Category: Web technologies & information standards (Page 27 of 58)

I am happy to announce that long time colleague Dale Waldt has joined us officially as a Senior Consultant. Dale has worked with us on a few projects over the years, and I have known him since the early days of SGML when he was at the IRS (who were early supporters of SGML). Dale also spent many years as VP Product Technology at RIA, the tax publishing business unit of the Thomson Corporation designing SGML and XML applications, and has spent the last few years helping organizations understand the business benefits of, and implement, XML strategies. We’ll post Dale’s bio shortly, but Dale will be at Gilbane Boston next week, along with most of us, where someone at out booth can help you track him down to meet him.
Dale is obviously steeped in XML expertise, and he is also a great communicator. Dale will be joining our XML practice, but will also be helping out in other areas where he has expertise including content management, digital asset management, and social media.
Dale’s email address is: dale@gilbane.com and his phone extension is 155.
Welcome Dale!

But I am trying, maybe, sort of, to wean myself from Microsoft Office. It isn’t so much that I dislike Office–it is fine–but I find myself going through notebook computers faster than my friends used to go through muscle cars back in the 70s–which is, well, fast. When I go to rebuild that machine, or move myself onto a new one, I find that even a few days of lost data is a big deal. I suppose I could go with an online backup service like Carbonite, but my real goal is to live more in the cloud and also to live sort of free.

So I’ve downloaded and begun working with Open Office, though not exclusively, and have also started to work with Thunderbird. I also spent some time setting up a sync between the Thunderbird Lightning calendar helper and Google Calendar. There are some glitches to Thunderbird, though. It does not recognize Vcards, of all things (though I found a workaround). And it also doesn’t let me click on and accept meeting invitations (nor does Google Calendar). I have to do this awkward step of saving the calendar file to disk, then import it into Google Calendar, then wait for Google Calendar and Thunderbird/Lightning to sync.

These seem like really simple, really easy things for Thunderbird folks to fix. The file formats for the calendar file and Vcard could not be simpler. I would venture that they will get to these.

But now I have a new problem. Frank, generous guy that he is, offered me the use of a Treo he no longer uses. I used to use Palm devices religiously, but I was even harder on them than I am on notebooks, so my wife stopped letting me buy them at some point. (Not only would I break them but I would leave them behind–in cabs, on planes, in trains, in rental cars–you get the picture.) I am going to give this a go again, but it looks like I will have an issue syncing with Thunderbird. The open source tool for syncing has some problems (“Some Thunderbird fields do not sync, eg. second e-mail address, mailing address, mobile phone.” Huh? Mobile phone?), and as near as I can tell, there are no other tools for syncing.

So I guess I go back to Outlook at least, or do people know of some options out there that I have missed?

To participate in the study, please follow this link:

As part of the Gilbane Group’s continuous market research efforts, we are conducting a survey to learn which tools are being used most predominantly for structured authoring. The survey should only take 5 minutes of your time, and will help us to continue provide you with insight on how content technology is being used.
To participate in the study, please follow this link:

In exchange for your completed survey, you will be entered into a drawing for a free conference pass to a Gilbane conference.
We look forward to seeing you at the Gilbane Boston 2008 conference, December 2 – 4! As always, the program includes results from research studies from Gilbane as well as other analysts.

Component content management (CCM) has been a focal point for events, presentations, and user engagements in which Gilbane has been involved this fall. Can an enterprise maxmize its investment in XML without implementing component content management? What’s the “over and above” effort required to adopt XML and implement CCM at the same time? Where does CCM make sense — for which applications does CCM deliver the most value to your organization?
We’ll be addressing these questions in a new white paper to be published within the next couple of weeks. You can get sneak peak in a webinar that we’re doing today with XyEnterprise and Research In Motion.
Component content management has become a permanent part of the broader enterprise content management landscape in a relatively short period of time. The need for CCM has naturally emerged after almost two decades of work with structured content. From SGML to HTML now XML, companies have realized that their investments in structured content could reach higher levels of benefit and payback if there were specialized systems designed to support content applications where XML shines – for reuse across content products, for repurposing across media types, for enabling high-quality multilingual communications. Hence a new category of content management systems has made its way to market over the past few years.
At the same time, a number of external market forces have combined to create unprecedented demand for agile content – for content that can be used outside a single context – a single document, a single format, a single language. These forces include a need to capture more revenues across geographic regions, shorter lifecycles of manufactured products, demand for more product customization, and a stronger emphasis on delivering sustainable positive customer experience.
As a result, CCM can deliver value not only for canonical applications such as technical documentation, but also across other applications for technical content, such as customer support and product engineering, and across other enterprise functions, such as contracts management and financial reporting.
The new Gilbane white paper looks at why and how CCM is helping companies extend their investments in XML and XML-based standards such as DITA and S1000D. It’s all just tagged content without ways to put it to work to solve real business problems. The companion webinar features a conversation with Kevin Duffy, president and CEO of XyEnterprise, and Karen Moser and Mark Tiegs from Research In Motion. It takes place Monday, November 3, 1:00 pm. Register here. Send us an email if you’d like a personal notification when the white paper is available.