It is not often that I use this site to talk about non-CMS or non-Tech, but I have to get this off my chest. Seeing four inces of snow on the ground in April does not make those that love summer happy. We had four inches of snow here, but other parts of South Dakota received more than a foot of snow. In other words, I can't complain too much, but I still hold the right to complain a little! The good news is that most of the snow has melted with only a few snow drifts still left in the yard.

Seeing this much snow during the last weeks of April isn't unheard of in the norhtern plains, but it doesn't happen too often. I think the last time I saw this much snow in April was in 2004. For the meteorologists at heart, the National Weather Service in Sioux Falls has a good explanation for show these type of winter weather storms develop in April.

This has been a very cold week in the Dakotas. Sunday morning the temperature dropped to around -14 degrees Fahrenheit (that's around -26 degrees Celsius). These are real temperatures and not wind chill.

Needless to say, I am not spending a whole lot of time outside this month. However, these cold temperatures are very geek friendly. I am spending my time at the computer and getting some very needed things done.

Some of the items I have been working on that may be of interest to you:

1. I am starting to make some decisions on where I want to take CMS Report from here. I'm considering to go more "professional" with the site. The changes I would like to make may involve some willingness on my part to partner with someone who has similar interests and more experience in these matters.

MySiouxFalls.com is a new and local online news source for the city where I currently reside, Sioux Falls, South Dakota.  At first, I was not all that excited about the site and had not plan on mentioning the MySiouxFalls.com site here at CMS Report.  We've all seen these sites before, right?  In fact, I would say that many of the visitors to this blog likely have designed or participated in building sites similar to MySiouxFalls.com.  That's not to say that there are not some things from a content management perspective worth mentioning.
 

Open source fans likely would have interest in knowing that the site runs Joomla! for it's content management system.  Weather buffs who border on the geeky side also might find interest that much of the site's weather graphics are provide by HAMweather.  HAMweather provides weather-related products and services (some of it for free) and in my opinion produces some of the best "custom" graphics derived from the National Weather Service's NDFD.  While the site's software has caught my attention, for a change it is something else that has caught my attention.  After visiting the site a few times and a chain of events, I suddenly realized that sites such as MySiouxFalls, NowPublic, and The Register are slowly changing my habits as a news reader.

This excerpt reminds me of long debates I had in my meteorology days over which is sunnier, "partly cloudy" or "partly sunny"?  I like Movable Type's answer to the long standing IT question...can just a blog be a full CMS?

There are often debates about this sort of thing — if you’re using a tool like Movable Type, which is platform designed for blogging, but it’s being used as a general content management system, is the output still a blog? Our answer: Who cares?

Oh and answer I always gave to the partly cloudy/partly sunny question?  I always replied that the terms meant the same thing.  About half of my colleagues would agree with me...the rest would continue to argue with me after lunch.

A post by Nick Lewis, Drupal and XML: Looking Forward, caught my attention. In his post he discusses work on developing the CAP XML format (Common Alerting Protocol).

In preparation for my /Nick Lewis/ trip to Washington D.C. next month, I’ve begun to develop a module that integrates the CAP XML format (Common Alerting Protocol) with drupal’s node, location, google map, category, and CCK modules.

Put plainly, the CAP format seeks:

“[to standardize] the content of alerts and notifications across all hazards, including law enforcement and public safety as well as natural hazards such as severe weather, fires, earthquakes, and tsunami. Systems using CAP have shown that a single authoritative and secure alert message can quickly launch Internet messages, news feeds, television text captions, highway sign messages, and synthesized voice over automated telephone calls or radio broadcasts.”

The United States' National Weather Service provides a listing of current watches, warnings, and advisories in CAP. While I've been curious about the CAP format, I've only used the RSS feeds from the NWS. I have not used the CAP format for two simple reasons:

• I currently don't have a clear understanding to the advantages of CAP over generic RSS feeds. Though if I cared to look into the format, I'm sure there are some advantages to the format for the purpose of emergency management.
• Until recently, there hasn't appeared to be much interest in the open source community to work with CAP.

A Drupal module providing the ability to parse information from CAP feeds would really be a huge benefit for those connected with emergency management.