December 31, 2004

Tsunami Relief

I added a box for donating to the American Red Cross via amazon.com. There are many worthy charities responding to the crisis, so this is only one. The Boston Globe has a listing of charities, with links to their web sites. I attend a Unitarian Universalist Church, and our larger association and our service committee (UUSC) are joining in relief efforts to assist disaster victims around the Indian Ocean. To contribute to that effort, please click here.

It is such a staggering tragedy, but it has been heartwarming to see the world work so hard to respond.

Posted by Bill Trippe at 3:27 PM | Comments (1)

December 30, 2004

2004 Year in Review: DRM Technologies

Bill Rosenblatt has a nice roundup of DRM technology news from this year at DRM Watch. Bill makes some very good points for enterprise DRM going forward:

Two things need to occur before we would consider Enterprise DRM to be ready to cross the chasm: large system integrators must build significant practices in information usage compliance that include DRM, and DRM needs to be integrated into larger enterprise solutions such as content management. We see evidence that the former is starting to happen at certain large consultancies. As for the latter, many industry watchers are waiting for the major enterprise document management vendors -- IBM, EMC (owners of Documentum), OpenText, and FileNet -- to make Enterprise DRM acquisitions and integrate them with their content management solutions.

Posted by Bill Trippe at 12:11 PM

December 29, 2004

ftp, secure shell

Can folks suggest a tool or tools that would help me (1) do ftp back and forth to a couple of web sites and (2) run a secure shell to my primary web site (which runs linux). I would want to run this on a couple of PCs, one of which is currently running Windows 2000, and another which is running XP.

I have been playing with CuteFTP for a couple of days, and like it. On the shell side of things, I have used something called AbsoluteTelnet. Both of these are still on their trial period, and seem ok, but I am open to suggestions.

And, silly question perhaps, but why isn't this sort of thing simply built into Windows? I was trying to run FTP on my XP machine through a DOS box, and I kept getting bad connections, etc.

Thanks,

Bill

Posted by Bill Trippe at 3:34 PM | Comments (4)

Jerry Orbach

Jerry Orbach, who played Detective Lennie Briscoe on Law & Order, passed away today.

I don't often react to celebrity deaths, but I am saddened over Orbach's passing. I probably watch 5 hours of Law & Order every week, and I love his character. But many of you probably know Orbach had a long and varied career—he was indeed a star of stage and screen. A song and dance man, he starred in Broadway shows including "Chicago" and "42nd Street" and won a Tony Award for his role in "Promises, Promises." More recently, he was the voice of the candlestick Lumiere in Disney's animated "Beauty and the Beast" (a video I saw 40,000 times when my boys were little, and I barely tolerated, but it was a kick to listen to Orbach).

I will always remember Orbach for a really chilling role as the mobbed-up Jack Rosenthal in Woody Allen's "Crimes and Misdemeanors." He only appears in a few scenes, opposite Martin Landau, who plays his successful and wealthy brother. But the few scenes, to my thinking, are perfectly done.

So a sad goodbye to Jerry Orbach—song and dance man, Hollywood character actor, and television star. You will be missed.

UPDATE: The Boston Globe is running a nice obit, written by Frazier Moore of the Associated Press. And there is a great roundup of coverage at The Gothamist.

Posted by Bill Trippe at 12:52 PM

One-Stop Compassion

Amazon.com is providing a very east way for its customers to give money to the American Red Cross for disaster relief in East Africa and South Asia in the aftermath of the earthquake and resulting tsunamis on December 26.

Click here to give. At this writing, 26,093 people have given $1,396,966.22. Give a little, and then keep refreshing that page and watch the total increase. Since I wrote this sentence, the totals have risen to 26156 people giving $1,401,616.22.

Posted by Bill Trippe at 10:37 AM

December 28, 2004

The Flugh?

Given the spelling of words like phlegm and cough, and rhymes like "through" and "Hugh," shouldn't "the flu" be spelled "the flough" or "the flugh"?

We have had a nice Christmas here, but my sons and I are taking turns being sick with some crud. My oldest son is on antibiotics starting today, so he should be feeling better soon. Poor guy; he has always had the most productive nose and lungs of anyone I know. When he was little, maybe 5, and suffering similarly, he said between sneezes, "Where does phlegm come from anyway, and what am I supposed to do with it?

A great question.

Posted by Bill Trippe at 12:06 PM

December 24, 2004

Almost Christmas

And, as usual, I am doing many things at the last minute...

Christmas is rich territory for a writer. I don't have to think very hard at all to come up with a dozen or more themes or stories surrounding Christmas. This year's theme has a lot to do with it being the first Christmas since my mom died. I visited her last Christmas afternoon, and she was not having a good day. In some ways, then, this Christmas is more peaceful, but that feeling is bittersweet at best.

For some reason, I find myself thinking about Christmas 1973. It was the first Christmas I worked at a regular job. I was 14, and had already spent a couple of years delivering telegrams, doing a paper route, and doing things like yard work and errands for neighbors. But that Christmas I was working at a neighborhood pharmacy, literally next door to my house. And since I was low boy on the totem poll, I got to work Christmas Eve and Christmas morning.

Christmas Eve that year was a blast. As I remember it, it was the last year before the chain store pharmacy, CVS, arrived in town, so it was the last year little pharmacies like Bandy's, where I worked, had a monopoly on the last-minute shoppers.

And what a monopoly it was. From dinner time until the traffic slowed at about 10:00 pm, we were hopping. That Christmas Eve, it seemed that every dad in the neighborhood got off work, stepped off the bus, walked into Bandy's, and bought two or more of the following gifts for their wives: a Timex Watch, a box of Whitman's Chocolates, some perfume (Jean Nate or maybe Chanel for a big spender), and a lady's electric razor. I learned how to wrap presents that Christmas, using precisely the right amount of giftwrap, ribbon, and tape under the watchful eye of Bandy and his wife Estelle. There were small items, too--paperback books, Christmas cards, bags of nuts and candies, lip balm, magazines, cartons of cigarettes. Some of the younger men, married or not, took the occasion to buy themselves the Christmas issue of Playboy. And one neighborhood dad, whom I only knew as the rather intimidating father of two beautiful Italian girls down the block, would buy a box of condoms. I ended up working there four years, and learned this was his precise ritual.

But that was the last Christmas Eve Bandy's had a monopoly. By the next summer, CVS had opened a few blocks away, and even the very next Christmas Eve was a pale comparison to my first one there. By the time I went off to college, the store was closing by 6:00, and by the time I finished college, Bandy had closed the store and retired.

The chain stores had won; as we have learned now, they always do. People got things a little cheaper, and a little faster. But here's to a Christmas Eve remembered, and to small details in lives observed.

Merry Christmas to those of you who celebrate. And a wish for a peaceful New Year for all of us.

Posted by Bill Trippe at 2:03 PM

Reuse

For a client project and for some current writing, I have been thinking a lot about reuse lately. When you do single-source publishing, especially with something like SGML or XML, you have a great opportunity to both repurpose the content into other formats (print, HTML, help, etc.) but to also reuse the content objects in multiple content products. Thus an aircarft maintenance task, say, checking tire pressure, that is common to many different aircraft models can be used in many different manuals.

Ann Rockley makes this point very well in a recent column for Transform Magazine:

To graduate to object-oriented content reuse, you must create modular content components, such as procedures, product overviews and sales descriptions, and then reuse these components in as many ways as possible. Brochures, manuals, training materials, troubleshooting guides and positioning papers are all prime candidates for content reuse, and they may all exist in print, Web and other forms.

The folks at Data Conversion Labs have done some research recently that suggests that as much as 50% of your content may be redundant and thus a perfect candidate for reuse. They have a new product and services offering, Harmonizer, that assesses how much of your content may be redundant and runs processes to eliminate extraneous content and "harmonize" remaining text to be more standardized.

The idea of reuse is easy; the application is difficult. I have seen it done extraordinarily well, though, with enormous payback. Data Conversion Labs is on the right track by coming up with a standard offering to help with the initial analysis. Another good starting point is Ann Rockley's book, Managing Enterprise Content. The chapter on reuse, "Fundamental Concepts of Reuse," can be downloaded for free here.

Posted by Bill Trippe at 1:18 PM

December 22, 2004

Internet Explorer, RIP?

If I am reading my web logs correctly, readers visiting my site use Internet Explorer less than 1% of the time. Mozilla is used about 50% of the time, bots seem to take another 12-15%, and a long list of other browsers and newsreaders account for the rest.

Is this possible?

Posted by Bill Trippe at 10:18 AM | Comments (5)

December 21, 2004

James Thurber on Christmas and Hemingway

James Thurber was the first writer I fully embraced. Sometime partway through high school, I read everything I could get my hands on. Along the way, I read a really fine biography by Burton Bernstein and began to understand how complicated a writer's mind and life can be.

The New Yorker is highlighting a Thurber piece from their archives. Short and sweet.

Posted by Bill Trippe at 10:29 PM

December 19, 2004

Cosmo Kaye

Watching White Christmas tonight, I realized how much Michael Richards, who played Cosmo Kramer on Seinfeld, riffs off Danny Kaye. I can't be the first person who noticed this, can I?

Great line, when Danny Kaye kisses Vera-Ellen in front of General Waverly, "In some ways you're far superior to my cocker spaniel."

Posted by Bill Trippe at 9:14 PM

December 17, 2004

It's a Wonderful Life

OK, I am sappy, but I have always loved the Frank Capra/Jimmy Stewart movie, It's a Wonderful Life. If you have trouble sitting through the whole thing, you can try this 30-second version, as re-enacted by bunnies. The bunny who plays Mary Bailey is OK, but she is no Donna Reed.

Posted by Bill Trippe at 10:48 PM

A Few Thoughts

I have been very busy with work, so haven't been posting much. A few thoughts, though:

Posted by Bill Trippe at 9:42 PM

December 13, 2004

Is QuarkXPress Giving Way to InDesign?

I have an article in the new Seybold Report that asks and attempts to answer this question. At this writing, the article is available to subscribers only, but if they put it on the free portion of the Web site, I will let you know. The following is from the introduction to the article.

A tip of the hat to friend and colleague Kate Binder of Prospect Hill Publishing Services who had some great ideas for the article and offered the best quotes.

Since the early 1990s, QuarkXpress has been the leading desktop publishing tool. Many products have tried but failed to knock QuarkXPress from its perch over the years. Some of us are even old enough to remember one-time products such as Manhattan Graphics' ReadySetGo!, and many industry followers rooted in vain for challengers such as Aldus PageMaker (the product eventually acquired by Adobe).

Indeed, despite the overwhelming leadership of its flagship product, Quark Inc. as a company seemed determined to breathe life into its competitors by infuriating its customer base with half-hearted customer support and onerous licensing terms. Year after year, however, QuarkXPress maintained its dominant market position.

In this desktop publishing war, all eyes have been on Adobe since it introduced InDesign in 1999. Publishers and creative professionals have watched the development of Adobe InDesign closely, and many of them evaluated the earliest releases. While a critical mass of new users was not ready to switch to InDesign 1.0 and 2.0 releases, users were clearly tuned into the emerging product and returned to evaluate it with each new release.

Posted by Bill Trippe at 10:32 PM | Comments (1)

December 11, 2004

Me and Julio Down at the Schoolyard

46-year old infielder Julio Franco signed a contract to remain an Atlanta Brave today. That means, as of this writing, there is still someone in Major League Baseball who is older than me.

Here's to you, Julio.

Posted by Bill Trippe at 9:49 PM

December 9, 2004

Shameless Request Department

People in the fund raising business tell me, "if you don't ask, people don't give." So I am asking. I have been working on this blog for a while, and I enjoy writing it, but I still need to pay the bills. I would love to spend more time on blogging. So, here goes.

<shameless-request>

If you like what you have been reading, and would like to see more, show the love, vote with your feet, and contribute through the Paypal "Make a Donation" button on the left side of the page. And, truly, any amount is welcome.

</shameless-request>

Thanks,

Bill

Posted by Bill Trippe at 3:24 PM | Comments (2)

The Case for DITA

The white paper I have been developing about DITA is now available for download at the Gilbane Report web site. Downloading is free, and requires no registration. The white paper is entitled, Topic-Oriented Information Development and Its Role in Globalization: The Case for the Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA).

I am including the executive summary here. My thanks to everyone who corresponded with me, especially to those of you who looked at early drafts of the paper.

Executive Summary

Globalization is a critical issue for any company interested in expanding its markets. For the company that markets sophisticated products, globalization is both more difficult and more critical because of the rich content that is needed to support these products.

Product document localization may well be the most difficult aspect of globalization. Documents often are long, with a mixture of text, tables, charts, and graphics. Moreover, the documentation must be produced in different forms--print, online Help sets, HTML. Translating such documents into multiple languages can be challenge.

Single-source publishing has matured as a method for producing complex documents in many formats. XML in particular has become the preferred format for single-sourcing, enabling companies to both repurpose their content into different formats and reuse content modules in different content types. Thus, a procedure that appears in one document can be stored once, edited once, reused in many different documents and repurposed into many different formats.

For all of its upside, XML-based single-source publishing has proven to be expensive and complicated to implement. XML-based single sourcing requires significant tool development, data conversion, and system integration prior to realizing the benefits of repurposing and reuse. To mitigate this, some vertical industries have developed their own XML tag sets. While successful on their own, these vertical industry efforts have not been extensible to other industries.

A new XML-based approach to information development is the Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA). DITA is a topic-centric architecture that provides a core Document Type Definition (DTD) and schema for developing documentation typical of many kinds of products. Conceived over several years at IBM, the extensible DITA architecture is now being managed by a technical committee at OASIS.

We looked at one organization, software developer Information Builders, Inc. (IBI), and their implementation of DITA for managing a large set of documentation that is translated into many languages. IBI made a strategic decision to adopt DITA, has implemented it, and is already realizing benefits from the decision.

This paper is sponsored by Idiom Technologies, Inc. Idiom provided the solution for IBI: WorldServer Global Electronic Publishing along with the recently introduced DITA option, WorldServer OpenTopic. We think the new Idiom solution is significant for combining the traditional functions of an XML Content Management System (CMS), a Globalization Management System (GMS), and a commercial DITA solution. In doing so, Idiom seems to be taking advantage of an intriguing nexus where single-source publishing, XML encoding, and globalization meet.

Posted by Bill Trippe at 11:34 AM

This is a Prayer

I have mentioned that, for a writing group in Melrose, we have been using a book, Writing Alone, Writing Together, by Judy Reeves. One of the approaches in the book is to do timed writing exercises, where you write freely based on a brief prompt. We have been doing this with great success in our group.

One recent prompt was, "This is a prayer," and I wrote the following in eight minutes.

Glory be to God for these plain things--socks without holes, shoes that stand up to the rain, eyeglasses without scratches, and a plate of beef stew that is just big enough.

My strong, handsome boys do so many things so well. When my oldest son was a baby, he would sleep stretched from my belly to my chin, burrowing into the warmth of my chest as I too slept. This comforted both him and me, of course. Him in his colic and distress, me in my awe of his mere presence. Some time later, I would spend the night with him in the hospital, and all my anxieties felt so small in the face of how matter-of-fact he was about all these strange, invasive tests. It didn't cure me of whining, but I do it less now.

And my younger son, so cool and self-possessed, so sure of himself in so many spheres.

Posted by Bill Trippe at 9:29 AM

December 8, 2004

Another Shoe Drops

So Oracle has made their formal entree into the content management space with Tsunami. I hope to get an in-depth briefing next week, after Oracle Open World, which has them all busy this week. I will let you know what I think.

Posted by Bill Trippe at 4:56 PM

Ted Kooser

Ted Kooser is the new US poet laureate. This was actually announced in September, but such announcements don't make the front page, so you will forgive me for only picking up on this recently.

Ted Kooser replaces Louise Gluck, who replaced Billy Collins, a poet I have discussed here a couple of times. Like Collins, Kooser is very readable, though I find Kooser relies more on imagery and Collins relies more on story.

The press has made a somewhat big deal of the fact that Kooser is from Nebraska, and the first poet laureate from the great plains. I do think geography is a big part of Kooser's work. Consider, for example, his poem Flying at Night.

There are some nice profiles of Kooser in the New York Times, Washington Post, and Christian Science Monitor. The first two links require (free) registration.

Posted by Bill Trippe at 9:44 AM | Comments (1)

December 7, 2004

Datawatch

My friend and colleague Phil Storey, who has been a frequent speaker at Gilbane Report events, has landed at software vendor Datawatch. Datawatch has a number of business intelligence, report managament, and data transformation tools, and has been moving steadily into the XML and content management arena. I like a number of their offerings, including VorteXML, which converts structured and unstructured content and data into XML. The Datawatch products are especially good at working with unstructured and semi-structured input such as what you get from print streams, legacy applications, and the like. If you have these kinds of requirements, they are worth checking out.

Posted by Bill Trippe at 4:20 PM

December 6, 2004

XMPie

Anyone have experience with XMPie or competitive products? Please feel free to post here or email me.

Posted by Bill Trippe at 8:38 PM | Comments (1)

December 4, 2004

Catalog Data Online

Any metrics out there on how much it costs companies to put their catalog data online as a step toward developing e-commerce? I am starting to work with a company that seems to have a surprisingly low-cost way of doing this.

Please feel free to post here or email me.

Thanks,

Bill

Posted by Bill Trippe at 1:51 PM

December 3, 2004

Some Cautionary Tales

Ten Ways I Almost Killed Myself

Or

Son, Don't Do What I Did

By Bill Trippe

1. 17, drunk at a lake in New Hampshire, my friend Chucky and I decide to bring a cast-iron chair from shore to a diving platform some 20 yards away. It is too heavy of course, and a few yards from the platform we lose our grip. As it drops to the bottom of the lake, the chair catches my ankle, taking me with it. A few frantic seconds later, I free my foot, but not before I have swallowed enough water to leave me retching over the side of the platform. I am fine.
2. 18, drunk and stoned in my friend Scott's car, we pick up three girls and head for a party across town. A block from the party, we are broad-sided at an intersection. Scott's car is pushed onto the sidewalk, shearing a hydrant off in the process. I am bathed in glass from the exploding windows and drenched in the deluge from the hydrant. A friend finds me wandering away from the accident, hysterical, imagining I am bathed in blood. Except for a few scratches, we are fine.
3. 15, I am hitchhiking to a nearby subway station when two guys pick me up. A few minutes later, the driver tells me they are not going to let me out, and their glassy looks confirm trouble. Without thinking, I open the door of the car, now going about 40, and declare that I am getting out unless they stop the car. With my feet scraping the pavement, gravel flying, they realize I am serious and stop the car. I am fine.
4. 14, I am on the elevated train tracks in a gritty neighborhood in Boston. From the street, some tough throws a paint can at the oncoming train and has the astonishing luck of derailing it. I slide from my seat on the back of one car, hit the floor, and slide the 45 feet to the front of the car, hitting the wall feet first. In the aftermath, I am somehow nominated to help shuttle people from the crippled train, along a narrow catwalk, to the platform. I am fine.
5. 16, I am riding shotgun and Shithead is driving a borrowed car. (Yes, we really called him that, and, no, I don't remember his real name.) Going 90 on a divided road near the airport, Shithead cuts the wheel -- he wants to fishtail -- but instead he loses control. The aftermath is spectacular. We have taken out 200 feet of chain-link fence and wrenched 50 fifty feet of guardrail from the divider, twisting it across the road. Every surface of the car is destroyed. We are fine.
6. 17, I am riding shotgun again and Chucky is driving. We are drag racing on a bridge over the Mystic River when the right front tire blows out. We veer into the curve, built high for exactly this kind of calamity. The passenger compartment comes right off the chassis, coming to a rest on the rail above the river. We climb out the driver's window. We are fine.
7. 18, my college roommate Erick and I have driven through a blizzard, stoned, to buy tickets to a concert. A half-mile from campus, Erick loses control on the ice, the car slides off the road, hits the embankment, and flips into the woods. I get my first non-hockey concussion, but am otherwise fine.
8. 17, I am riding shotgun with Chucky again when he decides to burn rubber outside a mobbed-up East Boston bar. We hit a puddle, and plow into a row of Cadillacs and Camaros. The patrons pour out of the bar, but the tension is quickly cut when one of the Camaro owners recognizes Chucky to be his cousin. We are fine.
9. 16, we are hanging out, all buzzed on one thing or another, when apparently I say the wrong thing to Shithead. He is a big ugly menacing kid, all red hair, freckles, and aviator glasses, but I can't see this is now because he is holding a gun to my face, screaming incoherently. I somehow put a parked car between us and dive underneath it. Someone else talks Shithead down, and a few minutes later we are back to partying.
10. 19, I am on an underground trolley, stopped in a station, when fire erupts from the dashboard. I have the bad luck of being in the backseat of the trolley. The driver gets up and bounds off the trolley, leaving us all to fight our way off. With the smoke billowing, I push open a window and dive out. It's a long way down to the platform, but a trash barrel breaks my fall. I am fine.

Posted by Bill Trippe at 2:26 AM

December 2, 2004

Interesting New Approach

Data Conversion Labs (DCL) has announced a new service, Harmonizer, which analyzes existing content sets for redundancy. As they describe the offering in their web site:

[The] Harmonizer&tm; content reuse service from DCL measures and eliminates redundant data from document sets. This unique system checks for duplicate content (and "near duplicates") and weeds out what you don't need; it also harmonizes text and grammar variations to fit your standard. In short, Harmonizer™ clears the clutter in order to reduce costs, improve accuracy, and speed up turn-around.

In announcing the service, DCL revealed some research they had done into some content sets, with a 83.1% level of redundancy in one aerospace company's maintenance manuals and 68.3% in a pharmaceutical firm's product data. DCL President Mark Gross said, ""They are recreating text that has already been written - and are paying for the privilege!"

Well said! And real food for thought.

Posted by Bill Trippe at 9:30 PM

Palm Springs

Well, honestly, I haven't seen much of it yet. I loved the plane ride from Phoenix to Palm Springs. Once we were terrestrial, it was kind of like driving around in southwest Florida--a whole lot of asphalt with chain stores and some palm trees here and there. Plus, there is the whole Bob Hope thing. I really am expecting him or Bing Crosby to emerge from stage left, highballs in hand, crooning... something. I am staying at the resort where, supposedly, Irving Berlin wrote "White Christmas." I have a meeting tomorrow in the Frank Capra room, for crying out loud.

Posted by Bill Trippe at 1:03 AM

Gilbane Conference

The Gilbane Conference was off to a great start yesterday--and then I had to leave town for a customer engagement. Attendance was very strong, and there was a nice turnout for the first-ever CM Pros meeting. I did get quick briefings from a few companies, and was most impressed with MarkLogic. Yes, there is still a place for an XML-specific repository. Especially when the XML in question is for documents and not data.

Posted by Bill Trippe at 12:52 AM

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