February 2010

Micropayments for Content

Rita McGrath at Harvard Business Review has written a blog post on why she hates micropayments.  Micropayments are financial transactions involving very small sums of money (see Wikipedia). For online publishing, a small fee would allow you to view the content for a certain period of time or for a certain number of articles.

Personally, I'm not sold on the concept of micropayments for content which is probably why I was lured to Ms. McGrath's article in the first place.

The idea has been around a long time — at least since the mid-to-late 90s — with both supporters and detractors weighing in. Millions have been lost by companies seeking to capitalize on streams of micropayments, almost all of which eventually crashed and burned. Myself, when confronted with a request to chip in 99 cents for a one-time glimpse at an article or $2.99 for a week's worth (as some of my local newspapers are doing) — well, I close that window and go away.

The author of the article discusses further the importance for any payment system adopted to consider "how the payment link of customers' consumption chains fits into their total experience". Micropayment systems have a tall order in that they need to be seamless, transparent, and achieve inevitability. Even grimmer for publishers, it's not only the micropayment experience that needs to be improved but also the non-micropayment systems too.

For the past few years, I've paid a yearly subscription to the Wall Street Journal for the print publication and the online subscription. With my yearly renewal coming up very soon, I've decided to discontinue my online subscription to the WSJ. Why would I do that? There are some very basic reasons to why I'm dropping WSJ.com. I rarely find myself reading the online content of the WSJ. I either already read the stories in the print version of the WSJ or I have found myself already familiar with the news story because I read a similar story posted elsewhere online. Stopping by the WSJ.com, unlike CNN or FoxNews, never became a daily ritual for me.

mojoPortal 2.3.3.9 Released

A new version of mojoPortal was released today, version 2.3.3.9. The most significant change for this release is the introduction by the developers for their support in using html templates generated by Artisteer to make skins for mojoPortal. Two new skins made with Artisteer templates are included in this release as well.

The new version of mojoPortal also includes additional changes:

The Gilbane Content Management Conference - San Francisco 2010

The Gilbane Group is gearing up quickly for another one of their conferences. The Gilbane Content Management Conference in San Francisco will be held May 18-20, 2010. This year's conference will cover a number of topics including Web technologies, content management, and collaboration tools.

Web, content, and collaboration technology have reached a new level of maturity. This is true in terms of technology, but more importantly, it is true in terms of what businesses expect to be able to do with these tools. Web and enterprise content management permeate every aspect of an organization. Public facing internet sites are the front door to an organizations' products and services, and where customers, partners and investors engage with the corporate brand and develop perceptions. Internal websites, whether in the form of intranets, blogs, wikis, or portals, provide knowledge workers increasingly efficient ways to collaborate and share knowledge. Customer and internal-facing applications share requirements that call for a number of enterprise content, publishing and infrastructure technologies, such as multi-lingual, social media, search, and integration software.

Gilbane San Francisco is organized into four tracks so that whether you are responsible for marketing, IT, a business unit, or an internal function, you will be able to easily navigate among the conference sessions. The four tracks include:

  • Customers & Engagement
  • Colleagues & Collaboration
  • Content Technology
  • Content Publishing

CMS Report is proud to be a media sponsor for Gilbane San Francisco 2010. If you plan on going to the conference, CMS Report has some good news that is going to save you some money. Our sponsorship of the conference entitles CMSReport.com readers to receive a special $200 discount to the conference. To receive the $200 discount, you'll need to use the code "cmsreport" when you're asked for it during the registration process.

The Gilbane Conference San Francisco 2010

ocPortal 4.3 released

ocPortal 4.3 was released this week. The new version of ocPortal introduces a number of "bug fixes, performance improvements, and usability improvements". However, ocPortal also introduces some new features to make upgrading to the new version more enticing.

The new features that have been implemented in ocPortal 4.3 include:

Mailbag: What makes Kentico CMS Different

Last week, I announced the addition of three CMSs to CMS Focus. CMS Focus is my top 30 list of content management systems that interest me the most. Because I limit the list to only 30 CMSs, there are obviously a good number of quality Web applications that are missing from this list. A CMS that arguably should be on the list is the Kentico CMS.

Kentico's PR Manager recently sent me an email to make his case for why Kentico should be included in the CMS Focus list. I likely will not be making any new changes to my top 30 list until June, however I will definitely consider Kentico the next time I update CMS Focus.


Hi Bryan,

I remember that Kentico CMS hasn't quite made it on your CMS Focus list.

Today, I would like to briefly comment on the criteria for selecting CMS on the list you published:
 
1. First, the application has to add something I haven't seen in a CMS before.

In case of a Kentico CMS it’s a set of its features that makes it unique. There are plenty of CMS that offers source code, hundreds that have multisite and multilingual support, dozens with open and well documented API, some that are SEO friendly, few that are fully rebrandable... And now will there any remain if you add 200+ web parts and 36 modules to cover the needs for building either Corporate Web Site, E-shop, Social Network or Intranet (=simply to allow your web site to grow in any direction)?  How many CMS vendors have 7 days bug fixing policy? Highly responsive support is something hard to prove, but please go ahead and do some “Mystery Mailing”, I’m sure that our support team won’t disappoint you (evaluators have right for 10 support tickets – so really please try this).

EPiServer, Umbraco, and Omeka added to CMS Report's CMS Focus

This week we added three Web applications to our CMS Focus top 30 list.  The CMSs and ECMs listed in CMS Focus are not necessarily the most popular in content management and are not meant to meet everyone's requirements for a CMS. Instead the content management systems that make up this top 30 are what I consider content management "game changers" or "attention getters". New to CMS Focus are the following CMS/ECM: EPiServer, Umbraco, and an unknown CMS called Omeka.

Looking for 3 fantastic content management systems

Since the early days of CMSReport.com, I have been providing a list of the top 30 Web applications that interest me the most. This list is called CMS Focus. If you take a close look at this list, you will find that I currently need three additional content management systems to complete the list of thirty. Which CMS/ECM would you recommend be placed on my list?