December 29, 2006
1984
Posted by Bill Trippe at 10:18 AM | TrackBack
December 28, 2006
Home Fire
Here is the latest installment in the American Life in Poetry series.
American Life in Poetry: Column 92
BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006
Home is where the heart. . . Well, surely we all know that old saying. But it's the particulars of a home that make it ours. Here the poet Linda Parsons Marion, who lives in Knoxville, Tennessee, celebrates familiarity, in its detail and its richness.
Home Fire
Whether on the boulevard or gravel backroad, I do not easily raise my hand to those who toss up theirs in anonymous hello, merely to say "I'm passing this way." Once out of shyness, now reluctance to tip my hand, I admire the shrubbery instead. I've learned where the lines are drawn and keep the privet well trimmed. I left one house with toys on the floor for another with quiet rugs and a bed where the moon comes in. I've thrown myself at men in black turtlenecks only to find that home is best after all. Home where I sit in the glider, knowing it needs oil, like my own rusty joints. Where I coax blackberry to dogwood and winter to harvest, where my table is clothed in light. Home where I walk out on the thin page of night, without waving or giving myself away, and return with my words burning like fire in the grate.
Reprinted from "Home Fires: Poems," Sow's Ear Press, 1997, by permission of the author. Copyright © 1997 by Linda Parsons. This weekly column is supported by The Poetry Foundation, The Library of Congress, and the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. This column does not accept unsolicited poetry.
******************************
American Life in Poetry provides newspapers and online publications with a free weekly column featuring contemporary American poems. The sole mission of this project is to promote poetry: American Life in Poetry seeks to create a vigorous presence for poetry in our culture. There are no costs for reprinting the columns; we do require that you register your publication here and that the text of the column be reproduced without alteration.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 4:13 PM
Speaking of My Resource Pages...
... I also spent some time updating my eForms resources page.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 3:36 PM
Content Management Books
I spent some time today updating my CMS Resources page, and in the process unearthed three books on content management that I hadn't listed previously.
- Enterprise Content Management Methods: What You Need to Know
- Enterprise Content Management Solutions: What You Need to Know
- FileNet: A Consultant's Guide to Enterprise Content Management
The first two are published by a vendor, OpenText. While the second two are published by two independent consultants who work a lot with Filenet technology.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 1:26 PM | TrackBack
December 27, 2006
The "New" 100 Most Useful Sites
The UK's Guardian newspaper revisits a list they came up with two years ago.
In 2004, the internet was a different place: there was, for example, no YouTube, and most Britons online didn't have broadband. That's changed dramatically: now, more than 75% of users have broadband, and the arrival of Web 2.0 has brought sites where the interaction is as fast as if it were on your machine. So we've revisited the "cream of the crop" that we brought you two years ago.
Sadly, I am nowhere on the list....
Posted by Bill Trippe at 10:21 PM
Speaking of San Francisco...
...it's not too early to be thinking of Gilbane San Francisco, which will be held April 10-12 at the Palace Hotel. Among the highlighs this year:
- New one-day LISA Forum.
- An expanded track on Enterprise Search & Information Access.
- Another expanded track on Enterprise Wikis & Collaboration.
- Vetted case studies from the Content Technology Works Initiative.
- In-depth tutorials taught by the experts who even other experts depend on.
- Technology Showcase - 60 plus content technology suppliers will show you their latest products, services and features. Our exhibitors include the large well-known players, as well as lots of newer companies with great technology that you won't find at other industry events.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 4:54 PM
Under the Christmas Tree
My teenage sons were very happy with their high-tech Christmas. Presents included an iPod Nano and Family Guy, Vol. 3 (Season 4, Part 1) for my younger son, while my older son has spent every waking moment with his Motorola Q Phone, taking time out to watch Pulp Fiction (Collector's Edition).
Meanwhile, I had a decidely low-tech Christmas, highlighted by the Get Fuzzy 2007 Page a Day Daily Boxed Calendar. Satchel Pooch is my man.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 10:13 AM
Goodbye 2006, Welcome 2007
Apoorv Durga says goodbye to 2006 and welcome to 2007 in the world of portals and content management.
2006 has been an exciting year for content technologies. Based on some of the interesting happenings, the following themes (in no particular order) have emerged that might have an impact on this space in coming years: Standards, or the lack of them was evident.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 9:00 AM
December 26, 2006
Two New IDPF Draft Specifications Available
Nick Bogarty of the Interational Digital Publishing Forum reports that two new specifications are available in working draft form and are ready for comment.The IDPF's Open eBook Publication Structure (OEBPS) Working Group has released two working draft specifications, the Open Publication Structure (OPS) 2.0 (internal working draft v0.7) and the Open Packaging Format (OPF) 2.0 (internal working draft v0.7) for public distribution and review as IDPF informational documents.
The IDPF strongly encourages feedback from potential users, developers and others, whether IDPF members or not, for the sake of improving interoperability and quality of IDPF work. The Working Group requests that comments to the specifications be made before Wednesday, January 31st in order to facilitate revision of the specifications. The specifications are available here (OPS 2.0) and here (OPF 2.0).
Feedback on the draft specifications should be made at the IDPF forums under "OPS/OPF 2.0 Public Drafts & Related Documents," and you can find a link to all IDPF specification documents here.
Document Summary
The OPS 2.0 and OPF 2.0 specifications are successors to OEBPS 1.2 which was released as an official IDPF specification in August 2002. The OPS specification describes a standard for representing the content of electronic publications. The OPF specification defines the mechanism by which the various components of an OPS publication are tied together and provides additional structure and semantics to the electronic publication. OPS/OPF will increase the viability and adoption of the previous OEBPS standard as both a cross-reading system interchange and production format as well as a final publication delivery format.
Both OPF and OPS are aligned with the OEBPS Container Format (OCF) specification which defines the standard mechanism by which all components of an electronic publication may be packaged together into a single archive for transmission, delivery and archival purposes. The OCF specification was released as an official IDPF specification on October 27th, 2006.
The OPS/OCF documents were submitted to the IDPF Board of Directors as an Informational Document as defined by the IDPF’s Policies and Procedures, section 4.6.1. While Informational Documents do not have an official specification status in the organization, the Working Group felt it important that IDPF members and the public have the opportunity to review the draft specification in order to obtain feedback on the current state of the proposal as well as to alert IDPF members that a proposal is forthcoming in order to allocate appropriate resources for a proper review. The document is expected to be submitted to the official IDPF output process in Q1 2007 which consists of Board of Director, public, intellectual property and membership review and a final membership vote.
This document was approved for submission by the Working Group on Thursday, December 14th and approved for release by the IDPF Board of Directors as an Informational Document on Friday, December 22nd.
The following documents may prove useful for introduction: the Working Group Charter, Specification Requirements, and IDPF member presentations on OPS, OPF & OCF.
Document Output Procedure
The OPS/OPF 2.0 documents are currently informational documents. All public comments made on the specification will be considered by the Working Group and, if appropriate, edits to the working drafts will be made. The Working Group expects to submit a final draft specification to the IDPF official output process in Q1 2007.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 2:06 PM | TrackBack
Your Next CMO Will Wear a Pocket Protector
Marketing Executive (CMO) Trends for 2007
"Year after year weve seen a 50 percent increase in marketing positions that require quantitative and research expertise. The most highly sought-after marketing professionals today started in one of the heavy mathematical disciplines, like engineering or finance, and moved into marketing later in their career."
Posted by Bill Trippe at 1:50 PM | TrackBack
December 25, 2006
Dad, the Cook
I am not much of a cook, but every Christmas morning I make pancakes for the family. A few years ago, my friend David Guenette and I got to spend a few days in San Francisco together. David really knows the city, and I saw more of San Francisco in those few days than I had in the six first trips I had made there. One of the places he introduced me to was Sears Fine Food in Union Square, and their, "Sears’ World Famous 18 Swedish Pancake" breakfast. I loved the pancakes, I bought the batter, and now every Christmas we have a little taste of San Francisco here in Melrose.
Merry Christmas, David!
Posted by Bill Trippe at 11:04 AM
Merry Christmas
Merry Christmas, to friends near and far!
Posted by Bill Trippe at 11:00 AM | TrackBack
December 24, 2006
Relational database integration with RDF/OWL
Bob DuCharme, one of the smartest guys in the business, reports that his XML 2006 paper is done and available. You can download the paper here and the PowerPoint slides here.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 11:43 AM | Comments (1)
December 22, 2006
Driving Through
Here is the latest installment in the American Life in Poetry series.
American Life in Poetry: Column 91
BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006
How many of us, when passing through some small town, have felt that it seemed familiar though we've never been there before. And of course it seems familiar because much of the course of life is pretty much the same wherever we go, right down to the up-and-down fortunes of the football team and the unanswered love letters. Here's a poem by Mark Vinz.
Driving Through
This could be the town you're from,
marked only by what it's near.
The gas station man speaks of weather
and the high school football team
just as you knew he would--
kind to strangers, happy to live here.
Tell yourself it doesn't matter now,
you're only driving through.
Past the sagging, empty porches
locked up tight to travelers' stares,
toward the great dark of the fields,
your headlights startle a flock of
old love letters--still undelivered,
enroute for years.
Reprinted from "Red River Blues," published by College of the Mainland, Texas City, TX, 1977, by permission of the author. Copyright (c) 1977 by Mark Vinz, whose most recent book is "Long Distance," Midwestern Writers Publishing House, 2005. This weekly column is supported by The Poetry Foundation, The Library of Congress, and the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. This column does not accept unsolicited poetry.
******************************
American Life in Poetry provides newspapers and online publications with a free weekly column featuring contemporary American poems. The sole mission of this project is to promote poetry: American Life in Poetry seeks to create a vigorous presence for poetry in our culture. There are no costs for reprinting the columns; we do require that you register your publication here and that the text of the column be reproduced without alteration.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 4:10 PM | TrackBack
December 19, 2006
SVG is Dead; Long Live SVG?
Every time I decide SVG has lost all of its traction, I read something like this that makes me at least consider that SVG still has legs.
From the article:
The NeuART II software works from these CDs, checking copyright and also making sure that the user has a valid copy of Adobe illustrator, and then using a JavaScript program converting the files into a standard vector graphic (SVG) format. The SVG images are stored on the users system and organized using the software, which works on Linux, Windows and Macintosh operating system computers.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 3:58 PM | Comments (3)
Call for Papers
Frank Gilbane notes that it is hard to believe, but the deadlines for speaking proposals for Gilbane's April San Francisco and June Washington DC conferences are rapidly approaching. Proposal guidelines can be read here. You can send the proposals to Frank. Tony Byrne from CMS Watch is chairing the Washington DC conference again, so you can also send proposals for DC directly to Tony.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 3:18 PM | TrackBack
Interview: How Taunton Press Built ROI, Customer Loyalty With Video, Slideshow for Sub Site
The Taunton Press' magazines, such as Fine Cooking, Fine Woodworking and Fine Gardening, have had an online presence for a number of years, with articles of past issues archived and for sale. And, they have an online store with more than 500 SKUs.
But in the last few years, company execs realized they had "a large body of great content that our subscribers and customers will consume in a lot of different media," says Interactive Marketing Director Michelle Rutkowski.
One way to offer readers more value while increasing Taunton’s revenues would be to create online paid products -- sites that offered some free content but that required subscriptions to access the rest.
The company created such a site with FineWoodworking.com, which rolled out in November 2005. "We built a big model and projected where we thought we would be, and we're pleased that we're where we think we should be in terms of a business," Rutkowski says.
An interesting case study, and I played a part in the development of FineWoodworking.com, working with Really Strategies and the Taunton folks to develop the requirements, write the RFP, and help choose the vendor, Ektron.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 1:31 PM
Quote of the Day
I am a writer and therefore an explorer. My immediate tribe remains the tribe of explorers.
-- Wole Soyinka
Posted by Bill Trippe at 11:01 AM
Stumbling Upon
I mentioned having some fun with StumbleUpon. Then today I found a delightful site called WordPerhect. Check it out. The startup tips are a hoot.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 12:18 AM
December 17, 2006
Another Sign of Life for eBooks?
S&S news: Digital archive plans—and Claire Israel’s defense of DRM
Simon and Schuster plans to have 12,000+ books from its backlist digitized by the end of ‘07, according to Publishers’ Marketplace. Download sales tripled this year, and DearAuthor credibly believes that “competitive pricing” helped…
Posted by Bill Trippe at 9:04 PM | TrackBack
December 14, 2006
Drupal with Ad Serving and Web Analytics
A client is interested in adopting Drupal, but is simultaneously looking at Web analytics and ad serving software, mainly commercial packages. I would like to put together a snapshot of some Drupal sites that use different analytics and ad serving packages, including Drupal modules. Would anyone be willing to share what they are currently using? You can post here or email me. Thanks.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 11:11 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
IBM, Yahoo Partner on Free Enterprise Search for SMBs
This strikes me as an interesting challenge to Google appliance, and a nice way for Yahoo to penetrate the enterprise with a well-regarded partner.
The free search package allows small and midsize businesses to search corporate file servers and databases as well as the public Web.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 10:35 AM | TrackBack
December 11, 2006
More on Microsoft Book Search
Again, as I mentioned in another entry, I have not looked too closely at it yet, but Microsoft Book Search has nice behaviour in the basic interface, and the image in this page was clearly digitized with some care.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 9:45 PM | TrackBack
Borges Manuscripts Lost, Thought Stolen, Then Found
According to an article in the Boston Globe, two handwritten manuscripts by Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges owned by a Harvard Square bookstore were found after being lost and presumed stolen. Store owner John W. Wronoski found the manuscripts Monday afternoon, stuck behind a photograph "just by weird chance," he said. "I am inordinately relieved."
The manuscripts included that of a favorite story of mine, "Pierre Menard, Author of Don Quixote."
Posted by Bill Trippe at 8:36 PM | TrackBack
December 8, 2006
A Conversation with Jon Udell about his New Job
Goodness. Jon Udell is taking a position with Microsoft.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 9:24 AM
December 7, 2006
Microsoft Book Search
Microsoft has launched its book search product. My initial reaction is mixed, though I haven't spent much time with it yet. On the one hand, it doesn't seem to work in Firefox (get used to seeing the word "Loading..." if you try to launch it) and it is really slow to start, even in Internet Explorer 6 (I haven't tried it in Explorer 7 yet). On the other hand, the interface for browsing a found book is much more attractive than Google Book Search and the scanning, at a quick glance, seems to be of a signficantly better quality than that on Google Books. Of course, beating Google Books on scanning quality is not exactly difficult.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 8:50 PM
Download a Good Book Lately?
Late in the last millennium I went to grad school, getting my MA in Publishing and Writing from Emerson College. Recently, a writer from the alumni office, Christopher Hennessey, interviewed me about the eBook business, and he ended up writing an excellent article. You can download a PDF of the entire magazine here (about 2.7 MB). I also took the liberty of creating a PDF with just the article itself, which is about 500K.
A hat tip to Christopher for writing an excellent survey of the value of eBooks to date.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 5:48 PM | TrackBack
Get Your Multimedia House in Order
“Do opportunities exist to call for more digital offerings, and are you prepared to spend wisely toward them? Looking back five years or so, some publishers put the cart before the horse, burning holes in their pockets for expansive digital publishing before the market was really clear.
“For instance, publishers that think they would benefit most from e-books need to know that a market exists, but it is not as big [as they might think] and there are plenty of third-parties who could easily handle production and hosting. On the other hand, medical and legal publishers with enormous electronic potential absolutely need to make a commitment to a digital presence and they need to adjust staff to handle it."
Sound like good advice? I hope it is. I gave it.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 3:30 PM | TrackBack
December 2, 2006
The Google Book "Nightmare"
Also from if:book, count Brewster Kahle among the people who are not fans of Google Books.
"Pretty much Google is trying to set themselves up as the only place to get to these materials; the only library; the only access. The idea of having only one company control the library of human knowledge is a nightmare.".
Posted by Bill Trippe at 6:15 PM
The State Of Magazine Websites
PaidContent.org points to some research, The State Of Magazine Websites.
(via Buzzmachine) The Bivings Group, which earlier this year did a comprehensive review of newspaper websites, has done it again with magazine websites: it researched the websites of the top 50 most circulated magazines in the U.S. and evaluated them.
Among the findings:
-- RSS feeds: 48 per cent of magazine websites.
-- Message boards/forums: 46 per cent
-- 38 per cent require registration to view all of the site’s content.
-- 38 per cent of the magazines offer at least one reporter blog.
-- Video is an offering on 34 per cent of websites.
-- Just 14 per cent of websites use podcasts and bookmarking; eight percent allow comments on articles; and six per cent use tags.
I want to know about the 52% of websites who have not implemeneted RSS yet. Hello, McFly!
Posted by Bill Trippe at 3:03 PM
Just What is a "Publication"?
From if:book, on today's publications
On November 27 the Pulitzer Prize Board announced that "newspapers may now submit a full array of online material-such as databases, interactive graphics, and streaming video-in nearly all of its journalism categories
Posted by Bill Trippe at 2:14 PM | TrackBack
A Chapter for the Ladies
The joys of Project Gutenberg: baseball, as viewed in 1888.
On account of the associations by which a professional game of base-ball was supposed to be surrounded, it was for a long time thought not a proper sport for the patronage of ladies. Gradually, however, this illusion has been dispelled, until now at every principal contest they are found present in large numbers. One game is generally enough to interest the novice; she had expected to find it so difficult to understand and she soon discovers that she knows all about it; she is able to criticize plays and even find fault with the umpire; she is surprised and flattered by the wonderful grasp of her own understanding, and she begins to like the game. As with everything else that she likes at all, she likes it with all her might, and it is only a question of a few more games till she becomes an enthusiast. It is a fact that the sport has no more ardent admirers than are to be found among its lady attendants throughout the country.
