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Source: http://feed.jonontech.com/jonontech

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<title>Jon On Tech</title>
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<link>http://jonontech.com</link>
<description>Just a nerd trying to save the publishing industry. Again.</description>
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<title>How to Avoid CMS Selection Confuction</title>
<link>http://jonontech.com/2013/05/13/how-to-avoid-cms-selection-confuction/</link>
<comments>http://jonontech.com/2013/05/13/how-to-avoid-cms-selection-confuction/#comments</comments>
<pubDate>Mon, 13 May 2013 22:53:31 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>Jon Marks</dc:creator>
<category><![CDATA[Future of CMS]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Ramblings]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">http://jonontech.com/?p=1976</guid>
<description><![CDATA[In which I reveal the two most important questions one should ask when selecting a CMS.]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[<blockquote class="dylan">The backstage manager was pacing all around by his chair 
“There’s something funny going on” he said ” I can just feel it in the air” 
- LILY, ROSEMARY AND THE JACK OF HEARTS</blockquote>
Let me tell you a secret. I probably shouldn’t, but I’ve been reading a few more “How To Select A CMS” posts recently and, truth be told, they’re the same as they were when I stopped reading them way back in 2011. Exactly. The. Same. Which is a bit depressing really.
So this is just between you and me: The features of the CMS don’t matter. At least not in the long term compared to the big things that’ll fuck you over. You know that big RFP feature matrix? Horseshit. The lovely demos in the vendor Dog And Pony shows? Yawn. Interviewing all your stakeholders? Ho hum – they don’t really have a clue.
Sure, you might have a decent idea of the features you need today. Maybe even in six months? But you don’t have a scooby what’ll happen next year. You could get broadsided by your vendor going to hell. Or that new CIO who wants to (de)centralise. Or that company merger. Or your department mandating Technology X or Open Source or Some Insane Security Policy. Or the thing that doesn’t exist yet that’s going to disrupt your ass back to the stone age.
Here is what matters. Your content needs to be able to outlive the technology that houses it. This is the most important question you should ask in any selection process:
<blockquote>Question 1: “If we select you, and it all goes tits up, how would we get our content out of your system and into something else?”</blockquote>
If it is painless to get your content out in a sensible form, you can’t go too badly wrong on your product selection. This is especially true if you don’t need to shell out a whole lot of cash up front for the software, but you are paying-as-you-go.
So that’s the software problem solved. But, as we all know, it is actually the services where you’re spending a whole lot of cash. So you’ve got your integrator estimate of a few tens or hundreds of man days. That’s a lot of bodies scuttling around on your project doing a whole lot of very important things. So take a step back and ask yourself the next most important question.
<blockquote>Question 2: “What the fuck are all those people actually doing, and what part of that work could we keep if we moved to another system?”</blockquote>
Some of the work is independent of (and should probably predate) the technology selection. Strategy, design, information architecture, content type modelling, business process modelling and all that good stuff. But on the technology side, there are some pieces that take a fair bit of time and should result in a portable asset. At the very least, all work creating the actual HTML should be independent of the system. If you’re using a standard templating language like XSLT (bite me, @pmonks) or FreeMarker or mustache.js, parts of your templating layer could migrate. And of course any hardcore business logic should be exposed by an API that could outlive your CMS. But if all these busy systems integration bees are plodding away on tech that you need to chuck should you change system, you’re probably doing something wrong.
So it is as simple as that. Read your Darwin again. Change happens. And it will keep happening at an ever increasing rate. Pick something that can change with it. Make portable content and portable technical assets. Don’t make monoliths.
]]></content:encoded>
<wfw:commentRss>http://jonontech.com/2013/05/13/how-to-avoid-cms-selection-confuction/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
<slash:comments>13187</slash:comments>
</item>
<item>
<title>Evil Doctor Browser vs CSS3 Spiderman</title>
<link>http://jonontech.com/2011/06/28/evil-doctor-browser-vs-css3-spiderman/</link>
<comments>http://jonontech.com/2011/06/28/evil-doctor-browser-vs-css3-spiderman/#comments</comments>
<pubDate>Tue, 28 Jun 2011 12:21:41 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>Jon Marks</dc:creator>
<category><![CDATA[tablets]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[android]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[iOS]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[mobile]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[performance]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[spiderman]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[uiwebview]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[webkit]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">http://jonontech.com/?p=1948</guid>
<description><![CDATA[Here at Kaldor Towers, we've been spending a lot of time comparing the performance of the browsers on various phones and tablets. Here is a video of a CSS3 animation powered Spiderman intro running on lots of devices at the same time.]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[<blockquote class="dylan">Well, she begged, she cried 
She pleaded with me all last night 
She wants me to go out 
And find somebody to fight 
- HERO BLUES</blockquote>
Here at Kaldor Towers, we’ve been spending a lot of time comparing the performance of the browsers on various phones and tablets. Our latest scientific study involved the newly created <a href="http://www.optimum7.com/css3-man/">CSS3 Spiderman</a> by Anthony Calzadilla (<a href="http://twitter.com/#!/acalzadilla/">@acalzadilla</a>). Have a look at all <a href="http://www.anthonycalzadilla.com/">his other animations too</a>. He rocks.
Anyway – to the experiment. The video below shows our test devices, all of which run <a title="WebKit" href="http://www.webkit.org/">WebKit</a>, showing the animation at the same time. WARNING: The way Spiderman is dismembered/vanished/frozen in time by some of the villainous devices may offend some viewers. And apologies for the excessive shaking and bad lighting.
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The devices used for the experiment:
<ul>
<li>Samsung Galaxy S GT-I9000 running Android 2.2 (Froyo.XXJPO)</li>
<li>Samsung Galaxy Tab GT-P1000 running Android 2.2 (Froyo.XWJJ7)</li>
<li>Motorola XOOM MZ601 running Androod 3.0.1 (Honeycomb H.6.1-38-1)</li>
<li>Google Nexus S running Android 2.3.4 (Gingerbread)</li>
<li>iPad 2 running iOS 5 Beta 1 [REDACTED. DETAILS LATER]</li>
<li>iPad 2 running iOS 4.3</li>
<li>iPad 1 running iOS 4.3.1</li>
<li>iPhone 4 running iOS 4.3.1</li>
</ul>
The repeatable testing methodology:
<ul>
<li>Kill all other applications running on the device</li>
<li>Browse to <a href="http://www.optimum7.com/css3-man/animation.html">http://www.optimum7.com/css3-man/animation.html</a> on the device browsers</li>
<li>Run the the whole animation so that all the assets are preloaded</li>
<li>Turn off the sound on all devices except one to avoid going insane</li>
<li>Start all the animations again at roughly the same time</li>
<li>Watch in horror as spidey is mutilated</li>
</ul>
With great power comes great responsibility. Android and iOS both have great power. Time for them to improve their browsers. Especially the Android devices.
]]></content:encoded>
<wfw:commentRss>http://jonontech.com/2011/06/28/evil-doctor-browser-vs-css3-spiderman/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
<slash:comments>7620</slash:comments>
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<item>
<title>Newsstand in a Nutshell</title>
<link>http://jonontech.com/2011/06/09/newsstand-in-a-nutshell/</link>
<comments>http://jonontech.com/2011/06/09/newsstand-in-a-nutshell/#comments</comments>
<pubDate>Thu, 09 Jun 2011 08:38:15 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>Jon Marks</dc:creator>
<category><![CDATA[Ramblings]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[tablets]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[api]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[apple]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[iOS]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[iPad]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Newsstand]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[publishing]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[pugpig]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Zinio]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">http://jonontech.com/?p=1931</guid>
<description><![CDATA[A year ago I had a dream that I was having an intimate chat with Steve Jobs about newspaper and magazine applications. "All the news apps currently out there ", he said after a thoughtful pause, "are shit. Why on earth should I have to wait tens of seconds, or even minutes, after I start the app before I can see the first page of my publication?"]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[<blockquote class="dylan">Good and bad, I define these terms 
Quite clear, no doubt, somehow 
Ah, but I was so much older then 
I’m younger than that now 
- MY BACK PAGES</blockquote>
A year ago I had a dream that I was having an intimate chat with Steve Jobs about newspaper and magazine applications. “All the news apps currently out there “, he said after a thoughtful pause, “are shit. Why on earth should I have to wait tens of seconds, or even minutes, after I start the app before I can see the first page of my publication?”
“Well, Steve-o”, I said. “The main problem is that we can’t quietly download issues in the background. The only way we can do that is shiftily declare our app as a VoIP app in which case we get some background capability. But it only works after starting and stopping the app, and your digilent App Reviewers would reject the app anyway.”
“Good point, Boofie, good point”, he said. “I think I better fix that.”
And, with the release of Newsstand for iOS 5, he did.
<a href="http://jonontech.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/features_newsstand_folder.png"><img class="aligncenter size-medium wp-image-1932" title="features_newsstand_folder" src="http://jonontech.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/features_newsstand_folder-300x143.png" alt="" width="300" height="143" /></a>
<h3>Newsstand is here</h3>
<a href="http://www.apple.com/ios/ios5/features.html#newsstand">Newsstand</a> was announced this week as part of the fanfare that was the WWDC 2011. In essence, a new icon will appear on the home screen of all users and will be used as a folder to store edition based content. It looks rather similar to the iBooks apps. One big difference is that iBooks is an app that one needs to download from the App Store. Newsstand is baked into the operating system.
<h3>End Users: Newsstand is a Clever Folder</h3>
From the point of view of an end user, Newsstand behaves like an iOS folder. Previously, each news application you had would sit on your home screens like any other app. Now, news apps will instead sit inside the Newsstand folder/application. This will give a few nice user interface advantages too. Instead of a generic icon for the publication, Newsstand will show the cover of the latest issue. And it will be able to tell you if a publication is new, and send you push notifications when a new issue is ready for your reading pleasure. As I understand it, publishers can choose to ignore newsstand completely and submit apps as they’ve always done. But if they do this, they won’t get the benefits of the new API that apps in the Newsstand can use.
<h3>Developers: Newsstand is an API for background download</h3>
For me, this is the cool part. Steve has come good on his promise. If, when developing your application you register as a Newsstand application, you get access to the <code>NewsstandKit.framework</code>. This lets you do two new things. Firstly, it lets you add and remove issues from the Newsstand application on the user’s home screen. Secondly, and most importantly, it lets you download your new editions in the background, even if the app isn’t running in the background. So the user will wake up in the morning, and your new edition will already be on his device. #FTW
Apart from this new API, you write your apps in exactly the same way. You submit them to the App Store in exactly the same way, and they are downloaded from the App Store in exactly the same way. So developers of stand alone news applications don’t need to worry about Apple stepping on their toes. iOS 5 is wonderful news for them, not a competitor.
It seems that there are some things that the API won’t support yet. It’ll work great if you’re a title that publishes weekly or daily like the good old print days. It isn’t clear how it will help if you want constantly updated content pushed to your daily edition – it appears that every background download job relats to a whole issue, a.k.a. a new icon in the Newsstand. We’ll need to dig deep to see how this can be done.
<h3>Publishers: Newsstand doesn’t change the publishing workflow, or economics</h3>
Newsstand does not provide any authoring tools, so you create editions in the same way you’ve always done. If you’ve got an existing standalone application, not a huge amount changes. You’ll still pay Apple their 30% as you do at the moment. Your users will still pay for your editions through the App Store or through In-App Purchases.
There seems to be a common misconception that people can discover edition based content (news, magazines, etc) through Newsstand. Now I don’t believe this is true. Newsstand will only show you titles that you have downloaded already. However, there probably will be a new way to search these titles through the App Store, which will create a new little market dynamic all on it’s own. I guess there might well be a view of the App Store embedded into Newsstand like there is for iBooks at the moment.
<h3>Winners and Losers</h3>
It’s a sad fact of life that OS-baked app “innovations” from the big boys will <a href="http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/06/06/which-apps-are-threatened-by-apples-upgrades/">destroy smaller players that have a competitive product</a>. From my perspective, the winners here are the end users, publishers and developers of stand-alone news applications. Companies like Adobe (with their Digital Publishing Suite) and those that create tools that sit on top of InDesign to create standalone apps (<a href="http://www.woodwing.com/">Woodwing</a>, <a href="http://www.magplus.com/">Mag+</a>, <a href="http://www.aquafadas.com/">Aquafadas</a>, etc) are largely unaffected, unless they had an idea they could also create their own store front.
The losers are the poor sods that are creating aggregator readers and charging outside of the App Store. I’m thinking mainly of people like poor <a href="http://www.zinio.com/">Zinio</a> who I think are going to struggle. For publisher consortiums that are more about the relationships than the technology (for example <a href="http://nextissuemedia.com">Next Issue Media</a>), things might still be okay if they just adopt the new technology. We mustn’t forget that iOS isn’t the only platform out there and that Android is becoming increasingly important. But, for 2011 at least, iOS is really the only platform out there that matters.
<h3>And a Shameless Plug</h3>
And for those of you that don’t know, my <a href="http://kaldorgroup.com">new company</a> is working on a hybrid iOS/HTML5 based reader called Pugpig. We’re lauching very very soon, so follow <a href="http://twitter.com/thepugpig">@thepugpig</a> for the latest news. Here is a sneaky screenshot of our Pugpig Guide sample book in the Newsstand.<a href="http://jonontech.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/ppnews.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-medium wp-image-1933" title="ppnews" src="http://jonontech.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/ppnews-300x200.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="200" /></a>
Disclaimer: The API may change before iOS 5 gets released, so I might be completely wrong about all of this. And, in my dream, Steve didn’t actually use the word “shit”.
]]></content:encoded>
<wfw:commentRss>http://jonontech.com/2011/06/09/newsstand-in-a-nutshell/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
<slash:comments>4827</slash:comments>
</item>
<item>
<title>Epic Fail Epics</title>
<link>http://jonontech.com/2011/04/27/epic-fail-epics/</link>
<comments>http://jonontech.com/2011/04/27/epic-fail-epics/#comments</comments>
<pubDate>Wed, 27 Apr 2011 20:25:45 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>Jon Marks</dc:creator>
<category><![CDATA[Ramblings]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[fail]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[poetry]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">http://jonontech.com/?p=1918</guid>
<description><![CDATA[I want to write a poetry book, and I want y'all to write it for me. It's going to be a poetry book documenting epic tech fails in 2011. So we've got lots of material from the last few days, and quite a bit more from the year. More than happy to have multiple poems per incident.]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[<blockquote class="dylan">My mind weaves a symphony 
And tapestry of rhyme 
- IF DOGS RUN FREE</blockquote>
I want to write a poetry book, and I want y’all to write it for me (*). It’s going to be a poetry book documenting epic tech fails in history. So we’ve got lots of material from the last few days, and quite a bit more from the year. More than happy to have multiple poems per incident.
<a href="http://jonontech.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/epicfailepics.png"><img class="aligncenter size-medium wp-image-1919" title="epicfailepics" src="http://jonontech.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/epicfailepics-239x300.png" alt="" width="239" height="300" /></a>
What we need for each poem is:
<ul>
<li>The poem, of course. Any form allowed – haiku, limerick, sonnet, childrens, rambling prose</li>
<li>A brief, two sentence description of the epic fail event</li>
<li>The date of the epic fail event</li>
<li>An illustration or two, handdrawn. It can, of course, by crap. Lots of colours would be nice.</li>
</ul>
Submissions in the comments. If you email/tweet me the images I’ll add them. And I’ll add one or two or my own creations as soon as I can pop open a beer. Entries close on Friday 6th May.
(*) By entering the competition you give up all rights to your masterpiece. The editor’s decision on what to publish is final.
]]></content:encoded>
<wfw:commentRss>http://jonontech.com/2011/04/27/epic-fail-epics/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
<slash:comments>4793</slash:comments>
</item>
<item>
<title>Selling Out Friends on Empire Avenue</title>
<link>http://jonontech.com/2011/04/24/selling-out-friends-on-empire-avenue/</link>
<comments>http://jonontech.com/2011/04/24/selling-out-friends-on-empire-avenue/#comments</comments>
<pubDate>Sun, 24 Apr 2011 19:33:25 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>Jon Marks</dc:creator>
<category><![CDATA[Ramblings]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Social]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[This Blog]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[empire avenue]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[social]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[stocks]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[twitter]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">http://jonontech.com/?p=1904</guid>
<description><![CDATA[In order to understand the social media douchebaggery that happens on our interwebs, you need to hold your nose and dive in some times. I try most things, but get bored of them pretty quickly. So I figured I had to try Empire Avenue (EAv), the stock trading game in which the stocks are people, and the bigger the douchebag the higher the value. Fortunately you don’t need to piss off (invite) your friends to get started.]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[<blockquote class="dylan">I’d go hungry, I’d go black and blue 
I’d go crawling down the avenue 
There’s nothing that I wouldn’t do 
To make you feel my love 
- MAKE YOU FEEL MY LOVE</blockquote>
In order to understand the social media douchebaggery that happens on our interwebs, you need to hold your nose and dive in some times. I try most things, but get bored of them pretty quickly. So I figured I had to try <a href="http://empireavenue.com/?t=37gaj52h">Empire Avenue</a> (EAv), the stock trading game in which the stocks are people, and the bigger the douchebag the higher the value. Fortunately you don’t need to <del>piss off</del> invite your friends to get started.
<a href="http://jonontech.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/eav-logo-300.png"><img src="http://jonontech.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/eav-logo-300.png" alt="" title="Empire Avenue Logo" width="300" height="43" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-1905" /></a>
First thing to say about this is, unlike most others, it is actually quite fun and quite addictive. By this I mean in the same way a stock market simulation game is fun and addictive. So I can recommend giving it a try by wasting an evening. Your value is based on the usual supply/demand/market forces, but also on your “score” on various social networks – currently Twitter, LinkedIn, FaceBook, Flickr and YouTube. I spent longer on it than I did on SecondLife (in which I spent all my money on poker and whoring and was destitude in about two hours) and it’s more fun than Quora ever got (which was probably when it was down due to the recent EC2 fiasco).
For me the best thing about the 4 hours of my life I’ve so far wasted was randomly bumping into and having a chat with Jeremiah Owyang (<a href="http://twitter.com/#!/jowyang">@jowyang</a> / (e)JOWYANG). At the time I was broke so could only buy 1 share in what is likely to become one of the biggest stocks on EAv. And he unwisely invested in (e)BOOF. It was interesting talking with all these big cheeses discussing the potential impact of EAv. There are theories that this’ll be the next big thing and that the social currency may even have some real world value in the long run. I’m rather skeptical on that. Although if you’re a moron you can by Eaves (the game currency) with your hard earned real cash.
<div id="attachment_1907" class="wp-caption aligncenter" style="width: 310px"><a href="http://jonontech.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/BOOFandJOWYANG.png"><img src="http://jonontech.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/BOOFandJOWYANG-300x132.png" alt="" title="BOOFandJOWYANG" width="300" height="132" class="size-medium wp-image-1907" /></a>If Jowyang thinks I'm a good investment ... Click to Enlarge</div>
I made some pretty dumb-ass investments in (e)IANT, (e)BLOEM, (e)PIEW, (e)BIGBLUEMOOSE and (e)SLWR who were all overvalued already and, seeing as they’re not douches, probably aren’t going to rise much. I bought some (e)IRI seeing she’s responsible for me trying this thing. And in a fit of madness I bought me a piece of (e)PMONKS, which is surely going to be worthless pretty soon. I’ll dump that after this post I think.
I wasn’t very surprised to see quite a few of my Twitter followers on EAv already, but only two of my FaceBook friends were on. Good thing too, ’cause my real friends are a worthless bunch that wouldn’t be worth shit to a shrewd Empire Avenue investor like me.
I have no idea about the strategy of this thing. A good way to make a bit of cash seems to be to monitor the “Recent Arrivals” section, and speculatively buy shares in most of them. If you’re quick, maybe a Google search, in particular to see if they’re rich in Twitter followers. People with a lot of followers seem to double in value as soon as they link their Twitter account to their profile, so you have to be fast. Price hikes from activity on the other network take much longer as, because they’re not public like Twitter, EAv has to run off and index them only once they’ve got your details. I’m told the algorithms value LinkedIn recommendations. Which I, for one, don’t.
Finally, a few strategy tips from me, which I sure to be excellent seeing as I’ve got about 4 hours experience: 
- Unlocking achievements gets you cash. So link everything like your blog, FaceBook, LinkedIn and join a few communities 
- People seem to search the Recent Arrivals section and buy people cheap if they look cool, before they manage to link their Twitter profiles and share prices rise 
- Buy (e)BOOF
Have fun out there.
  
<script type="text/javascript" charset="utf-8">
//EDIT THE FOLLOWING VARIABLES
//enter your exact ticker
var eav_t = "BOOF";
//Size 1 is 100x100 and Size 2 is 190x167
var eav_s = 2;
//Do not edit the following:
var eav_is_ssl = ("https:" == document.location.protocol);
var eav_asset_host = eav_is_ssl ? "https://badge.empireavenue.com/" : "http://badge.empireavenue.com/";
document.write(unescape("%3Cscript src='" + eav_asset_host + "blog/?t=" + eav_t + "&l=" + escape(window.location) +"&s=" + eav_s + "' type='text/javascript'%3E%3C/script%3E"));
</script> 

]]></content:encoded>
<wfw:commentRss>http://jonontech.com/2011/04/24/selling-out-friends-on-empire-avenue/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
<slash:comments>6074</slash:comments>
</item>
<item>
<title>Google’s Moat and Castle</title>
<link>http://jonontech.com/2011/04/18/googles-moat-and-castle/</link>
<comments>http://jonontech.com/2011/04/18/googles-moat-and-castle/#comments</comments>
<pubDate>Mon, 18 Apr 2011 22:27:18 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>Jon Marks</dc:creator>
<category><![CDATA[Ramblings]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[amazon]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[android]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[app]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[apple]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[chrome]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[cloud]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[facebook]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[google]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[mobile]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[twitter]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">http://jonontech.com/?p=1890</guid>
<description><![CDATA[In a fit of madness, I tried to draw a summary of everything Google is involved in, and all of their main competitors. Utter madness I tell you.]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[<blockquote class="dylan">With your mercury mouth in the missionary times 
And your eyes like smoke and your prayers like rhymes 
And your silver cross, and your voice like chimes 
Oh, who among them do they think could bury you? 
- SAD-EYED LADY OF THE LOWLANDS</blockquote>
Short version: I drew a picture while watching crap on TV. Scroll to the bottom to see it.
I seem to be bumping into Google absolutely everywhere these days. When you take a step back and think about it, it really is astonishing how many areas they play in, and how many competitors they have. And it changes fast. In the last few days, they’ve <a href="http://mashable.com/2011/04/16/google-video-rip/">ditched Google Video</a>, acquired <a href="http://www.pushlife.com/">PushLife</a> (their <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_acquisitions_by_Google">94th acquisition</a>) and are rumoured to be <a href="http://techcrunch.com/2011/04/16/google-flipboard-killer/">building a FlipBoard killer</a>.
I also recently read a wonderful article, <a href="http://abovethecrowd.com/2011/03/24/freight-train-that-is-android/">The Freight Train That Is Android</a> by VC Bill Gurley (<a href="http://twitter.com/bgurley">@bgurley</a> – follow him now). He introduces his article with a famous quote from investor-extraordinaire <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warren_Buffett">Warren Buffet</a>, who said:
<blockquote>In business, I look for economic castles protected by unbreachable moats</blockquote>
In Google’s case, the economic castle is search and ads. That is the cash cow. Gurley then go on to say:
<blockquote>Google’s aim is defensive not offensive. They are not trying to make a profit on Android or Chrome. They want to take any layer that lives between themselves and the consumer and make it free (or even less than free). Because these layers are basically software products with no variable costs, this is a very viable defensive strategy. In essence, they are not just building a moat; Google is also scorching the earth for 250 miles around the outside of the castle to ensure no one can approach it. And best I can tell, they are doing a damn good job of it.</blockquote>
<div id="attachment_1891" class="wp-caption aligncenter" style="width: 236px"><a href="http://jonontech.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/GoogleOverviewLowv2.jpg"><img class="size-medium wp-image-1891" title="GoogleOverviewLowv2" src="http://jonontech.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/GoogleOverviewLowv2.jpg" alt="" width="226" height="300" /></a>Click for large image. High Res available below.</div>
So, inspired by all of this, I drew a picture to give myself a birds-eye view of everything I know that Google is involved in as of 20:00 GMT on Monday 18th April 2011. They’re not winning on all fronts but they’re doing pretty well. “Social” is their weak point at the moment, which is why Larry P just announced that <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/larry-page-just-tied-employee-bonuses-to-the-success-of-the-googles-social-strategy-2011-4?op=1">25% of all Googlers bonuses depend on their social success</a>.
Now I am sure I didn’t waste hours of my life on this beast and you’re all going to stick it on your wall at work and home. Here are the big versions:
<a href="http://jonontech.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/GoogleOverviewPDFv2.pdf">Download Hi-Res PDF</a>: 1.3 MB 
<a href="http://jonontech.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/GoogleOverviewHighv2.jpg">Download Hi-Res JPG</a>: 4.2 MB
And feel free to point out all my cock-ups in the comments and I’ll update this next time my wife watches another shitty romcom.
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<title>Crunch Time for RIM</title>
<link>http://jonontech.com/2011/03/25/crunch-time-for-rim/</link>
<comments>http://jonontech.com/2011/03/25/crunch-time-for-rim/#comments</comments>
<pubDate>Thu, 24 Mar 2011 23:11:48 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>Jon Marks</dc:creator>
<category><![CDATA[Ramblings]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[tablets]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[android]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[App Store]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[apple]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[BlackBerry]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[google]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[mobile]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[playbook]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[rim]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[tablet]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">http://jonontech.com/?p=1879</guid>
<description><![CDATA[Poor RIM took a beating this evening after announcing their quarterly financials. It all seems rather up and down. Probably more down. Here is my summary of their 2011 so far.]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[<blockquote class="dylan">Don’t even hear a murmur of a prayer 
It’s not dark yet, but it’s getting there 
- NOT DARK YET</blockquote>
Poor RIM took a beating this evening after announcing their <a href="http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/20110324/rim-beats-on-bottom-line/">quarterly financials</a>. It all seems rather up and down. Probably more down. Either way, I think the next few months are going to decide if RIM have a role to play in The Great Mobile Wars This Decade. Here is my summary of their 2011 so far.
<a href="http://jonontech.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/rim.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-1884" title="rim" src="http://jonontech.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/rim.jpg" alt="" width="192" height="129" /></a>
Bad News
In January, some douche decided that he’d launch the new careers site at http://rim.jobs/. I mean, seriously. Surely everyone reads <a href="http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=rim%20job">Urban Dictionary</a> these days. This is even better than <a href="http://www.experts-exchange.com/">http://www.experts-exchange.com/</a> before they stuck in the clarifying hypen.
<a href="http://jonontech.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/RimJobTweet.png"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-1881" title="RimJobTweet" src="http://jonontech.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/RimJobTweet.png" alt="" width="400" height="176" /></a>
Good News
They took the site to the more sensible domain <a href="http://www.rim.com/careers/">http://www.rim.com/careers/</a>. It briefly redirected but the domain is completely gone now.
Good News
RIM have finally announced that their new tablet, the PlayBook, is shipping this month. It’s been delayed a few times so hopefully this is it. I think the name is okay, actually. Although if it is meant to refer to a basketball/football playbook, then it makes more sense in the US.
Bad News
It going to have a similar price to the iPad2. It is $500/$600/$700 for the models with 16GB/32GB/64GB RAM. This can’t be good for them. Tablets need to be cheaper than the iPad to get traction.
At 7 inches, it is much smaller than most other tablets. It seems it ain’t going to be much good unless you tether it to your Blackberry. And there are still questions about battery life (which has not been mentioned in any spec sheets I’ve seen yet). Maybe another more detailed post about the features of the PlayBook some other time.
Good News
Their QNX operating system is interesting, and might mean they can run Adobe Flash faster than other Android based tablets. Flash on Android still needs to prove itself. And the fact that they’re not Android might be a differentiator in a world of<a href="http://galaxytab.samsungmobile.com/"> Samsung Galaxy</a> and <a href="http://www.motorola.com/Consumers/US-EN/Consumer-Product-and-Services/Tablets/ci.MOTOROLA-XOOM-US-EN.overview">Motorola Xoom</a>. Bad news here is that <a href="http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/20110104/analyst-flash-could-be-hogging-playbook-battery-life/">some analysts are blaming poor battery life</a> on greedy Flash and the theory that QNX wasn’t designed for mobile usage.
Bad News
The fact that they’re not Android means they don’t have many apps at all. It’s pretty difficult to write apps for the PlayBook at the moment. This was highlighted in a hilarious blog post “<a href="http://blog.jamiemurai.com/2011/02/you-win-rim/">You win, RIM!</a>” by developer Jamie Murai that went viral. You should read it (seriously), and his <a href="http://blog.jamiemurai.com/2011/02/rim-rant-follow-up/">follow-up post</a>. RIM did respond to his rant pretty well I think. The fact that they’re trying to lure developers by chucking free PlayBooks at them is a sign of the times.
Good News:
<a href="http://jonontech.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/qnx-android2.jpg"><img class="aligncenter" title="qnx-android2" src="http://jonontech.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/qnx-android2.jpg" alt="" width="562" height="326" /></a>
RIM have<a href="http://press.rim.com/release.jsp?id=4935"> just confirmed</a> that they’ll run Android apps. Woot. It’s been rumoured for a while but they’ve confirmed it now. Some argue that this is an admission that their own developer SDK is a pile of shite. However, if they didn’t do this, I think they’ve have been dead in the water so it is a smart move. You won’t be able to download your RIM apps from the Android Marketplace (or the shiny new <a href="http://www.amazon.com/mobile-apps/b?ie=UTF8&node=2350149011">Amazon AppStore for Android</a>). Instead, developers will need to resubmit their apps to <a href="http://us.blackberry.com/apps-software/appworld/">BlackBerry App World</a>. This is probably okay.
The highlights of the press release:
<blockquote>
<ul>
<li>BlackBerry PlayBook to support BlackBerry Java and Android apps</li>
<li>Native C/C++ development support added, in addition to HTML5, Flash and AIR support</li>
<li>Support from leading game engines: Ideaworks Labs (AirPlay) and Unity Technologies (Unity 3)</li>
<li>BlackBerry PlayBook becomes a new market opportunity for all the developers who have already created over 25,000 BlackBerry Java apps and more than 200,000 Android apps</li>
</ul>
</blockquote>
It’s probably also slightly good news for RIM that GOOG might be about to annoy the developer community slightly with their <a href="http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/mar2011/tc20110324_269784.htm">delayed open sourcing of Honeycomb</a>.
And finally
Note that I really want RIM to do well. The more players in this game the better, and a two horse race between Android and iOS is a bit dull. Having RIM and WebOS in the mix spices things up. And at least they’re getting a whole lot of press again. There is no such thing as bad publicity, right? Go RIM!
 
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<slash:comments>5189</slash:comments>
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<title>Shooting down paywalls</title>
<link>http://jonontech.com/2011/03/22/shooting-down-paywalls/</link>
<comments>http://jonontech.com/2011/03/22/shooting-down-paywalls/#comments</comments>
<pubDate>Tue, 22 Mar 2011 12:44:50 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>Jon Marks</dc:creator>
<category><![CDATA[Ramblings]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[javascript]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[new york times]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[paywall]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[publishing]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[security]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[sunday times]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[wsj]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">http://jonontech.com/?p=1852</guid>
<description><![CDATA[With the New York Times paywall coming up, I thought I'd dump some more paywall thoughts. Are secure paywalls even a good idea?]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[<blockquote class="dylan">Now there’s a wall between us, somethin’ there’s been lost 
I took too much for granted, got my signals crossed 
Just to think that it all began on a long-forgotten morn 
“Come in,” she said, “I’ll give you shelter from the storm 
- SHELTER FROM THE STORM</blockquote>
<h2>The State of Paywalls</h2>
Another high profile publication is putting up walls. <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/">The New York Times</a> is planning on charging again. Their paywall is up in Canada, and will be up globally by the end of the month. And it looks to be one of the least secure implementations yet. They seem to have done everything on the client. So, first, the content is always actually on the page. They just pop an obscuring <div> on top of it so that you can’t see the content, and stop the browser scrolling. <a href="http://toys.euri.ca/">This guy</a> has already written a 3-line script for dodging it which I’ll reproduce in full:
<code>//Prototype is already installed on NYTimes pages, so I'll use that: 
$('overlay').hide(); 
$('gatewayCreative').hide(); 
$(document.body).setStyle( { overflow:'scroll' } );</code>
So one way for non-techies go get around the paywall is to use something like the above in a <a href="http://www.greasespot.net/">Greasemonkey </a>or similar script. Or, if you want to be more dramatic about it, you could even use <a href="http://erkie.github.com/">this spaceship</a> to shoot away the offending HTML elements. It’s cool as you can shoot the paywall and the ads together.
<div id="attachment_1868" class="wp-caption aligncenter" style="width: 1008px"><a href="http://jonontech.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/shootingpaywalls.png"><img class="size-full wp-image-1868" title="shootingpaywalls" src="http://jonontech.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/shootingpaywalls.png" alt="" width="998" height="440" /></a>Using an HTML element destroying spaceship to tear down a paywall</div>
The New York Times also have a 20 free articles per month thing going. Again, implemented client side using a cookie. Delete your cookies from the site, and it is all yours. Getting around this paywall is so easy that it looks like they didn’t even try to properly protect the content. And maybe they didn’t.
In fact, there is a strong argument to say that a secure paywall isn’t a good idea. The<a href="http://www.thetimes.co.uk"> Times of London</a> have a well implemented, pretty secure paywall, but they are one of the few. The Wall Street Journal, probably the most successful pay wall of the lot, do a simple referer check. If you’re coming from Google, you get access. So if you’ve got the energy, just search for the headline on Google to get your free access. If you’ve got less energy but more skillz, just spoof your referer using <a href="https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/kkcdhmhggbdgjiehnfkdklfegjlhjfmh">Spoofy</a> or something. This also works on the New York Times site.
<h2>The Problem</h2>
The root of the problem is getting the balance correct between social sharing and decent security, and we all know how users hate (and I mean proper, vitriolic hate) hitting a paywall when clicking on a shared link.
When it comes to the crunch, there are only three models that are possible to securely implement:
<ul>
<li>Option #1: No real security that a monkey couldn’t avoid. This is the NYT, WSJ and many more. But this will stop the vast majority of folk “stealing” the content. The biggest downside is probably the <a href="http://tinyurl.com/4ltnwhe">press reaction too the joke of a paywall</a>, as has just happened with the NYT.</li>
<li>Option #2: Allow limited access to non-paying users (first click free, 20 free articles per month, or whatever). However, in order to do this securely the user must register first. And although registration is less of a barrier than asking for a credit card, it’ll still scare people off in droves. And if registration is too easy without a valid email address check, you’ll get a whole load of Donald Duck’s registering. Off the top of my head I can’t think of anyone doing this at the moment.</li>
<li>Option #3: The Full Monty. All users have to pay to see any protected content. The Times of London are doing this. I really don’t like this option for most people as new readers will be hard to come by. You might do well from existing loyal fans, but in the long term I can’t see it working. Sharing is caring and all that.</li>
</ul>
<h2>The Solution</h2>
Fucked if I know.
With all of the above models, not all of the content needs to be protected. The Times of London protects everything. As does the pr0n industry. Others only protect parts of their site. Some protect content until it is a bit stale (a week, or maybe an hour in financial services). I quite like <a href="http://www.thedaily.com/">The Daily’s</a> model. They simply don’t bother to try to protect the stuff on the web site. I don’t think they’re even bothered by <a href="http://thedailyindexed.tumblr.com/">the sites popping up</a> allegedly circumventing the paywall. You pay for the iPad app and hopefully that offers such a lovely experience that it is worth it.
My view is you probably want the paywall to leak, so superficial security is probably best. You certainly want people posting links to your content on FaceBook, Twitter and the rest. The people that try to “hack” it probably wouldn’t have paid anyway, so you’ve got some nice differential pricing going there already. Especially if you’re getting ad revenue too. Maybe show a lot more ads to the non-registered users.
Of course, if it is easy enough for my deceased grandmother to bypass, you’ve got problems. No-one will pay, and you’ll piss off the people that already have. But if you lose 3% or something, it doesn’t sound like the end of the world. Comparable to shoplifting in retail.
Now this clearly doesn’t work for single, high value assets (books, movies, music) where people will go to a lot of effort to get their grubby little hands on a single item of content. But for newspapers and magazines, it is probably time for most publishers to choose Option #1, give up on 100% security, hope that legitimate experience is a whole lot better than the cheating experience and accept that there are <a href="http://jonontech.com/2010/05/26/ostriches-cheapskates-charlatans-old-dogs-and-hippies/">some people that won’t pay for anything</a>.
<h2>Or a better solution</h2>
Wait! Before we give up, I think Option #2 is the long term solution. No-one seems to do it at the moment because the registration barrier is big and people won’t even register to see content shared with them. But what if they were registered already? If a publisher could throw their proprietary registration system out the window and allow access through Google, FaceBook or TheNextBigThing, they would be laughing. Then they could provide proper, secure metered access/first click free/X free per month and lots lots more without scaring users off. And, of course, when they can do their one-click payment through the above things get even better, but that’s another topic.
<a href="http://jonontech.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/JANRAIN.png"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-1871" title="JANRAIN" src="http://jonontech.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/JANRAIN.png" alt="" width="295" height="222" /></a>
Secure paywalls aren’t that hard, and these leaky things offend my sensibilities. I’m not aware of any publishers doing this properly at the moment. Or are they? Let me know. Over and out.
 
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<title>Back with a Bang</title>
<link>http://jonontech.com/2011/03/18/back-with-a-bang/</link>
<comments>http://jonontech.com/2011/03/18/back-with-a-bang/#comments</comments>
<pubDate>Fri, 18 Mar 2011 14:50:14 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>Jon Marks</dc:creator>
<category><![CDATA[Ramblings]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[This Blog]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[kaldor]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[news corp]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[publishing]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">http://jonontech.com/?p=1855</guid>
<description><![CDATA[My blog hasn't had enough attention recently. You see, I was involved in some top secret shiftyness and I signed a lot of pieces of paper which meant I couldn't really talk about a lot of interesting things. But I'm free from that now.]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[<blockquote class="dylan">Call me any name you like 
I will never deny it 
Farewell Angelina 
The sky is erupting 
I must go where it’s quiet 
- FAREWELL ANGELINA</blockquote>
Come gather ’round friends let me tell you a tale. I’ve been rather quiet these last twelve months. My poor blog has been lacking the frequent wisdom you all grew to depend on. And when the posts did come, they were often inane lacking in substance. You see, friends, I was involved in some top secret shiftyness and I signed a lot of pieces of paper which meant I couldn’t really talk about a lot of interesting things.
But I’m free from that now. So while it isn’t clear that my <a href="http://tinyurl.com/5w5n8bo">noble attempt to save the publishing industry</a> from itself has been a success, I’ve emerged from the other side even wiser (gasp!) than before. I’m once again allowed to talk about things, and I’ve got a whole lot of shit I’d like to talk about. So, loyal readers, watch this space for more exciting news about Content Management Systems. And the Publishing Industry. And Paywalls. And Tablets and other Mobile Shit. And Adobe and Woodwing and HTML and iOS and Core Text. And lots lots more.
On the down side, I might not have much time to share all this wisdom with all of you. You see, I’ve started <a href="http://www.kaldorgroup.com">a new company</a> with a <a href="http://www.linkedin.com/company/kaldor-product-development-group">few other brilliant people</a> and we’re going to try to save the Publishing Industry from itself yet again. This promises to be time consuming, but I promise I’ll spend more time on this blog as my readers are worth saving too.
<a title="Kaldor Product Development Group" href="http://www.kaldorgroup.com"><img class="aligncenter size-medium wp-image-1858" title="logo" src="http://jonontech.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/logo-300x142.png" alt="" width="300" height="142" /></a>
So that’s the news. Back with a Bang.
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<slash:comments>6040</slash:comments>
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<title>The Day of The Daily</title>
<link>http://jonontech.com/2011/02/02/the-day-of-the-daily/</link>
<comments>http://jonontech.com/2011/02/02/the-day-of-the-daily/#comments</comments>
<pubDate>Wed, 02 Feb 2011 17:30:08 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>Jon Marks</dc:creator>
<category><![CDATA[Events]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">http://jonontech.com/?p=1839</guid>
<description><![CDATA[So The Daily is live. Just finished watching the launch announcement and was impressed. The app is really feature rich. It can live update during the day, has 360 degree video, live audio articles, a large sports score database, games and good social integration. And it even has the weather!]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[<blockquote class="dylan">And he was told but these few words, 
Which opened up his heart, 
“If ye cannot bring good news, then don’t bring any.” 
- THE WICKED MESSENGER</blockquote>
So The Daily is live. Just finished watching the launch announcement and was impressed. I was lucky enough to see some sneaky preview concept versions a few months ago, and they’ve really turned it into reality in a ridiculously short amount of time.
Yeah, yeah, it did crash once in the launch demo. But all iPad apps crash, right? I’m sure they’ll iron out the last few kinks over the coming days. If you’re in the US (or are wise in the ways of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverse_proxy">reverse proxies</a> *), get it from the <a href="http://itunes.com/apps/thedaily">App Store</a> now. If you’re anywhere else, or don’t know what a reserve proxy is, have a look at the <a href="http://www.thedaily.com/">web site</a>, <a href="http://blog.thedaily.com/">blog</a> or <a href="http://www.facebook.com/TheDailyFeed">FaceBook page</a>.
<a href="http://jonontech.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/IMG_0015.png"><img class="aligncenter size-medium wp-image-1840" title="Daily Home Page" src="http://jonontech.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/IMG_0015-300x225.png" alt="" width="300" height="225" /></a>
I take my hat off to the techie brains behind the operation, John McKinley (<a href="http://twitter.com/#!/ourparents">@ourparents</a>) who, it turns out, is not only wise but also delivers on time. And of course we all love <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Miller_(businessman)">Jon Miller</a> and his basketball analogies . Random aside: It was a year today that Jon Miller interviewed yours truly for his current job. He really is a lovely guy. **
The app is really feature rich. It can live update during the day, has 360 degree video, live audio articles, a large sports score database, games and good social integration. And it even has the weather!
I’m not smart enough to know if The Daily is going to be a roaring success or an unholy disaster. But I love the fact that Rupert tries bold things like this. That’s one of the many reasons I’ve loved the last year I’ve spent on The Darkside at News Corp. Someone in this industry has to try something.
<a href="http://jonontech.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/IMG_0017.png"><img class="aligncenter size-medium wp-image-1842" title="IMG_0017" src="http://jonontech.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/IMG_0017-300x225.png" alt="" width="300" height="225" /></a>
* No reserve proxies were harmed in the making of this blog post. 
** This blog reflects my opinions only and not those of my employer.
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<item>
<title>McBoof’s Predictions For Content Management In 2011</title>
<link>http://jonontech.com/2010/12/22/mcboofs-predictions-for-content-management-in-2011/</link>
<comments>http://jonontech.com/2010/12/22/mcboofs-predictions-for-content-management-in-2011/#comments</comments>
<pubDate>Wed, 22 Dec 2010 22:41:57 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>Jon Marks</dc:creator>
<category><![CDATA[Future of CMS]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Ramblings]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[amazon]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[api]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[cloud]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[CMS]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[facebook]]></category>
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<description><![CDATA[Right, sheeple - it's time to learn something from the Great McBoof. Normally you'd expect to pay somewhere between $5000 and $10000 for this kind of information in some top secret report. But here it is, completely free. Steal it all when your CIO demands your white paper on Trends for Next Year, or to impress your friends at your local #LastThursdayCMS. So, without further ado, I guess you McBoof's Predictions For Content Management In 2011.]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[<blockquote class="dylan">When all of your advisers heave their plastic 
At your feet to convince you of your pain 
Trying to prove that your conclusions should be more drastic 
Won’t you come see me, Queen Jane? 
- QUEEN JANE APPROXIMATELY</blockquote>
Right, sheeple – it’s time to learn something from the Great McBoof. Normally you’d expect to pay somewhere between $5000 and $10000 for this kind of information in some top secret report. But here it is, completely free. Steal it all when your CIO demands your white paper on Trends for Next Year, or to impress your friends at your local #LastThursdayCMS. So, without further ado, I guess you McBoof’s Predictions For Content Management In 2011.
<a href="http://jonontech.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/Nostradamus.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-medium wp-image-1827" title="Nostradamus" src="http://jonontech.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/Nostradamus-296x300.jpg" alt="" width="296" height="300" /></a>
#1 – Names Remain Sacred: Ridiculous crapronyms like WEM and CEM will vanish. Those that invented them will scuttle back in shame, only to crawl back with some new ones. But the CMS twitterati are a wiley bunch, and aren’t easily fooled. I’ll try to write a blogpost later about why these crapronyms are so bad, but I’m currently surrounded by four babies with the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norovirus">norovirus</a> (not pleasant), and this is a story that deserves to be told properly.
#2 – Return To Core Competencies: New highly-focussed kickass products will appear in areas into which the CMS vendors tried to encroach. The vendors will feel a bit stupid, stop building monoliths and focus on the stuff they’re good at. They’ll embrace integration again. The areas include analytics, MVT, search, image manipulation, transcoding and community. Most will be *aaS and easily integrated. Kiss your custom CMS tracking module, A/B testing module, forum module, twitter module, image resize module and full text search module goodbye. They’re going to look pretty shit compared to what’s coming.
#3 – Focus on APIs: The API will take centerstage in 2011. The next versions of most CMSs will be properly architected for them. A product will be judged by the quality of the API it exposes. The really good news is that this will properly re-establish the split between content management and content delivery. Portals will be portals again. And there will be much rejoicing. Vignette DPM will be unofficially axed. And there will be even more rejoicing. All APIs will become HTTP based. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Content_Management_Interoperability_Services">CMIS</a> will play a relatively small role in 2011. The vendors will all claim their APIs are RESTful, although only a handful really will be. Note that there is nothing wrong with these slightly dirty, non-RESTful APIs. I’d rather have dirty than <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simple_Object_Access_Protocol">SOAP</a>. And SOAP is going away. Can you believe the S stands for Simple.
#4 – Enemies Will Stop Sleeping Together: 2010 had a good few CMS aquisitions that didn’t make sense. Vendors that had many overlapping products acquired one another or merged. None of these were a good idea, so 2011 won’t repeat this. No chance of either the speculated <a href="http://jonontech.com/2010/10/09/microsoft-vs-adobe-ryder-cup-style/">Microsoft – Adobe</a> or Interwoven – Open Text jokes happening. Note that yours truly does still think the <a href="http://jonontech.com/2010/07/28/a-fine-day-for-adobe/">Adobe – Day</a> deal was smart, but they didn’t have overlapping products.
#5 – New Auth Protocols: FaceBook Connect is going to become important to the CMS vendors. It’ll be a checkbox on RFPs. Which sucks, but I’m sure <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nostradamus">Nostradamus</a> didn’t like all his predictions either. OpenID and OAuth aren’t going to set the world alight in 2011.
#6 – RFPs Continue to Waste People’s Time: The CMS choir will continue to all sing that big fat RFPs are not the way to effectively select a product. And this will continue to fall on deaf ears and we’ll continue to see these dumbass, energy sapping, pointless documents arriving in our inboxes.
#7 – A Storm Cloud Brewing: Vendors start to <a href="http://jonontech.com/2010/06/21/the-cloud-not-a-crock-of-shit/">properly understand the cloud</a>. They’ll all architect their software for it. Amazon will be dominant. The smarter CMS vendors will provide EC2 instances all installed and ready to go. I must confess I only properly understood it early this year.
#8 – Real Multichannel Delivery: The success of the <a href="http://jonontech.com/2010/01/27/why-the-ipad-makes-murdoch-right/">iPad</a> (and, I predict, the Samsung Galaxy Tab) will mean vendors start thinking about multichannel again properly. 2011 will be the year Android becomes really important. Even Windows Phone 7 might start to matter a bit. In fact, we might get people saying “Digital Content Managament” instead of “Web Content Management”. Which would be yet another craproymn as that is what good old “Content Management” is.
#9 – And Multichannel Authoring: It won’t just be delivery to the tablets and smartphones. It’ll be authoring too. In 2011, half the vendors will write web apps while the other half will write native apps to show off their mobile authoring platforms. By 2012, 80% will be writing web apps.
#10 – The Crew Trumps The Product: The realisation will hit home about why <a href="http://jonontech.com/2009/04/12/which-comes-first-the-crew-or-the-cms/">the implementation is still more important than the product choice</a>. There will be some attempts to start SI/Agency reviews or reports, but I don’t think they’ll take off until 2012.
Bonus CMS Prediction: 2011 Is Gonna Be Fun: The CMS Twitter community will continue to be insane and a good laugh. We’ll drink lots of beer together. @pmonks will not grow up, @irina_guseva will retain her title as CMS Queen, @piewords will remain the voice of reason, @justincormack will still write very well thought out posts not often enough. Those pesky analysts will continue to stir things up and keep us occupied. The well-meaning vendors will continue to sprout marketing bullshit. And I’ll continue to be completely wrong about absolutely everything.
<a href="http://jonontech.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/macgowan.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-medium wp-image-1829" title="macgowan" src="http://jonontech.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/macgowan-300x297.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="297" /></a>
Bonus Christmas Prediction: No new Christmas song will be released that will come even close to Fairytale of New York – by far and away the best Christmas song ever written. The lyrics are brilliant enough to bring tears to my eyes , the music Irish and folky and Shane MacGowan is the ugliest bastard you’re ever likely to see in a music video. Listen to <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HwHyuraau4Q">THIS </a>three times and I’ll buy you a beer if you aren’t in love with it.
As usual, comments and flames much appreciated. Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good-night.
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<title>Going up to get down</title>
<link>http://jonontech.com/2010/11/11/going-up-to-get-down/</link>
<comments>http://jonontech.com/2010/11/11/going-up-to-get-down/#comments</comments>
<pubDate>Thu, 11 Nov 2010 15:47:42 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>Jon Marks</dc:creator>
<category><![CDATA[Ramblings]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">http://jonontech.com/?p=1810</guid>
<description><![CDATA[Change is in the air. I'd love to tell you all about it, but I'm afraid I'm under NDA. So, instead, I present in full, for the first time ever on the interwebz, a short story written by my colleague, the great @sallyfoote. Follow her on Twitter, and convince her to start her own goddamn blog so I don't have to pimp her stories for her. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and the story in no way reflects any personals circumstances.]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[<blockquote class="dylan">I’m staying with Aunt Sally, but you know, she’s not really my aunt 
Some of these memories you can learn to live with and some of them you can’t 
- SUGAR BABY</blockquote>
Change is in the air. I’d love to tell you all about it, but I’m afraid I’m under NDA. So, instead, I present in full, for the first time ever on the interwebz, a short story written by my colleague, the great <a href="http://twitter.com/sallyfoote">@sallyfoote</a>. Follow her on Twitter, and convince her to start her own goddamn blog so I don’t have to pimp her stories for her. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and the story in no way reflects any personals circumstances.
<h2>Going up to get down – Sally Foote</h2>
Through the glass boardroom door Jack can see the new IT Director and the woman from HR, heads bent together over sheets of paper, making notes. He counts the straight-backed chairs (fifteen), the potted plants (two) and the framed front pages of the paper (seven). One reads: “Diana is Dead” and another “Does this mean War?” They nods to one another and then look up. The director motions Jack to come in, offers him a coffee, clips the cup onto the saucer and slides it across the smooth wooden table. He doesn’t really like coffee, but he drinks it anyway. The director leans forward over the table, elbows apart, fingertips pressed together.
“Now Jack,” he’d said, “I’m sure you can guess what this is about?” He raises one eyebrow and pauses dramatically. Jack shifts in his chair and tucks his hands beneath his thighs. It’s been over two months since the new IT Director stood up in front of the whole department and invited them to ‘get on board the change train’.
“We’re worried about you Jack. We get the impression you’re unhappy,” the director pauses, “That you’re not happy here at the paper.” They don’t want to alarm him. Would he like some sugar for his coffee? The matching white jar is pushed in his direction. And the meeting isn’t about poor performance, more a lack of engagement.
“Perhaps failure to thrive?” suggests the HR woman. She smiles and sets her pen down next to her notebook.
In his last appraisal, Jack’s manager, Peter, had described him as a quiet chap who preferred to work alone. Jack had vigorously nodded his agreement. They’d talked about the fact that Jack did not like meetings and preferred to be left to get on with things. Jack explained that, in fact, this was one of the main reasons he had become a programmer. Peter nodded and then said that he felt that Jack would benefit from working more closely with his colleagues. Jack should be a bit more proactive, a bit more of a team player, a bit more like Jessica: Jessica, with her long blonde ponytail swinging from side to side as she strides round the building, wearing her enthusiasm like a badge. Jack thinks she would do well in palliative care. He imagines her standing at his bedside asking her questions: “What motivates you Jack?” “Do you want to talk about it Jack?”
“Jack,” says the IT Director, “This is a people kind of company. We’re all about the intellectual property. We like everyone to get stuck in, we like people to get involved. It’s all about vigour. And Jack, we want to help people to get somewhere. Do you know what I mean?” Jack rubs his hand across his forehead. He remembers the white calves of the IT Director flashing across the finish line at the company fun-day. He’d been pushing a wheelbarrow with Jessica in it, her legs dangling over the front.
The director pours himself another cup of coffee. “We don’t want you to be,” he pauses glancing up, “left behind.” Jack smiles stiffly.
The woman from HR has been wondering whether Jack would like to move on, or perhaps take some time off? She splays out her fingers on the glossy surface of the table and tips her head to one side. One of her long silver earrings falls against her cheek. Would Jack be interested in taking redundancy? It is being offered, does he understand? No obligation. He can go or stay, as he chooses. They really do just want him to be happy. The director stands and extends his hand. The handshake is vigorous. “You have a think about it Jack, you have a little think about it, and then get back to us.”
The foyer of the 6th floor is unusually crowded (only one of the lifts is working) and so Jack stands over to one side, near the windows. A faction of journalists are passing a set of pictures between them. “No, no, no,” says the one. “For god sakes,” says another, “does the man even know how to focus a lens?” On the far wall soldiers in a huge black and white print fire from behind a blockade. Jack turns to look out at the satellite dish pimpled rooftops of the surrounding low rise flats. Two forlorn pigeons stare back at him from their dripping perch. Beyond them the glass buildings of the city glisten and steam. Black umbrellas bob past one another like chequers on the pavement below. In the glass of the window he can just see the faint outline of his face hovering ghostlike on the glass. He presses down a stray tuft of hair that has sprung up on his crown.
When Jack came for the interview seventeen years ago, straight out of university, he had expected a maths test or logic puzzle of some sort. Instead he was taken on a tour of the editorial floor. It was nearly seven o’clock and the pages for the next day’s paper were being finished. Jack stood behind a tall man who was typing headlines standing up and shouting instructions across the room. “I’m looking for the picture on 17. Can someone revise forty-seven? Twenty-three is good to go.” The man knocked over a jar of pencils that rolled across the desk and spread themselves in a fan along the carpet. Jack bent to pick them up, scrabbling on his knees between the desks. People moved around him and stepped over him and even when he set the jar back on the desk, no one said a thing. He had a sudden memory of a terrarium of snakes that he had been taken to see as a child. How, invisible in the darkened corridor, he could put his hand right up against the warm glass, palm flat against a snake’s pale belly. He shivered with excitement, to be that close. For all the big breaking stories, he’s been there watching the pages being made, the pictures being chosen, the headlines being typed. He bought the paper after 9/11 and though he had seen the front page a hundred times the night before, he still could not believe it. Lately, what with the change train chuffing its way through IT, he has found himself up there more often, a shadow leaning against a wall, or swivelling, slowly back and forth in an unused chair, disappearing.
A restless woman comments loudly to her companion about the poor quality of the building, the indignity of having to work under these circumstances, the ineffectiveness of the service departments. Jack turns back into the foyer and they disappear round the corner to the stairwell, heels clicking on the polished marble floor, Macintosh tails swishing out behind them. The lift doors open and Jack pushes past the journalists to lean against the mirrored back wall. How’s that for vigour, he thinks. The button console has illuminated numbers for every floor. Jack reaches out and presses “B”. B for basement. B for beneath. B for bowel.
The lift descends to the basement and the doors open but Jack doesn’t move. He is staring at the familiar white wall where for seventeen years he has turned left, walked past the PC support team, past the network specialists, down to the corner where the programmers sit. Each morning, he put down his bag, pulled out the chair, sat down, moved the keyboard closer, entered his name (Jack_Everitt), entered his password (Boogie@10). For a man who likes routine, it was a comforting pattern. Now the day begins with a scrum meeting – they stand in a circle and there is a baton that is passed from one person to the next with the turn to speak. There is a chart on the wall where you are supposed to write the good things that happened to you each week. No one is allowed to make their own tea; you have to earn your caffeinated drinks in friendship.
Jessica had once told Jack, leaning forward, palms on her knees, that if she wouldn’t want to work anywhere else. She said she only liked this job because of the people. “Imagine doing IT somewhere else where you just sat at your desk all day and didn’t go out and chat to people and have discussions about things.” Jessica closed her eyes and shook her head. Swish, swish went the pony tail. “Imagine,” said Jack.
Thanks to Jessica there is invariably a long cold cup of tea waiting for him on his desk.
The doors begin to close, shiny as a mirror, and he watches the two halves of his reflection draw together until there he is – Jack with a line down the middle.
He glances at the buttons, reaches out and then drops his arm, looks down at his two shoes on the red-brown swirls of the carpet, hooks a lock of hair behind his ear. The lift, like so many other things in modern life, must be controlled by a computer. And it would be programmatically impossible for the lift to know he’s here. The doors are not going to suddenly reopen like a mouth and spit him out. The carpeted silence is so beautiful that he coughs, just the once, to reaffirm it.
He still has the first programming book he bought: “The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Visual Basic” with its enticingly titled opening chapter: “An Introduction to Programming: A Walk on the Wild Side”. Jack spent the weekends sitting at his parents’ computer working his way through it. He liked that it was called ‘writing code’ and that no one else could understand it. He liked the precision it demanded – one misplaced colon could meant hours of errors and frustration. He kept the book all through high school and even university. Just last week he took it out of the bottom drawer of his desk and thumbing through “Looping with Do and Until – Around and Around we go” smiled at a blue-biro note from his fourteen-year-old self: “WOW!”
Jack designs his programs like formulas. He begins with the problem, defines the solution and then logically and methodically writes out all the possible ways to get to there.
IF the up button is pressed on the fourth floor 
THEN go to the fourth floor 
ELSE wait.
Next he adds exceptions to catch unexpected or unusual things that might happen. For example if the lift is already on the second floor when someone inside pushes ‘two’, then the doors should open. Finally he fits it all together and tests it, watches the computer working through the logic, making the decisions. It feels rather good to be an unhandled exception.
The lift bleeps and begins to rise and Jack almost laughs out loud.
A short, rather wide-hipped woman wearing a blue skirt, steps into the lift on the ground floor. She looks at the seven unlit buttons, presses five and then turns to Jack, eyebrows raised questioningly, finger poised. The world, it would seem, is not designed for travel without destination.
“Four,” replies Jack
The doors open on the fourth floor and when Jack makes no move to exit, the blue skirt swooshes round, and the woman says, smiling, “This is four” and then presses her finger firmly onto the ‘open door’ button. Jack steps hesitantly out. He hasn’t been on the fourth floor before and has no idea what happens up here. He can feel himself blushing as he pauses uncertainly, feet together. The office spreads out to his left and he is convinced he can hear a settling of silence – like when someone uninvited steps into a conversation. He checks his watch in what he hopes is a purposeful manner, moves the face back and forth across his wrist. The lift doors slide slowly closed behind him. He takes a deep breath, draws his shoulders back and then strides over to the newspaper stand directly opposite the doors, picks up a copy. He unfolds the paper and turns noisily through a few pages. At page 14 he taps an article with his finger, refolds the newspaper, tucks it under his arm and turns on one foot, back towards the lift doors. He presses the down arrow and waits.
When Jack was 10 an obsession with choose-your-own adventure books had raged through the boys of his age. They read them on the bus, on the stands during athletics and folded open beneath their desks in geography. At the end of each chapter you were required to make a decision and follow the story onto a specified page according to the choice you’d made. “If you think Araya should head west to seek water, turn to page 27 or, if you think Araya should seek shelter in the village, turn to page 81.” He hated the randomness of the choices, you just had to take a chance and pick one. Jack had got stuck in the underwater forest for two whole weeks. Back and forth he went between pages 73 and 36, reading the same paragraphs over and over again.
What would he do with the money? Buy a new computer? Take a trip? He could do something completely different altogether. He unfolds the piece of paper from his back pocket to check the figure again. It’s a lot of money. More like fifty computers, two thousand new t-shirts, a long trip.
He gets back into the lift with two young men. They have neat lines pressed into the front of their trousers and the one has little padlocks for cufflinks.
“Floor?”
“Basement” Jack says and puts his hands into his jeans pockets.
“It’s set in a newspaper,” says the one with the padlocks, “That’s why they’re filming it here. Scarlett Johansen is playing a journalist.”
“Playing a hot journalist!” interjects the other.
“She’s working undercover investigating something or other, and then she falls in love with the guy she’s writing about. ”
“Tell me she shags someone over the editor’s desk.”
“Oh yeah sure, that’s the one they’re filming on Saturday, to see if it’s possible to actually get you to come in on the weekend.” They both laugh.
The lift pings its arrival on the third floor.
“Scarlett Johansen, ready yourself, we’re coming for you!” says the man with the padlocks, hoisting up his trousers.
The windows of the third floor are blacked out with curtains and huge lamps glare down on the far corner of the room. Jack has only seen film sets in films before. He can smell the heat of the lights and the muted sound of a large group of people being quiet. A microphone on a boom sways above the throng of onlookers. Jack can tell there’s no point in trying to get any closer. Every available space has someone in it. One man has lifted his chair up onto his desk and is sitting, arms folded, watching. From the epicentre of the room a voice roars “Cut.”
A young woman gets into the lift carrying a stack of film cans; the red tape running round their sides says “URGENT: UN-DEVELOPED STOCK”. Jack knows exactly who Scarlett Johansen is. Last Saturday he went to see “Girl with the Pearl Earring” at his local cinema. It was part of a festival of films about art. His usual seat (middle of the front row) was taken and he had to make do with sitting further off to the side which ruined the whole experience. Jack likes to immerse himself in films – so close that there is nothing between him and the screen, like an invisible protagonist. The woman carrying the film cans gets out on the ground floor and as the lift doors open once again in the basement, Jack presses the close door button with a firm finger. The painting in the film, the girl in the painting, the actress in the girl, and now the real woman. There’s a symmetry to it that appeals – like opening one of those Russian Dolls. And what’s more:
IF Miss Johansen is not likely to be the type of woman to take the stairs 
AND IF this is the only operational lift, 
THEN at some point, during the course of the day, she is going to get in it. 
ELSE There is no else; Jack is going to be waiting.
On the seventh floor someone steps up to the doors, and then seeing him standing there, takes a surprised step back. This is one of what Jack dubs ‘the turns’ – where the lift reaches one of the extremes of the building, and the expectation that he should alight is all the greater because there is nowhere else to go. He begins to explain that he is actually going back down and gives a small apologetic wave of his hand to cover the missing end of his sentence. After three or four of these incidents, he perfects the gesture in lieu of any explanation. It involves a quick flick of the wrist that is both welcoming in a ‘No, no, it’s ok, get into the lift’ way and also directional in an ‘I’m going up’ or ‘I’m going down’ way. It’s astounding how many people immediately understand what he means. Of course he is not alone; thanks to the broken lift there are lots of other people, too impatient to wait, who are going up to get down.
The lift gets busier after noon as people head to lunch. Women scratch in their handbags, discussing where they will buy their sandwiches – “Pret or that little Turkish place on the corner?” Just after one o’clock it is so full that bodies are pressed uncomfortably against one another, and the doors open to disappointed faces of people on each floor who sigh and turn on their heels to take the stairs. Jack wedges himself into the back corner, crosses his arms over his chest. Most people waited to speak until they were out of the lift, snippets of their conversations drifting back. “Suggested that he just give up. Best thing for it really. There’s nothing more I…” and “That’s what she says she wants but, honestly now, do you think it’s ethical?”
And then they are all back again after lunch, and no-one comments on the fact that he is still there, though one woman, with a carrier bag of sandwiches, chewing on a soft drink straw, points a finger at him and smiles. She gets out on three.
“It’s like I’m CCTV,” thinks Jack, “I see it all, but no one sees me.”
Jack shifts his weight from one foot to the other, tugs down the hem of his T-shirt. This could be it. The lights at the far end have been turned off and some of the black curtains pulled open, spilling daylight in. There’s a great heap of cables lying on the floor near the lift, and a woman just out of sight to the left is calling for water. But no one is waiting to get in.
As the doors start to ease closed, a young assistant wearing a headset rushes towards him, her hand stuck out in front of her calling: “Hold the lift, please.” He doesn’t move and she has to repeat it – “Hold the doors!” Her forehead creases as the doors begin to close and a soft “Hey” escapes her lips. Jack frantically stabs at the ‘three’. The doors yawn open and he apologises. She frowns again, puts a foot in the door, and beckons off to the right. Two men wheel over a large trolley-like piece of equipment. It has rubber wheels that creak over the metal lip of the lift. Jack is forced to step right back against the smoked-glass mirrors.
The men stand on either side of the trolley, looking at Jack.
“Alright?”
Jack nods.
By four o’clock Jack is not alright. He is desperate to go to the toilet. He stands quietly, legs crossed, jaw clenched as long as he can and then bursts out on five, where the bathrooms are directly opposite the lift. He hops as he pees. Two floors below Scarlett could be gliding down to her waiting limousine. He skids back, bathroom door slamming behind him, leaves a wet fingerprint on the down button. A man waiting adjacent to him glances over and says: “Stairs might be quicker mate.”
Jessica is in the lift.
“Oh my God, Jack,” she says, eyes widening with delight, “Where the hell have you been? Did you have your meeting? Peter’s going mental.” She gestures on either side of her head with two rotating fingers. “He called the director and everything to find out what time you finished the meeting and where you were.” She is standing in his spot and so he’s stopped just inside the closing doors. On the back wall behind her, he can see the curious effect of too many mirrors in such a small space, the reflection of Jessica over and over, diminishing.
“Jack, are you ok?” she pauses, rubs the side of her nose, “That guy from the Arts Desk called again. He’s getting some sort of error message, wants you to call him back. I wrote it all down. It’s on your desk.” Jack watches her mouth opening and closing. “Are you going back to your desk now? What are you doing up here? Hey, did you know that Scarlett Johansen is filming on third?”
“I’m CCTV,” says Jack.
“What?”
“Are you getting off?” says a woman on the 7th floor.
“Yes,” says Jessica.
“No,” says Jack.
She turns and waves goodbye.
Two men in mid-conversation get in on the second floor, pausing only briefly. The taller of the two is wearing a pale linen suit, its back lightly crumpled, as if he has been sitting down for too long. He talks rapidly and angrily, pointing at the shorter man’s chest:
“Thing is, right, if you don’t do something about it, it’s cyclical; the whole process, repeats and repeats and repeats,” he pauses, “in perpetuity.” Jack thinks of a furious bee he’d watched on a bus slamming itself against the window. It would crawl slowly up the glass to the very rim where centimetres from fresh air, it would take flight and drop back down again to the base of the frame, and bang, bang, bang. He watched this loop over and over for the whole length of the bus journey. Eventually the bee would die. After he got off, he thought of the bus going round and round its route, with the bee inside going up and down the window. In perpetuity.
When doors open on the third floor there’s a group of people huddled around the lift, facing Jack. He untucks his hands from behind his back and crosses them firmly over his chest. One woman has a clipboard propped on her hip and next to her a tall young man is swinging a roll of thick, silver tape around one finger. Standing in the middle, is Scarlett Johansen. She is lifting her sunglasses up towards her face, and for a very, very brief instant, he catches her eye over the top of the huge fly-lenses.
An assistant gets into the lift and walks towards Jack. She touches his arm and says in a honeyed American accent “Excuse me sir, I wonder if you could do us just the biggest favour? Miss Johansen, and,” she indicates the group of people waiting at the lift with a quick round circular motion over her shoulder, “well, there’s quite a few of us. Would you mind?” The doors begin to close and her arm darts out, a manicured red nail depresses the open button. She smiles at Jack: “Thanks so much, really, thanks.” Scarlett is fiddling with her bracelet, pushing it backwards and forwards over the fine bones of her wrist. The grip on his forearm tightens and he is directed out of the lift.
On the other side of the now deserted floor a man is rolling up a cable, wrapping it over his hooked thumb and down around his elbow, pausing to yank as the plug-end catches somewhere amongst the debris. Behind him the lift pings open again.
“Hey?” says the American woman. “Hey!”
Jack turns back to face the lift. Scarlett has removed her glasses now and is rummaging in her handbag.
“Are you the new runner?”
Jack blinks, sees clearly, nods.
“Where the hell have you been all day?” She says gesturing him into the lift “Come on then”
Ha, ha, thinks Jack, how’s this for vigour?
<a href="http://twitter.com/sallyfoote"><img class="aligncenter size-thumbnail wp-image-1816" title="foot" src="http://jonontech.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/foot1-150x150.png" alt="" width="90" height="90" /></a>
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<item>
<title>I’ve Learned Stuff In The Past Two Hours</title>
<link>http://jonontech.com/2010/11/07/ive-learned-stuff-in-the-past-two-hours/</link>
<comments>http://jonontech.com/2010/11/07/ive-learned-stuff-in-the-past-two-hours/#comments</comments>
<pubDate>Sun, 07 Nov 2010 22:19:49 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>Jon Marks</dc:creator>
<category><![CDATA[Ramblings]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[instalyrics]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[music]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[paperli]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[rockmelt]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">http://jonontech.com/?p=1797</guid>
<description><![CDATA[The family is sick in bed and fast asleep, so I got a few rare moments to browser the intarwebs. I discovered RockMelt, instalyrics and how much I hate paper.li]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[<blockquote class="dylan">If today was not an endless highway, 
If tonight was not a crooked trail, 
If tomorrow wasn’t such a long time, 
Then lonesome would mean nothing to you at all. 
- TOMORROW IS A LONG TIME</blockquote>
The family is sick in bed and fast asleep, so I got a few rare moments to browse the intarwebs. I discovered RockMelt, instalyrics and paper.li. I also learned about <a class="myButton" href="http://www.zurb.com/playground/jquery-raptorize">jquery-raptorize</a> but that’s not important right now.
<h2>RockMelt – @rockmelt</h2>
<a href="http://jonontech.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/rockmelt.png"><img class="aligncenter size-medium wp-image-1798" title="rockmelt" src="http://jonontech.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/rockmelt-300x168.png" alt="" width="300" height="168" /></a>
<a href="http://www.rockmelt.com/">RockMelt</a> is a new browser built on Chrome (my browser of choice) that includes some funky new integrations with the shits the cool kids are using. And I’m trying to be a cool kid. Let’s see if it does better than <a href="http://flock.com/">Flock</a>, the previous attempt at a social browser that I remember. The fact that it is backed by The Daddy Of Browsers, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marc_Andreessen">Marc Andreessen</a> certainly can’t hurt. I was lucky enough to briefly meet Marc at a Top Secret Event a few months ago. He’s my kind of guy and most things he touches turn to gold. You can watch a video on their site right now. Looking forward to my invite arriving.
<h2>InstaLyrics – @instalyrics</h2>
<a href="http://jonontech.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/instalyrics.png"><img class="aligncenter size-medium wp-image-1799" title="instalyrics" src="http://jonontech.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/instalyrics-300x219.png" alt="" width="300" height="219" /></a>
I love my music and, as my legions loyal readers will know, I love searching for lyrics. Every post on this blog starts with <a href="http://jonontech.com/index-of-songs/">a Bob Dylan lyric</a>, for example. I take longer finding the lyrics than I do writing the posts! You know how when searching the dark corners of the web for lyrics you get pron-popups and warez assaulting you from all angles? Well none of that here. Kudos really should go to <a href="http://musixmatch.com/">musiXmatch</a> that provide the fully legit API that powers this. I heart APIs.
<h2>paper.li</h2>
<a href="http://jonontech.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/paperli.png"><img class="aligncenter size-medium wp-image-1800" title="paperli" src="http://jonontech.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/paperli-300x215.png" alt="" width="300" height="215" /></a>
Okay, I’ve known about <a href="http://paper.li/mcboof">paper.li</a> for a while. But I never knew how much I fucking hate the thing. I hate hate hate it, and hate it more as it grows every more popular. Sure, it is pretty and all, but this monster turns everyone into an aggregator, and a noisy one at that. It’s even more annoying than FourSquare for Twitter spam. The sneaky bastard even gets into my “mentions” stream. Please, please, dear Tweetdeck, add some functionality to filter out this evil. And dear twits, stop the auto-promote daily tweets I implore you. Oh, and in case you hadn’t heard, The Who Gives A Fuck Daily is out! <a href="http://bit.ly/9u29rG">http://bit.ly/9u29rG</a> Top stories by @mcboof @mcboof @mcboof
Well, that’s all I learned. Anything else cool out there?
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<slash:comments>14200</slash:comments>
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<title>Hiring Tips That HR Wouldn’t Like</title>
<link>http://jonontech.com/2010/10/27/hiring-tips-that-hr-wouldnt-like/</link>
<comments>http://jonontech.com/2010/10/27/hiring-tips-that-hr-wouldnt-like/#comments</comments>
<pubDate>Wed, 27 Oct 2010 03:20:51 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>Jon Marks</dc:creator>
<category><![CDATA[Ramblings]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[firing]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[hiring]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[interview]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">http://jonontech.com/?p=1788</guid>
<description><![CDATA[I've been doing a fair bit of hiring in this year. Turns out that everyone has wildly different ideas about who is a good hire, and who sucks the big one. So here are some top tips to help you get the good apples.]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[<blockquote class="dylan">When all of your advisers heave their plastic 
At your feet to convince you of your pain 
Trying to prove that your conclusions should be more drastic 
Won’t you come see me, Queen Jane? 
- QUEEN JANE APPROXIMATELY</blockquote>
So I’ve been doing a fair bit of hiring in this year. Turns out that everyone has wildly different ideas about who is a good hire, and who sucks the big one. Let’s get straight to it – here are ten questions. Leave your thoughts in the comments. I’ll share my views (with reasons) once all the important folk have commented. Discussions on the <a href="http://twitter.com/#search?q=%23iwouldhire">#iwouldhire</a> hashtag please.
<a href="http://jonontech.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/Jerk.png"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-1792" title="Jerk" src="http://jonontech.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/Jerk.png" alt="" width="318" height="335" /></a>
Each persona has a nice short name, so you can leave comments in the form of (assuming you went for the first option in every case): 
PUSSY,PISSANT,BADGES,EDU,SUIT,PLANNER,LATE,PERFECT,WINNER,FAD
And that’s only 62 characters. So you can tweet it with the hashtag and the link back and everything to give me some lovely, sweet, linky love juice.
1. PUSSY OR LEAPFROG 
 A solid worker than executes the strategy laid out by upper management 
OR 
Someone with a critical eye and scientific mind that questions everything, clearing escalating their concerns. If their boss doesn’t listen, they escalate even higher.
2. PISSANT vs PLODDER 
 The developer that whines about everything, even though they’re less experienced than you, and they’re wrong most of the time 
OR 
The developer that quietly goes about their business and doesn’t rock the boat
3. BADGES vs SCARS 
 A solid developer that is certified in every product in your stack 
OR 
A seasoned developer with excellent track record who has never been certified in anything and has never touched the products in your stack
4. EDU vs EXP 
 The kid fresh out of college with her three year university degree 
OR 
The kid that didn’t bother with college and has three years experience
5. SUIT vs SLOB 
 The well dressed, articulate MBA grad that doesn’t open their mouth in a meeting 
OR 
The guy that security tries to escort out of the building twice a week that rants and raves in every meeting
6. PLANNER vs REBEL 
 The dude that submits a well thought out business case for new ideas in the company and requests time and budget to develop them 
OR 
The dude that doesn’t ask, builds something off-piste without approval, and presents it when it has some substance
7. LATE vs LIE 
 The guy who was late for the interview 
OR 
The guy that made some shit up on his CV
8. PERFECT vs POTTYMOUTH 
 Someone that has a perfectly constructed LinkedIn profile 
OR 
Someone that has a pretty filthy, off-topic blog
9. WINNER vs LOSER 
 Talks about many succesful projects in the interview 
vs 
Talks about numerous disasters in the interview
10. FAD vs SAD 
 Wants to try the new tech that the kids love on every project, even though they’ve never used it in production 
vs 
Happy to stick to the tried and tested old stuff, even though it isn’t exactly leading edge
So answers below in the format suggested. A beer if anyone matches 9 out of 10 on my list, and a job if anyone matched all of them (you’ve got a 1 in 1024 chance of guessing that).
Note: While the tips outlined in this post are invaluable, they are in no way endorsed by the HR department of any company I have ever worked for.
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<slash:comments>12109</slash:comments>
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<title>Microsoft vs Adobe, Ryder Cup Style</title>
<link>http://jonontech.com/2010/10/09/microsoft-vs-adobe-ryder-cup-style/</link>
<comments>http://jonontech.com/2010/10/09/microsoft-vs-adobe-ryder-cup-style/#comments</comments>
<pubDate>Sat, 09 Oct 2010 20:31:37 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>Jon Marks</dc:creator>
<category><![CDATA[Future of CMS]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[adobe]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[aquisitions]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[day]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[flash]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[microsoft]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[omniture]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[photoshop]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[silverlight]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">http://jonontech.com/?p=1778</guid>
<description><![CDATA[In light of recent rumours, I figured it would be a good waste of time to take most of Adobe's products, and line them up, Ryder Cup style, against the closest Microsoft equivalent.]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[<blockquote class="dylan">You got a lotta nerve 
To say you are my friend 
When I was down 
You just stood there grinning 
You got a lotta nerve 
To say you gota helping hand to lend 
You just want to be on 
The side that’s winning 
- POSITIVELY 4TH STREET</blockquote>
Let’s set the record straight. I can’t play golf. My course record is 120 odd, which sucks. But I love watching it. Especially the Ryder Cup. I actually can’t think of any sporting event that puts more pressure on the people involved. Let’s argue that one later.
Unfortunately I wasn’t watching the Ryder Cup last night. I was trying not to watching some shitty RomCom that my wife was enjoying. So, in honour of the <a href="http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/10/07/microsoft-and-adobe-chiefs-meet-to-discuss-partnerships/">New York Times’</a> rumoured (and stock spiking but highly improbable) Microsoft/Adobe merger, I made me this:
<a href="http://jonontech.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/MicrosoftVsAdobe.png"><img src="http://jonontech.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/MicrosoftVsAdobe.png" alt="" title="MicrosoftVsAdobe" width="562" height="660" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-1780" /></a>
All of the scores are completely subjective. It’s worth mentioning that while <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shantanu_Narayen">Captain Shantanu</a> played his strongest possible team (of 14 players), <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Ballmer">Captain Steve</a> rested some of his powerhouses including Windows itself, SQL Server, Office, Azure, Team XBox and much much more. Steve picked the players that were the best match for Team Adobe’s players.
If anyone wants to argue the scoring, or provide their own, I’d be interested. And if anyone wants to give Apple vs Google a bash, that’ll be cool too. Winner plays Adobe.
The finish of this one wasn’t quite a nailbiting as the <a href="http://www.rydercup.com/2010/europe/">2010 Ryder Cup</a>, so Microsoft Paint’s controversial win over Adobe Photoshop didn’t change the outcome. I do so love golf. Although I love cricket more. And, to end on a random fact, Shantanu loves cricket even more than I do. 
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<title>Five Things I’m Probably Wrong About</title>
<link>http://jonontech.com/2010/09/24/five-things-im-probably-wrong-about/</link>
<comments>http://jonontech.com/2010/09/24/five-things-im-probably-wrong-about/#comments</comments>
<pubDate>Fri, 24 Sep 2010 20:42:44 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>Jon Marks</dc:creator>
<category><![CDATA[Ramblings]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[CMS]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[development]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[json]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[perl]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[rdf]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[standards]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[XML]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[xslt]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">http://jonontech.com/?p=1769</guid>
<description><![CDATA[When people tell me that I'm drunk these days, I normally am. But there are some other things people keep telling me that I don't agree with, so they're probably right. They're all related to the fact that I'm an old school control freak dog that probably can't learn new tricks.]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[<blockquote class="dylan">Now you would not think to look at him 
But he was famous long ago 
For playing the electric violin 
On Desolation Row 
- DESOLATION ROW</blockquote>
A few months ago, I was chatting to a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Miller_(businessman)">very wise man</a>. He said to me: “If three people tell you that you’re drunk, even if you’ve had nothing to drink, you’d best go home and sleep it off”.
When people tell me that I’m drunk these days, I normally am. But there are some other things people keep telling me that I don’t agree with, so they’re probably right. They’re all related to the fact that I’m an old school control freak dog that probably can’t learn new tricks.
So, I give you Five Things I’m Probably Wrong About But Strongly Believe I’m Not. Maybe some long blog posts about any or all of these if people want to have an argument and educate me, but I’ll keep it short for now.
<a href="http://jonontech.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/ACE-voting-wisdom-of-the-crowds.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-1770" title="Odd One Out" src="http://jonontech.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/ACE-voting-wisdom-of-the-crowds.jpg" alt="" width="425" height="282" /></a>
I prefer XML to JSON. Yes, I know they’re not really competing technologies. One is an interop format, and one is an object serialisation. But they sure feel like they compete from where I’m standing. The kids all seem to prefer JSON over XML as an API response format, even when the client of the API isn’t JavaScript. But not me. I’m old school like <a href="http://www.scripting.com/2006/12/20.html">Dave Winer</a>, even though he’s sometimes a bit of a cock.
I prefer RDFa to Microformats. And I prefer RDF to XHTML for structured data. I’ll take structure and standards over conventions. Microformats are more popular than RDFa, and people are probably right that RDF is complex and hasn’t taken off. But I can’t help it. I just don’t like using CSS classes to imply semantics.
I prefer XSLT to all alternatives. I love forced well formed markup. I love the fact you can’t be lazy and hack. I love the override model and the terminology they use. I love XSLT so much that I don’t really know what the viable alternatives are. <a href="http://freemarker.sourceforge.net/">Freemarker</a>? <a href="http://mustache.github.com/">mustache</a>? I hate all web templating languages that end in a P. That includes JSP, ASP(.NET), PHP. It’s not easy to make XSLT spaghetti like you see in the P langauges. I know the kids all think XSLT is complicated, verbose and slow, but I just don’t see it.
I prefer strongly typed to weakly typed languages. The theme of control continues. I’ve seen to many non-typed programmers write hundreds of test cases for their code which pretty much replicated a typing system. Compilers are an automated test suite in my book. While we’re here, I hate Perl more than anything else. Especially if the project team size is greater than one. “<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/There's_more_than_one_way_to_do_it">There’s more than one way to do it.</a>” Sneaky fuckers just want to write code that is impossible to understand so that the weird guy on the second floor can keep his job maintaining it. I’ll have a double helping of consistency with some control sauce on top, please.
I prefer referential integrity to chaos. I like the fact I can’t get horseshit data into my system. While I believe the repository administrator should be able to disable referential integrity (<a href="http://blog.technologyofcontent.com/2010/09/towards-a-comparison-of-content-repositories/">REFINT</a>) constraints for performance reasons in a tested, production environment, I can’t handle the mess my development repositories get in to. Many smart folk are telling me REFINT is a slow waste of time and a layer above the repo should be responsible for it. But I don’t buy that either. Note that I am a big NoSQL fan and prefer a hierarchical repository to a relational one.
So you see, I’m a freak. My developers are all tree-loving hippies that want flexibility. I want impose technologies that restrict the hell out of all of that. And you all thought I was the hippy! If any of you, dear readers, agree with me on any of the above, I’d feel a whole lot better. I’m feeling rather alone out here. I’m like the guy at the back of the crowd:
<blockquote>Brian: Please, please, please listen! I’ve got one or two things to say. 
 The Crowd: Tell us! Tell us both of them! 
 Brian: Look, you’ve got it all wrong! You don’t NEED to follow ME, You don’t NEED to follow ANYBODY! You’ve got to think for your selves! You’re ALL individuals! 
 The Crowd: Yes! We’re all individuals! 
 Brian: You’re all different! 
 The Crowd: Yes, we ARE all different! 
 Man in crowd: I’m not… 
 The Crowd: Sch! 
- Life of Brian (1979)</blockquote>
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<slash:comments>5032</slash:comments>
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<item>
<title>Broken Bones, Good Deals and My Daddy</title>
<link>http://jonontech.com/2010/08/31/broken-bones-good-deals-and-my-daddy/</link>
<comments>http://jonontech.com/2010/08/31/broken-bones-good-deals-and-my-daddy/#comments</comments>
<pubDate>Tue, 31 Aug 2010 20:29:15 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>Jon Marks</dc:creator>
<category><![CDATA[Ramblings]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[contract]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[doctor]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[negotiation]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[procurement]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[vendor]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">http://jonontech.com/?p=1762</guid>
<description><![CDATA[Gather round, children. Let me tell you about my Dad. He's a wonderful, smart man. He taught me to play chess when I was 3. He is also an orthopaedic surgeon, which means he fixes broken bones and things. He worked for many many many years in government hospitals until, about ten years ago, he moved from the operating theatre to the courtrooms, working in the medico-legal world.]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[<blockquote class="dylan">I don’t have the strength 
To get up and take another shot 
And my best friend, my doctor 
Won’t even say what it is I’ve got 
- JUST LIKE TOM THUMB’S BLUES</blockquote>
Gather round, children. Let me tell you about my Dad. He’s a wonderful, smart man. He taught me to play chess when I was 3. He is also an <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orthopedic_surgery">orthopaedic surgeon</a>, which means he fixes broken bones and things. He comes from a long line of doctors, which I broke when I turned out to be a computer geek. He worked for many many many years in government hospitals until, about ten years ago, he moved from the operating theatre to the courtrooms, working in the <a href="http://www.medico-legalsociety.org.uk/index.asp">medico-legal</a> world.
Here is how it works. Someone gets injured somehow. In South Africa where I grew up, it is normally a car accident. South Africa has one of the worst road safety records in the world. It is often <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whiplash_(medicine)">whiplash</a>. Don’t ever get my Dad started on whiplash. Seriously.
Anyway, the insurance companies need to reimburse the victim for medical bills, loss of earnings, psychological trauma and other goodies. And this is where it gets tricky – you need to put a dollar (or ZAR) value onto all of this. It is complicated even more when some victims (either fraudulenty, subconsciously or due to lawyer’s pressure) fake or exaggerate their situations.
<a href="http://jonontech.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/FDA-vision-test_600.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-1763" title="FDA-vision-test_600" src="http://jonontech.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/FDA-vision-test_600.jpg" alt="" width="420" height="488" /></a>
Which is where the experts come in. Both the insurance fund lawyer and the victim’s lawyer need to ensure that they have medical experts on their benches. And here is the cool bit. All the senior orthopods in South Africa know and respect one another. Most of them will represent both the patient or the insurance fund – they don’t play favourite.
So the two doctors will sit in the courtroom, recognise each other, and think to themselves “Oh look, they’ve got Doctor {insert name here} . He’s a good guy who knows his shit and will fairly represent the situation.” And, more often than not, they’ll quickly come to a fair and equitable agreement. The doctors normally don’t even open their mouths in court. They just sit there like finely tuned bullshit detectors and only get involved when the bullshit levels rise. However, if either side lacks a respected expert, things can drag on a whole lot longer and end in a mess. Of course this isn’t always the case but, as I understand it, it is pretty close.
So what? Well here is my point. I’ve recently been engaging a lot of third parties product and service vendors. And I’ve been really fortunate to work with people from these companies that really really know what they’re doing. And, they seem to think I know what I’m doing. Which has made the entire process quick, painless and fair. Both sides know what a fair day rate for consultants is. Both sides know which products are real and needed for the solution, and can smell <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snake_oil">snakeoil</a> a mile away.
So, the moral of the story. When engaging third parties, make sure that you have someone on your team that knows the industry backwards, and make sure the third party knows that you know. Secondly, make sure that the third party has someone that knows their industry backwards and doesn’t just sprout hot air.
You’ll save yourself a fuckload of time and stress. Trust me. I’m a Doctor’s son.
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<slash:comments>2811</slash:comments>
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<item>
<title>Drifting Yellow Dots – Gartner CMS MQ 2010</title>
<link>http://jonontech.com/2010/08/27/drifting-yellow-dots-gartner-cms-mq-2010/</link>
<comments>http://jonontech.com/2010/08/27/drifting-yellow-dots-gartner-cms-mq-2010/#comments</comments>
<pubDate>Fri, 27 Aug 2010 22:08:32 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>Jon Marks</dc:creator>
<category><![CDATA[Ramblings]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[alterian]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[autonomy]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[coremedia]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[day]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[EPiServer]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[fatwire]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[gartner]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[oracle]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[quadrant]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[sdl]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[sitecore]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[tridion]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[vignette]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">http://jonontech.com/?p=1753</guid>
<description><![CDATA[Lordy, has it been a year already? Sure has. The 2010 Gartner Magic Quadrant for WCM is out. You can get the report here courtesy of our friends at SiteCore. As usual it is worth a read, but here are the juicy bits.]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[<blockquote class="dylan">I began to think what a deed I’d done. 
I grabbed my hat and I began to run. 
I made a god run but I ran too slow; 
They overtook me down in Jericho 
- IN SEARCH OF LITTLE SADIE</blockquote>
Lordy, has it been a year already? Sure has. The 2010 Gartner Magic Quadrant for WCM is out. You can <a href="http://www.sitecore.net/Products/Resources/whitepapers/Gartner-Magic-Quadrant.aspx">get the report here</a> courtesy of our friends at SiteCore. As usual it is worth a read, but here is the juicy bit:
<a href="http://jonontech.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/wcmmq20101.png"><img class="aligncenter size-medium wp-image-1755" title="wcmmq2010" src="http://jonontech.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/wcmmq20101-279x300.png" alt="" width="279" height="300" /></a>
I’ve marked the guys that have improved a reasonable amount with a green line, indicating where they’ve moved to since 2009. No-one has really slipped, although a few have vanished. EMC have given up on WCM and are partnering with Fatwire instead. <a href="http://jonontech.com/2009/05/06/omg-open-text-buy-grandpa-vignette/">Vignette</a> and Nstein are also now part of the Open Text dot. Expect to see <a href="http://jonontech.com/2010/07/28/a-fine-day-for-adobe/">Day replaced by Adobe</a> on here in 2011.
They’ve stuck with the same Big Three (Oracle, Automony/Interwoven and Open Text) in the lead as last time. Two other Big Guys – Microsoft and IBM – are inching closer to the Leader Quadrant. It does seem that to be near the top of the “ability to execute” axis, you need to be a massive company and have technology that is at least ten years old. I <a href="http://jonontech.com/2009/08/10/what-has-the-ministry-of-magic-quadrants-got-against-me/">ranted about this last year</a>, and the same thoughts apply. I should point out that this dimension is defined as “how well a vendor sells and supports its WCM products and services“, not on the success of implementations or happiness of customers. If you want to get the products with the most marketing dollars behind them, this is the axis for you.
The Open Text logic still confounds me. Here is how I see it. In 2009, Open Text was one of the three leaders, based on what I can only assume was The Product Formerly Known As RedDot. Vignette and Nstein were lingering in the shitty quadrant (VIGN on the border, admittedly). So my only conclusion is that RedDot was the favoured product in the eyes of Gartner. However, my spider senses (and OTEX staff layoffs) tell me RedDot is on its way out and the Vignette WCM product is the Chosen One. So I’d have expected the Gartner folk to move OTEX further into the danger zone, but the uncertainly and product direction have actually given them a boost.
The tussle between the younger upstarts is as close as ever. The Java vendors (FatWire and Day) have gained slightly on the .NET ones (SiteCore, Ektron). The Java/.NET hybrid, SDL, keeps its nose in front. I think we’ll see bigger gaps in 2011.
Last year, I noted that poor EPiServer had got a bit of a raw deal. That’s been fixed. I’ve always felt they should be sitting right next to SiteCore on this thing. And CoreMedia also got a big bonus. Alterian got a little boost, but they’re still in the quadrant of despair.
There are two new vendors on there, Atex and Dynamicweb. I’ve heard of the latter but never seen them. And only heard of Atex when they aquired Polopoly as few years ago. Never seen their product either, so not comments here.
Still no Open Source vendors on here, for the same revenue related reasons as last time. I’m not going over all that again.
Most of these little yellow dots haven’t drifted very far in a year – the report is pretty similar despite the M&A activity that has kept us bloggers busy. So pretty much a repeat of last year. And, like last year, here is hoping Gartner’s lawyers don’t serve me any takedown notices.
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<title>It Can All Change In A ChartBeat</title>
<link>http://jonontech.com/2010/08/24/it-can-all-change-in-a-chartbeat/</link>
<comments>http://jonontech.com/2010/08/24/it-can-all-change-in-a-chartbeat/#comments</comments>
<pubDate>Mon, 23 Aug 2010 23:24:55 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>Jon Marks</dc:creator>
<category><![CDATA[Ramblings]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Analytics]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[chartbeat]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[google]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[social media]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">http://jonontech.com/?p=1740</guid>
<description><![CDATA[It's pretty addictive watching your blog stats, isn't it? Remember when Google Analytics came to town and instead of waiting days to see traffic reports, you could see updates in mere hours. On a good day, you could sometimes see things in 15 minutes. Well, GA, there is a new new kid on the block, he shows you data in real time, and his name is <a href="http://chartbeat.com/">chartbeat</a>.
]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[<blockquote class="dylan">The joint is jumpin’ 
It’s really somethin’ 
The beat is pumpin’ 
My heart is thumpin’ 
Spent my money on you honey 
- HAD A DREAM ABOUT YOU, BABY</blockquote>
It’s pretty addictive watching your blog stats, isn’t it? Remember when Google Analytics came to town and instead of waiting days to see traffic reports, you could see updates in mere hours. On a good day, you could sometimes see things in 15 minutes. Well, GA, there is a new new kid on the block, he shows you data in real time, and his name is <a href="http://chartbeat.com/">chartbeat</a>.
<a href="http://jonontech.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/chartbeat_media_logo.png"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-1743" title="chartbeat_media_logo" src="http://jonontech.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/chartbeat_media_logo.png" alt="" width="318" height="54" /></a>
I’d never heard of it until last week when I was lucky enough to meet the cool folk at <a href="http://betaworks.com/">betaworks</a> (@Borthwick and @aweissman). These guys don’t mess around – they’re behind such social media hits as <a href="http://tweetdeck.com/">TweetDeck</a>, <a href="http://bit.ly/">bit.ly</a> and <a href="http://twitterfeed.com/">twitterfeed</a>. You heard it here first – chartbeat is going to be big.
It’s really easy to get started – you just stick a couple of JavaScript tags onto all your pages a.l.a. Google Analytics, and you are done. The reports you get are much simpler than those from GA, but it is really real time. You can see the visitors on your site within a couple of seconds of their arrival. I wrote a <a href="http://jonontech.com/2010/08/23/drupal-lawsuits-and-a-peruvian-prostitute/">test link bait post (sorry)</a>, tweeted it, and saw my 17 concurrent visitors within seconds.
<div id="attachment_1744" class="wp-caption aligncenter" style="width: 310px"><a href="http://jonontech.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/chartbeatscreen1.png"><img class="size-medium wp-image-1744" title="chartbeatscreen1" src="http://jonontech.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/chartbeatscreen1-300x240.png" alt="" width="300" height="240" /></a>Visitors to your site in real time. Notice one person is writing a comment. Click for large image.</div>
But there is more. GA simply registers a hit when a page is loaded. chartbeat has a heartbeat and chats to the server every couple of seconds. This means that it can more accurately measure time spent on the site, user actions like scrolling (giving a nice scroll depth metric), and even keypresses. In the screenshot above, you’ll see one person is writing – they were leaving a comment at the time.
<div id="attachment_1746" class="wp-caption aligncenter" style="width: 310px"><a href="http://jonontech.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/chartbeatscreen3.png"><img class="size-medium wp-image-1746" title="chartbeatscreen3" src="http://jonontech.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/chartbeatscreen3-300x227.png" alt="" width="300" height="227" /></a>Typical detail page. Gotta love the scroll depth and engagement indicators</div>
It also comes with a nice preintegration with <a href="http://www.backtype.com/">backtype</a>. This searches the social media buzz of the interwebs and reports activity as part of your report. When @izahoor, @theg, @irina_guseva, @cmsreport and @kevinc2003 were kind enough to retweet my horseshit blog post, I saw my dashboard get a bit busier and saw their link love appear shortly afterwards in the backtype console. Good stuff.
<div id="attachment_1745" class="wp-caption aligncenter" style="width: 310px"><a href="http://jonontech.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/chartbeatscreen2.png"><img class="size-medium wp-image-1745" title="chartbeatscreen2" src="http://jonontech.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/chartbeatscreen2-300x204.png" alt="" width="300" height="204" /></a>Nice integration with backtype. Click for large image.</div>
It has an <a href="http://chartbeat.pbworks.com/">API</a> and a bucket of prebuilt <a href="http://chartbeat.com/sitewidgets/">widgets</a>. I haven’t had time to play with these, but I might add a widget here soon. The downside being, of course, it would pretty much always say “1 user currently viewing this page”. And that would be you.
It gets better. chartbeat even monitors the health of your site. While I was testing, <a href="http://jonontech.com/2010/05/18/godaddy-godaddy-you-bastards-im-through/">my dickhead hosting company GoDaddy</a> had yet another embolism, and my site flatlined for about 5 minutes. But unlike the previous million times this happened, it didn’t die silenty. I got a nice email from chartbeat informing me of the tragedy. Also, it tells you how long a page took to load for each user. 20 seconds isn’t great, GoDaddy. And yes, it has a free iPhone app too.
<a href="http://jonontech.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/cbiPhone.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-medium wp-image-1751" title="cbiPhone" src="http://jonontech.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/cbiPhone-200x300.jpg" alt="" width="200" height="300" /></a>
Because I’m a social media guru who understands transparancy and douchebaggery, I’ve shared my wonderful stats with the world. So have a look at <a href="http://chartbeat.com/dashboard2/?url=jonontech.com&k=c59ec106fbe4b408ff964fea71bf65a9#">my chartbeat dashboard</a>.
You do have to pay a small fee for all this goodness, but it is money well spent. Buy it. Finally, a huge nod to <a href="http://twitter.com/arctictony">@arctictony</a> for helping me out.
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<slash:comments>5608</slash:comments>
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<title>Drupal, Lawsuits and a Peruvian Prostitute</title>
<link>http://jonontech.com/2010/08/23/drupal-lawsuits-and-a-peruvian-prostitute/</link>
<comments>http://jonontech.com/2010/08/23/drupal-lawsuits-and-a-peruvian-prostitute/#comments</comments>
<pubDate>Mon, 23 Aug 2010 20:42:15 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>Jon Marks</dc:creator>
<category><![CDATA[Ramblings]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[bastard]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[con]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[liar]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[linkbait]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[whore]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">http://jonontech.com/?p=1730</guid>
<description><![CDATA[Sorry, so very sorry, dear reader. This isn't a real post. But it is research for a real post. You see, I'm test driving a new analytics package which, on first impressions, is awesome. Problem is, my blog doesn't get enough traffic to make any screenshots interesting. Which is why you are here.]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[<blockquote class="dylan">Hang on to your woman if you got one 
Remember in El Paso, once, you shot one. 
She may have been a whore, but she was a hot one 
- BILLY</blockquote>
Sorry, so very sorry, dear reader. This isn’t a real post. But it is research for <a href="http://jonontech.com/2010/08/24/it-can-all-change-in-a-chartbeat/">a real post</a>. You see, I’m test driving a new analytics package which, on first impressions, is awesome. Problem is, my blog doesn’t get enough traffic to make any screenshots interesting. Which is why you are here.
So, before you leave, browse around and read some shit. It’s all in the interest of science. Retweet it, leave a comment, tell your friends and make my screenshots the busiest darn screenshots any analytics review ever had. If you’re very very lucky, you might even notice your visit in a picture in my next post.
<a href="http://jonontech.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/linkbait.png"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-1731" title="linkbait" src="http://jonontech.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/linkbait.png" alt="" width="476" height="214" /></a>
Let’s see if 1337 Twitter followers are worth anything. I’m serious. I’ve got elite followers. And I’m sure I’ll lose a whole bunch of them pretty damn soon.
UPDATE: You can read the real blog post now – <a href="http://jonontech.com/2010/08/24/it-can-all-change-in-a-chartbeat/">It Can All Change In a ChartBeat</a>. And I only lost 2 Twitter followers. Fuck ‘em.
<a href="http://jonontech.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/l3371.png"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-1737" title="l337" src="http://jonontech.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/l3371.png" alt="" width="636" height="178" /></a>
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<slash:comments>1504</slash:comments>
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<title>Painting the Analytics World Blue</title>
<link>http://jonontech.com/2010/08/13/painting-the-analytics-world-blue/</link>
<comments>http://jonontech.com/2010/08/13/painting-the-analytics-world-blue/#comments</comments>
<pubDate>Fri, 13 Aug 2010 21:18:37 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>Jon Marks</dc:creator>
<category><![CDATA[Ramblings]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[adobe]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Analytics]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[apple]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[coremetrics]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[google]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[ibm]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[omniture]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[unica]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[webtrends]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">http://jonontech.com/?p=1720</guid>
<description><![CDATA[We've got some more BlueWashing going on. IBM announced today that they're acquired analytics and marketing vendor Unica for $480 million. It seems like a lot of cash to me, but then again IBM have got plenty and what do I know. I do know it follows quite shortly after they bought pure analytics vendor CoreMetrics.]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[<blockquote class="dylan">I already assumed 
That we’re in the felony room 
But I ain’t a judge, you don’t have to be nice to me 
But please tell that 
To your friend in the cowboy hat 
You know he keeps on sayin’ ev’rythin’ twice to me 
- SHE’S YOUR LOVER NOW</blockquote>
We’ve got some more BlueWashing going on. <a href="http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9180682/Update_IBM_buying_Unica_for_480M">IBM announced today</a> that they’re acquired analytics and marketing vendor Unica for $480 million. It seems like a lot of cash to me, but then again IBM have got plenty and what do I know. I do know it follows quite shortly after they bought pure analytics vendor CoreMetrics.
<a href="http://jonontech.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/ibm_unica_coremetrics.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-1723" title="ibm_unica_coremetrics" src="http://jonontech.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/ibm_unica_coremetrics.jpg" alt="" width="456" height="152" /></a>
The “<a href="http://blog.unica.com/farewell-to-coremetrics-and-web-analytics-as-you-knew-it/">Farewell to Coremetrics and Web Analytics as you knew it</a>” post from the Unica blog (two months ago) is quite interesting in retrospect:
<blockquote>Now, IBM’s acquisition of Coremetrics follows suit as IBM folds Coremetrics into Websphere with the likely intention of making it part of the Websphere eCommerce technology stack.
With no major standalone contenders remaining in the market (WebTrends had signaled their interest in getting acquired) prospective web analytics buyers must evaluate the core competencies of the parent company in order to determine the best match for their current and future needs.
IBM does NOT appear to be making a play for a broader analytics offering</blockquote>
The wise seem to be saying that IBM isn’t actually going to bother marketing either Unica or CoreMetrics, but rather just add them into the already vast IBM Suite. Which effectively mean they’re being withdrawn from the Analytics battlefield. If that is the case, then the three players that will be slugging it out will be Adobe Omniture, Google Analytics and WebTrends. And although WebTrends are alledgely not trying to put themselves up for sale, I suspect they might be gobbled up quite soon. Maybe AAPL will feel left out of an Adobe vs Google slugfest, and buy WebTrends just to join the fracas. Maybe we should count Nedstat too, but I don’t see much of them. Or have they already been bought?
I’m the kind of guy that likes to believe the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HAL_9000#Origin_of_name">IBM <-> HAL</a> thing (although Arthur denies it), and I’ve got this vision of poor IBM acquired vendors trying to wriggle free of the corporation. For no good reason, let’s end on this:
<blockquote>Dave Bowman: Open the pod bay doors, HAL. 
HAL: I’m sorry, Dave. I’m afraid I can’t do that.</blockquote>
<a href="http://jonontech.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/2001-SPACE-ODYSSEY.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-1725" title="2001 SPACE ODYSSEY" src="http://jonontech.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/2001-SPACE-ODYSSEY.jpg" alt="" width="450" height="250" /></a>
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<slash:comments>2407</slash:comments>
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<title>My Midlife Crisis Catalyst</title>
<link>http://jonontech.com/2010/08/07/my-midlife-crisis-catalyst/</link>
<comments>http://jonontech.com/2010/08/07/my-midlife-crisis-catalyst/#comments</comments>
<pubDate>Sat, 07 Aug 2010 20:23:48 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>Jon Marks</dc:creator>
<category><![CDATA[Ramblings]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[This Blog]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[civilization]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[games]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">http://jonontech.com/?p=1711</guid>
<description><![CDATA[A friend of mine just reintroduced me to my favourite game of all time. A curse on all of his houses. Civilization Revolution is out on iOS and, the bad news is, it is as good and addictive as ever. I don't play games any more, trying to balance my time between my kids, my job, my blog and the odd bit of sleep. That's all about to go to hell.]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[<blockquote class="dylan">Come you masters of war 
You that build all the guns 
You that build the death planes 
You that build the big bombs 
- MASTERS OF WAR</blockquote>
A friend of mine just reintroduced me to my favourite game of all time. A curse on all of his houses. <a href="http://www.macworld.com/appguide/article.html?article=142206">Civilization Revolution</a> is available on iOS and, the bad news is, it is as good and addictive as ever. It’s actually been around for almost a year, but I was blissfully unaware. I don’t play games any more, trying to balance my life between my kids, my job, my drinking, my blog and the odd bit of sleep. That’s all about to go to hell.
I’ve given it a try and it rocks. I feel like I’m 18 again when all I had to do was play Civilization I, go out and get drunk, play some more, drinks some more, write some pretty easy university maths exams, and play even more. But two decades later, I’m told I have “responsibilities”. I’ve got a bad feeling that this week the kids are going to go feral, my wife will leave me, the fridge will fester, and I’ll get fired.
<a href="http://jonontech.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/Civilization_for_iPhone.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-1712" title="Civilization_for_iPhone" src="http://jonontech.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/Civilization_for_iPhone.jpg" alt="" width="480" height="320" /></a>
But a man has gotta do what a man has gotta do. The game won’t beat itself on Emperor level, you know. Those asshat Greeks need to be taught a lesson, the shifty Aztecs can’t be trusted, and Ghengis Khan is really, really pissing me off. So until I’ve sorted that out, you won’t be seeing much on this blog. £3.99 is a small price to pay for your life to fall apart. <a href="http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/civilization-revolution/id324563544?mt=8">Buy it</a>, you know you want to.
[UPDATE]: The iPhone version went FREE the day after I flushed £3.99 down the bog. Makes my time-stealing, money-stealing friend that ruined my life even more of a ballsack. At least the rest of you can have your midlife crisis for free.
<a href="http://jonontech.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/CivFullMap.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-1713" title="CivFullMap" src="http://jonontech.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/CivFullMap.jpg" alt="" width="480" height="320" /></a>
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<slash:comments>999</slash:comments>
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<title>Warning: Acquisitions May Cause Dizziness, Vomiting, Nausea and Diarrhea</title>
<link>http://jonontech.com/2010/08/04/warning-acquisitions-may-cause-dizziness-vomiting-nausea-and-diarrhea/</link>
<comments>http://jonontech.com/2010/08/04/warning-acquisitions-may-cause-dizziness-vomiting-nausea-and-diarrhea/#comments</comments>
<pubDate>Wed, 04 Aug 2010 21:41:00 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>Jon Marks</dc:creator>
<category><![CDATA[Ramblings]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[autonomy]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[interwoven]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[mental]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[open text]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[rant]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[reddot]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[vignette]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">http://jonontech.com/?p=1695</guid>
<description><![CDATA[Where there is smoke, there is fire. In this case, it'll be a shitstorm of a fire that'll consume everything useful in it's path. A bit like a Scorched Earth Campaign of Content Management. Of course I'm talking about the Autonomy/Open Text speculation, which isn't actually going to happen. Surely.]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[<blockquote class="dylan">All the tired horses in the sun 
How’m I supposed to get any ridin’ done? Hmm. 
- ALL THE TIRED HORSES</blockquote>
Where there is smoke, there is fire. In this case, it’ll be a shitstorm of a fire that’ll consume everything useful in it’s path. A bit like a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scorched_earth">Scorched Earth</a> Campaign of Content Management.
Of course I’m talking about the Autonomy/Open Text speculation <a href="http://akbaspost.blogspot.com/2010/07/autonomy-to-announce-large-acquisition.html">here</a> (@hakana), <a href="http://bigmenoncontent.com/2010/07/26/musings-on-possible-autonomy-opentext-acquisition/">here</a> (@ldallasBMOC) and <a href="http://wordofpie.com/2010/07/29/acquisition-fever/">here</a> (@piewords). In truth, the few rumours are, according to the crowds, highly unlikely to have any substance so this whole post is a waste of time. Apart from photos of CEOs in bed with hookers, no-one in Twitterville can produce a single good reason for it that I can swallow. But if this post even slightly reduces the miniscule chance of this joke of a deal materialising, it’s time well spent.
<div id="attachment_1702" class="wp-caption aligncenter" style="width: 345px"><a href="http://jonontech.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/BadEngineering.png"><img class="size-full wp-image-1702" title="BadEngineering" src="http://jonontech.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/BadEngineering.png" alt="" width="335" height="287" /></a>The whole is less than the sum of the parts</div>
Onward. It’s pretty clear there is no way that this deal could make a new sale more likely. The number of different CMS and search products The Firm would have warrants the invention of a new Collective Noun. How about a Gaggle of Products? Or Confusion of Products. Or Mindfuck of Products? Should some poor customer go through a vendor selection exercise and pick Opentonomytext, they’d need to go through another one to pick the product. Ain’t gonna happen.
And the poor existing customers. Following the Open Text/Vignette deal, many poor customers are still wondering whether or when their product will be discontinued. They’re playing Russian Roulette with about 2 bullets in the chamber. If this deal happens, they’ll have about 4 bullets. Some will jump ship, so the whole idea of creating a maintenance revenue cash cow doesn’t make sense either. In simple maths terms: (Autonomy Maintenance 2011) + (Open Text Maintenance 2011) < (Opentonomytext Maintenance 2011).
Spare a thought for the search engineers at Vignette. They OEM’ed Autonomy as their search for years. “Best of Breed”, they all cried. Then arch-rival Interwoven was aquired by Autonomy. “We’re not paying our arch rival cash every time we sell a product”, they cried. “Autonomy is a piece of shit. Let’s embed the Open Text search engine.” So they did. Hopefully they didn’t delete the code, cause they may be flipping it back pretty soon.
And spare a thought for yours truly. I’ve pushed my MS Paint skills to the limit creating the <a href="http://jonontech.com/2010/04/27/superspliced-open-text-logo-updated/">Super Spliced Open Text Logo</a>. I think the only way I could make a logo for the new beast is on a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%C3%B6bius_strip">Möbius strip</a>, and I don’t have any lying around.
<a href="http://jonontech.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/SuperSpiceDollars.png"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-1700" title="Super Spice Dollars" src="http://jonontech.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/SuperSpiceDollars.png" alt="" width="447" height="126" /></a>
Now I’m not saying that the road ahead for either company is paved with gold. But they’ve both got some good products, some great people and a fair bit of cash. If they roll up their sleeves and innovate, they might just be okay. If they keep playing Pass The Parcel with products that develop more slowly than tectonic plates, they’re toast. Wait! Hold on a second! What’s that putrid smell? Oh, look, it’s an an elephant graveyard. And elephants don’t make good software. Especially dead ones.
P.S. Remember, this isn’t actually going to happen. Surely. They’re gonna buy someone else. Answers on a postcard.
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<title>A Fine Day For Adobe</title>
<link>http://jonontech.com/2010/07/28/a-fine-day-for-adobe/</link>
<comments>http://jonontech.com/2010/07/28/a-fine-day-for-adobe/#comments</comments>
<pubDate>Wed, 28 Jul 2010 08:56:26 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>Jon Marks</dc:creator>
<category><![CDATA[Future of CMS]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Ramblings]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[adobe]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[alfresco]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[boobs]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[CMS]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[day]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[flash]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[java]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[livecycle]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[spain]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[wcm]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">http://jonontech.com/?p=1684</guid>
<description><![CDATA[Finally, finally, an acquisition I think I understand. Adobe have just announced they're buying Day Software (press release) for about USD $240 million - just slightly less than OTEX paid for Vignette. Adobe's re-entry into the CMS game is well overdue.]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[<blockquote class="dylan">No, there’s nothin’ you can send me, my own true love, 
There’s nothin’ I wish to be ownin’. 
Just carry yourself back to me unspoiled, 
From across that lonesome ocean. 
- BOOTS OF SPANISH LEATHER</blockquote>
Finally, finally, an acquisition I think I understand. <a href="http://www.adobe.com/">Adobe </a>have just announced they’re buying <a href="http://www.day.com/">Day Software</a> (<a href="http://www.adobe.com/aboutadobe/pressroom/pressreleases/pdfs/201007/072810AdobetoAcquireDaySoftware.pdf">press release</a>) for about USD $240 million – just slightly less than <a href="http://jonontech.com/2009/05/10/will-vignette-give-open-text-food-poisoning/">OTEX paid for Vignette</a>. Adobe’s re-entry into the CMS game is well overdue. Some might argue that the Creative Suite tools are becoming more CMS like. They dabbled briefly in it when they aquired Macromedia (remember Contribute, anyone?) and the Product Formally Known As Stellent comes from this line.</div>
<div>This aquisition makes sense from both sides. Kudos to the senior Day team (Erik, David, Kevin, Roy and others) for making Day so attractive. And from Adobe’s perspective I think it had to be either Day or Alfresco. There aren’t many independents left, and a Java based technology fits best with them. Many were surprised it wasn’t Alfresco due to the recent love affair between the two of them. The wise <a href="http://ecmarchitect.com/archives/2010/07/28/1189">ECM Architect, Jeff Potts</a>, says it best so I quote him here:
<blockquote>
Honestly, I thought Adobe would acquire Alfresco by the end of last year and I was surprised when it didn’t happen. They had done a big OEM deal making Alfresco part of LiveCycle and they did a gigantic Alfresco implementation as part of standing up Adobe’s acrobat.com site. Heck, Adobe even hosted Alfresco’s community event back in 2008. All small potatoes in the grand scheme of things, I know, but I can’t help but feel like the proud parent who’s daughter brought home a keeper, only to find out the guy’s been dating a hottie from Switzerland the whole time.</blockquote>
I must admit I’m also partly saddened by the news. I rather liked having a few smaller, more nimble independent players. The bigger guys all seem to be getting sidetracked by M&A activity and posturing, and innovation seems to have ground to a halt. I can’t even begin to get my head around the impending clusterfuck that would be an <a href="http://bigmenoncontent.com/2010/07/26/musings-on-possible-autonomy-opentext-acquisition/">Autonomy Interwoven and</a> <a href="http://bigmenoncontent.com/2010/07/26/musings-on-possible-autonomy-opentext-acquisition/">Open Text merger</a>. If there is any truth to that rumour, put on a hard hat, run for cover and sell your shares in both as quickly as humanly possible. But more on that later perhaps.
I’m guessing that operationally this merger will affect Day very little, if any, in the short term. Hopefully it just gives them a bit more money and clout. A few big questions spring to mind, and hopefully we will get clarity on them soon:
<ul>
<li>Day has a good track record contributing to open source projects, particularly the Apache ones. Hopefully this continues.</li>
<li>Will Adobe have any intentions of integrating the Day products with existing Adobe ones, specifically Adobe Content Server and Adobe LiveCycle Enterprise Suite? I hope it is the end of ColdFusion</li>
<li>Will Day integrate even more closely with Adobe’s other big recent purchase – Omniture?</li>
<li>Day’s big event, Ignite, promises <a href="http://www.day.com/day/en/company/news_events/press_releases/dayignite2010.html">iPads to all</a>. I hope the Adobe – Apple squabbles don’t interfere with anything.</li>
<li>I hope Day doesn’t ONLY focus on “technologies that create and deliver rich online and offline experiences leveraging the ubiquity of Flash and PDF”. I wonder what the latest Day employee, @kasthomas, makes of this.</li>
<li>Speaking of which, there is a huge amount going on in the publishing industry at the moment around tablets and magazines and shit. Adobe have been in the thick ofthings with the wildly successful Wired App, and CMS is going to be a big part of this. But I’m not allowed to talk about this right now, am I?</li>
</ul>
Day and Flash have always been close. I remember debating with David whether Flash should be considered a first class citizen of the web. Bigoted me thinks it is a second class citizen. See point 7 in <a href="http://www.slideshare.net/uncled/jboye-presentation-wcm-trends-for-2010">David’s slide deck</a> below:
<a href="http://jonontech.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/DayDavid.png"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-1687" title="Day Trends" src="http://jonontech.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/DayDavid.png" alt="" width="580" height="415" /></a>
In closing, I think it’s also really important to note that I’m writing this from a beach in Lanzarote. It hasn’t been easy to divert my attention from the Spanish Sun, Spanish Sea, Spanish Sangria and Spanish Boobies Bouncing Around, but yours truly belives it is crucial to keep you all abreast of the latest in CMS developments so has taken a hit for the team to write this up. Signing out, and see you all back on the soggy island for <a href="http://www.meetup.com/London-CMS/">#LastThursdayCMS</a> tomorrow night …
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<slash:comments>3623</slash:comments>
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<item>
<title>The Cloud – Not A Crock of Shit</title>
<link>http://jonontech.com/2010/06/21/the-cloud-not-a-crock-of-shit/</link>
<comments>http://jonontech.com/2010/06/21/the-cloud-not-a-crock-of-shit/#comments</comments>
<pubDate>Mon, 21 Jun 2010 21:44:22 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>Jon Marks</dc:creator>
<category><![CDATA[Ramblings]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">http://jonontech.com/?p=1659</guid>
<description><![CDATA[It was just over a year ago when a younger, more naive Jon declared the The Cloud is a Crock of Shit. Well, I'm a little wiser now and I'm overjoyed to report that, in fact, it isn't. Cloud Computing is very real, and something you need to know about.]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[<blockquote class="dylan">Even though a cloud’s white curtain in a far-off corner flashed 
An’ the hypnotic splattered mist was slowly lifting 
Electric light still struck like arrows, fired but for the ones 
Condemned to drift or else be kept from drifting 
- CHIMES OF FREEDOM</blockquote>
It was just over a year ago when a younger, more naive Jon declared the <a href="http://jonontech.com/2009/04/21/the-cloud-a-crock-of-shit/">The Cloud is a Crock of Shit</a>. Well, I’m a little wiser now and I’m overjoyed to report that, in fact, it isn’t. Cloud Computing is very real, and something you need to know about. I HEART clouds.
<a href="http://jonontech.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/heart_cloud.gif"><img class="aligncenter size-medium wp-image-1676" title="heart_cloud" src="http://jonontech.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/heart_cloud-300x300.gif" alt="" width="240" height="240" /></a>
In my defense, when I wrote my blog post a year ago, 98% of the time the phrase “The Cloud” was used it was by people that didn’t have a clue what it meant. This has now dropped to 44% which means that, more often than not, you should listen to people that say it. Sadly, the number is still about 85% for people with the word “Sales” or “Business” on their business cards, so continue to ignore them. And the<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud_computing"> wikipedia entry</a>, while improved, is still is desparate need of an update.
<h2>Public Clouds</h2>
So what is Cloud Computing? There are <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/what-is-cloud-computing-and-how-do-i-use-it-1896368.html">lots</a> <a href="http://communication.howstuffworks.com/cloud-computing.htm">of</a> <a href="http://www.the-network-effect.com/">definitions</a> <a href="http://gigaom.com/2009/04/11/6-half-truths-about-the-cloud/">out</a> <a href="http://www.infoworld.com/d/cloud-computing/what-cloud-computing-really-means-031">there</a>. But let’s distill the essence of Cloud Computing by listing things that Cloud Computing is that good old Hosted Services (*aas) and Grid/Utility Computing are NOT. They are:
<table border="0">
<tbody>
<tr>
<th></th>
<th>Cloud Computing</th>
<th>Grid/Utility Computing</th>
<th>Hosted *aas</th>
<th>Your Server Room</th>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Infrastructure Services – offers a wide variety of platform services</td>
<td>YES</td>
<td>NO</td>
<td>NO</td>
<td>YES</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Multi-tenancy – resources shared by a vast set of users</td>
<td>YES</td>
<td>SOMETIMES</td>
<td>SOMETIMES</td>
<td>NO</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Usage Based Pricing – very fine grained</td>
<td>YES</td>
<td>SOMETIMES</td>
<td>NO</td>
<td>NO</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Scalability – ramped up (with no cap) or down in near real time</td>
<td>YES</td>
<td>SOMETIMES</td>
<td>NO</td>
<td>NO</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Programmability – provisioning can be accessed via software</td>
<td>YES</td>
<td>NO</td>
<td>NO</td>
<td>NO</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Virtualisation – Machines are virtual, not physical</td>
<td>MAYBE</td>
<td>MAYBE</td>
<td>MAYBE</td>
<td>MAYBE</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
Firstly, you’ll notice that the concept of virtualisation is nothing to do with Cloud Computing. It’s an orthogonal concern. I like to think of a Cloud Computing platform a bit like a Java<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Java_Platform,_Enterprise_Edition"> JEE App Server</a>. The App Server provides a Java Application ways to access resources like storage, memory, caching, queuing, messaging and more – all with a standard API. A Cloud Computing API offers access to all of this, and more. Plus an API to allow the programmer to provision more resources. However, unlike the JEE example, the APIs to different cloud providers isn’t yet standard. But this is what people like <a href="http://opencloudconsortium.org/home/">The Open Cloud Consortium</a> and <a href="http://code.google.com/p/unifiedcloud/">Unified Cloud Interface Project</a> are working on.
But I talked about this <a href="http://jonontech.com/2009/04/21/the-cloud-a-crock-of-shit/">last time</a>. Back then, however, I didn’t have a clue what kind of APIs they were trying to standardise. Now I’m no expert in this area, after all I was one of the Great Cloud Unwashed a meagre year ago. So the table below that I’ve thrown together to illustrate Cloud Capability no doubt has plenty of errors and ommissions. So please correct me via the comments and I’ll update it. If something like this already exists somewhere in the interwebitutes, I couldn’t find it.
<table border="0">
<tbody>
<tr>
<th>CAPABILITY</th>
<th>Microsoft Azure</th>
<th>Amazon Web Services (AWS)</th>
<th>Google App Engine (GAE)</th>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Infrastructure Provisioning</td>
<td>Windows Azure</td>
<td>Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2)</td>
<td>n/a – You just get the App Engine</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>NoSQL Database</td>
<td>Azure Table Services</td>
<td>Amazon SimpleDB</td>
<td>App Engine Data Store (BigTable + GFS)</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Relational Database</td>
<td>SQL Azure</td>
<td>Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS) – MySQL</td>
<td>n/a</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Blob/Doc Storage</td>
<td>Azure Blob Storage</td>
<td>Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3)</td>
<td>App Engine Data Store (Google File System)</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Caching</td>
<td>Azure Cache</td>
<td>n/a</td>
<td>memcached</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Queuing</td>
<td>Azure Queue Services</td>
<td>Amazon Simple Queue Service (Amazon SQS)</td>
<td>Task Queues</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Messaging / Notifications</td>
<td>n/a</td>
<td>Amazon Simple Notification Service (Amazon SNS)</td>
<td>App Engine Mail</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Data Processing</td>
<td>n/a</td>
<td>Amazon Elastic MapReduce (Hadoop)</td>
<td>Google MapReduce</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Payment</td>
<td>n/a</td>
<td>Amazon Flexible Payments Service (Amazon FPS)</td>
<td>n/a (Google Checkout not part of GAE)</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>CDN</td>
<td>n/a</td>
<td>Amazon CloudFront</td>
<td>n/a</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Public Datasets</td>
<td>Codename “Dallas”</td>
<td>Amazon Public Data Sets</td>
<td>n/a</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Back Office</td>
<td>
<div id="_mcePaste">Office Live Workspace</div>
<div>Business Productivity Online Standard Suite (BPOS)</div>
</td>
<td>n/a</td>
<td>Google Apps (Docs, etc)</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
Very random aside – if you don’t know what memcached does, read the best ever overview of a technology ever written – <a href="http://code.google.com/p/memcached/wiki/TutorialCachingStory">An Adventure In Learning memcached</a>.
Once you grock the Cloud Computing model, it becomes clear that this model introduces many questions around security and privacy. I’m getting rather weary of people saying they don’t like the idea of putting data on cloud services (and *aaS services like Google Docs and others). They’re statistically far more secure than internal networks. There are also interesting commercial models and legal questions but, seeing this blog isn’t Jon On Commerce or Jon On The Law, I’ll leave those alone for now.
<h2>Virtual Private Clouds</h2>
So we know what a Public Cloud is. And it all makes sense, right? But what about Virtual Private Clouds. That was the question, from Ian Truscott, that made me write this post.
<a href="http://jonontech.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/virtualprivatecloud.png"><img class="aligncenter size-medium wp-image-1660" title="virtualprivatecloud" src="http://jonontech.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/virtualprivatecloud-300x94.png" alt="" width="300" height="94" /></a>
Well, Amazon offer their own <a href="http://aws.amazon.com/vpc/">Virtual Private Cloud service</a>. In essence, this gives you a VPN bewteen your local network and a dedicated resources on the Amazon Web Services. You can then treat your Amazon instances as if they were part of your local network. In addition to the standard AWS fees, you also pay for each hour that your VPN is in place, and for the data transferred. I’ve stolen their image so I don’t have to draw my own knock-off which wouldn’t be anywhere near as pretty:
<a href="http://jonontech.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/AmazonVPC.gif"><img class="aligncenter size-medium wp-image-1664" title="AmazonVPC" src="http://jonontech.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/AmazonVPC-300x205.gif" alt="" width="300" height="205" /></a>
My colleague <a href="http://twitter.com/justincormack">@justincormack</a> got me looking into <a href="http://www.eucalyptus.com/">Eucalyptus </a>- a product which allows you to create your own physical Private Cloud – entirely hosted by you. This works in almost the opposite way to the Amazon VPC Service. You use your own hardware, and install their software over the top. However, they also support the Amazon EC2 APIs, which allows you to administer your cloud as you would an Amazon Cloud and, even better, move resources between your cloud and Amazon’s. So you see, Ian, Private Clouds and Virtual Private Clouds are real and more than just hosting.
But enough of my blabbering. To keep abreast of all things cloud, follow these peeps on Twitter. They keep me in the know:
<ul>
<li>Christofer Hoff (<a href="http://www.twitter.com/Beaker">@Beaker</a>)</li>
<li>James Urquhart (<a href="http://www.twitter.com/jamesurquhart">@jamesurquhart</a>)</li>
<li>steve clayton (<a href="http://www.twitter.com/stevecla">@stevecla</a>)</li>
<li>Joe Drumgoole (<a href="http://www.twitter.com/jdrumgoole">@jdrumgoole</a>)</li>
</ul>
And as I said earlier, please comment with corrections to my Cloud Capability Table. I’m positive it is strewn with errors. Help me!
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<slash:comments>1881</slash:comments>
</item>
<item>
<title>Ostriches, Cheapskates, Charlatans, Old Dogs and Hippies</title>
<link>http://jonontech.com/2010/05/26/ostriches-cheapskates-charlatans-old-dogs-and-hippies/</link>
<comments>http://jonontech.com/2010/05/26/ostriches-cheapskates-charlatans-old-dogs-and-hippies/#comments</comments>
<pubDate>Wed, 26 May 2010 21:30:10 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>Jon Marks</dc:creator>
<category><![CDATA[Ramblings]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">http://jonontech.com/?p=1644</guid>
<description><![CDATA[Paywalls are in the air. The Times have just launched their new site, and more will follow. No-one is quite sure how many people are going to cough up their cash for the content - we'll just have to wait and see. For today, let's just try to put the people that won't pay into neat little boxes.]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[<blockquote class="dylan">They say that patriotism is the last refuge 
To which a scoundrel clings. 
Steal a little and they throw you in jail, 
Steal a lot and they make you king. 
- SWEETHEART LIKE YOU</blockquote>
Paywalls are in the air. <a href="http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/news/">The Times</a> have just launched their new site, and more will follow. No-one is quite sure how many people are going to cough up their cash for the content – we’ll just have to wait and see. For today, let’s just try to put the people that won’t pay into neat little boxes. Let me know where you fit in, if there are any big groups I’ve forgotten, or if you think this is just plain old horseshit. Here goes nothing – meet the Ostriches, Cheapskates, Charlatans, Old Dogs and Hippies.
<h2>The Characters</h2>
<a href="http://jonontech.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/LittleBoxes.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-large wp-image-1650" title="LittleBoxes" src="http://jonontech.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/LittleBoxes-1024x209.jpg" alt="" width="655" height="134" /></a>
The Ostriches don’t particularly care about news. They don’t buy newspapers and don’t care much for newspaper sites. They’ll clearly never pay for editorial content as it isn’t something they need. ‘Nuff said.
Cheapskates have a price point of $0.00. Given the choice between a crap sprocket for $0.00 versus a pretty decent sprocket at $0.01, they’d take the crap one. While they acknowledge that the Times, for example, might have better quality editorial than other sites, there is no way in hell they’d pay for it. You’ll hear them often in the current debates – if site X charges me, I’ll get my fix from site Y. Cheapskates also only read free print newspapers.
The Charlatans wouldn’t pay online for anything either, but for different reasons. Hell, if I get my films, TV shows, music, eBooks and prawn for free from BitTorrent or Rapidshare, why in heaven’s name would I pay for news? There are a lot of charlatans out there. Even yours truly has occasionally downloaded something for backup purposes before I’ve got around to buying the product. Ironically, the last music I actually paid for were the tunes for my son’s second birthday, which was a pirate party. And yes, I steal images from Google Images without proper attribution, for which I am deeply ashamed.
Old Dogs are more honest than Charlatans and happily pay for content they consider valuable. Paying for a film, music album, eBook or their niche prawn collection is normal practice for these guys. They’d probably even buy digital editions of magazines, because they’re using to paying for print subscriptions and magazine websites have never offered a decent free alternative. However, they are horrified by the idea of paying for newspaper content only because, in recent times, they’ve got used to getting the content for free from the websites. Had the newspapers never had free sites, they might not find themselves in the pickle they’re currently in as there are a lot of Old Dogs out there who certainly don’t learn new tricks easily.
Then we have the Hippies. They wouldn’t pay as it violates their moral code. These tree huggers believe in Open Standards, Open Source, Open Data, Free Love, Free Beer, Free Interwebs and Free Content. Ideologically speaking, I’m pretty closely aligned with this bunch, and I certainly look like a Hippie. I’m completely with them on Open Standards and Open Source, both of which can happily co-exist with paid for revenue models. Open Data and Paywalls aren’t compatible, but the point of the Open Data movement is making freely available factual data which is compiled using the tax-payers money. It isn’t about devaluing content produced by hard working individuals or companies.
<h2>Some afterthoughts</h2>
The great @McBoof has a bit of all of these characters in his DNA. However, I really really hope that the paywalls work and quality journalism gets the funding it needs and deserves to flourish. The main alternative, ad revenue, is stinky. The lion’s share goes to the search engines, aggregators and shitty content farms. The next alternative is “changing the way newspapers produce content”, which means you’ll be reading crap like this blog instead of professionals that can actually form coherent thoughts and do proper research.
There is a lot more to chat about. If paid-for journalism fails, what’ll go next? Music is already struggling, and films are taking a small beating from the Charlatans. Paid-for prawn is on the decline, with dating sites overtaking them in revenue. In 5 or 10 years time, will we all only be watching amateur home movies or free blockbusters with even more product placement that we have already?
And we also need to chat about the clear shift from “buying” to “renting” (or <a href="http://econsultancy.com/blog/5969-the-future-of-media-lies-in-access-not-ownership">ownership vs access</a>) . But seeing I’m always accused of rambling on for too long, I’ll leave it at that and talk about the rest later. Hell, I’ve got so much interesting stuff to share with you guys, I might just put up my own paywall.
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<slash:comments>4591</slash:comments>
</item>
<item>
<title>Global CMS Geekery</title>
<link>http://jonontech.com/2010/05/20/global-cms-geekery/</link>
<comments>http://jonontech.com/2010/05/20/global-cms-geekery/#comments</comments>
<pubDate>Thu, 20 May 2010 19:37:17 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>Jon Marks</dc:creator>
<category><![CDATA[Events]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Ramblings]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Beer]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[CMS]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[cmswatch]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[gilbane]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[last thursday]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">http://jonontech.com/?p=1629</guid>
<description><![CDATA[Good news. CMS Geeks are getting tanked up all over the world, and it's spreading. If you live in/travel to one of these areas, join your groups and tell your friends. A few cities with a visible CMS presence haven't joined in yet. I'm talking to you Stockholm and Copenhagen. And Western Europe could use a couple. Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and India need to represent too.]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[<blockquote class="dylan">You said you were going’ to Frisco, stay a couple of months. 
I always liked San Francisco, I was there for a party once. 
- MAYBE SOMEDAY</blockquote>
Good news. CMS Geeks are getting tanked up all over the world, and it’s spreading. We all drink and blabber on the last Thursday on every month, unless a conference or something means we should move the date for an uber-event. Here is a quick summary of where we are.
<a href="http://jonontech.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/beermap2.png"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-1639" title="CMS Geek Beer Map" src="http://jonontech.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/beermap2.png" alt="CMS Geek Beer Map" width="586" height="560" /></a>
London (<a href="http://www.meetup.com/London-CMS/">MeetUp</a>, <a href="http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=2281353">LinkedIn</a>) - The original, a.k.a. #LastThursdayCMS. Thanks to Kenton and the other guys at Squiz for starting it. Been going a few years now, and had many celebrity visits. We will have lots of nice photos once our most recent celebrity visitor, @theresaregli, figures out how to download from her camera.
New York (<a href="http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=2997630">LinkedIn</a>) – Follow this one on #CMSGeekUpNYC. There have been a few meetings, with another big one coming soon. Irina (@irina_guseva) has taken the baton here.
San Francisco (<a href="http://www.meetup.com/last-thursday-cms-sf-bay-area/calendar/13516333/">MeetUp</a>, <a href="http://www.linkedin.com/groups?home=&gid=2997890">LinkedIn</a>) - The first one is TONIGHT (20 May 2010), moved to coincide with Gilbane SF. The Mad Monks (@pmonks) is your guy for this one, and it’s on #CMSGeekUpSF. Hoping for some photos soon.
Amsterdam - The first event is tonight, and they’re using #CMSGeekUpAMS. The SDL Tridion folks will be there in force and you may see a Hippo or two. With the @erikmhartman event in town, it’s likely to grow. Don’t be put off by the stupidly small beers they serve in Amsterdam. Just drink more.
Boston - Yet to have a meeting, but the intentions are good. Threatening to organise is @natea. This should get big with many vendors based in the Boston area. Not sure we have a hashtag yet.
Paris (<a href=" http://www.meetup.com/last-thursday-cms-paris/">MeetUp</a>, <a href="http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=3067809">LinkedIn</a>) – Just created! First event is on Monday 14 June, after which is becomes Last Thursdays. Created by @adeforsan and @elieauvray, and you can follow it on #CMSGeekupParis. Expect free drinks from Nuxeo, Jahia and others.
Geneva (<a href="http://www.meetup.com/CMSGeekUpGeneva/calendar/13695401/">MeetUp</a>) – We’re “spreading like cholera”. A new joiner, set up by @scroisier. Looking forward to hearing about their first event.
So if you live in/travel to one of these areas, join your groups and tell your friends. A few cities with a visible CMS presence haven’t joined in yet. I’m talking to you Stockholm and Copenhagen. And Western Europe could use a couple. Australia (Yuval, you listening?), New Zealand, South Africa and India need to represent too.
Start spreading the word and creating those groups. Finally, feel free to map a better map than my horrorshow.
<div id="attachment_1632" class="wp-caption aligncenter" style="width: 610px"><a href="http://jonontech.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/TonyLondon.jpg"><img class="size-full wp-image-1632" title="Celebrity Guest In London" src="http://jonontech.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/TonyLondon.jpg" alt="" width="600" height="450" /></a>Celebrity Guest In London</div>
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<title>GoDaddy, GoDaddy, you bastards, I’m through</title>
<link>http://jonontech.com/2010/05/18/godaddy-godaddy-you-bastards-im-through/</link>
<comments>http://jonontech.com/2010/05/18/godaddy-godaddy-you-bastards-im-through/#comments</comments>
<pubDate>Tue, 18 May 2010 20:56:10 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>Jon Marks</dc:creator>
<category><![CDATA[Ramblings]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[This Blog]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">http://jonontech.com/?p=1618</guid>
<description><![CDATA[I've been on GoDaddy a long time, and got pretty annoyed by the speed and reliability of the service. And now they've been hacked too. I'm angry.]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[<blockquote class="dylan">
Your daddy walks in wearin’ 
A Napoleon Bonaparte mask 
Then you ask why I don’t live here 
Honey, do you have to ask? 
- ON THE ROAD AGAIN</blockquote>
It was only a matter of time. It seems some hacker group wanted to take down my site. Probably a Chinese military faction, a bunch of Free Content Tree Hugging Hippies, or someone I whipped in some youth chess tournament. Naturally, I was prepared for this shit so ensured my site was running the latest everything, and was more secure than Fort Knox – safe from ground attacks or air assaults.
But, it turns out, not safe from burrowing from below. These sneaky hackers realised my site was rock solid, so they took out the whole of GoDaddy instead. My blog was injected with evil PHP script which redirected my legions of adoring fans to malware pages. Apologies to the thousands of other bloggers on GoDaddy who were innocent victims of this malicious, round-about attack on Jon On Tech.
Fortunately, GoDaddy accepted complete responsibility for the situation, and their tech support really understood the problem and helped people quickly and effectively. NOT. Actually, they continually blamed non-patched software and their tech support people wouldn’t know they were being penetrated until the poker came out of one of their eye sockets. I hate those guys.
I’ve done some temporary fix (which you can find <a href="http://www.blogtips.org/godaddy-hacked-again-another-way-to-cure/">here</a>) that goes through all the files on your system and removes the evil PHP. However, it’s only temporary. Me, and thousands of others, are completely at the mercy of the script-kiddies that currently can do pretty much anything to the GoDaddy servers. I might already be part of a BotNet. It seems to be some Linux Shared Hosts problem that is affecting other hosting companies too. If one account on the host is compromised, all the accounts are toast. So the Jon on Tech ship is floating, but leaky. Not to mention as slow and flaky as always. So why do I still live on GoDaddy? Cause I haven’t had time to get the fuck off it yet. But I plan to.
Here is what my home page looked like while fixing the problem. I stole the image from Google. Seems other people have the same sentiments as I do.
<a href="http://jonontech.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/GoDaddySuck.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-1619" title="GoDaddySuck" src="http://jonontech.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/GoDaddySuck-e1274215292596.jpg" alt="" width="500" height="345" /></a>
Thanks to <a href="http://twitter.com/roekens">@roekens</a> who alerted me to the problem. It’s probably only him and my mother that read my blog, and Mommy dearest wouldn’t know Malware from Tupperware. As usual, I started this post with a Bob Dylan lyric. But let me end with the last stanza from a poem by the great (if slightly unbalanced) <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daddy_(poem)">Sylvia Plath</a> which sums up my #GoDaddy feelings nicely right now:
<blockquote>There’s a stake in your fat black heart 
And the villagers never liked you. 
They are dancing and stamping on you. 
They always knew it was you. 
Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I’m through 
DADDY – SYLVIA PLATH</blockquote>
P.S. Please let me know if anything dodgy happens again, like you get redirected to some pr0n or anti-virus rubbish. However, don’t be alarmed if the site is slow or times out. That’s just GoDaddy’s usual service. 
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<slash:comments>1014</slash:comments>
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<item>
<title>E is for Enterprise</title>
<link>http://jonontech.com/2010/05/06/e-is-for-enterprise/</link>
<comments>http://jonontech.com/2010/05/06/e-is-for-enterprise/#comments</comments>
<pubDate>Thu, 06 May 2010 19:44:28 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>Jon Marks</dc:creator>
<category><![CDATA[Ramblings]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[CMS]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[ECM]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[ejb]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[enterprise]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[naming]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[wcm]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">http://jonontech.com/?p=1606</guid>
<description><![CDATA[Here we go again. Peter (@pmonks) and Laurence (@piewords) are at it again. The current enormously important discussion topic is whether the 'E' makes any sense in the term ECM. Well, it doesn't.
]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[<blockquote class="dylan">We heard the Sermon on the Mount and I knew it was too complex, 
It didn’t amount to anything more than what the broken glass reflects. 
When you bite off more than you can chew you pay the penalty, 
Somebody’s got to tell the tale, 
I guess it must be up to me. 
- UP TO ME</blockquote>
Here we go again. Peter (<a href="http://twitter.com/pmonks">@pmonks</a>) and Laurence (<a href="http://twitter.com/piewords">@piewords</a>) are at it again. The current enormously important discussion topic is whether the ‘E’ makes any sense in the term ECM.
<a href="http://jonontech.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/argument.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-1612" title="Pie and Monks" src="http://jonontech.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/argument.jpg" alt="" width="400" height="319" /></a>
<div>I think everyone that matters agrees that Enterprise Content Management defines a problem domain, not a kind of product. I’ve never heard anyone use the term ECMS, and hope that I never do. But Content Management defines a problem domain too, and I don’t like the idea that Content Management is a subset of Enterprise Content Management at all. Or should it be the other way round – ECM is a subset of CM? If either case is true, we need a name for the bit that isn’t identical. How about some set theory to help.</div>
The idea that WCM + ECM = CM is bollocks. I do agree that ECM = WCM + RM + DM + some other things. But what does CM equal? I’m going with Peter here. ECM = CM and the ‘E’ needs to go. If there is a good reason to keep the E, do we also need EDM, ERM and E-EveryThingElse?
In <a href="http://wordofpie.com/2010/05/06/ecm-in-the-pantheon-of-content-management/">Pie’s blogpost</a>, he lists some important characteristics that form the essense of ECM. However, they all hold true for CM too. They really differentiate between ECM/CM and WCM.
So let’s have a quick look at the word “Enterprise”. Here are some uses:
<ul>
<li>An Enterprise is an organisation. When used in a product name, it normally means stuff that happens behind the firewall. For example, Yammer is an Enterprise Twitter. I’m not sure anyone thinks that ECM is for internal stuff (including partners and suppliers) and CM is for stuff you share with the world. Or do they?</li>
<li>Enterprise License – this usage is similar to the above. It’s an all you can eat for your organisation, that starts expensive and gets worse.</li>
<li>Enterprise Architect – I’m not sure what this means exactly. It’s not something I’ve ever wanted on my business card. Technical Architect or Solutions Architect work just fine.</li>
<li>Enterprise Java Beans – Now that was a fuck up, wasn’t it? It really just means bulky and complex – the opposite of lean and simple. Ask any of the guys at Vignette who are trying to make core changes to the product. Newer, simpler technologies have bitch-slapped EJB’s all over the place. It feels to me like the E in ECM and the E in EJB are the same thing. It’s the E that makes me scared.</li>
</ul>
Interesting aside: CMSWatch have recently <a href="http://www.cmswatch.com/Blog/1720-Categorizing-the-Web-CMS-marketplace----A-new-look">renamed the Enterprise Tier product category</a> in their report to “Complex Enterprise Platforms”. The use of the word Complex here is particularly intriguiging. In my simple mind, Complex is always a bad thing in a product, even when the problem domain has complex problems. The product’s aim in life should be to hide that complexity from everyone. I wonder if the fact that all of the platforms classified by CMS Watch as complex (Autonomy Interwoven, EMC/Documentum, IBM, Open Text/Vignette, Oracle) are J2E based means anything (Interwoven has Perl and other stuff thrown in too). While we’re on it, 5 of the 6 Upper Tier products are Java too, except for Tridion which is a .NET/Java/COM mashup.
Here is the truth – you’ll only hear the words “Free” and “Enterprise” in the same sentence from an economist, never a CMS salesman. And Enterprises are by their very nature big and slow. The closest thing to an Agile Enterprise that you’re likely to see is Captain James T. Kirk taking a sharp left while evading those pesky Klingons. These days, Enterprise is a mindset which implies Complex. And Complex is Bad. Please, Lord, help me keep things simple and take away that E.
<a href="http://jonontech.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/starship5.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-1608" title="Starship Enterprise" src="http://jonontech.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/starship5.jpg" alt="" width="450" height="288" /></a>
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<slash:comments>1125</slash:comments>
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<item>
<title>Superspliced Open Text Logo Updated</title>
<link>http://jonontech.com/2010/04/27/superspliced-open-text-logo-updated/</link>
<comments>http://jonontech.com/2010/04/27/superspliced-open-text-logo-updated/#comments</comments>
<pubDate>Tue, 27 Apr 2010 19:44:31 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>Jon Marks</dc:creator>
<category><![CDATA[Ramblings]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[logo]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[open text]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[reddot]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[vignette]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">http://jonontech.com/?p=1595</guid>
<description><![CDATA[Open Text's recent acquisition of NStein means it is time to update the super-spliced Open Text logo that first made it's appearance in the article When CMS Genes Won’t Splice, inspired by the aquisition of Vignette. So here it is in all of it's glory, with a nice Red N added.]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[<blockquote class="dylan">She promised that she’d be right there with me 
When I paint my masterpiece. 
- WHEN I PAINT MY MASTERPIECE</blockquote>
Open Text’s recent <a href="http://www.cmswire.com/cms/enterprise-cms/open-text-to-cash-out-cdn-35-million-for-nstein-006749.php">acquisition of NStein</a> means it is time to update the super-spliced Open Text logo that first made it’s appearance in the article <a href="http://jonontech.com/2009/09/15/when-cms-genes-wont-splice/">When CMS Genes Won’t Splice</a>, inspired by the aquisition of Vignette. So here it is in all of it’s glory, with a nice Red N added:
<a href="http://jonontech.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/OTEXwithNstein.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-1597" title="Open Text logo including Nstein" src="http://jonontech.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/OTEXwithNstein.jpg" alt="" width="447" height="133" /></a>
Feel free to use it all over the interwebs. That means you <a href="http://twitter.com/irina_guseva">Miss Guseva</a> – you promised.
Now I need OTEX to buy some companies with an ‘e’ in the logo. Are escenic, EPiServer or Ektron for sale, anyone? The companies gobbled into the logo are, for those that care:
<ul>
<li>RedDot</li>
<li>Obtree C4</li>
<li>NStein</li>
<li>Gauss</li>
<li>Vignette</li>
<li>Hummingbird</li>
</ul>
And, dear Open Text, please don’t sue me if this is illegal or brand tampering or anything else.
Colophon: MS Paint, and nothing but MS Paint.
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<slash:comments>3486</slash:comments>
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<item>
<title>CMS Vendor Navel Gazing</title>
<link>http://jonontech.com/2010/04/19/cms-vendor-navel-gazing/</link>
<comments>http://jonontech.com/2010/04/19/cms-vendor-navel-gazing/#comments</comments>
<pubDate>Mon, 19 Apr 2010 21:12:16 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>Jon Marks</dc:creator>
<category><![CDATA[Ramblings]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[CMS]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[wcm]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[wordpress]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">http://jonontech.com/?p=1583</guid>
<description><![CDATA[Is it possible to take five crucial CMS features and rate them in order of importance. It should be. But will anyone play?]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[<blockquote class="dylan">You can either go to the church of your choice 
Or you can go to Brooklyn State Hospital 
You’ll find God in the church of your choice 
You’ll find Woody Guthrie in the Brooklyn State Hospital 
And though it’s only my opinion 
I may be right or wrong 
You’ll find them both 
In the Grand Canyon 
At sundown 
- LAST THOUGHTS ON WOODY GUTHRIE</blockquote>
Forgive me, WordPress, for I have sinned. It’s been 8 weeks since my last blog post. And in that time <a href="http://wordofpie.com/2010/03/04/what-makes-a-cms-a-cms/">many</a> <a href="http://www.fiercecontentmanagement.com/story/wordpress-cms-debate-continues/2010-03-30">people</a> <a href="http://www.persuasivecontent.com/wordpress-barely-a-cms">have</a> <a href="http://contentedmanagement.net/blog/what-makes-different-wcm-different/">slandered</a> <a href="http://twitter.com/irina_guseva/status/9847596047">WordPress</a>, accusing it of not being a Web Content Management (WCM) platform at all. But that’s not important right now.
What is important is the main reason for my 8 week lapse – the arrival of my very own WCM – Willow Coco Marks, born 19 Feb and smiling ever since. So I’m now the proud owner of two darling little sproglets. And no-one would ever dare to ask me which of my children I love more. That would be horrible. It would be like asking a CMS vendor to take five super important features decide which they love the most. No-one who has seen <a href="http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,924815-8,00.html">Streep</a> bawling her eyes out in <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sophie's_Choice_(film)">Sophie’s Choice</a> would go there.
<a href="http://jonontech.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/woodyguthrie.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-1588" title="Woody Guthrie" src="http://jonontech.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/woodyguthrie.jpg" alt="" width="400" height="316" /></a>
So, here is the deal. I challenge any CMS vendor to rate these in order of priority:
<ul>
<li>Editors – A user interface that is a editor or publisher’s wet dream</li>
<li>Performance - The fastest, most stable and scalable CMS in the world</li>
<li>Features – The richest set of features any CMS could dream of offering</li>
<li>Developers – An open, standard, extensible product that makes developers salivate</li>
<li>Website – A product that can give you a kick-ass website, really really quickly</li>
</ul>
Yes, yes, yes, we know they are all important. But not equally important to you. For example, would you choose a proprietary format if it made the editor interface better? Would you add the feature the developers all want if it affected performance?
So, dear vendors, have a long hard introspective and submit your answers in the comments in the form E P F D W (assuming you like the random order I listed them in) with the first being most important and the last less important than the other four. And no, there isn’t a right answer.
Who wants to play?
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<slash:comments>1565</slash:comments>
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<item>
<title>McBoof’s New Job</title>
<link>http://jonontech.com/2010/02/15/mcboofs-new-job/</link>
<comments>http://jonontech.com/2010/02/15/mcboofs-new-job/#comments</comments>
<pubDate>Mon, 15 Feb 2010 21:21:39 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>Jon Marks</dc:creator>
<category><![CDATA[Ramblings]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[This Blog]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[job]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[murdoch]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[news corp]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">http://jonontech.com/?p=1567</guid>
<description><![CDATA[Okay, this is getting stupid now. In order to end the horseshit on #mcboofsnewjob (thanks @pmonks) and the worst poll ever (thanks @jameshoskins), here is the official statement.]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[<blockquote class="dylan">So all you newsy people, spread the news around, 
You c’n listen to m’ story, listen to m’ song. 
You c’n step on my name, you c’n try ‘n’ get me beat, 
When I leave New York, I’ll be standin’ on my feet. 
- HARD TIMES IN NEW YORK TOWN</blockquote>
Okay, this is getting stupid now. In order to end the horseshit on <a href="http://twitter.com/#search?q=mcboofsnewjob">#mcboofsnewjob</a> (thanks @pmonks) and the <a href="http://2020visions.wordpress.com/2010/02/12/mcboofsnewjob-some-idle-friday-afternoon-speculation/">worst poll ever</a> (thanks @jameshoskins), here is the official statement.
I’m the Lead Architect on a high profile <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/News_Corporation">News Corp</a> project. It covers many areas that I’m deeply interested in, and many of my technology sweet spots.
Now leave me in peace. Speculate away, but I’m not going to be talking about this one much I’m afraid. Move along, folks. Nothing to see here.
P.S. If you’re a genius looking for a job, hunt me down on LinkedIn. Especially if I know you already.
<a href="http://jonontech.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/news_corp.gif"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-1569" title="news_corp" src="http://jonontech.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/news_corp.gif" alt="" width="532" height="436" /></a>
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<slash:comments>3463</slash:comments>
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<item>
<title>Goodbye LBi, Hello Mayhem</title>
<link>http://jonontech.com/2010/02/11/goodbye-lbi-hello-mayhem/</link>
<comments>http://jonontech.com/2010/02/11/goodbye-lbi-hello-mayhem/#comments</comments>
<pubDate>Thu, 11 Feb 2010 14:20:02 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>Jon Marks</dc:creator>
<category><![CDATA[Agency]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Ramblings]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Beer]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[change]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[LBi]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">http://jonontech.com/?p=1532</guid>
<description><![CDATA[A change is as good as a holiday, they say. Well, after ten brilliant years at the company now known as LBi, it's time for a change. I wasn't looking for anything, but an opportunity came along that, had I turned it down, I'd probably regret forever.]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[<blockquote class="dylan">Yes, to dance beneath the diamond sky with one hand waving free, 
Silhouetted by the sea, circled by the circus sands, 
With all memory and fate driven deep beneath the waves, 
Let me forget about today until tomorrow. 
- MR. TAMBOURINE MAN</blockquote>
A change is as good as a holiday, they say. Well, after ten brilliant years at the company now known as LBi, it’s time for a change. I wasn’t looking for anything, but <a href="http://jonontech.com/2010/02/15/mcboofs-new-job/">an opportunity came along</a> that, had I turned it down, I’d probably regret for the rest of my life. More on this <a href="http://jonontech.com/2010/02/15/mcboofs-new-job/">here</a>; I plan to keep this blog going strong – time and lawyers permitting.
To all my LBi colleagues, thanks for the wonderful times, the beers and the things you’ve taught me. You’ve got an awesome gig going, and the road ahead looks rosy. In particular, thanks to the exec for their vision and guidance, the technical architects for all their wisdom, and my development teams for fucking up far less projects than the industry average.
To the Dream Team (@mislip, @laurajaybee, @dacrumb, @skinnybouffant and @shakster), congrats on a job well done and I’ll be watching a certain site with eager anticipation. And a huge huge thanks to my boss, Mark, for keeping me honest for the last few years.
To end my Paltrow-esque blubbering – to all my wonderful, well-informed clients that read this blog, thanks for letting me go near your projects, and for making most of the work a pleasure.
We’ll always have<a href="http://www.fancyapint.com/pubs/pub367.php"> The Pride</a>. It’s been real.
P.S. If anyone wants my old job (the best job at the best agency in London), mail careers@lbi.com for the attention of Mark Agar and the subject “I want Jon’s old job”. I’m serious.
<a href="http://jonontech.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/ScrewYouGuys.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-medium wp-image-1536" title="ScrewYouGuys" src="http://jonontech.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/ScrewYouGuys-261x300.jpg" alt="" width="261" height="300" /></a>
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<slash:comments>1364</slash:comments>
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<item>
<title>#cmshaiku 2010 Results</title>
<link>http://jonontech.com/2010/02/10/cmshaiku-2010-results/</link>
<comments>http://jonontech.com/2010/02/10/cmshaiku-2010-results/#comments</comments>
<pubDate>Wed, 10 Feb 2010 12:12:35 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>Jon Marks</dc:creator>
<category><![CDATA[Events]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Ramblings]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Beer]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[botnet]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[CMS]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[erlang]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[gilbane]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Haiku]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[poetry]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[vote]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">http://jonontech.com/?p=1544</guid>
<description><![CDATA[Time up. The votes have been tallied, checked and verified by our independent auditors. Let's announce all of our winners.]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[<blockquote class="dylan">Trails of troubles, 
Roads of battles, 
Paths of victory, 
I shall walk. 
- PATHS OF VICTORY</blockquote>
The votes have been tallied, checked and verified by our independent auditors. With over 250 tweets to the <a href="http://twitter.com/#search?q=%23cmshaiku">#cmshaiku hashtag</a> and 114 votes in the Grand Winner category, it’s been more popular than expected. Time to announce the<a href="http://jonontech.com/2010/02/05/cmshaiku-2010-beer-contest/"> #cmshaiku 2010</a> winnners. The worthy Grand Winner from Cheryl McKinnon (who knows a thing or two about legacy vendors and legal):
<blockquote>Legacy vendors 
want to play haiku too but 
poems stuck in legal</blockquote>
<a href="http://jonontech.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/cmshaikuwinners.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-1545" title="cmshaikuwinners" src="http://jonontech.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/cmshaikuwinners.jpg" alt="" width="400" height="417" /></a>
I’ve always suspected that Peter Monks is actually a Bot written in Erlang, but he proved me wrong. He’s actually a BotNet with a powerful Poetry Plugin. Sadly, his Distributed Denial of Justice attack meant that poor Kathy Brown’s masterpiece was pushed into third. Philippe came a close fourth, although yours truly thinks his was probably the most inspired entry.
Cheryl (Self Promotion) and Peter’s (Random) legions of voters meant they also won their categories. Embarassingly I won the Product category by a country mile. Laurence Hart won the General section, and Paul Carvill won the Despair section. I fear I did Philippe (@proops) a disservice by including both his genius open source haiku and my fork in the same category, thus splitting the vote.
So, I owe <a href="http://twitter.com/cherylmckinnon">Cheryl</a>, <a href="http://twitter.com/pmonks">Peter</a>, <a href="http://twitter.com/k4thybrown">Kathy</a>, <a href="http://twitter.com/piewords">Laurence </a>and <a href="http://twitter.com/paulcarvill">Paul </a>beers. You’ll receive your prizes next time we happen to be in a bar together. All liability for events occuring after drinking said beer falls squarely on the drinker. Kathy can tell you what happened last time I bought her a beer …
If you need a bit more poetry in your life, you can follow all the entrants using <a href="http://twitter.com/McBoof/cmshaiku">this Twitter list</a>. Also, a special shout to Tim Walters for laughing in the face of the <a href="http://econsultancy.com/blog/5399-forrester-to-analysts-you-can-blog-but">Forrester personal brand building embargo</a>.
Lastly, make sure you get your copy of the book from our friends at <a href="http://gilbane.com/">Gilbane </a><a href="http://www.outsellinc.com/">Outsell</a>.
And please, I beg, tweet / haiku should inspiration / find you! For the book.
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<item>
<title>#cmshaiku 2010 Beer Contest</title>
<link>http://jonontech.com/2010/02/05/cmshaiku-2010-beer-contest/</link>
<comments>http://jonontech.com/2010/02/05/cmshaiku-2010-beer-contest/#comments</comments>
<pubDate>Fri, 05 Feb 2010 17:25:52 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>Jon Marks</dc:creator>
<category><![CDATA[Events]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Ramblings]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Beer]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[CMS]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Haiku]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[poetry]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[vote]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">http://jonontech.com/?p=1499</guid>
<description><![CDATA[It's the biggest competition to hit the web in a long time - The 2010 CMS Haiku Beer Contest. We created the fourth worst poetry in history, caused the CEO of Sun to resign, and inspired a prize for the Gilbane Conference in San Francisco.]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[<blockquote class="dylan">Took an untrodden path once, where the swift don’t win the race, 
It goes to the worthy, who can divide the word of truth. 
- I AND I</blockquote>
It’s the biggest competition to hit the web in a long time – The 2010 CMS Haiku Beer Contest. We created the fourth worst poetry in history, caused the CEO of Sun to resign, and inspired a prize for the <a href="http://gilbanesf.com/">Gilbane Conference in San Francisco</a>. If I have forgotten you, please leave your entry in the comments. You can still make the book.
<a href="http://jonontech.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/HaikuHighlights.png"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-1502" title="HaikuHighlights" src="http://jonontech.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/HaikuHighlights.png" alt="" width="578" height="119" /></a>
But enough of that, it’s time to pick the winners. Due to the overwhelming response, I’ve divided the best into six categories of five. Please vote in each category. Voting closes on Feb 10. I’m buying beers for all the winners.
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There were many other fine entries. Sadly, a few good ones didn’t meet the strict traditional <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haiku">5/7/5 syllable rule</a>. We decided that an @ or a # could count as a syllable, but didn’t have to.
Happy voting, and watch this space for the winners.
<pre><a href="http://jonontech.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/GilbaneSFHaiku.png"><img class="aligncenter size-medium wp-image-1501" title="Gilbane San Fransisco Haiku Prize" src="http://jonontech.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/GilbaneSFHaiku-200x300.png" alt="" width="240" height="359" /></a></pre>
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<title>Why the iPad Makes Murdoch Right</title>
<link>http://jonontech.com/2010/01/27/why-the-ipad-makes-murdoch-right/</link>
<comments>http://jonontech.com/2010/01/27/why-the-ipad-makes-murdoch-right/#comments</comments>
<pubDate>Wed, 27 Jan 2010 21:20:11 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>Jon Marks</dc:creator>
<category><![CDATA[Ramblings]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Apple Inc.]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[flash]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[iPad]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[IPhone]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[murdoch]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[newscorp]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[paywall]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[publishing]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">http://jonontech.com/?p=1486</guid>
<description><![CDATA[My thoughts on the iPad, why it will be good for the publishing industry, and why people will pay for content on it.]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[<blockquote class="dylan">Where were you when it started 
Do you want it for free 
What was it you wanted 
Are you talking to me? 
- WHAT WAS IT YOU WANTED?</blockquote>
Right. It’s the iPad and, <a href="http://jezebel.com/5458338/that-time-of-the-month-the-internets-best-period+related-ipad-jokes">obvious jokes</a> aside, I think the device is going to revolutionise more than just reading on the toilet.
Here’s the thing – the iPad is just too damn beautiful for shit content. I think this is the best thing that has happened to publishing for a long long time. People will pay for content on this baby, and on other devices that follow. Be assured, they will follow, just like they followed the iPhone. I wouldn’t disrespect my iPad (that someone is sure to send me as a gift) by reading machine-generated advertorial crap on it. I want to read good content written by people that are paid to write. And I’d be happy to pay a small fee for this – for books, newspapers, magazines, video and the hybrids of these that are going to emerge.
<a href="http://jonontech.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/iPadNYT.png"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-1487" title="iPad" src="http://jonontech.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/iPadNYT.png" alt="" width="436" height="528" /></a>
We recently saw a lot of people <a href="http://www.cmswire.com/cms/web-publishing/guardian-news-agency-to-make-32-mil-on-iphone-app-006436.php">paying for the Guardian iPhone App</a>, although I don’t understand how a one-off payment for content is sustainable. We need a way to do in-app recurring payments, which should be relatively easy. <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/mediatechnologyandtelecoms/digital-media/6559694/Rupert-Murdoch-to-remove-News-Corps-content-from-Google-in-months.html">Murdoch’s threat </a>to remove News Corp content from Google and start charging for it makes more and more sense. And all you people that scream about content being free – consider the BBC web site for a second. They produce wonderful content, which is paid for by every citizen in the UK as part of our taxes, and I don’t think many people begrudge them this.
There will also be people that scream “Damn You, @McBoof. How could you write about the joys Open Data and Open Standards then embrace a Paywall. Judas!”. To those I say, “Trust Me, Open does not always mean Free”. More on this another time.
A last thought on the iPad. The fact that it doesn’t have a camera doesn’t bother me at all. The lack of Flash is a small issue, but I don’t like Flash much. No USB port sadly – the device is still too closed for me. And it needs to multitask, and I got the impression from what I’ve seen so far that it doesn’t. That sucks a bit. Still, I want one.
Let’s close on a video from 2006 (thanks to <a href="http://www.twitter.com/halvorson">@halvorson</a>):
<object classid="clsid:d27cdb6e-ae6d-11cf-96b8-444553540000" width="425" height="344" codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=6,0,40,0"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true" /><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always" /><param name="src" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/YFNQE_TzQNI&hl=en_GB&fs=1&" /><param name="allowfullscreen" value="true" /><embed type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="425" height="344" src="http://www.youtube.com/v/YFNQE_TzQNI&hl=en_GB&fs=1&" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true"></embed></object>
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<item>
<title>An Incomplete Directory of Open Standards</title>
<link>http://jonontech.com/2010/01/10/an-incomplete-directory-of-open-standards/</link>
<comments>http://jonontech.com/2010/01/10/an-incomplete-directory-of-open-standards/#comments</comments>
<pubDate>Sun, 10 Jan 2010 15:04:58 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>Jon Marks</dc:creator>
<category><![CDATA[Future of CMS]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Ramblings]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Application Layer]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[cmis]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[CMS]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Hypertext Transfer Protocol]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Internet protocols]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[JCP]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[OASIS]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Open standard]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[portal]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Standard]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Technology/Internet]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[W3C]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[WebDAV]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[World Wide Web Consortium]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">http://jonontech.com/?p=1445</guid>
<description><![CDATA[During the panel discussion at the recent British Computer Society Open Source event, there was discussion (and confusion) about Open Source versus Open Standards. I was asked "So, can you give us some examples of Open Standards". I rattled off a few, but I thought I'd add a few more here. ]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[<blockquote class="dylan">Through this open world I’m about to ramble, 
Through ice and snows, sleet and rain, 
I’m about to ride that mornin’ railroad, 
P’raps I’ll die on that train. 
- MAN OF CONSTANT SORROW</blockquote>
During the panel discussion at the recent <a href="http://jonontech.com/2010/01/07/bcs-open-source-presentation/">British Computer Society Open Source event</a>, there was discussion (and confusion) about Open Source versus Open Standards. I was asked “So, can you give us some examples of Open Standards”. I rattled off a few, but I thought I’d add a few more here. There is a lot more to be said on the topic, but a good place to start is to list the standards that I think are important.
If I get the time, I plan to turn this into a nice diagram that is much more easily digestible. If there are important standards that I’ve forgotten about that anyone interested in web sites should know about, please let me know in the comments. I’d avoided worrying about file formats (e.g. PNG, MPEG, PDF). And REST isn’t a standard – it is an architectural style that was developed in parallel with the HTTP/1.1 protocol. I’m sure there are many many important ones I’ve left out though.
This is a long and boring post with a record-breaking number of acronyms. So maybe you should stop reading now.
<h2>The Internet Plumbing</h2>
These standards are the plumbing of the Internet. Like the sewers under a big city, they are impossible to change and will be there forever. They’re infrastructure. Some people are saying Twitter has already become infrastructure, but I’m not convinced about that yet. These standards are split into layers – the link layer is about physical connection to a network and include standards such as Ethernet. The Internet layer routes packets of information across one or more network using the <a title="Internet protocol" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_protocol">Internet protocol (IP)</a>. The Transport Layer is responsible for the reliable delivery of messages, and uses standards such as TCP or UDP. Finally, the Application Layer provides higher level application specific protocols such as DNS, HTTP (and <a title="WebDav" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WebDAV">WebDAV</a>) for web servers, FTP, SMTP for mail servers, NTP for time servers, <a title="LDAP" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lightweight_Directory_Access_Protocol">LDAP</a> for user directories and so on. But I’m not here to talk about any of these. I want to talk about the standards that sit on top of these, specifically for web pages.
<h2>Making Web Pages</h2>
<div id="attachment_1449" class="wp-caption aligncenter" style="width: 391px"><a href="http://jonontech.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/w3ctimeline-4500x1796.png"><img class="size-medium wp-image-1449" title="First 10 Years of the W3C" src="http://jonontech.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/w3ctimeline-4500x1796-300x119.png" alt="" width="381" height="151" /></a>First 10 Years of the W3C - Click for large version</div>
Let’s start with the standards we know and love that make up web pages. Of course we have <a href="http://www.w3.org/TR/1999/REC-html401-19991224">HTML 4</a>, <a href="http://www.w3.org/TR/2008/REC-xhtml-basic-20080729">XHTML</a> and the eagerly awaited <a title="status is WD" href="http://www.w3.org/TR/2009/WD-html5-20090825/">HTML 5</a>. We make our HTML pretty using <a href="http://www.w3.org/TR/2008/REC-CSS1-20080411/">Cascading Style Sheets (CSS)</a> and we interact with the page using the <a href="http://www.w3.org/TR/2000/REC-DOM-Level-2-Style-20001113">Document Object Model (DOM)</a>, which has a large number of associated standards. Note AJAX is not a standard, despite what you might hear. The <a title="status is LCWD" href="http://www.w3.org/TR/2009/WD-XMLHttpRequest-20091119/">XMLHttpRequest</a> DOM API (which can be used to implement AJAX) is currently a last call working draft and may be a W3C standard soon. Another client side standard, <a href="http://www.w3.org/TR/2003/REC-SVG11-20030114/">Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG)</a> never really took off and probably never will.
So we have standards to make interactive web pages that may or may not be semantically rich. But the world would be a better place if these pages can be accessed by as many people as possible. So we have accessibility standards as part of the Web Accessibility Initiative (<a title="WAI" href="http://www.w3.org/WAI/">WAI</a>). These include <a title="status is REC" href="http://www.w3.org/TR/2008/REC-WCAG20-20081211/">Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG)</a> for your web page and the imminent <a title="status is WD" href="http://www.w3.org/TR/2009/WD-wai-aria-20091215/">Accessible Rich Internet Applications (WAI-ARIA)</a>.
Excellent! Our HTML is neat, we’ve styled it, and all humans can interact with it. But what about the machines? They don’t understand our badly structured markup. If we want machines to be able to understand the content, we need to engage with the semantic web standards and <a href="http://www.w3.org/TR/2004/REC-rdf-concepts-20040210/">Resource Description Framework (RDF)</a>. The UK public sector is keen on <a title="status is WD" href="http://www.w3.org/TR/2009/WD-rdfa-in-html-20091015/">HTML+RDFa</a> although this is not a W3C standard yet. You can query your RDF data set using <a href="http://www.w3.org/TR/2008/REC-rdf-sparql-query-20080115/">SPARQL</a> and define your ontology (formal representation of concepts and relations between them) using the <a href="http://www.w3.org/TR/2009/REC-owl2-primer-20091027/">Web Ontology Language (OWL, not WOL)</a>. While we’re at it, a related and very succesful standard which touches my world is the <a title="Dublin Core Metadata Standard" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dublin_Core">Dublin Core Metadata Standard</a>, which is an <a title="ISO standard" href="http://www.iso.org/iso/iso_catalogue/catalogue_ics/catalogue_detail_ics.htm?csnumber=52142">ISO standard</a>. I like this <a id="u.9y" title="good introduction to Semantic Web standards" href="http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/tech-manager/?p=2716">good introduction to Semantic Web standards</a> if you want to read more.
<h2>The Biggest Standard of the Naughties</h2>
<a href="http://www.w3.org/TR/2008/REC-xml-20081126/">Extensible Markup Language (XML)</a> is a hugely successful standard. If you judge the success of a standard by its adoption (which I do), it was the Hit of the Decade. <a href="http://www.w3.org/TR/2004/REC-xmlschema-0-20041028/">XML Schema (XSD)</a> has replaced the ill-thought-out DTD standard for defining XML structures. Other child standards include the node selection language <a href="http://www.w3.org/TR/2007/REC-xpath20-20070123/">XPath</a> and query language <a href="http://www.w3.org/TR/2007/REC-xquery-20070123/">XQuery</a>. <a href="http://www.w3.org/TR/1999/REC-xslt-19991116">XSL Transformations (XSLT)</a> is my favourite templating language. <a href="http://www.w3.org/TR/2006/REC-xinclude-20061115/">XML Inclusions (XInclude)</a> joins XML documents together. They’ve also given us <a href="http://www.w3.org/TR/2009/REC-xforms-20091020/">XForms</a> to collect data – sadly it hasn’t taken off as I’d have liked.
Also XML related, the Web Services Standards have given us a wonderful way to make remote services play together. The Holy Trinity behind Web Services are <a href="http://www.w3.org/TR/2007/REC-soap12-part0-20070427/">SOAP</a> (previously Simple Object Access Protocol) to define the message formats, <a href="http://www.w3.org/TR/2007/REC-wsdl20-primer-20070626">Web Services Description Language (WSDL)</a> to give service descriptions and <a title="Universal Description, Discovery and Integration (UDDI)" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UDDI">Universal Description, Discovery and Integration (UDDI)</a> to find the services. UDDI is actually an OASIS specification, not W3C, but it fits better here.
<h2>OASIS standards</h2>
<div>All of the standards mentioned so far are open, and unless otherwise stated, are looked after by the <a href="http://www.w3.org/">World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)</a> and the <a title="Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF)" href="http://www.ietf.org/">Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF)</a>. These guys look after the Web as we know it. However, there are other standards bodies that create open standards that are more application specific, and some bodies that create standards which might not be considered truly open. Below are some of the important ones.</div>
<a title="OASIS" href="http://www.oasis-open.org/who/">OASIS</a> (Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards), in their own words, “drives the development, convergence and adoption of open standards for the global information society”. The OASIS standards that touch my world include, in no particular order:
<div>
<ul>
<li><a href="http://xml.coverpages.org/cmis.html">Content Management Interoperability Services (CMIS)</a> – Okay, so this isn’t actually a standard yet, but it is well on the way. It will allow for interoperability between Content Repositories</li>
<li><a href="http://www.oasis-open.org/specs/#wsrpv2.0">Web Services for Remote Portlets (WSRP)</a> – Allows portals to include remote portlets. This is probably going to lose to the newer, simpler portlet/widget ideas.</li>
<li>
<div><a href="http://www.oasis-open.org/specs/#uddiv3.0.2">Universal Description, Discovery and Integration (UDDI)</a> – mentioned earlier. The third pillar of Web Services</div>
</li>
<li><a href="http://www.oasis-open.org/specs/#samlv2.0">Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML)</a> – Used for exchanging authentication and authorization data between security domains. I think this will also lose to newer protocols.</li>
<li>
<div><a href="http://www.oasis-open.org/specs/#ditav1.1">Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA)</a> – A presentation neutral component-oriented XML content standard, which competes with another OASIS standard, <a href="http://www.oasis-open.org/specs/#dbv5.0">DocBook</a>, which I know very little about.</div>
</li>
<li>
<div><a title="eXtensible Resource Descriptor Sequence (XRDS)" href="http://docs.oasis-open.org/xri/2.0/specs/cd02/xri-resolution-V2.0-cd-02.html">eXtensible Resource Descriptor Sequence (XRDS)</a> – An XML format for discovery of metadata about a resource. Actually part of another standard, but that’s just details.</div>
</li>
</ul>
<a href="http://jonontech.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/StandardsBodies.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-medium wp-image-1471" title="StandardsBodies" src="http://jonontech.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/StandardsBodies-300x98.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="98" /></a>
<div>
<h2>Authentication and Private Data Portability</h2>
</div>
<div>OASIS tends to focus on fairly large, complex standards which are always at risk from smaller standards which are often easier to implement so have less of a barrier to adoption. The standards that I think will beat SAML include <a title="OpenID" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Openid">OpenID</a> which has taken the web by storm recently and <a title="OAuth" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OAuth">OAuth</a>. OpenID (under the <a title="OpenID Foundation" href="http://openid.net/foundation/">OpenID Foundation</a>) is a web single sign-on protocol similar to SAML. OAuth (now under the IETF) allows a site to request private user data from another site. Both OpenID and OAuth above rely of XRDS. While we’re talking about users and social networks, other important not-quite-standards are listed below. A great article to learn more about these is the “<a href="http://sites.google.com/site/oauthgoog/Overlap">Overlap of identity technologies</a>” worked example from Google.</div>
<ul>
<li>
<div><a title="OpenSocial" href="http://www.opensocial.org/">OpenSocial</a> (Google) – for building social applications (widgets) and share data across networks</div>
</li>
<li>
<div><a id="ntxr" title="Friend of a Friend" href="http://www.foaf-project.org/">Friend of a Friend</a> (FOAF) – defines an open technology for connecting social Web sites and the people in them. It uses RDF and OWL.</div>
</li>
<li>
<div><a id="hmsa" title="Portable Contents" href="http://portablecontacts.net/draft-spec.html">Portable Contents</a> – for moving your social graph around the internet with you</div>
</li>
</ul>
<h2>Content Repository Access, and Java Community Standards</h2>
<div>CMIS is a Content Repository access standard. Another very successful repository standard you all know well is SQL, which has been a standard with both the <a title="American National Standards Institute" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_National_Standards_Institute">American National Standards Institute</a> (ANSI) and the <a title="International Organization for Standardization" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Organization_for_Standardization">International Organization for Standardization</a> (ISO) for over 20 years. File system standards haven’t seen the same joy, with most major operating systems using their own standard.</div>
<div>Another open content repository standard is the <a id="vv90" title="Java Content Repository" href="../2009/11/26/cmis-jcr-and-osgi-for-idiots/">Java Content Repository</a> (JCR) from the <a id="v-xy" title="Java Community Process" href="../2009/11/26/cmis-jcr-and-osgi-for-idiots/">Java Community Process</a> (JCP) Programme. Now while these standards are Java language focussed, they are still open. JCP standards are defined in Java Specification Requests (JSRs), of which there are other 300. Some important, well adopted JCP standards include:</div>
<ul>
<li>
<div>JSR 170 and 283 for the Java Content Repository</div>
</li>
<li>
<div>JSR 168 and 286 for Java Portlet Specification</div>
</li>
<li>JSR 53, 152 and 245 for various versions of <a title="Java Servlet" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Java_Servlet">Java Servlet</a> and <a title="JavaServer Pages" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JavaServer_Pages">JavaServer Pages</a> (JSP)</li>
<li>
<div>
<div>JSR 314 for <a title="JavaServer Faces" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JavaServer_Faces">JavaServer Faces</a> (JSF)</div>
</div>
</li>
<li>
<div>
<div>JSR 255 for <a title="Java Management Extensions" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Java_Management_Extensions">Java Management Extensions</a> (JMX)</div>
</div>
</li>
</ul>
<h2>Syndication</h2>
<div>
<div>For syndication we have <a id="g5d5" title="RSS" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSS">RSS</a>, which is looked after by the <a title="RSS Advisory Board" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSS_Advisory_Board">RSS Advisory Board</a> (the guy that fixes my boiler is on it) and <a id="gafp" title="AtomPub" href="http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc4287.txt">AtomPub</a>, which is an IETF standard. An extension to these, <a id="vuoy" title="PubSubHubbub" href="http://code.google.com/p/pubsubhubbub/">PubSubHubbub</a>, is a Google project which added near-realtime notification to RSS and AtomPub. My boiler guy thinks this <a id="vsym" title="specification has holes" href="http://www.xn--8ws00zhy3a.com/blog/2009/11/pubsubhubbub-security-concerns">specification has holes</a>. For outlines, we have OPML (Outline Processor Markup Language). For example, here is <a href="http://jonontech.com/opml.xml">my blogroll as OPML</a>.</div>
</div>
<h2>Things that start with Open</h2>
I thought I’d end with some things I like that aren’t actually standards, but use the word Open in their title.
<ul>
<li><a id="l_:r" title="OpenSearch" href="http://www.opensearch.org/Home">OpenSearch</a> – A set of formats designed to make sharing search results easier</li>
<li><a href="http://www.openstreetmap.org/">OpenStreetMap</a> – Creates and provides free geographic data such as street maps to anyone who wants them. This is more about Open Data than Open Standards, but anyway.</li>
<li><a id="zo9o" title="OpenCalais" href="http://www.opencalais.com/">OpenCalais</a>- A service that semantically parses your content and identifies people, events, places and more. I used the WordPress plugin <a id="oa.:" title="Tagaroo" href="http://tagaroo.opencalais.com/">Tagaroo</a> on this blog for fun. Only basic use is free, though. Probably doesn’t really belong here. However, below is a screenshot that shows Tagaroo suggesting tags and images for this blog post. The power of semantic analysis.</li>
</ul>
<a href="http://jonontech.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/tagaroo.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-1447" title="Tagaroo WordPress Plugin" src="http://jonontech.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/tagaroo.jpg" alt="" width="709" height="525" /></a> 
</div>
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<slash:comments>2941</slash:comments>
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<item>
<title>BCS Open Source Presentation</title>
<link>http://jonontech.com/2010/01/07/bcs-open-source-presentation/</link>
<comments>http://jonontech.com/2010/01/07/bcs-open-source-presentation/#comments</comments>
<pubDate>Thu, 07 Jan 2010 10:31:50 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>Jon Marks</dc:creator>
<category><![CDATA[Events]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[This Blog]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[bcs]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[open source]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Presentation software]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[prezi]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">http://jonontech.com/?p=1434</guid>
<description><![CDATA[As I write this, we're kicking of the BCS Event - Public Funds in the UK: Open Source for Document and Content Management? I'll write more about the event afterwards, but I thought I'd share my presentation.
I did this using Prezi, which I really enjoyed. First time I've used it - apologies if it makes you feel sick. And it probably doesn't make any sense without me talking over it. Probably doesn't make sense then either, but anyway.]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[<blockquote class="dylan">I don’t build up illusion ’til it makes me sick, 
I ain’t afraid of confusion no matter how thick. 
- MOST OF THE TIME</blockquote>
As I write this, we’re kicking off the BCS Event – <a href=" http://ossg.bcs.org/2009/09/20/public-funds-in-the-uk-open-source-for-document-and-content-management-london-070110/">Public Funds in the UK: Open Source for Document and Content Management</a>? I’ll write more about the event afterwards, but I thought I’d share my presentation.
I assumed I’d be stoned if I used PowerPoint at an Open Source event, so I did this using <a href="http://prezi.com">Prezi</a>, which I really enjoyed. First time I’ve used it – apologies if it makes you feel sick. And it probably doesn’t make any sense without me talking over it. Probably doesn’t make sense then either, but anyway.
<object id="prezi_rmga5cq2iplv" classid="clsid:d27cdb6e-ae6d-11cf-96b8-444553540000" width="550" height="550" codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=6,0,40,0"><param name="name" value="prezi_rmga5cq2iplv" /><param name="allowfullscreen" value="true" /><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always" /><param name="bgcolor" value="#ffffff" /><param name="flashvars" value="prezi_id=rmga5cq2iplv&lock_to_path=1&color=ffffff&autoplay=no" /><param name="src" value="http://prezi.com/bin/preziloader.swf" /><embed id="prezi_rmga5cq2iplv" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="550" height="550" src="http://prezi.com/bin/preziloader.swf" flashvars="prezi_id=rmga5cq2iplv&lock_to_path=1&color=ffffff&autoplay=no" bgcolor="#ffffff" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" name="prezi_rmga5cq2iplv"></embed></object>
You can see the presentation online here: <a href="http://prezi.com/rmga5cq2iplv/">http://prezi.com/rmga5cq2iplv/</a>
]]></content:encoded>
<wfw:commentRss>http://jonontech.com/2010/01/07/bcs-open-source-presentation/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
<slash:comments>624</slash:comments>
</item>
<item>
<title>Don’t Look Back – Zeitgeist 2009</title>
<link>http://jonontech.com/2009/12/31/dont-look-back-zeitgeist-2009/</link>
<comments>http://jonontech.com/2009/12/31/dont-look-back-zeitgeist-2009/#comments</comments>
<pubDate>Thu, 31 Dec 2009 19:48:03 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>Jon Marks</dc:creator>
<category><![CDATA[This Blog]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Analytics]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[google]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[wordpress]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[zeitgeist]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">http://jonontech.com/?p=1412</guid>
<description><![CDATA[Baaaah. I said I wouldn't write this post, and a few people advised me not to. But, dear readers, some of you begged for it. More importantly, I'm doing it for me as a record. So if you don't like these Blog Year In Review posts, stop reading now. Bye bye, and Happy New Year.]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[<blockquote class="dylan">She’s got everything she needs, 
She’s an artist, she don’t look back. 
- SHE BELONGS TO ME</blockquote>
Baaaah. I said I wouldn’t write this post, and a few people advised me not to. “Don’t Look Back!” they cried. But, dear readers, some of you begged for it. More importantly, I’m doing it for me (<a href="http://twitter.com/Gommit/statuses/7236920305">thanks Finnur</a>) as a record. So if you don’t like these Blog Year In Review posts, stop reading now. Bye bye, and Happy New Year.
<h2>The Numbers</h2>
I finally started this blog in March 2009. The main reasons were a) I was up most of the night anyway due to baby’s sleeping habits and b) I was forced to take some holiday in March. I was never expecting anyone to read it, so a huge huge thank you to those that did, and helped me get some traffic love juice. I also got lucky with my timing as the infamous CMS Vendor Meme started just when I did. In 10 months, I’ve done:
<ul>
<li>Real Life beers with about 30 or 40 people I’d never have met if I didn’t start this blog. You know who you are.</li>
<li>According to Alexa, a mere 700,000 sites are more popular than mine. I’ve got a Page Rank of 5, although these don’t mean anything any more.</li>
<li>65 blog posts (34 in the long gone super-keen first 3 months). So averaging 1.5 posts per week. Each post has lyrics from a different Bob Dylan song. I’m aiming for 100 before a theme change.</li>
<li>571 comments (just over 8 per post). Probably 100 of these are from me!</li>
<li>5,224 spam comments that Akismet has saved me from</li>
<li>21,700 visits, or 45,500 page views, according to Google Analytics</li>
</ul>
My biggest day ever was about 400 visits. A shitty weekend is about 30. The traffic numbers have actually stayed reasonably constant since I started, although the frequency of new posts has dropped enormously.
<a href="http://jonontech.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/Stats.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-1414" title="Traffic for 2009" src="http://jonontech.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/Stats.jpg" alt="" width="695" height="155" /></a>
<h2>Most Underrated</h2>
These are the 5 posts I liked most that never even made the Top 20. Please read them and tell all your friends. The poor guys never stood a chance.
<table border="0">
<tbody>
<tr>
<th>BLOG POST</th>
<th>SUMMARY</th>
<th>BOB DYLAN SONG INTRO</th>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><a href="http://jonontech.com/2009/12/23/six-seminal-concerts-or-what-ive-learned-about-blogging/">Six Seminal Concerts, or What I’ve Learned About Blogging</a></td>
<td>Social Media lessons from rock concerts</td>
<td>LIKE A ROLLING STONE</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><a href="http://jonontech.com/2009/09/15/when-cms-genes-wont-splice/">When CMS Genes Won’t Splice</a></td>
<td>Options for Open Text CMS Roadmap</td>
<td>HIGHWAY 61 REVISITED</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><a href="http://jonontech.com/2009/11/11/dont-make-monoliths/">Don’t Make Monoliths</a></td>
<td>A little story about Asterix and the Monoliths</td>
<td>NORTH COUNTRY BLUES</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><a href="http://jonontech.com/2009/04/12/which-comes-first-the-crew-or-the-cms/">Which Comes First: the Crew or the CMS?</a></td>
<td>Thoughts on corruption in vendor selection exercises</td>
<td>THE BALLAD OF FRANKIE LEE AND JUDAS PRIEST</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><a href="http://jonontech.com/2009/03/22/the-cms-word-on-the-tweet/">The CMS Word on the Tweet</a></td>
<td>Thoughts on how the term CMS means different things to different people</td>
<td>PLAYBOYS AND PLAYGIRLS</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<h2>Most Read</h2>
Here is the obligatory Top 10 by traffic. I’ve used number of unique visits as my metric.
<table border="0">
<tbody>
<tr>
<th>UNIQUE VISITS</th>
<th>BLOG POST</th>
<th>SUMMARY</th>
<th>BOB DYLAN SONG INTRO</th>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>2,049</td>
<td><a href="http://jonontech.com/2009/07/21/follow-forty-twitter-cms-gurus-in-three-clicks/">Follow Forty Twitter CMS Gurus In Three Clicks</a></td>
<td>Bit of a gimmick, but nice and viral as it turned out.</td>
<td>WHEN THE SHIP COMES IN</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>1,454</td>
<td><a href="http://jonontech.com/2009/05/06/omg-open-text-buy-grandpa-vignette/">OMG! Open Text buy Grandpa Vignette</a></td>
<td>First impressions on the unexpected Open Text acquisition of Vignette. The only blog post I wrote at work (sorry, boss!), so I was one of the first.</td>
<td>OH, SISTER</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>1,170</td>
<td><a href="http://jonontech.com/2009/03/25/celebrity-cms-deathmatch-part-3/">Celebrity CMS Deathmatch – The Aftermath</a></td>
<td>CMS Vendor Meme Commentary – after it all ended.</td>
<td>IDIOT WIND</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>899</td>
<td><a href="http://jonontech.com/2009/08/10/what-has-the-ministry-of-magic-quadrants-got-against-me/">What has the Ministry of Magic Quadrants got against me?</a></td>
<td>Rant about Gartner’s new WCM Magic Quadrant</td>
<td>BOB DYLAN’S 115TH DREAM</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>819</td>
<td><a href="http://jonontech.com/2009/10/23/a-collaborative-google-wave-blog-post/">A Collaborative Google Wave Blog Post</a></td>
<td>The Motley Crew writes a post in one hour with Wave</td>
<td>TOMBSTONE BLUES</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>794</td>
<td><a href="http://jonontech.com/2009/11/26/cmis-jcr-and-osgi-for-idiots/">CMIS, JCR and OSGi for Idiots</a></td>
<td>A diagram outlining JCR, CMIS and OSGi</td>
<td>IT’S ALL OVER NOW, BABY BLUE</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>672</td>
<td><a href="http://jonontech.com/2009/05/10/will-vignette-give-open-text-food-poisoning/">Will Vignette Give Open Text Food Poisoning?</a></td>
<td>More thoughts on the world-shaking OTEX-VIGN acquisition</td>
<td>MIXED UP CONFUSION</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>636</td>
<td><a href="http://jonontech.com/2009/04/21/the-cloud-a-crock-of-shit/">The Cloud – A Crock of Shit</a></td>
<td>My thoughts on the non-existent cloud, the hype, and the standards</td>
<td>KNOCKIN’ ON HEAVEN’S DOOR</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>628</td>
<td><a href="http://jonontech.com/2009/03/17/celebrity-cms-deathmatch/">Celebrity CMS Deathmatch – The Beginning</a></td>
<td>CMS Vendor Meme Commentary – Part I</td>
<td>ALL ALONG THE WATCHTOWER</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>592</td>
<td><a href="http://jonontech.com/2009/07/08/brain-teasers-for-the-pub/">Brain Teasers For The Pub</a></td>
<td>Ten brain teasers to think about over a beer</td>
<td>SILENT WEEKEND</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<h2>Best Traffic Sources</h2>
Here is just a summary of where the traffic came from. Again, a massive thanks to those that lowered the tone of their sites by linking to me.
<ul>
<li>25% of my traffic was from search engines. Google is the only one that matters sending about 95% of these.</li>
<li>30% of the traffic was “direct”. I never bothered to set up tracking from Tweets but I’d bet the majority of these came from Twitter clients like Seesmic or Tweetdeck. Which means I get much more traffic from Twitter than Google. The other 45% of the traffic is from referring sites.</li>
<li>Twitter was my top referrer by miles, with 25% of my direct visits.</li>
<li>Second, third and fourth were all very close – cmswire.com, cmswatch.com and jboye.com. Eighth went to cmsreport.com</li>
<li>FaceBook, LinkedIn and Delicious made the Top 20.</li>
<li>The blogs in the Top 20 referrers were <a href="http://julianwraith.com/">julianwraith.com</a> (6), <a href="http://asserttrue.blogspot.com/">asserttrue.blogspot.com</a> (7), <a href="http://reddotcmsblog.com/">reddotcmsblog.com</a> (9), <a href="http://2020visions.wordpress.com/">2020visions.wordpress.com</a> (13), <a href="http://sala.us/">sala.us</a> (14), <a href="http://ecmarchitect.com/">ecmarchitect.com</a> (15), <a href="http://tristanrenaud.jahia.com/">tristanrenaud.jahia.com</a> (17), <a href="http://irinaguseva.wordpress.com/">irinaguseva.wordpress.com</a> (19) and <a href="http://persuasivecontent.com/">persuasivecontent.com</a> (20)</li>
</ul>
Well, that’s that. If for some reason you’re interested in a stat I didn’t share, ask in the comments. Be excellent to each other, and I’ll see you on the other side of the noughties for that beer. It’s been real.
<a href="http://jonontech.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/DontLookBack.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-1425" title="Don't Look Back" src="http://jonontech.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/DontLookBack.jpg" alt="" width="340" height="475" /></a>
]]></content:encoded>
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<slash:comments>2385</slash:comments>
</item>
<item>
<title>Six Seminal Concerts, or What I’ve Learned About Blogging</title>
<link>http://jonontech.com/2009/12/23/six-seminal-concerts-or-what-ive-learned-about-blogging/</link>
<comments>http://jonontech.com/2009/12/23/six-seminal-concerts-or-what-ive-learned-about-blogging/#comments</comments>
<pubDate>Wed, 23 Dec 2009 10:56:17 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>Jon Marks</dc:creator>
<category><![CDATA[Ramblings]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[This Blog]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Beer]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[blogging]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[dylan]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[music]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[social media]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[twitter]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">http://jonontech.com/?p=1354</guid>
<description><![CDATA[Being a blogging newbie, I learnt a shitload this year which, it transpires, was well understood by the Social Media gurus I've loved for years. So, ladies and gentlemen, I bring you their wisdom from 1965 - 1970, the years I should have lived in. I'll take my lessons from Lennon, Dylan, Hendrix, Page, Jagger or Morrison over social media whore @GuyKawasaki or ego-blogger @Scobleizer any day of the week.]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[<blockquote class="dylan">You never turned around to see the frowns on the jugglers and the clowns 
When they all come down and did tricks for you 
You never understood that it ain’t no good 
You shouldn’t let other people get your kicks for you 
- LIKE A ROLLING STONE</blockquote>
End of the decade again. Everyone is writing the Obligatory Reflection and/or Prediction stuff again. So I ain’t going to write one of those. However, being a blogging newbie, I learnt a shitload this year which, it transpires, was well understood by the Social Media gurus I’ve loved for years. So, ladies and gentlemen, I bring you their wisdom from 1965 – 1970, the years I should have lived in. I’ll take my lessons from <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beatles">Lennon</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_dylan">Dylan</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimi_Hendrix">Hendrix</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Led_Zeppelin">Page</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolling_stones">Jagger </a>or <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Morrison">Morrison </a>over social media whore <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guy_Kawasaki">@GuyKawasaki</a> or ego-blogger <a href="http://twitter.com/scobleizer">@Scobleizer</a> any day of the week.
<h3>Lesson #1: It’s Noisy Out There, So Make a Bigger Noise</h3>
The Beatles, New York, NY, August 15 1965
The <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Beatles'_1965_U.S._tour#The_Shea_Stadium_show">Beatles concert at Shea Stadium</a> broke records all over the place, with over 55,000 people attending. And Beatlemania was at its peak, so the crowd was going mental. The noise in the stadium was, according to Lennon, “louder than God”. No-one in the stadium could really hear any of the music. And, as it turned out, nor could the band. So eventually Lennon just started banging the keyboard with his elbows just to make some sound that people could actually hear.
It’s noisy as hell in the blogosphere too. Most blogs don’t get read. If you want people to notice you, you need to make a noise. Start banging your keyboard with your elbows.
<a href="http://jonontech.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/Beatles.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-medium wp-image-1355" title="The Beatles" src="http://jonontech.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/Beatles-300x198.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="198" /></a>
<h3>Lesson #2: Experiment, but Don’t Pander to the Crowds</h3>
Bob Dylan, Newport Folk Festival, Newport, RI, July 25 1965
As some of you might know, I’ve got a soft spot for Bob. I love his older acoustic gems. So I might have been one of the sheep who were upset when, at the<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newport_Folk_Festival#The_Electric_Dylan_Controversy"> Newport Folk Festival</a>, Dylan plugged in his guitar and backing band, and mixed it up a bit. At a concert in Manchester the following year, we had the famous <a href="http://www.wordmagazine.co.uk/content/bob-dylan-and-judas-myth">Judas Incident</a>. Details are still sketchy, but let’s go with the romantic version. Dylan starts playing some electric tunes, and during a gap between songs <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/features/bob-dylan-how-i-found-the-man-who-shouted-judas-507883.html">someone </a>shouts “Judas”. Dylan replied with the rather cryptic “I don’t believe you, you’re a liar“, before turning to his band instructing them to “play it fucking loud!” And they did, belting out an awesome version of Like A Rolling Stone. The “rock” albums which followed (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highway_61_Revisited">Highway 61 Revisited</a> and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blonde_on_Blonde">Blonde on Blonde</a>) are two of my favourites, and they both went platinum nice and quickly.
So, like Bob, I’ve tried to experiment. Do different things, and see what your readers like. Don’t just keep doing what you think they like. Branch out a bit for potential new readers. Sometimes you can go a bit far, though. I’m really struggling to understand a world in which Bob could release such an <a href="http://www.thenation.com/blogs/notion/505907/bob_dylan_s_christmas_album_is_this_a_joke">embarrassing Christmas album</a>. Maybe time will prove everyone wrong here too.
<a href="http://jonontech.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/Dylan.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-medium wp-image-1357" title="Dylan" src="http://jonontech.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/Dylan-300x195.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="195" /></a><a href="http://jonontech.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/JimiHendrix.jpg"></a><a href="http://jonontech.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/LedZeppelin.jpg"></a><a href="http://jonontech.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/RollingStones.jpg"></a>
<h3>Lesson #3: Controversy Breeds Traffic</h3>
Jimi Hendrix, Monterey, CA, 16 June 1967
When The Jimi Hendrix Experience were booked at the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monterey_Pop_Festival#The_Jimi_Hendrix_Experience">Monterey Pop Festival</a>, they were huge in England, but largely unknown in the US. Some of the biggest names in pop at the time were performing – The Animals, Beach Boys, The Mamas & Papas and more. However, it’s Hendrix that is remembered. He closed his set with an insane version of “Wild Thing”, which ended with Jimi dousing his guitar in lighter fluid, setting it on fire and smashing the shit out of it. Surprise, surprise – people remembered that and the buzz helped propel him to stardom in the USA too.
In the blogosphere, more controversial posts generate far more interest. It can be really boring reading the same things over and over again where everyone agrees with each other. Have (or make up) strong opinions, play Devil’s Advocate and encourage debate around your posts. If these debates prove that you were completely wrong, admit you were an idiot, thank the crowds for teaching you something, and buy another guitar.
<img class="aligncenter size-medium wp-image-1358" title="JimiHendrix" src="http://jonontech.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/JimiHendrix-300x198.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="198" />
<h3>Lesson #4: Talk About What You Know, Your Way</h3>
Led Zeppelin, Boston, MA, 23 January 1969
The famous Boston Tea Party concert. The birth of head banging. Zeppelin only had one 70-minute album under their belt at the time , but they played for over 4.5 hours. In the words of bassist <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Paul_Jones_(musician)">John Paul Jones</a>:
<blockquote>There were kids actually banging their heads against the stage. I’ve never seen that at a gig before or since, and when we finally left the stage we’d played for four and a half hours … I suppose it was then that we realized just what Led Zeppelin was going to become.</blockquote>
Most of the concert was rambling, brilliant improvisation. They mashed up their existing songs, mixed in some covers and generally went with the flow. The band knew each other, they knew their craft, and just kept making shit up.
For bloggers, there’s nothing wrong with rambling and improvising. I’ve discovered that I can’t really plan blog posts, and I can’t write short ones. If Led Zep can get away with it, so can I. And I prefer reading posts that have a little personality thrown in.
<img class="aligncenter size-medium wp-image-1359" title="LedZeppelin" src="http://jonontech.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/LedZeppelin-300x164.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="164" />
<h3>Lesson #5: Shit Happens, Live With It</h3>
Rolling Stones, Hyde Park, England, 5 July 1969
The <a href="http://www.ukrockfestivals.com/stones-in-the-park.html">Hyde Park Free Concerts</a> are legendary. As are the Rolling Stones. Two days before their scheduled appearance, band mate Brian Jones was found dead in his swimming pool, another victim of “death by misadventure”. Admittedly Jones hadn’t been playing with the band for a month, but the Hyde Park Concert was scheduled to be his replacement’s first live gig. So the concert turned into a Brian Jones memorial. Jagger opened the set by reading a section from <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adonais">Adonais</a>, a poem by Shelley. Over 250,000 people were there.
By all accounts, the performance itself was pretty crap. But the lesson here is that bad things happen, and you need to be flexible and deal with them. I’ve written some blog posts that are ridiculously bad and I’ve been tempted to delete the bastard things. BJ Fogg said on Twitter “<a href="http://twitter.com/bjfogg/statuses/5653920993">I regret 20% of what I tweet</a>“. I’m probably about the same. But you can’t do anything about it. Get over it, learn, and move on.
<img class="aligncenter size-medium wp-image-1360" title="RollingStones" src="http://jonontech.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/RollingStones-300x198.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="198" />
<h3>Lesson #6: A Network is About Quality, not Quantity</h3>
Jim Morrison, Miami, FL, 1969
Aaah, the <a href="http://www.doors.com/miami/one.html">Miami Incident</a>. Now this didn’t actually happen exactly like it did in <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0101761/">the movie</a>, but I prefer that version. The story goes something like this. Morrison was really struggling with his self-created sex-symbol rocker image. He arrived at the concert much more drunk than usual (and usual was pretty damn drunk). He stumbled to the mic, and started rambling – a few versus of his poetry, but mostly utter nonsense. The crowd was getting uneasy, and Jim was getting annoyed with his followers that didn’t understand him. He started calling them idiots, culminating in the often quoted (though not 100% accurate) “You’re all a bunch of fuckin’ slaves!”
What am I getting at here? Well, Morrison had been collecting “followers” for years, and then decided he didn’t like them. Hordes of people hanging on his every word, but completely useless to him. They no longer understood what he thought he was. It’s a bit like Twitter really. The important thing is not how many followers you have – an army of SEO spammers or porn bots or follow-me-follow-you-gurus is no use to man or beast. You want people that care. Jim said it far better a year later in one of his poems – A Feast Of Friends a.k.a The Severed Garden. Admittedly he’s talking about death, but it works for Twitter too:
<blockquote>I will not go 
Prefer a Feast of Friends 
To the Giant Family.</blockquote>
<a href="http://jonontech.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/Doors.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-medium wp-image-1356" title="Doors" src="http://jonontech.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/Doors-300x235.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="235" /></a>
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<title>Visions of Jon: WCM is for Losers</title>
<link>http://jonontech.com/2009/12/16/visions-of-jon-wcm-is-for-losers/</link>
<comments>http://jonontech.com/2009/12/16/visions-of-jon-wcm-is-for-losers/#comments</comments>
<pubDate>Wed, 16 Dec 2009 22:24:19 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>Jon Marks</dc:creator>
<category><![CDATA[Ramblings]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[CMS]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[ECM]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[monolith]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[names]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[standards]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[wcm]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">http://jonontech.com/?p=1332</guid>
<description><![CDATA[The mystics at CMS Watch have been throwing the bones again and have released their 2010 Technology Predictions, including "Enterprise Content Management and Document Management will go their separate ways". Pie responded with "Enterprise Content Management and WCM will go their separate ways." But I've got my own thoughts.]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[<blockquote class="dylan">Ain’t it just like the night to play tricks when you’re tryin’ to be so quiet? 
We sit here stranded, though we’re all doin’ our best to deny it 
- VISIONS OF JOHANNA</blockquote>
The end of the decade is nigh, and the mystics at CMS Watch have been throwing the bones again. They’ve released their very interesting <a href="http://www.cmswatch.com/Trends/1760-2010-Technology-Predictions">2010 Technology Predictions</a>. The first of these caught my eye:
<blockquote>CMS Watch: Enterprise Content Management and Document Management will go their separate ways</blockquote>
I don’t agree with the terminology here. In my world, Document Management is one of the pillars of Enterprise Content Management. Enterprise Content Management is not a technology, it’s a business problem. Documents are one of the types of content the Enterprise needs to manage. So they can’t really go their separate ways. The wise <a href="http://wordofpie.com/2009/12/16/redefining-the-core-tech-of-ecm/">Pie responded</a> quickly to this prediction with an alternative:
<blockquote>Pie: Enterprise Content Management and WCM will go their separate ways.</blockquote>
Now this I agree with more than the CMS Watch version. Parts of ECM include Document Management, Records Management, Collaboration, Imaging, Workflow and all that good stuff. It is these pillars that allow a business to manage their content. The end game of all of these technologies is content sitting in a repository that can be easily found and consumed. The includes all the fun with versions, security, compliance and anything else you’d want to do with it. But it does not include setting up web based delivery channel that exposes some of this content. WCM should not be considered part of ECM.
Now Pie also acknowledges that his prediction isn’t going to happen, although it should. My prediction is even less lightly to happen, but here it is anyway:
<blockquote>Jon: Enterprise Content Management is well defined. The term WCM is horseshit, unnecessary and should take a long walk off a short pier.</blockquote>
I can already see the news headlines: LONDON, 2009 – SHOCK HORROR! WCM Geek Demands Death of term WCM. But it’s true. I’m of the camp that wished the term WCM would cease to exist.
The W is meant to stand for Web, which makes people think Web Site. But it also includes Mobile, Kiosks, TV and various other HTML based delivery channels. Many vendors are trying to deliver their WCM content to print channels too. I want any product that ends in “CM” to focus on content creation and management. As Pie said, this content should be accessed via an API or repository standard. A Content Management System should be an extensible application that works pretty well out of the box. The kind of standard these systems care about include data/process standards (for example <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darwin_Information_Typing_Architecture">DITA</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_Process_Execution_Language">BPEL</a>, or <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dublin_Core">Dublin Core</a>) and repository access standards (for example <a href="http://jonontech.com/2009/11/26/cmis-jcr-and-osgi-for-idiots/">JCR </a>or <a href="http://jonontech.com/2009/11/26/cmis-jcr-and-osgi-for-idiots/">CMIS</a>).
<a href="http://jonontech.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/WalkThePlank.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-1340" title="Walk The Plank" src="http://jonontech.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/WalkThePlank.jpg" alt="Walk The Plank" width="470" height="329" /></a>
The other half of the coin is the delivery framework. These are called Web Publishing Tools (WPT) in <a href="http://blog.programmableweb.com/2009/10/13/cope-create-once-publish-everywhere/">NPR’s COPE</a> and <a href="http://blogs.alfresco.com/wp/pmonks/2008/11/05/web-cmss-dissected/">Presentation Management Systems (PMS)</a> by Peter Monks. Things like <a href="http://struts.apache.org/">Struts</a>, <a href="http://www.springsource.org/">Spring Web</a>, <a href="http://www.asp.net/mVC/whatisaspmvc/">ASP.NET MVC</a>, <a href="http://rubyonrails.org/">Ruby on Rails</a> and many many more are all delivery frameworks. So are Portals. They let you manage authentication, URLs, site structure, templates, layouts, page composition, personalisation, aggregation and more. They understand standards like JSON, AJAX libraries, Web Services, SAML, OAuth, OpenID, Open Social, Portlets, Gadgets, WSRP, and so on and so on. They let you call any API to bring in content or functionality from any source.
Of course you can use these technologies to power sites that aren’t “content managed” at all. They should treat CMS driven content components, SoCo powered UGC components, DAM powered media components and anything else that can sit on a web site as equals. Interestingly, it isn’t uncommon to see “Web Content Management Systems” used to power sites that that aren’t really content managed. Take something like Drupal – it’s often simply used as a delivery framework without any content modules. I’ve launched sites running on .NET “WCM” systems that have never intended to have any content changed post launch. In these examples, the WCM product is being used purely as a good delivery framework.
But sadly, my prediction it isn’t going to happen. I’m just going to have to keep thinking of a WCMS as a tightly coupled hybrid of a content management system and a delivery framework. On the plus side, I’ll continue to make money out of poor customers that think a “WCM migration/replacement” doesn’t involve a complete site rewrite as they’re throwing the delivery baby out with the content bath water. Losers.
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<title>Spot The Difference – The 2010 CMS Watch Vendor Map</title>
<link>http://jonontech.com/2009/12/03/spot-the-difference-the-2010-cms-watch-vendor-map/</link>
<comments>http://jonontech.com/2009/12/03/spot-the-difference-the-2010-cms-watch-vendor-map/#comments</comments>
<pubDate>Wed, 02 Dec 2009 23:31:34 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>Jon Marks</dc:creator>
<category><![CDATA[Ramblings]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[analysts]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[CMS]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[cmswatch]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[dam]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[ECM]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[jboss]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[opentext]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[oracle]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[soco]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[sun]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[vendor]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[vignette]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[vyre]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">http://jonontech.com/?p=1321</guid>
<description><![CDATA[As everyone knows, I think the CMS Watch Content Techonology Vendor Map is awesome. They've just released the 2010 version. The main differences between this and the 2009 version are highlighted.]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[<blockquote class="dylan">Here’s to Cisco an’ Sonny an’ Leadbelly too, 
An’ to all the good people that traveled with you. 
Here’s to the hearts and the hands of the men 
That come with the dust and are gone with the wind. 
- SONG TO WOODY </blockquote>
 As everyone knows, I think the CMS Watch Content Techonology Vendor Map is awesome. They’ve just released the 2010 version. As far as I can tell, the main differences between this and <a href="http://jonontech.com/2009/03/09/cms-watch-subway-vendor-map-2009/">the 2009 version </a>are shown below:
 <a href="http://jonontech.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/2010SpotTheDiff.JPG"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-1323" title="2010SpotTheDiff" src="http://jonontech.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/2010SpotTheDiff.JPG" alt="2010SpotTheDiff" width="746" height="558" /></a>
Get the high res version from the <a href="http://www.cmswatch.com/Trends/1749-2010-Vendor-Map">CMS Watch site</a>. 
 So, what’s changed? Firstly, the big mergers and acquisitions:
<ul>
<li>Adobe decided to buy Omniture for reasons I haven’t figured out yet. It’s made the map more topologically tricky.</li>
<li>OpenText has <a href="http://jonontech.com/2009/05/06/omg-open-text-buy-grandpa-vignette/">gobbled up Vignette</a>, removing another of the big dots</li>
<li>Oracle has <a href="http://jonontech.com/2009/03/18/total-eclipse-of-the-sun/">bought SUN</a>, which hasn’t changed much since Oracle had a few of everything already.</li>
<li>JBoss and eXo have <a href="http://www.cmswire.com/cms/enterprise-cms/exo-jboss-community-merge-portals-for-best-of-breed-open-source-solution-004856.php">merged Portal platforms</a></li>
<li>ClearStory is now <a href="http://www.feedroom.com/">The FeedRoom</a>, who have been recently acquired by <a href="http://www.kit-digital.com/">KIT digital</a>.</li>
</ul>
New Kids On The Map:
<ul>
<li>Vyre isn’t new, but it’s now recognised as a DAM product too. This was <a href="http://jonontech.com/2009/03/09/cms-watch-subway-vendor-map-2009/">discussed last time</a>. <a href="http://www.opencms.org/">OpenCms </a>has made the WCM big time, along with <a href="http://www.hannonhill.com/">Hannon Hill</a>, <a href="http://www.telerik.com/">Telerik </a>and <a href="http://omniupdate.com/">Omniupdate</a>.</li>
<li><a href="http://www.marklogic.com/">Mark Logic </a>storms onto the XML Component Management line after creating quite a buzz in the last few months. <a href="http://www.quark.com/">Quark </a>is on there too, Revolutionizing Publishing. Again.</li>
<li><a href="http://news.cnet.com/8301-1001_3-10393138-92.html">Cisco’s new tools </a>get them onto the Social and Collab line. It’s busy there though – they’re joined by Salesforce (the Daddy), <a href="http://www.yammer.com/">Yammer </a> (like Twitter for the Enterprise), <a href="http://www.mindtouch.com/">MindTouch </a>(Open Source Enterprise Networking Platform) and <a href="http://www.kickapps.com/">KickApps</a> (another community builder).</li>
<li>Three ECM platforms I know nothing about: <a href="http://www.fabasoft.com/">Fabasoft</a>, <a href="http://www.docuware.com/">DocuWare </a>and <a href="http://www.objective.com/">Objective</a>.</li>
</ul>
And finally:
<ul>
<li>FaceBook has gone. Maybe not enterprise enough. Which is probably why Twitter isn’t on either.</li>
<li>Poor EPiServer still hasn’t made it onto the SoCo line, even though they’ve got a very mature Community product</li>
<li>SAP still isn’t considered a CMS, which is fine by me.</li>
</ul>
So that’s that. A 300 page report costs about the same as an overpaid consultant researching badly for a couple of days to prepare that disappointing Google-fleeced document you were embarrassed to show your boss. It’s a no brainer. <a href="http://www.cmswatch.com/Reports/Subscriptions/">Buy the reports</a>. All of them. They rock.
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<title>CMIS, JCR and OSGi for Idiots</title>
<link>http://jonontech.com/2009/11/26/cmis-jcr-and-osgi-for-idiots/</link>
<comments>http://jonontech.com/2009/11/26/cmis-jcr-and-osgi-for-idiots/#comments</comments>
<pubDate>Thu, 26 Nov 2009 15:42:42 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>Jon Marks</dc:creator>
<category><![CDATA[Ramblings]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Beer]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[chemistry]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[cmis]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[CMS]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[felix]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[jackrabbit]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[jcr]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[osgi]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[sling]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">http://jonontech.com/?p=1302</guid>
<description><![CDATA[I had the chance to drink beer and talk shit with the great David Nüscheler, which inspired me to draw a picture all about JCR, CMIS and OSGi. ]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[<blockquote class="dylan">The empty-handed painter from your streets 
Is drawing crazy patterns on your sheets. 
- IT’S ALL OVER NOW, BABY BLUE</blockquote>
Every now and again, certain tumultuous events coincide that makes us feel insignificant. A bit like a total solar eclipse, which is a rare and humbling thing. This week three seemingly unconnected occurances came to pass which made me stop and think. Firstly, <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/external/idg/2009/11/23/23idg-momentum-builds-for-open-content-management-standard-91825.html">CMIS was mentioned in the New York Times</a>. Yes, the New York Times. Secondly, Jeff Potts released his “<a href="http://ecmarchitect.com/archives/2009/11/23/1094">Getting Started with CMIS</a>” tutorial. And, finally, I had the chance to drink beer and talk shit with the great <a href="http://jcp.org/en/press/news/specLeadStars/commFocus_stars_nuescheler">David Nüscheler</a>.
So, to honour all of this, I drew a picture.
Why, you may ask. Well, after chatting to David, I felt inspired to think (and blog) more about the <a href="http://wiki.apache.org/jackrabbit/JcrLinks">JCR</a>, <a href="http://wiki.alfresco.com/wiki/CMIS">CMIS </a>and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OSGi">OSGi</a>. But while doing my cursory research (that’s a strong word for what I do, but anyway), I discovered that there were quite a few things I knew nothing about, and a few products that I’d never heard of. I also coined the word Dignorance in honour of my newly found knowledge gaps.
<a href="http://jonontech.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/Dignorance.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-medium wp-image-1304" title="Dignorance" src="http://jonontech.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/Dignorance-300x134.jpg" alt="Dignorance" width="300" height="134" /></a>
So here is a small version of the picture. Click for a large one, or <a href="http://jonontech.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/JCRCMISOverview_v1.4.pdf">download it as PDF</a>. Do whatever you want to with it. If you think it is useful, or think it needs fixing, leave comments here or get in touch. I’m sure it’s completely wrong all over the place. If you want the original Visio drawing to play with, let me know.
<a href="http://jonontech.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/JCRCMISOverview_v1.4.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-medium wp-image-1349" title="JCRCMISOverview_v1.4" src="http://jonontech.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/JCRCMISOverview_v1.4-205x300.jpg" alt="JCRCMISOverview_v1.4" width="205" height="300" /></a>
Next time I come to your office, I except to see this printed as A3 and stuck on your wall.
UPDATE 18 Dec 2009: I’ve written an article on CMS Wire which explains some of this. Have a look:
<a href="http://www.cmswire.com/cms/web-cms/wcm-field-notes-the-skinny-on-jcr-cmis-and-osgi-006279.php">http://www.cmswire.com/cms/web-cms/wcm-field-notes-the-skinny-on-jcr-cmis-and-osgi-006279.php</a>
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<title>Brave Vendors, Cruel Judges and Me</title>
<link>http://jonontech.com/2009/11/15/brave-vendors-cruel-judges-and-me/</link>
<comments>http://jonontech.com/2009/11/15/brave-vendors-cruel-judges-and-me/#comments</comments>
<pubDate>Sat, 14 Nov 2009 23:00:52 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>Jon Marks</dc:creator>
<category><![CDATA[Ramblings]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[23video]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[CMS]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[espirit]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[jboye]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[kapow]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[microsoft]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[sitecore]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[terminalfour]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[webidol]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">http://jonontech.com/?p=1275</guid>
<description><![CDATA[I promised I'd scribble something about the Web Idol Competition at JBoye 09. The competition involved 6 vendors each presenting a fast paced 7 minute demo to the crowds, mimicking something like Pop Idol. The judging is done by an "expert" panel of 3 judges who offer inane commentary. The audience vote holds all the power over the final outcome. I was lucky enough to be asked to be one of the three judges on the panel.]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[<blockquote class="dylan">These be seven curses on a judge so cruel: 
That one doctor will not save him, 
That two healers will not heal him, 
That three eyes will not see him. 
That four ears will not hear him, 
That five walls will not hide him, 
That six diggers will not bury him 
And that seven deaths shall never kill him. 
- SEVEN CURSES</blockquote>
Better late than never. I promised I’d scribble something about the <a href="http://jboye.com/conferences/aarhus09/web_idol">Web Idol Competition at JBoye 09</a>. The competition involved 6 vendors each presenting a fast paced 7 minute demo to the crowds, mimicking something like Pop Idol. The judging is done by an “expert” panel of 3 judges who offer inane commentary. The audience vote holds all the power over the final outcome.
I was lucky enough to be asked to be one of the three judges on the panel. Teaching me the ropes were <a href="http://www.jboye.com/conferences/aarhus09/speakers/erik_hartman">Erik Hartman</a>, a grandfather of Content Management, and <a href="http://www.jboye.com/conferences/aarhus09/speakers/sara_redin">Sara Redin</a> of JBoye. The night before, I was out drinking with a Dutch guy called Erik and was enormously impressed by how much he knew about all the CMS products out there. Idiot that I am, I didn’t put two and two together and only realised that he was the Erik when I sat next to him on the panel. I’ve been a fan of his for ten years.
Anyway, the participating vendors (in the order they presented, from our right to left in the picture) were <a href="http://www.microsoft.com/">Microsoft</a>, <a href="http://www.e-spirit.com/">e-Spirit</a>, <a href="http://kapowtech.com/">Kapow</a>, <a href="http://www.terminalfour.com/">TERMINALFOUR</a>, <a href="http://www.23video.com/">23 Video</a> and <a href="http://www.sitecore.dk/">Sitecore</a>. So 4 content management vendors, a content migration vendor and a video startup.
<a href="http://jonontech.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/WedIdol1.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-medium wp-image-1289" title="WedIdol1" src="http://jonontech.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/WedIdol1-300x199.jpg" alt="WedIdol1" width="300" height="199" /></a>
First up was Microsoft, presenting a Web <a href="http://sharepoint2010.microsoft.com/product/capabilities/content/pages/top-features.aspx">Content Management</a> interface in <a href="http://sharepoint2010.microsoft.com/Pages/default.aspx">SharePoint 2010</a>. I think it is a massive improvement over the monster that is MOSS 2007, but my fellow judges didn’t think much of it. The much hated Ribbon interface (as featured in the new versions of MS Office) received scorn. The demo didn’t show anything profound. While it is true that we didn’t see anything that other systems haven’t been doing for years, at least it brings SharePoint into the ballpark. I’ve been violently opposed to the idea of using MOSS for public facing sites, but the new version might warrant a rethink.
While we’re on this, those of you that saw <a href="http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/exec/steve/2009/10-19SharePointConf09.mspx">Steve Ballmer’s discussion with Tom Rizzo</a> in October 2009 must have had their ear’s prick when they heard this:
<blockquote>We have a lot of customers using SharePoint in Internet sites, and with the capabilities of 2010, we expect to see that explode. But it wasn’t the initial design point for SharePoint.</blockquote>
Wait, Steve, did I hear you right? After The Righteous have been fighting (and losing) the SharePoint For Public Facing Sites for many a long year, you suddenly say that Internet Sites were not a design goal of the initial SharePoint. No shit. But why couldn’t you have saved everyone a whole lot of pain and said this when MOSS was released. And if, in 5 years time, you end up saying the same thing about SharePoint 2010, I think I’ll kick you in the starboard testicle.
Next up was e-Spirit, showing off the <a href="http://www.e-spirit.com/en/product/advantage/advantages.html">FirstSpirit </a>CMS. e-Spirit aren’t a vendor I know much about. They’re really big in Germany, and are trying to get into other markets. I actually quite like the interface we were shown, although it does look rather complicated. It’s always hard to judge as we were show the interface as seen by an administrator. Maybe it’s simpler if you’re logged in as a lesser mortal. The drag-and-drop of multiple objects looked rather nice. That said, the demo didn’t go well at all. The connection to the interwebs was very slow which screwed the demo badly (my comment about everything being run on local machines was wrong). And the choice of things to show wasn’t great either.
Third on was Kapow, doing a content migration demo. I thought the demo was decent, taking content from the conference site and sticking it into SiteCore. However, I suspect that most of the audience probably weren’t sure what they were seeing. For me, the demo was a lot more interesting than the rather dry Kapow presentation the night before. They showed the web interface for scripted remote control of a browser for migrating content. If I understood it correctly, it’s a bit like the <a href="http://seleniumhq.org/">Selenium IDE</a>. Seeing as I’m more a fan of coding/scripting than pointing/clicking, it didn’t do much for me. I’m sure there is a scripting interface too, but we never saw it. I know the <a href="http://www.vamosa.com/lbi-a339">Vamosa </a>product suite far better than I know Kapow, and the demo I saw didn’t allow me to compare the two.
TERMINALFOUR was fourth. <a href="http://twitter.com/pierotintori">Piero </a>showed a nice solid demo of the interface with a bit of WebDAV thrown in, but again nothing profound. Later that beer-fuelled evening, Janus introduced Piero to someone from the Danish digital agency <a href="http://www.727.dk/">727 </a>online, and we all spent the next half an hour talking shite about 727 landing on TERMINALFOUR. You probably had to be there.
Fifth was 23 Video, a startup that also produced the video for the conference. While the previous four demos were feature showcases, this demo was scenario based, which the judges preferred. But as the judges are all CMS geeks not Video Sharing Sites geeks, there weren’t too many questions. For example, my company uses the <a href="http://code.google.com/apis/youtube/overview.html">YouTube API</a> and <a href="http://www.viddler.com/">Viddler</a> at the moment. The demo didn’t convince me to consider changing. I’d also have loved to see a video upload, but I guess the restrictive conference bandwidth probably meant they were clever to avoid this.
Last were defending champions SiteCore, presented by the defending champion <a href="http://twitter.com/larsbirkholm">Lars Birkholm Petersen</a>. This was probably the most feature poor seven minutes of all of them. The whole demo consisted of creating a form with a CAPTCHA, and trying to fill in the form. There was a peak at the newly released Online Marketing Suite. They cleverly did not ever actually show the SiteCore interface which some of you will know also contains an Office-style ribbon.
However, it was a brilliantly presented featureless demo. Lars had hats representing conference organiser <a href="http://twitter.com/janusboye">Janus</a>, and CMS Analyst <a href="http://twitter.com/adriaanbloem">Adriaan Bloem</a> (who wasn’t at the conference because he wasn’t capable of passing the CAPTCHA). He told a great story and got lots of laughs from everyone. You can watch the all the demos below.

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The results:
<ul>
<li>3rd – TERMINALFOUR</li>
<li>2nd – 23 Video</li>
<li>1st – Sitecore, defending their title</li>
</ul>
Unsurprisingly, the votes went according to the quality and style of the demo, not according to what was actually demoed. And the best demo certainly won. But none of the vendors showed any profound features. Throughout the conference everyone was talking about The Next Big Thing, Social Media, Engagement, Web 3.5, etc, etc. Yet all the CMS vendors simply showed their content entry forms! If I’d had a vote, I think I’d have voted for Microsoft (shock, horror!) based on a Most Improved Award mentality.
The whole event was great fun. The other two judges were mean – Erik being the hardest to please. I’m told that Erik looks like a kitten compared to <a href="http://twitter.com/tonybyrne">Tony Byrne</a>, who makes vendors cry. Finally, I often wonder how important the “sizzle” factor is in demos that are part of formal RFPs. I hope the buyers judge on more than the audiences at Web Idol do.
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<item>
<title>Don’t Make Monoliths</title>
<link>http://jonontech.com/2009/11/11/dont-make-monoliths/</link>
<comments>http://jonontech.com/2009/11/11/dont-make-monoliths/#comments</comments>
<pubDate>Wed, 11 Nov 2009 12:46:53 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>Jon Marks</dc:creator>
<category><![CDATA[Agency]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Ramblings]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[architecture]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[planning]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[procurement]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">http://jonontech.com/?p=1258</guid>
<description><![CDATA[This was the main point of my JBoye Presentation. A few people have asked me what I mean by this. So I figured I'd write a little story instead about the technical, project management and procurement monoliths that have been giving me a headache recently.]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[<blockquote class="dylan">Come gather ’round friends 
And I’ll tell you a tale 
Of when the red iron pits ran plenty. 
- NORTH COUNTRY BLUES</blockquote>
Asterix was worried. Once again he’d woken up with his bed surrounded by water. It appeared that the melting polar ice caps were leading to a rise in the sea level, which was threatening to flood the whole of Armorica. The only solution would be to move the entire town further inland, and they’d run out of magic potion. He got up, got dressed, and went to find Overcomplix, the town’s architect. When he found him, Overcomplix looked worried too.
“So, Overcomplix, how are the plans to migrate the village inland progressing?”, inquired Asterix. “To be honest”, replied Overcomplix, “not very well. You see, when we designed this village, we opted for a tightly coupled, fully integrated architecture. The town hall is joined to the market by solid iron girders, and all of the houses are tightly welded to the market. If we could move one building at a time, we’d be okay. But if we try to separate them, the whole village will fall apart. I think Gantchartix is working on a plan, though.”
“That’s no good at all”, sighed Asterix. “I’ll talk to Gantchartix, but it sounds like we’ve built a monolith. Let me find Obelix. He’s helped us out of tight spots before.”
<a href="http://jonontech.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/asterix-obelix.gif"><img class="aligncenter" title="asterix-obelix" src="/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/asterix-obelix-188x300.gif" alt="asterix-obelix" width="188" height="300" /></a>
When Asterix found Gantchartix, he was surrounded by Microsoft Project Plans and grinning from ear to ear. “I’ve created a masterpiece”, smiled Gantchartix. “The village is saved. All we need to do is get one hundred thousand doves and connect them to the village with pieces of rope. Then, all the doves need to lift off at exactly the same moment, fly inland a bit, and land at exactly the same time. If one of them mistimes it, the village will fall apart. But look at my project plan – it’s perfect.”
Asterix wasn’t convinced. Once again, Gantchartix was living inside his plan instead of reality. “That sounds like a Big Bang approach to me, Gantchartix. Those never work. Your plan is a monolith. I really need to speak to Obelix. He has experience with these things.”
All this worrying had made Asterix hungry. He decided to visit Procurafix to grab a bite to eat.
“Sorry, Asterix, we don’t have any food,” explained Procurafix. “We are in the middle of evaluating responses to our Supply Everything To Armorica RFP. The lawyers are embroiled in a battle over the Boar Hunting Rights clause, so the process might take a while yet. Rather annoyingly, this probably means we won’t have grain or water for a while either. It’s a single contract for everything.”
“That is annoying”, said Asterix. “In fact, your process sounds rather like another monolith. I’ll see if Obelix can move it forward. He is good at that.”
<a href="http://jonontech.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/asterixandobelix2.jpg"><img class="aligncenter" title="Building A Monolith" src="/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/asterixandobelix2.jpg" alt="Building A Monolith" width="300" height="300" /></a>
Obelix seemed to be the only one that could bypass Procurafix’s rules as when Asterix found him he was feasting on nuts and oysters. Asterix explained the sad state of affairs, and asked Obelix for help.
“Sorry, Asterix. I’m afraid I have some bad news. The Goths have offered me a much higher day rate as part of an extremely attractive package. Effective immediately, I’m working for them. You’re on your own.”
“Oh no! We’re doomed,” cried Asterix. “We should never have made those fucking monoliths.”
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<slash:comments>8587</slash:comments>
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<item>
<title>My JBoye09 Fix WCM Presentation</title>
<link>http://jonontech.com/2009/11/04/my-jboye09-fix-wcm-presentation/</link>
<comments>http://jonontech.com/2009/11/04/my-jboye09-fix-wcm-presentation/#comments</comments>
<pubDate>Wed, 04 Nov 2009 13:19:55 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>Jon Marks</dc:creator>
<category><![CDATA[Events]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Ramblings]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[CMS]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[cmswatch]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[jboye]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">http://jonontech.com/?p=1231</guid>
<description><![CDATA[Just finished my "Inconvenient truths and unsolved industry challenges" session at JBoye09, with Janus Boye and Jarrod Gingras of CMS Watch. You can download the slide deck as a 2MB PDF here
]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[<blockquote class="dylan">In the dime stores and bus stations, 
People talk of situations, 
Read books, repeat quotations, 
Draw conclusions on the wall. 
Some speak of the future, 
My love she speaks softly, 
She knows there’s no success like failure 
And that failure’s no success at all 
- LOVE MINUS ZERO/NO LIMIT</blockquote>
Just finished my “<a href="http://jonontech.com/2009/11/02/lets-fixwcm-before-the-wheels-come-off/">Inconvenient truths and unsolved industry challenges</a>” session at <a href="http://www.jboye.com/conferences/aarhus09/">JBoye Aarhus 09</a>, with <a href="http://www.jboye.com/conferences/aarhus09/speakers/janus_boye">Janus Boye</a> (the organiser) and <a href="http://www.jboye.com/conferences/aarhus09/speakers/jarrod_gingras">Jarrod Gingras</a> of CMS Watch. The session was fairly lively, and the <a href="http://twitter.com/#search?q=%23fixwcm">#fixwcm</a> hashtag was nice and busy. Over 300 tweets so far, and it’s still going strong. Keep the discussion going. If you’re at the conference, grab me for some beers over the next couple of nights.
<div id="__ss_2475374" style="width: 425px; text-align: left;"><a style="font:14px Helvetica,Arial,Sans-serif;display:block;margin:12px 0 3px 0;text-decoration:underline;" title="J Boye20091103 V1.2" href="http://www.slideshare.net/mcboof/j-boye20091103-v12">J Boye20091103 V1.2</a><object style="margin:0px" classid="clsid:d27cdb6e-ae6d-11cf-96b8-444553540000" width="425" height="355" codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=6,0,40,0"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true" /><param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always" /><param name="src" value="http://static.slidesharecdn.com/swf/ssplayer2.swf?doc=jboye20091103v1-2-091111100531-phpapp02&stripped_title=j-boye20091103-v12" /><param name="allowfullscreen" value="true" /><embed style="margin:0px" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="425" height="355" src="http://static.slidesharecdn.com/swf/ssplayer2.swf?doc=jboye20091103v1-2-091111100531-phpapp02&stripped_title=j-boye20091103-v12" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true"></embed></object>
<div style="font-size: 11px; font-family: tahoma,arial; height: 26px; padding-top: 2px;">View more <a style="text-decoration:underline;" href="http://www.slideshare.net/">documents</a> from <a style="text-decoration:underline;" href="http://www.slideshare.net/mcboof">Jon Marks</a>.</div>
</div>
You can download the slide deck as a 2MB PDF here: 
<a href="http://jonontech.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/JBoye20091103_v1.2.pdf">http://jonontech.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/JBoye20091103_v1.2.pdf</a>
The slides probably don’t make any sense without my commentary. In fact, they probably don’t make any sense with it.
<a href="http://jonontech.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/JBoyeMug.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-medium wp-image-1237" title="JBoyeMug" src="http://jonontech.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/JBoyeMug-299x300.jpg" alt="JBoyeMug" width="299" height="300" /></a>
I know a few people have blogged about the session. So far I’m aware of:
<ul>
<li>Janus Boye – <a title="Permanent Link to Rethink web content management" rel="bookmark" href="http://www.jboye.com/blogpost/rethink-web-content-management/">Rethink web content management</a></li>
<li>Jarrod Gingras, CMS Watch – <a href="http://www.cmswatch.com/Trends/1738-Fix-WCM">Is WCM fundamentally broken?</a></li>
<li>Irina Guseva, CMS Wire -<a href="http://www.cmswire.com/cms/web-cms/jboye09-web-content-management-inconvenient-truths-and-industry-challenges-005954.php"> #jboye09 Web Content Management: Inconvenient Truths and Industry Challenges</a></li>
<li>Ron Miller , FierceCM – <a href="http://www.fiercecontentmanagement.com/story/vendor-soley-responsible-wcm-project-failure/2009-11-04">Is the vendor solely responsible for WCM project failure? </a></li>
<li>Michael Kowalski- <a href="http://cmsish.wordpress.com/2009/11/03/hey-everybody-lets-fixwcm-right-now/">Hey everybody, let’s #fixwcm right now!</a></li>
<li>Yuval Ararat – <a rel="bookmark" href="http://www.yuvalararat.com/2009/11/what-went-wrong-fixwcm/">What went wrong? #fixwcm!</a></li>
<li>Vern Imrich – <a href="http://www.percussion.com/community/technology-community/contentions/get-most-from-wcms-test-trial-poc/">Get the most out of a WCMS Trial, Test, or Proof of Concept (POC)</a> (Sales Pitch Alert!)</li>
<li>Ian Truscott – <a href="http://www.persuasivecontent.com/does-wcm-really-need-a-fix">Does WCM Really Need a Fix?</a></li>
<li>James Hoskins – <a href="http://2020visions.wordpress.com/2009/11/05/fixwcm-some-thoughts-from-the-front-line/">#fixwcm – some thoughts from the front line</a></li>
<li>Seth Gottlieb – <a href="http://www.contenthere.net/2009/11/the-worlds-worst-wcms.html">The world’s worst WCMS</a></li>
<li>Bryan Ruby, CMS Report – <a href="http://cmsreport.com/blog/2009/when-wcm-no-longer-fun">When WCM is no longer fun</a></li>
<li>Philippe Parker – <a href="http://contentedmanagement.net/blog/something-rotten-in-wcm/">Something rotten in WCM</a></li>
<li>Tristan Renaud – <a href="http://tristanrenaud.jahia.com/dont-forget-your-crampons-your-rope-and-more">Fixing the WCM: don’t forget your crampons, your rope and your guide</a></li>
<li>Lokesh Pant – <a href="http://contentprise.com/2009/11/12/who-should-fixwcm/">Who should #fixwcm?</a></li>
</ul>
And thanks to the kind people that took the photos I stole without credit from Google. Sadly, I stole them from stolen sources so really don’t know who to credit. Finally, here’s a taster of some of the many tweets that came in:
<ul>
<li>bjfogg OH in #jboye09 session: If we can name things better, we can put standards around them #fixwcm</li>
<li>RussellNelson #fixwcm 1 happy cms customer in a room of 20 – that meets my definition of something that is broken</li>
<li>jameshoskins #fixwcm not all the buyers fault – WCM vendors need to focus on long standing pain points as much as those business winning new features</li>
<li>tednyberg Often times when companies switch #WCM often I think it’s a sign of dissatisfaction with the implementer, not necessarily the #CMS. #fixwcm</li>
<li>sigdestad #fixwcm Dare to say no to the customer – Good advices some times require courage</li>
<li>adrianmateljan Are the likes of @cmswatch diverting us from the real implementation issues? Perhaps #agencywatch would be more appropriate? #fixwcm</li>
<li>theresaregli @janusboye says a big part of education is finding people who are trusted #jboye09 #fixwcm</li>
<li>irina_guseva If you’re waiting for #WCM vendors to wake up and fix the problems, it is unrealistic, says @janusboye #fixwcm #jboye09</li>
<li>yuvalararat Guys the products are fine the way we implement and the way clients envision the system is the failure, Kill the sales guys #fixwcm</li>
</ul>
<div id="_mcePaste" style="overflow: hidden; position: absolute; width: 1px; height: 1px; top: 599px; left: -10000px;">bjfogg OH in #jboye09 session: If we can name things better, we can put standards around them #fixwcm 
RussellNelson #fixwcm 1 happy cms customer in a room of 20 – that meets my definition of something that is broken 
jameshoskins #fixwcm not all the buyers fault – WCM vendors need to focus on long standing pain points as much as those business winning new features 
tednyberg Often times when companies switch #WCM often I think it’s a sign of dissatisfaction with the implementer, not necessarily the #CMS. #fixwcm 
sigdestad #fixwcm Dare to say no to the customer – Good advices some times require courage 
adrianmateljan Are the likes of @cmswatch diverting us from the real implementation issues? Perhaps #agencywatch would be more appropriate? #fixwcm 
theresaregli @janusboye says a big part of education is finding people who are trusted #jboye09 #fixwcm 
irina_guseva If you’re waiting for #WCM vendors to wake up and fix the problems, it is unrealistic, says @janusboye #fixwcm #jboye09 
yuvalararat Guys the products are fine the way we implement and the way clients envision the system is the failure, Kill the sales guys #fixwcm</div>
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<slash:comments>4093</slash:comments>
</item>
<item>
<title>Let’s #fixwcm Before The Wheels Come Off</title>
<link>http://jonontech.com/2009/11/02/lets-fixwcm-before-the-wheels-come-off/</link>
<comments>http://jonontech.com/2009/11/02/lets-fixwcm-before-the-wheels-come-off/#comments</comments>
<pubDate>Sun, 01 Nov 2009 23:25:29 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>Jon Marks</dc:creator>
<category><![CDATA[Agency]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Events]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Ramblings]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[This Blog]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[CMS]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[cmswatch]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[jboye]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[standards]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">http://jonontech.com/?p=1220</guid>
<description><![CDATA[How many WCM implementations leave customers grinning from ear to ear? The statistics make sad reading. But if so many projects don’t meet expectations, who is to blame? Is it the vendor, either because of a crappy product or dodgy practice? Or the implementer that eats your budget while making a beautiful product smell real bad? Or are the customers naive, unrealistic or worse?]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[<blockquote class="dylan">Standing next to me in this lonely crowd, 
Is a man who swears he’s not to blame. 
All day long I hear him shout so loud, 
Crying out that he was framed. 
- I SHALL BE RELEASED</blockquote>
How many WCM implementations leave customers grinning from ear to ear? The statistics make sad reading. But if so many projects don’t meet expectations, who is to blame? Is it the vendor, either because of a crappy product or dodgy practice? Or <a id="aso:" title="the implementor that eats your budget" href="../2009/04/24/sitatm-milking-the-client/">the implementer that eats your budget</a> while making a beautiful product smell real bad? Or are the customers naive, unrealistic or worse?
On Wednesday morning, the <a id="udhx" title="Web Content Management Track" href="http://www.jboye.com/conferences/aarhus09/web-content-management">Web Content Management Track</a> of the <a id="v0cw" title="Greatest Web Conference in the World" href="http://www.jboye.com/conferences/aarhus09/">Greatest Web Conference in the World</a> kicks off. The opening session, “Inconvenient truths and unsolved industry challenges “, has a rather unambitious aim – to solve the world’s WCM problems. A bit like WCM World Peace. On the panel we’ll have <a href="http://www.jboye.com/conferences/aarhus09/speakers/janus_boye">Janus Boye</a> himself representing the customer viewpoint, <a href="http://www.jboye.com/conferences/aarhus09/speakers/jarrod_gingras">Jarrod Gingras</a> of CMS Watch representing the analyst massive, and <a id="qlda" title="little old me" href="http://www.jboye.com/conferences/aarhus09/speakers/jon_marks">little old me</a> defending the honour of the implementers.
<a href="http://jonontech.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/Tweet4.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-medium wp-image-1222" title="Tweet4" src="http://jonontech.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/Tweet4-300x187.jpg" alt="Tweet4" width="300" height="187" /></a>
The topics are sure to be varied, and our <a id="ov8q" title="esteemed moderator" href="http://www.jboye.com/conferences/aarhus09/speakers/peter_sejersen">esteemed moderator</a> will be sourcing questions from the crowd, and from Twitter. We’ll be using the hashtag <a id="o854" title="#fixwcm" href="http://twitter.com/#search?q=%23fixwcm">#fixwcm</a> so be sure to set up your Twitter search now, and get involved in the discussions. Apart from blaming each other for multiple disasters, some other issues we might be covering include:
<ul>
<li>Does the term WCM even make sense these days?</li>
<li>Are there too many vendors out there, and will we see consolidation?</li>
<li>Can buyers navigate the marketplace themselves?</li>
<li>Why do so many projects fall on their face?</li>
<li>Will Open Source vendors dominate in the future?</li>
<li>Do you need hard requirements to select a CMS, or is it a philosophical decision?</li>
<li>Are more Web / Content Standards the answer to our prayers?</li>
<li>Why are the Requests for Proposal always so bad?</li>
</ul>
<a href="http://jonontech.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/Tweet1.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-medium wp-image-1219" title="Tweet1" src="http://jonontech.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/Tweet1-300x169.jpg" alt="Tweet1" width="300" height="169" /></a> 
You can start shaping the session right now by tweeting your thoughts using our <a id="f80k" title="#fixwcm" href="http://twitter.com/#search?q=%23fixwcm">#fixwcm</a> hashtag. We want to hear why you think WCM is broken, and what the biggest challenges are. Or if you just want a 140-character rant about a horrorshow of a project, that’ll be fun too.
Join us live on Twitter on Wednesday 4th November between 10:30 and 12:00 CET to throw in some curveballs. And if, for some reason, you’re attending the conference but choose to attend one of the competing parallel sessions (like the great <a href="http://www.jboye.com/conferences/aarhus09/speakers/kristina_halvorson">Kristina Halvorson</a>,<a href="http://www.jboye.com/conferences/aarhus09/speakers/bob_boiko"> Bob Boiko</a>, <a href="http://www.jboye.com/conferences/aarhus09/speakers/jane_mcconnell">Jane McConnell</a> or <a href="http://www.jboye.com/conferences/aarhus09/speakers/shawn_shell">Shawn Shell</a> – it’s a tough pool), you can still participate on Twitter at the same time!
<a href="http://jonontech.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/Tweet2.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-medium wp-image-1218" title="Tweet2" src="http://jonontech.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/Tweet2-300x169.jpg" alt="Tweet2" width="300" height="169" /></a> 
See you in person or in the Twittersphere. It’s going to be cold as hell in Aarhus, but the discussions are sure to get heated.
P.S. If you think the main WCM problem is the design of the content repository, it looks like @pmonks, @justincormack, @micycle and others might have it fixed before our session starts. Hope they’ll share their findings live! The Content Tree is Dead. Long Live the Content Graph.
<a href="http://jonontech.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/Tweet3.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-medium wp-image-1221" title="Tweet3" src="http://jonontech.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/Tweet3-300x186.jpg" alt="Tweet3" width="300" height="186" /></a>
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<slash:comments>3788</slash:comments>
</item>
<item>
<title>A Collaborative Google Wave Blog Post</title>
<link>http://jonontech.com/2009/10/23/a-collaborative-google-wave-blog-post/</link>
<comments>http://jonontech.com/2009/10/23/a-collaborative-google-wave-blog-post/#comments</comments>
<pubDate>Fri, 23 Oct 2009 15:53:29 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>Jon Marks</dc:creator>
<category><![CDATA[Ramblings]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[This Blog]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[collaboration]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[google]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[wave]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">http://jonontech.com/?p=1198</guid>
<description><![CDATA[It's almost 17:00 on a Friday afternoon, and I've just spent the last hour trying to write a blog post on Google Wave with The Motley Crew. Rather than say any more, read the post we made. I've embedded the wave below for those that have a Wave account, and the full blog text is at the bottom.]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[<blockquote class="dylan">Now I wish I could write you a melody so plain 
That could hold you dear lady from going insane 
That could ease you and cool you and cease the pain 
Of your useless and pointless knowledge 
- TOMBSTONE BLUES</blockquote>
It’s almost 17:00 on a Friday afternoon, and I’ve just spent the last hour trying to write a blog post on Google Wave with The Motley Crew. Rather than say any more, read the post we made. I’ve embedded the wave below for those that have a Wave account, and the full blog text is at the bottom, and hopefully repeated on the blogs of <a href="http://irinaguseva.wordpress.com/">Irina</a>, <a href="http://blog.technologyofcontent.com/2009/10/wave-experiment-things-we-hate-about-content-management/">Justin</a>, <a href="http://www.persuasivecontent.com/i-predict-a-cms-riot-1-hour-6-people-1-wave">Ian </a>and more. Maybe even CMS Watch if Adriaan can twist Tony’s arm!
<h1>The Wave</h1>
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<h1>Things We Hate About Content Management</h1>
- By The Motley Crew
It was a lovely Friday morning/afternoon, and we were Waving. The experiment initiated by McBoof (yes, that one) brought together 6 CMS folks from around the world. The event gathered together analysts, journalists, vendors, system integrators toWave on a topic that was decided at that very moment. We had one hour (in between conference calls and other job thingys) to pick a topic and Wave it.
A little collab on what exactly to Wave about later, we decided to do “a mindmap of things we find annoying in CMSs.” To up the ante, we also decided to take the original bullet points (deemed “too easy”) and convert the whole thing toprose. Was the tool given really up to the task? Were our minds flexible enough to wrap around this kind of realtime collaboration?
In the beginning — we blame the tool <img src='http://jonontech.com/wp-includes/images/smilies/icon_wink.gif' alt=';)' class='wp-smiley' /> — we were Drowning, not Waving. We (almost) didn’t fight about edits. We almost didn’t step on each other’s toes. All in all, it turned out to be a fun and productive collaborative exercise. Read on to see for yourself.
<h2>Cosmetic Issues</h2>
There really should be a CMS UI fashion police. As there should be a Magic Quadrant for shoes and handbags. Why? Well, there’s a couple of issues.
For instance, sloppy, non-designed design. You know the kind of thing that has not been thought about and reworked and made to feel right. The sort of thing coders do if you don’t force them. But at the same time, over-designed interfaces can be just as bad: the designers and developers really need to be on speaking terms.
When building a system that works, you can’t have the development team in the basement on a sustenance of Jolt coding away into the night, and the designers in the penthouse in turtleneck sweaters sipping espressos. Too many CMS designs end up being programmer vs. end-user friendly. And this is not the best way to charm away those marketing and web content folks.
Developers and designers need to talk to each other and essentially, both should talk to users – not just eat your own dogfood – but listen to what dogs like to eat. A developer or UI designer are not content editors, marketers or knowledge and information workers.
Some vendors say that the agonizingly and depressingly black UI backgrounds are hip and modern. Well, they are not, really. Who told you that? Especially if you add a Star Trek theme to it and sprinkle in some stars and cosmic swirls, because if Apple does it, it must be cool right? Not pointing any fingers, but I would quit if I were a content manager having to spend my 9-5 staring into the “black hole” of some of the CMS UIs that are out there on the market.
Even pop-ups seem less annoying when compared to dark UIs. Which brings us onto…
<h2>Interface Issues</h2>
Interfaces need a comfortable lived in feel. Content management is something people work with every day, it is their interface to their job. You meet people who hate the interface, and that makes their work a heap of pain. I have seen people who describe the 44 clicks it takes to insert an image. You have a responsibility to these people, to make them love the content and make the tool disappear.
We all hate it when the interface does something on its own that ruins your context. E.g. a page refresh, or in Wave the jumping around of the scrolled window in some cases <img src='http://jonontech.com/wp-includes/images/smilies/icon_wink.gif' alt=';-)' class='wp-smiley' /> Or the lack of an easy way to bookmark, so you can reference someone to the content. Remember people will be collaborating and need to send links around. Make sure the UI is a proper web application with URLs. And why do tasks that are easy to describe and often repeated in exactly the same way still take more than a few clicks? (Or maybe even dozens of clicks.) With bonus points for forcing users to use dialogs or tabs to enter mandatory information. Remember people do not have all the information in the right order.
Also, we need sane conflict merges. Check in and check out is too extreme for most uses. But people want to edit offline still. Of course Wave doesn’t have an offline: Google thinks this problem is going away, it’s real time so there are never conflicts (that’s defined in the XML protocol; it’s quite interesting if you are that way geeky). Does Google have the right answer here? Well, the Motley Crew is struggling here, and some browsers lost sync during this experiment.
“Power users” (those who use it all day long) of CMSs needed to have a “Desktop” experience. What does Desktop Experience mean? Well, it doesn’t really have to be on the desktop — these days it is perfectly possible to get very close to a hitherto Desktop experience in a browser or similar. these are qualities: very low latency from action to response, no page refreshes, modal and modal-less dialog boxes as appropriate, “push” notification.
<h2>Architectural Issues</h2>
Architectural issues of the wave overtook any architectural issues of Content Management Systems. The fact that we authored this entire article in a single blip didn’t help, and slowed everything down enormously. McBoof learned the hard way that he really need a new laptop and spent most of the session giving his machine CPR. Next time we’ll do each paragraph in its own blip to stop FireFox going down like a Led Zeppelin.
Monolithic systems. Build it out of pieces that the client can not use all of. Obviously your pieces may work together better, but there should be components. Do not try to reinvent all kinds of wheel. “Best of breed,” though, is just another weasel marketing idea, as if systems are pinnacles not about meeting requirements.
 
Marketeers are adroit at using the term Best Practice to position Their Way as the only way that a particular matter can be solved. (Many of us live in that netherland of having to pedal that point of view, but it is a falsehood that the careful buyer should try to see through.)I think this devalues genuine best practice, vendors should cite references
 
Most often a marketeer’s Best Practice view is the only one they subscribe to as their product development has paddled up the wrong stream and cannot or won’t reverse their architectural design (probably because of the cost of doing so). This intransigence most often causes a product to doom itself. (Think of IBM and The Mainframe Is The Only Way To Do Serious Business).
Who really still believes that there is a place in this world for Flash or Java Applet based Rich Text Editors? TinyMCE, FCKeditor and others are filling the gap left by Ektron when they bit the hand that feeds and entered the CMS market. Ephox is trying to spread, but I find it difficult to come up with an excuse to use an Applet over HTML with javascript these days. Stick with the standard.
<h2>Business Issues</h2>
Where you are buying into something that you may very well need to change or integrate with there is strong benefit in considering Open Source. Open Source used to frighten commercial software companies but we have come along way on that road to understand that commercial organisation can operate in an Open Source world and benefit. This does not necessarily mean that their prized system needs to be fully opened up, but taking the spirit of it to mean that you are completely open to people seeing and learning from your code how it operates.
Exactly what you need to see opened up varies. In a CMS there may be a subsystem that stores the content or one that allows a Rich Text Editor. These arguably don’t need to be opened up, but when a CMS ships with modules for, for example, an RSS feed widget, calendaring tool, prebuilt webforms, users who then want a variation on this module can benefit from seeing how the “pros” did it, they can then use it as a starting point for their own different implementation.
We really don’t need vendors that pay lip service to the buzzwords. When they think the new CMS buzzword “engagement” is just a screenshot of Google Analytics. Or when they add an image picker and call itDAM . And a cross-over between WCM and ECM? Don’t think WCM is like ECM and it’s about organizing content, not about effectively communicating with the audience. And don’t think that if you organize the content, you canaut omatically communicate effectively.
Completely different, but equally frustrating, is procurement (and the procedures that go with it.) Procurement folk don’t recognise the importance of user adoption to the success of the project — of the black background and all the UI issues pointed out previously. If a CMS is procured according to procedure, the selection is a success to them. But those same rules are often a recipe for ignoring what the users really need.
At the same time, budgets that aren’t transparent are an issue – customer and vendor should be able to have a sensible grown up conversation. As a customer, of course you want good value, but how cheap are you?But to vendors: many licensing models don’t make any sense, and force you to do stupid things. People are scared to have that conversation – the best architectural fit first I say, lets figure out an appropriate license around that.
<h2>Conclusion</h2>
So much hatred rolled up into a tight little ball of anti-CMS rage. Who would have expected it from such a respected bunch of CMS folk. We hate the designs, the interfaces, the architectures and the business. Time for a beer/wine? Wave good bye! 

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<slash:comments>6123</slash:comments>
</item>
<item>
<title>Reflections on EPiServer London Day</title>
<link>http://jonontech.com/2009/10/15/reflections-on-episerver-london-day/</link>
<comments>http://jonontech.com/2009/10/15/reflections-on-episerver-london-day/#comments</comments>
<pubDate>Thu, 15 Oct 2009 09:50:11 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>Jon Marks</dc:creator>
<category><![CDATA[Events]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Ramblings]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Beer]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[CMS]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[EPiServer]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[google]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[hangover]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[interwoven]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[marketing]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[partners]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[sitecore]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[tridion]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[upgrade]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">http://jonontech.com/?p=1183</guid>
<description><![CDATA[So I managed to get to the EPiServer Customer and Partner Day in London. The main goodies on the roadmap are the new Marketing Arena, and EPiServer 6.]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[<blockquote class="dylan">Well, early in the mornin’ 
‘Til late at night, 
I got a poison headache, 
But I feel all right. 
- PLEDGING MY TIME</blockquote>
I managed to get to the <a href="http://www.episerver.com/en/Events/Upcoming_Events/EPiServer-Customer-and-Partner-Day-2009/Agenda/">EPiServer Customer and Partner Day</a> in London on Tuesday. I presented there <a href="http://www.episerver.com/en/Events/Passed_Events/EPiServerday_london/Agenda/">last year</a>, but this year could relax and go to lots of sessions. There were over 250 people, a big increase. They’re doing rather nicely in the UK, and everywhere else. They claim to have launched 500 new sites in the last three months. Personally, I hate the number of sites metric. I wish vendors would use number of new clients. For a nice, general overview of the day read <a href="http://2020visions.wordpress.com/2009/10/14/heard-more-than-i-bargained-for-at-episerver-day-09/">James’ blog post</a>. I’m just going to ramble a bit as usual.
<a href="http://jonontech.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/IMG_1670.JPG"><img class="aligncenter size-medium wp-image-1193" title="Mingling is fun" src="http://jonontech.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/IMG_1670-300x225.jpg" alt="Mingling is fun" width="300" height="225" /></a>
EPiServer are still moving extremely quickly, which I talked about <a href="http://jonontech.com/2009/03/11/episerver-day-2009-stockholm/">six months ago at the Swedish event</a>. The main goodies on the roadmap are the new Marketing Arena, and EPiServer 6. And I stayed till far too late and still have a headache two days later, but that’s a story for another time.
<h2>Yams, Yams everywhere</h2>
Yes, we’ve got Yet Another Marketing Suite. Hot on the heels of <a href="http://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&source=web&ct=res&cd=1&ved=0CAsQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.sitecore.net%2Fen%2FNews%2FPress-releases%2F2009%2FSitecore-Online-Marketing-Suite-for-Enhanced-Marketing-Abilities.aspx&ei=NDHWSvWWPIb54AbGuancDA&usg=AFQjCNHgENEoy9T_eBWambaKX_HcozmzWg&sig2=uviQBUUswcl_8CabFGn-Gw">SiteCore’s Online Marketing Suite</a>, <a href="http://www.sdltridion.com/products/sdltridion2009/">Tridion’s Unified Online Marketing Suite</a> and <a href="http://www.interwoven.com/components/pagenext.jsp?topic=SOLUTION::OPTIMIZED_PAGE">Autonomy/Interwoven’s Optimized Landing Page Solution</a>, our friends at EPiServer showed off their new <a href="http://world.episerver.com/Articles/Items/Introducing-Marketing-Arena---Turning-Web-traffic-into-Revenue/">Marketing Arena</a>. EPiServer’s product has four main prongs (each sold separately, batteries included):
<h3>Campaign Monitor and Optimiser (CMO)</h3>
The CMO has two parts. The Landing Page Optimiser (LPO) performs A/B Testing and has a nice interface. It is an entry level product that doesn’t include demographic information in the A/B testing which, for me, is something they need to introduce before I’d consider using it. The tool needs to be able to say, for example, “Page A performs best for US customers and Page B for European customers”. It also doesn’t perform <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multivariate_testing">Multivariate Testing</a> but who know what the future holds. It provides basic web analytics, but wouldn’t claim to complete with a niche analytics product. In summary, it’s a nice entry level tool.
<a href="http://jonontech.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/CMO_BigScreen.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-medium wp-image-1188" title="CMO_BigScreen" src="http://jonontech.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/CMO_BigScreen-300x183.jpg" alt="CMO_BigScreen" width="300" height="183" /></a>
The second part, EPiServer SEO, performs good static analysis of your site and provides friendly instructions about how to improve your searchability based on the ever-changing rules of the search engines. It does all the things it should, looking at sematic code quality as well as content quality. It summarises this into a single number (your Digital Visibility) in a similar way to <a href="http://websitegrader.com/">WebSite Grader</a>. It’s a hosted service maintained by a third party. I wish I’d known about this before an we could have tried to set up a partnership with LBi instead – we have <a href="http://www.lbi-netrank.co.uk/">a service that’s very similar</a>.
One thing I don’t like is the fact EPiServer SEO also has basic web tracking, to provides things like Heat Maps showing where users focus. Other parts of the CMO already have script based tracking. Two products doing this is one too many. And another trend I don’t like – black seems to be the new white. CMO has a shiny black background on their new “funky” product, while everything else is still white. Vignette did it with their Rich Media product. What’s wrong with white backgrounds anyway?
<h3>B2B Adapt</h3>
This is cool. Using an enhanced version of the <a href="http://www.dnb.co.uk/dnb-database.asp">Dun & Bradstreet company database</a>, it maps the visitor’s IP address to their company’s <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_Industrial_Classification">Standard Industrial Classification</a> (SIC) code. From this, the product can tell the vertical industry of the company, the number of employees and even the annual turnover. These attributes are then fed into the rules engine to allow you to target different content to the revelant people. For example, you could show a very different pages to a small Swedish fishing company and a large US pharma. This is a hosted service which contains both the up-to-date database of companies as well as the rules.
I’d really like to use a service like this simply to get the demographic information and then put it to use in my own evil ways. However, I’m told this isn’t legal. There are strict (and somewhat quirky) rules around how company demographic information can be used.
<h3>B2B Prospect</h3>
This is a lower-cost option using the same technology as B2B Adapt. It simply provides a report of the companies that visited your site, including contact details and other useful things.
<h2>From Zero to Hero</h2>
Those of you that are wise in the EPiWays will recognise a few of the features mentioned above. EPiServer have a really really strong development community and an extensible API, so third parties are continually adding modules and features. They’ve just taken the first step towards an EPiAppStore with the release of the <a href="http://www.episerver.com/en/Extras/">EPiServer Extra directory</a> which includes free and commercial modules created by EPiServer and third parties. Many of these modules are now in the main product. Some of the extras that have made the big time include:
<ul>
<li><a href="http://www.dropit.se/">dropit </a>- Their X3 add-on has become <a href="http://www.episerver.com/en/Products/EPiServer-Create/Template-creation/">EPiServer Composer</a>, part of the Create+ package.</li>
<li> <a href="http://www.meridium.se/imagevault">Meridium</a> – Their <a href="http://www.episerver.com/en/Products/EPiServer-Create/Advanced-image-handling/">ImageVault</a> DAM add-on is also part of Create+ (and they stayed late and had lots of beer)</li>
<li><a href="http://www.ottoboni.se/products">Ottoboni </a>- Their InteractiveScene is in <a href="http://www.episerver.com/en/Products/EPiServer-Create/Flash-for-everyone/">Create+</a> too.</li>
<li><a href="http://www.onlineservices.no/?lang=44">Online Services</a> – <a href="http://www.onlineservices.no/?id=301&lang=44">XTractor </a>for EPiServer has become EPiServer SEO.</li>
<li><a href="http://www.enecto.com/en/">Enecto </a>- The adaptivecontent and prospectfinder are <a href="http://www.enecto.com/en/B2B-Targeting/">B2BAdapt </a>and <a href="http://www.enecto.com/en/B2B-Analysis-based-on-qlikview-business-intelligence/">B2BProspect </a>respectively.</li>
<li>EPiTrace – this is now bundled in the Marketing Arena.</li>
</ul>
<a href="http://jonontech.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/AllTheEPiMore.JPG"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-1184" title="AllTheEPiMore" src="http://jonontech.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/AllTheEPiMore.JPG" alt="AllTheEPiMore" width="439" height="145" /></a>
I really like this model, by the way. All the most of the integrations are loosely coupled, and using partners like this allows the EPiServer guys to focus on the core.
<h2>What’s in EPiServer 6</h2>
The other big news is, of course, the arrival of EPiServer 6. Technically, this isn’t a massive change and the upgrade from 5.x promises to be trivial. As @rogerwirz pointed out in his closing presentation, it’s more of an “editorial training upgrade” than a technical one. I loved the comedy-act demo from @sunnaster and @mathel, sucking Tweets into the new Dynamic Data Store. I’m slightly uneasy about the Dynamic Data Store “Big Table” architecture, but I think this is because I’m old-school and fear change. But don’t get fooled into believing that this is anything like Google’s <a href="http://labs.google.com/papers/bigtable.html">BigTable </a>which isn’t an RDBMS and wouldn’t pass the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ACID">ACID</a> test. The EPiServer “Big Table” really is just a big bastard of a SQL table which sounds pretty hard to index. But I’m sure they’ve got it right. Something to talk to Roger about next time he’s in town.
I liked the demo of the new Dashboard (and how to write extensions for it) from @epirach and @bevan_souster. This Dashboard is based on the new <a href="http://labs.episerver.com/en/Blogs/Roger/Dates/2009/7/CPU-Load-Gadget-for-EPiServer-CMS-July-CTP/">EPiServer CMS Shell framework</a> and provides good Portalesque features. However, I think it also overlaps enormously with many of the features of EPiServer Composer. So much overlap, in fact, that keeping both technologies alive doesn’t make sense. If I was a betting man (which I am) I’ll wager the heart of EPiServer Composer will be ripped out and replaced with a shiny new one in one (or at most two versions) time. At least I hope so.
Some other new features of EPiServer 6 which excite me:
<ul>
<li>Completely browser compatibility on the editorial site</li>
<li>Complete mirroring rewrite, which is a very good thing</li>
<li>Access rights on page types</li>
<li>Access rights on languages</li>
<li>Drag and drop page tree ordering</li>
</ul>
<h2>Final Thoughts</h2>
The thing I like most about EPiServer is their geekiness and honesty. For example, in the keynote, they happily admit which products are simply OEM’ed partner products. Some competitors will wax lyrical about how their product has won Award XYZ, which happened before they even OEM’ed it. The final presentation was a tech demo that everyone was forced to watch. I did hear some less-technical people saying that some of the presentations aren’t slick and “marketeer” enough. Which is great. Keep it up I say.
But please use a shorter hashtag than <a href="http://twitter.com/#search?q=%23episerverdayuk09">#episerverdayuk09</a> next year.
<div id="_mcePaste" style="overflow: hidden; position: absolute; left: -10000px; top: 0px; width: 1px; height: 1px;">Dun & Bradstreet</div>
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<item>
<title>Web in a Box, or Mix and Match?</title>
<link>http://jonontech.com/2009/09/23/web-in-a-box-or-mix-and-match/</link>
<comments>http://jonontech.com/2009/09/23/web-in-a-box-or-mix-and-match/#comments</comments>
<pubDate>Wed, 23 Sep 2009 08:22:45 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>Jon Marks</dc:creator>
<category><![CDATA[Ramblings]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[CMS]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[EPiServer]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[procurement]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[sitecore]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[standards]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">http://jonontech.com/?p=1107</guid>
<description><![CDATA[CMS RFPs seem to want everything these days. But should you buy a single one-stop-shop product that does everything, or assemble together a set of best-of-breed products?]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[<blockquote class="dylan">Never bein’ able to separate the good from the bad, 
Ooh, I can’t stand it, I can’t stand it, 
It’s makin’ me feel so sad. 
- DEAD MAN, DEAD MAN</blockquote>
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acme_Corporation">ACME Corporation</a> have decided to launch a web presence to support their thriving cartoon supply business . They hire you as the brand new big technical cheese to realise their vision. And this vision, as usual, includes everything: Content Management, of course; Search so that you can find the products; a Community to provoke discussion about new product design; Digital Asset Management to store the images and blueprints of the products; Analytics to track down who is interesting in committing nefarious deeds; CRM to improve the way they deal with their prospects; and mapping software to track Road Runners. And something to glue these all together. So, Mr Big Cheese, what are you going to do: buy a single one-stop-shop product that does everything, or assemble together a set of best-of-breed products?
<div id="attachment_1112" class="wp-caption aligncenter" style="width: 490px"><a href="http://jonontech.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/acme_full.jpg"><img class="size-full wp-image-1112" title="acme_full" src="http://jonontech.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/acme_full.jpg" alt="The ACME Corporation Web Site" width="480" height="410" /></a>The ACME Corporation Web Site</div>
<h2>What do the RFPs say customers want?</h2>
The majority of the <a href="http://jonontech.com/2009/08/25/the-perils-of-procurement/">CMS Vendor Selection RFP</a>s that I see demand feature ticking around search, analytics, SoCo, DAM and all the rest. They ask for it all. These RFPs are geared towards procuring a single product that does everything. Most also all assume that the Content Management System will also be the delivery layer and ask for many delivery layer features. A pure-play decoupled CMS wouldn’t stand a chance. If the scoring was done purely on the features lists, a portal would often beat a CMS. The vendor presentations tend to focus more on the features of the canned demonstration site they all have than on the CMS back end.
<h2>What does the research say customers want?</h2>
The research doesn’t agree completely with this. The recent <a href="http://econsultancy.com/reports/cms-survey-report">eConsultancy CMS Survey</a> showed that more customers want best-of-breed suppliers over a one-stop shop, especially for companies with more than 100 employees.
<div>
<dl id="attachment_1111" style="width: 712px;">
<dt><a href="http://jonontech.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/BestofBreedorOnestop.JPG"><img title="BestofBreedorOnestop" src="http://jonontech.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/BestofBreedorOnestop.JPG" alt="When selecting a CMS vendor, which do you prefer? (from Squiz/eConsultancy report)" width="702" height="465" /></a></dt>
<dd>When selecting a CMS vendor, which do you prefer? (from Squiz/eConsultancy report)</dd>
</dl>
</div>
<h2>What is the strategy of the vendors?</h2>
Well, they all seem to heading towards the one-stop-shop solution. Sure, they’ll release new features to their core product. But more and more, they seem to be differentiating by moving into other areas. CMS vendors, in particular, are packaging in social/collaboration software, search software, shopping baskets and payment modules, basic DAM and the kitchen sink. Everyone is producing their own Analytics and MVT software. For example, SiteCore recently announced their <a href="http://www.sitecore.net/en/News/Press-releases/2009/Sitecore-Online-Marketing-Suite-for-Enhanced-Marketing-Abilities.aspx">Online Marketing Suite</a> and EPiServer called with their <a href="http://www.episerver.com/en/News/Press/EPiServer-Marketing-Arena-Uniquely-Enables-Marketers-to-Create-Dynamic-Measureable-Web-Experiences/">Marketing Arena</a> . Seeing as most of these features really sit at the delivery layer, not the content management layer, the number of <a href="http://www.cmswatch.com/Trends/1363-Decoupled-Web-CMS-vendors-have-not-disappeared">pure decoupled CMS vendors is on the decline</a>. There is a <a href="http://jonontech.com/2009/03/16/lost-in-aquisition/">huge amount of M&A activity</a> at the high end of the market as everyone tries to cover all the bases.
So, the strategy of the vendors seems to be on diversification. Gut feeling would imply that finding a niche, or focussing on improving the core CMS would be front of mind. Not so, they’re all playing “RFP feature ticking”. They all bang on about being “open” and supporting open standards, while at the same time singing about their proprietary, tight integration between their newly aquired products. For example, a typical conversation:
<blockquote>Me: So, Mr Vendor X, why do you think we’d use your new Analytics|Search|Community product over the one we currently use? 
Vendor: Because our one has a ‘much deeper integration with our product’ and ‘understands our product’ better.</blockquote>
There are problems with this as I see it, some of which include:
<ul>
<li>everyone is building monoliths</li>
<li>as parts of the system become obsolete, and it becomes harder to take advantage of unexpected future goodies</li>
<li>you really are at the mercy of a single vendor</li>
</ul>
<h2>What does the future hold?</h2>
I would have expected the fact that standards are improving to mean that we’d have more focussed best-of-breed vendors that allow you to plug their product in to any CMS – the nice Lego-block style architecture diagram. However, currently it looks like we’re heading the other way, which really depresses me. We might even be buying the Google CMS Appliance before long.
If it continues at this rate, our friends at <a href="http://www.cmswatch.com/Reports/">CMS Watch</a> might need to consolidate all their lovely reports into the “Web In A Box” report quite soon …
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