If, while envisioning this new CMS-empowered world, you are experiencing a feeling like the cavalry has just arrived, it's with good reason. Powerful tools can help you "liberate" your ever-growing store of content from its original context and format. CMS can enable the ikind of reusability that gets you closer to the goal of true multichannel publishing.
Posted Sep 01, 2002
Content Management (CM) systems are a critical piece of infrastructure in today's enterprise. As Web sites have grown in size and importance, so has CM. Many corporate Web sites suffer from problems, such as non-standard presentation, inconsistency of content, nonexistent editorial process, content publication choke points, and the embedding of content in presentation. Large Web sites have this problem in spades. Without a CM system, handling—or better yet solving—these seemingly disparate problems becomes a nightmare.
Posted Jun 01, 2002
Today, we find ourselves adrift in a sea of information. There's information all around us—on our hard drives, our organizations' databases, the Internet, printed documents, commercial publications, emails, subscription-based services—yet we're frustrated when trying to locate and use it.
Posted Jun 01, 2002
I was a judge for the annual awards of the UK Directory Publishers Association. This process highlighted the fact usability testing is extremely important.
Posted Apr 01, 2002
Predictions of consolidation in the Content Management (CM) vendor arena have appeared in nearly every major industry prognosis over the past two years. Gartner Group, for example, recently reiterated its prediction that half the CM vendors in existence in mid-2001 would leave the marketplace by the end of 2002. But the reports of CM's death have been greatly exaggerated because despite these consolidation predictions, the number of CM vendors has continued to rise.
Posted Apr 01, 2002
There is not a single book on the shelf in my office with "intranet" in the title. However, there is a group of books that I refer to during consulting projects, or when preparing conference papers.
Posted Mar 01, 2002
While United Press International (UPI) and others news services have mechanisms for adding keywords and categorizing their content, UPI recognized a need to add more automation to the process. With the recent growth and improvement in tools for Computer-Aided Indexing (CAI), UPI undertook a process of looking at their needs and evaluating the many CAI tools out there. In the end, they chose technology from Montreal-based NStein Technologies.
Posted Mar 01, 2002
Taxonomy technology greatly assists the sharing of enterprise knowledge. But don't expect to sit back and watch it go. Experts agree that those searching for an out-of-the-box solution shouldn't hold their breath. Count on adding a little elbow grease, but the results will be worth it.
Posted Mar 01, 2002
Intranets present some difficult challenges for the user. In an ideal world, the navigation should be so intuitive that only on rare occasions should it be necessary to use the search function. However, we do not live in an ideal world…
Posted Feb 01, 2002
When you think of content management for video assets, you may not initially think of governmental applications. But as the events of last fall have reminded us, there is more to a secure society than simply commerce and media. A digitized knowledgebase can be a valuable tool in support of overall governmental training and response efforts. In the last few years, the capacity of networks to deal with video has improved, and content management for video has come of age.
Posted Feb 01, 2002
Like a relay runner left without a teammate to hand the baton, the Salt Lake Organizing Committee began a furious search for a technology partner to replace both Quokka and Logictier as the clock continued to count down. After holding preliminary talks with a number of high-profile prospects, viable options were beginning to dwindle. Finally, in June, just seven months before the games were to begin, SLOC struck a deal with Microsoft/MSNBC to host and produce the official sites for the 2002 Winter Olympic Games.
Posted Feb 01, 2002
Many worry that spending on intranets and IT in general will decrease as costs are trimmed. In fact, intranet infrastructure investment is as important as always.
Posted Jan 01, 2002
Managing a company's knowledge requires a very different set of skills than are typically found in a Web team. Chief among these is a complete obsession with the customer. As they make the transition from project-oriented production houses to trusted knowledge brokers, Web teams must learn to become obsessed with their own customers, those employees that have the knowledge to help a company prosper in an increasingly competitive global marketplace.
Posted Jan 01, 2002
No, these are not your father's corporate Web sites. They are doing a lot more than just presenting company information. They're courting customers, suppliers, and partners in B2B applications, and enticing consumers in B2C venues. They're using several kinds of third-party content—reference information, news, bulletin boards, educational information—to attract these different audiences. In short, they are doing all of the sorts of things that the dot coms are doing—or were doing before the bottom fell out for them.
Posted Jan 01, 2002
In the mid-1990s, a number of publishers looked into publishing electronic versions of scientific journals. And that is where the problems started.
Posted Dec 01, 2001