Apr 28, 2005
There is a new proposal for a standards based Services Oriented Architecture Framework for Interoperable Enterprise Content Management on the AIIM web site. AIIM is the "international authority on Enterprise Content Management." The initiative is being lead by Paul Fontaine of the US Department of Transportation and Mike Connor of Adobe. If successful, this standard will enable companies to share content across different content management systems.
Back in 2000, the ECM industry's position was that effective content management could only be provided by large centralized monolithic applications. This development is interesting because it is another sign that ECM vendors are turning away from the business of providing a single unified (one size fits none) solution for all of an organization's diverse content management needs. If successful, these standards will allow organizations to select best of breed technologies that meet the specific needs of business processes without sacrificing content reuse and cross departmental information sharing.
There are a number of other standards that will also be effective in implementing interoperable content architectures. The Java Content Repository (JSR 170) provides a standard interface for a content repository to facilitate the integration and substitution of content management systems. The Semantic Web enabled by RDF is enabling content applications to interact and share information with one another. Content syndication standards like RSS and Atom open new possibilities for content aggregation and reuse. Metadata standards like the Dublin Core help make content easier to find.
It is going to be very interesting to see how these standards evolve and realize their potential to create effective content management solutions. I would expect rapid evolution of new content applications that streamline communication and discover new value for existing content.
Apr 25, 2005
The Bricolage project recently announced the launch of their community Wiki. The presence of the Wiki will help spread the load of managing user and technical documentation for Bricolage. Currently, documentation is pretty thin and difficult to navigate so the mail list is the primary source of information on using and developing in Bricolage. If the community embraces the Wiki, it could be a very valuable resource.
Right now, there is no content on the Wiki so the best bets for Bricolage documentation are the How To Guides, the API Docs (which also have some user docs sprinkled in), this overview article on Perl.org, and, of course, the mail archives.
If you use Bricolage and are looking for a way to contribute, helping populate the Wiki would be a great way to get started.
Apr 06, 2005
There is talk of new Open Source project to develop an application to migrate content from one CMS to another. The Exorcist is for content what ETL (Extract, Translate, Load) tools are for data. The design of the application uses custom import/export plugins that that are installed on the source and target repositories and translate content into an XML format that can be read, translated, and written by The Exorcist. The application then does XML transformations from what the source plugin can write to what the target plugin can read.
At present, The Exorcist is still a concept which has been presented in blogs and at various conferences. Initial development will be for the Midgard Framework. As of this date, there is no project site for the project.
Mar 25, 2005
A few months ago I was looking for a project planning tool (a la Microsoft Office) that would run on Linux. I found Planner by Imendio and have been using it for a while now. Here is what I think:
Positives
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The application is very simple to use and does not try to "outsmart" you like MS Project.
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The actual project plan is stored in a very easy to read and simple XML format. If you know a little bit about XSLT, you can do some cool things with the data.
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You can output the plan into an HTML document (the application uses XSLT to this) that you can distribute to people that don't have Planner. The output looks great in the browser but does not print very well. The Gantt section has a horizontal scroll that gets lopped off during print. To correct the problem I just edited the XSL files to remove the Gantt chart section.
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The application is very stable. I have had no crashed or file corruptions.
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Because the data file is plain text XML, you can actually use a source code system to manage it, see the differences and actually understand what is going on.
Negatives
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Planner does not run on Microsoft Windows. Gnome only.
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Planner is not Microsoft Project and, therefore, is usually not the company standard.
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Planner does not export into MS Project format. Although, you could set up xsl transforms to output to other formats (I think MS Project imports CSV). I doubt most project managers would be into tinkering with XSL. Come to think of it, most project managers would not be running Linux on a 12 pound laptop with the horsepower of a server.
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Planner only allows Finish to Start and Start to Start dependencies. I am a big fan of Finish to Finish dependencies.
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At first I thought the Lag feature did not work but then I noticed that it is done in hours. Surprise! I didn't expect that.
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You need to open the properties window to edit most fields of a task (such as resources). This can really slow down data entry.
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The "Work" column is deceptive for super-tasks. It is really duration. So if you have two concurrent sub-tasks or have multiple resources working on a sub-task, the work column of the super-tasks will not total the work of the sub-tasks. This makes various time estimation exercises difficult.
Overall, I think Planner is a pretty useful tool with some limitations which may or not be deal breakers depending on your environment. I am looking forward to checking out Open Workbench, an open source version of Niku Workbench which is part of Niku Enterprise Project Management Suite. It's Windows only which will make it easier to adopt - especially when working with clients.
Mar 25, 2005
Mitchell Levy, CEO of Happy About and author of the book Happy About Knowing What to Expect in 2005 writes that Blogging and Social Networking will be a big trend in 2005.
8. Blogging and Social Networking Become Accepted Business Tools
"Blogging will become a mainstream business tool." Bill Liao, COO, http://www.openbc.com
"The Internet braces itself for the next wave as bloggers band together to force changes, both good and bad. The largest collaborative blog becomes an exercise in human rights' advocacy." Jack Yan, CEO, Jack Yan & Associates
"The combination of social networking sites and Google will finally make real the cyberpunk concept of reputation servers. We will all get used to checking Google and LinkedIn before doing a business deal or going on a date. To do otherwise, will be unthinkable." Dave Asprey, Strategy & Startup Consultant
Merriam-Webster's 2004 Word of the Year, now this... I think we have something here.
Mar 16, 2005
WYSIWYG editors are a key feature in most CMS products: both commercial and open source. These components add HTML controls to a web form field so that a non-technical user can apply their own formatting to the text that they enter. I think of WYSIWYG editors as being The Great Compromise of content management. WYSIWYG editors balance the needs of the authors, who would rather use something like MS Word to enhance their prose with formatting, and systems people who want structured data to store and reuse.
In the commercial world, the leader is Ektron's eWebEditPro which is OEM'ed in Interwoven Teamsite and many other commercial CMS products. On the open source side, there are many projects including htmlArea, Kupu and BXE and Xopus. Both BXE and Kupu are hosted on OSCOM and there is some code sharing between them. Most WYSIWYG editors are based on Javascript to be cross browser compatible although not all are tested on both IE and Gecko based browsers.
A couple of weeks ago I was setting up Bricolage to work with htmlArea (which is integrated with Bricolage and several other open source CMS) and was surprised to see that the latest version (3.0) was no longer available on the htmlArea website. I learned from the list that InteractiveTools is no longer maintaining the code and the project has moved to DynArch.com (thanks, Bret Dawson for the answers).
Then last week, there was an interesting discussion on the OSCOM mailing list about htmlArea losing momentum and other emerging editors. Drupal has shifted from htmlArea to TinyMCE and has a module to integrate FCKEditor. XOOPS is now using Kiovi. Some simple editors such as widgeEditor and Cross-Browser Rich Text Editor. Unfortunately, all of these WYSIWYG editor projects (like many Javascript projects) are pretty small and it is hard to tell where they are going. On the plus side, it is not a great risk to maintain these Javascript libraries on your own if you find one that meets your needs today.
If you want a list of HTML Editors and the the browsers they support, check out the HTMLArea website.
Mar 08, 2005
One of the things that we try to do at Optaros is leverage some of the best practices of open source projects in our own work with clients. There are many great articles about applying open source development principles to internal software development projects. Here are some very simple practices and tools that I find useful.
We use the source control system subversion (svn) to manage all of our file-based deliverables (code and documentation). Windows users connect via Tortoise SVN, which integrates into Windows File Explorer and exposes svn functionality from a right click menu, or the Eclipse plugin subclipse. *NIX users can also use subclipse but many prefer just to use the command line client.
One great configuration in svn is to hook it up to a mail list so subscribers get an email whenever anyone checks in their work. Subscribing to the svn commits mail list keeps everyone in sync. You know what has changed and why with the check-in comments.
Subversion is primarily designed for managing text files and handles concurrency between users by merging rather than the locking checkout model. This does not work so well for binary files such as MS Word documents. However, svn will recognize and notify you of the conflict so you can use the compare documents feature in MS Word to merge documents.
When possible, we write our documentation in HTML with a simple style sheet that applies a common style to all of the deliverables. These HTML pages are easily converted to PDF to make them more portable. Using HTML avoids problems like different versions of Word or Open Office mangling formatting.
We use a Wiki (Media Wiki) for information sharing such as ramp up materials and tips. Media Wiki has an RSS feed of edits so it is easy to keep up to date with changes. One very cool use that we have found for a Wiki is to have multiple users work on a document (such as a proposal) together. The way to do it (in Media Wiki at least) is to create the outline of the document using Wiki headings (==heading==) and save it. Doing this breaks up the page into multiple editable sections. Then each team member can work on his/her section by clicking on the edit button for that section. Once every section is complete, you can click on the edit page link and copy all of the text into a document. This technique allows a group of people to work rapidly on a document without getting in each others way.
I like to use bug tracking software (such as bugzilla ) for more than just recording bugs found in software during QA. Usually projects start using a bug tracking system once code starts getting delivered. I like to capture defects, enhancements, dependencies, and issues through the analysis and design of the software as well. I think this is better than the typical spreadsheet for several reasons. First of all, there is no concurrency issue: with a spreadsheet, only one person can edit it at a time and you never really know whether you are looking at the latest version. Second, a bug tracking system can capture the dialog around an issue in addition to the status. Third, bug tracking systems send emails to the owners and they have the power to update the task (rather than having a bottleneck at the project manager).
These little tactics really help with the coordination of work and communication within our teams. They do not require huge process or methodology changes, just the introductions of some (free) systems that automate communication and collaboration so they don't fall through the cracks. There are many more tips on the development side but I will save those for another post
Mar 05, 2005
Lauren Wood, of The Gilbane Report has an excellent introductory article on the corporate use of Blogs and Wikis (factoid: did you know that "Wiki" is a Hawaiian word for "hurry" or "quick"?). The article gives real world examples of companies using blogs and Wiki's for internal and external communication purposes.
I agree with Lauren that these tools have great potential in the enterprise. Blogs and Wiki's support information sharing needs that get miss-handled by email. My metaphor for email is a big heavy crescent wrench that gets used for everything from whacking something like a hammer to tightening and loosening the smallest of nuts -in the process, destroying both the wrench and the things you are trying to fix with it. Email is (miss)used as a file system, database, audit trail, and discussion tool. As a result, almost every one I know complains about how unmanageable their email box is.
Wiki's and blogs are a happy medium between totally unstructured email and extremely structured and formal content management solutions. Like email, these tools give users a low hurdle (technical, organizational, and process) to contribute valuable information. However, unlike email, information within these systems is less vulnerable to being lost and is more accessible to a wider audience - especially when coupled with a good search engine.
The article also discusses the risks of using Wiki's and links to a very good blog posting by Leigh Dodds about how to make your corporate Wiki succeed.
Mar 03, 2005
There is a good article on open source content management systems in the latest (January/February) issue of EContent Magazine. Here are some key points:
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Frank Gilbane, of the Gilbane Report, is quoted: "If you have a spectrum where you build a CMS yourself on one end and commercial solutions at the other end, open source can sit in the middle." I like this way of describing the role of open source CMS. I think too often the focus is that open source is cheap content management. The real potential of open source is that it provides commodity functionality that can serve as a foundation for building unique solutions.
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When considering an open source alternative, it is critical to evaluate the strength of the community. This is the engine that will drive the evolution of the software and also a resource to get help in using or extending the software.
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There is growing interest in open source CMS as more and organizations look at open source as an alternative or complement to commercial technologies.
Feb 28, 2005
CM Professionals is holding its second Summit (press release) in San Francisco on April 11th, 2005. I went to the first Summit in Boston (November, 2004) and it was a great opportunity to meet others who live and breathe content management, share our experiences and think together about solving content management problems.
Like the Boston Summit, the Spring Summit is being held in conjunction with the The Gilbane Conference on Content Management Technologies (my notes from the Boston Gilbane Conference) and Summit attendees receive a discount on their conference registration fees.
See you there!