December 2008

A couple years ago we decided to use MediaWiki for a wiki implementation at work.  Wikipedia uses MediaWiki for their wiki application so we felt it was the right choice for our needs.  One concern my team had was that MediaWiki didn't come with a rich text editor (no WYSIWYG).

While a number of us may be fine with using wikitext or HTML to edit our wiki pages, I believe the majority in any organization prefers to edit their pages with a friendly user interface similar to that found on their word processor. At the time, we tried a number of solutions but found neither the suggested TinyMCE or FCKeditor implementation integrated that well with mediaWiki.  So for our project we settled with wikEd, an editor that still required users to work with wiki syntax but surprising a very good tool for most users.

During a lunch conversation last week with Deane Barker of Gadgetopia and Blend Interactive, I mentioned my frustrations with MediaWiki not having available a good WYSIWYG solution.  Deane suggested that I look at a more recent implementation of MediaWiki plus FCKeditor. This project is being supported by the developers of FCKeditor themselves.

Andrew Conry-Murray has written a good article in InformationWeek about the integration of collaboration software with enterprise content management.  The article is titled, A New Approach To Collaboration And Enterprise Content Management. The article focuses specifically on Microsoft's Sharepoint and Alfresco's Share being utilized with or sometimes replacing the traditional ECM products.

 

ECM products like Documentum have come a long way from their origins moving certain content through specific business processes, such as loan origination or check processing. This is still their primary role, but ECM vendors are broadening their scope to help companies manage new content types and encourage collaboration. Where does that leave your choices?

 

Companies will always have a mishmash of content repositories to deal with, so it makes sense to build a software layer that can reach into all them to apply uniform policies

 

I have only one complaint about the article, the article is poorly titled.  The process and workflows being described are not a new approach for enterprises, but rather an ongoing approach for bringing collaboration tools into an enterprise's content management system.

Many of us had originally thought that bringing Enterprise 2.0 into our organizations would be as easy as installing software on the server.  What we're finding is that for many of our workers, collaboration of content within an organization sometimes requires signficant changes to our business culture.  New ideas and new approaches are always welcomed.  However if you really want to see true collaboration in the enterprise, it is not always new approaches that are needed but a recommitment to the Enterprise 2.0 projects you started months ago.

Earlier today, Matthew Mullenweg announced the official release of Wordpress 2.7.  This new version of WordPress is a dandy with significant improvements made to the WordPress administrative interface and dashboard.  The choices you now have to customizing our blogging workflow is almost endless.

While we could start reading off from the changelogs for all the new features in WordPress 2.7, It's probably just as easy to show you the video.

I know what most of you are thinking and let me address what is on your mind at this very moment. No, I'm not blinded with nerd goggles.  In fact, I'm currently writing this post from a Windows Vista PC while my wife in the next room is on her MacBook Pro.  Windows and OS X have earned their roles on the computer stage and I would be the last person to dismiss these great operating systems.  However, these days I'm finding that Linux has just as much of a right to this stage when debating the value of operating systems.  

Radiant, a Ruby on Rails based CMS, will soon be released under version 0.7. The new version is currently available as a release candidate. 

The most significant changes between Radiant 0.6.9 and 0.7 will include:

"The usability of a content management system is paramount. If authors and site owners can’t work out how to use the CMS, you’ve got nothing. The CMS can have all the functionality in the world, but usability trumps it all."

 - James Robertson, Practical ways to assess CMS usability, Column Two, November 25, 2008

I'm doing a little morning reading at some of my favorite Internet spots.  A couple of this morning's IT related posts that caught my attention:

Fatwire Content Server 7.5, a Web content management system (WCM), was released this week.  Fatwire's Content Server intends to deliver a compelling web experience by building, deploying, and managing large-scale and interactive web sites.  New features in CS 7.5 include:

• Site Preview: Allows business users to set up time-based versions of their website and preview what their site will look like on different future dates, including side by side preview of date-based versions. With this new tool, business users and marketers can create seasonal and time-based online campaigns with ease.

The developers of Gallery, an online photo-album organizer, have officially announced the start of Gallery 3.  I have to say they have a very aggressive release date for the release of version 3.0.

Ironic how the world can change so quickly.  Yesterday, the CIO of my organization began enforcing the use of anti-virus software on all of our Linux clients and servers.  Today, I read that Apple is telling its Mac users to purchase anti-virus software.  Something nasty is brewing out there.

Apple encourages the widespread use of multiple antivirus utilities so that virus programmers have more than one application to circumvent, thus making the whole virus writing process more difficult.