If any of your colleagues are less than 100 percent enthusiastic about your Web projects, here is how to light a fire under them: Share the latest findings of the Digital Future Project (PDF), conducted for the past seven years by the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Southern California. Start with this: [...]
Category Archives: Technologies for publications and Web content
Web Metrics Demystified (A Little)
September 22, 2008“Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.” If department store merchant John Wanamaker were alive today, he would find no shortage of firms wanting to sell him answers. The field of Web metrics (also called Web analytics) is exploding, as data analysts get better at [...]
Also posted in Framing content in print and on the Web Leave a comment
Why Is an Online Community Like a Barbecue?
September 8, 2008It’s not the flame wars. It’s because even the most rewarding discussion list, Web board, wiki, or other online community can take forever to start. Like soggy charcoal briquettes. For decades, I’ve been part of a world-wide community of professionals/developers who got our start in the pre-Internet days, when we used CONTACT, sophisticated collaboration software [...]
Also posted in Management of a publications enterprise 1 Comment
Don’t Call Us—We’ll E-Mail You
August 12, 2008Organizational life is full of outdated rituals, from office parties to annual performance reviews that do little to improve the quality of product, process, or personal experience. Technology can do away with many of them. For instance, an organization can do an online survey to find out how staff would really like to socialize. A [...]
Also posted in Industry trends, Management of a publications enterprise Leave a comment
Help a Reporter Out, and Everybody Wins…
August 4, 2008Taking their cues from wildly popular websites such as MySpace and Facebook, new services are using social networking for professional ends. Consider Help A Reporter Out, a service that connects journalists to potential sources. If you crave publicity for your publication or website—who doesn’t?—acting as a source is a great way to achieve wide exposure. [...]
Hey—Get Your Hands Off My Site
July 23, 2008“Plagiarism is a serious and growing problem on the Web. At any moment, anyone in the world can copy your online content and instantly paste it onto their own site. After making minor changes, they will claim your content as their own.” I freely admit that I copied the paragraph above from Copyscape, a website [...]
Also posted in Management of a publications enterprise Leave a comment
You Name It, a Blogger Is On It
July 21, 2008As an information junkie, I appreciate colleagues and friends sending me links to articles, Web sites, software, and events, that they think I’ll find interesting. And I reciprocate. I’m also a blog aficionado, subscribing when I see a source that looks valuable, relevant, or interesting. Many of your readers no doubt fit the same profile. [...]
Give Your Past a Future: Archive
July 14, 2008If you manage an ongoing publication or Web content operation, you’re probably overwhelmed with file build-up. Can’t you just hit “delete” from time to time? Not really. The government may require your organization to retain material for specified times—financial records, for instance—but even if it doesn’t, you may find yourself in litigation one day. Then, [...]
Conference Calls and Call Recording with Skype
July 12, 2008Relatively few offices have abandoned their phone lines in favor of Internet telephony, often called VOIP (Voice Over Internet Protocol). If you are in the majority not quite ready to cut the telephone cord, transferring some of your work onto the Internet may save you time and money. I use Skype, a free, downloadable program [...]
Also posted in Presentations and meeting coverage 1 Comment
Emergency Response in a Flash
July 7, 2008Remote access to one’s primary computer via services such as GoToMyPC is a powerful work tool, saving one the need to cope with unfamiliar system setup and applications. But GoToMyPC (and the free equivalents VNC, LogMeIn, and Windows Remote Desktop) require fast Internet connections for the local and remote system. They also require that the [...]