined me to continue discussing and learning about enterprise search in a roundtable forum. It was hard to know which end of the search animal we should address first to help everyone speak the same language. That is precisely what is making this marketplace such a tough one. Vendors represent a huge variety of solutions, each positioning product(s) for a problem of their definition, offering technology that targets the specific problem. Buyers have multiple search needs but still want a single solution. Further complicating the mix is a dizzying array of search jargon. With vendors and buyers using their own language the market is, frankly, a real mess.

Take Ms. Feldman’s three big buckets and think of one example of search product in each category. Now think about all the types of searches that people in your organization need to perform just to get their routine work done:

  • Looking up an address in a directory
  • Finding an image for a presentation
  • Retrieving a press release your department issued last year on a new product
  • Locating a configuration change to a piece of equipment in manufacturing
  • and so on…

Can you imagine any single search interface or product from the tools you know that would give you the means to find all of these pieces of information? Can you imagine a single search tool that would answer your query in a couple of simple steps, and able to perform the functions right out of the box? Simple solutions that address the complexity of business variables and technology standards in most organizations make any single solution an unlikely candidate at a reasonable cost.

Blog readers can request answers to questions, ask for help with sorting out the marketplace or definitions to understand the jargon. I invite readers to tell me what you think needs to be talked about and I’ll give it my best shot. What do you need to know first to tread through the search marketplace?

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