Is it Comeback Time for Movable Type?

Movable Type celebrated its 11th birthday on October 8. But with the milestone came a challenge: how to regain its standing in North America, a position that has declined since 2010, when the Web CMS and web publishing software provider moved to Japan following acquisition by Six Apart.  

While Movable Type continued to provide the backend for some substantial websites, questions on the future of the platform persisted in North America. The community that remained found themselves overwhelmed with demands for support and understaffed to keep up with the demand. 

While the community struggled in North America, development work continued in Japan, but due to language barriers, the advancements literally and figuratively did not translate overseas. Following the release of Movable Type 5.2 in September, the release of 42 new plugins to the North American market at a community meeting on October 18, a promise to follow up with more solutions from the Japanese community and some other interesting developments, Movable Type looks to be taking the first steps towards what will be a challenging comeback.

The Plugins

The plugins range from complex to simple solutions, all of which work towards a goal of making the platform more user friendly. They include solutions built by 601am and After6 Services, two U.S. based companies, as well as 37 from the Japanese MT developer community.

Both Aaron Bailey, 601AM principal and Dave Aiello, CEO of After6 Services were on hand to demonstrate their plugins. Aaron Bailey presented first, introducing the Navigation plugin, which allows the technically challenged to edit navigation within a WYSIWYG interface, removing the need to enter such changes directly into the templates. This will be a boon for sites that update their content regularly, but don't have the dedicated developers to keep up with changes. 

A CloudAssets plugin enables users to push files to both Rackspace and AWS environments, creating separate urls for local and cloud assets.   

The SuperAssets trio of plugins by After6 allow simple and seamless integration of YouTube, Flickr and SoundCloud assets into Movable Type posts. Instead of needing to embed in the source code, the assets fall under the rubric of the MT asset manager, allowing a clear view of all media assets in one place. 

Next Steps

Following the presentation of the After6 plugins, Dave Aiello made an impassioned call to action to the North American Movable Type community. Saying that it was time to change the way the community worked, he challenged the four North American development firms present to form a consortium of sorts, a Movable Type partner community to share resources and common knowledge to speed the creation of solutions and to avoid recreating work.

If this plan goes through, it could spell a boon to the development community and to Movable Type end users, in speeding solutions to the public and in solving problems with the combined knowledge and experience of the group.

Takeshi Osanai, product manager of Movable Type, had earlier in the day shared the following goals:

• English translations of all available Japanese plugins
• English translation of Japanese documents relating to MT
• A renovated plugin directory
• Share knowledge on github wiki with English speaking MT community.

Robert Minton, vice president of sales and marketing in North America, is tasked with seeing these goals come to fruition. Hired this past June, Minton knows the challenges ahead and is aware of mistakes made in the past. He is also aware of the level of competition that exists in today's market as opposed to when Movable Type was the only game in town. Minton acknowledged that design and customer service are two areas where Movable Type needs to step up its game in North America.  

Will all of this add up to Movable Type regaining market share in North America? Only time will tell for sure, but if the company and the community deliver on all of the plans they have for the future, it might just have a chance.

 

 

Source : cmswire[dot]com

Apple iPad Mini vs. Microsoft Surface, Let Battle Commence

 San Jose is the place to be, as Apple confirms the 23 October launch event for the iPad Mini, setting it up for a battle royale with Microsoft's new Surface tablets. 

Contenders, Ready…

Okay, these two devices aren't direct competitors, however by launching around the same time, it gives the watching world a grandstand view of a real Microsoft vs. Apple battle, something we haven't really seen before since the early and recent-era PC days.  

Microsoft unveiled the pricing of its Surface tablets earlier, which pitches it directly against the full-size iPad range, with the addition of its unique cover/keyboard. While the iPad Mini is designed to compete more with the Kindle Fires and Nexus tablets of this world, its premium quality and iOS experience will make for interesting comparisons from users. 

With Apple having confirmed the news of a 23 October event, which will show off the new Mini iPad the new iTunes, a new Retina MacBook, perhaps new Mac Minis and maybe some other goodies, it might be quite a show.

But with all this news leaking out well in advance, Apple really needs to ditch the "look at our magic" presentations and do something new and different. A more hard-hitting, consumer focused event with content subscriptions to broaden the ageing iTunes approach will be greatly appreciated. 

In the Eye of the Consumer

So, with the holiday season looming, buyers will have a wider choice of tablets than ever before. Apple, Android makers and Microsoft will all be promoting their devices heavily. Certainly, Apple's market dominance will be watered down come next year, but Apple will be happy maintaining its margins and the sense of "best-of-breed", regardless of how true (or not) that perception is. 

Microsoft will be looking to set a decent base on which to grow the Windows 8 (and Windows RT) base. But, it risks user confusion and fragmentation from its multi-OS approach, while Android makers will be looking to pick up on the massive Android smartphone user base. 

The iPad Mini really could be the first Apple device in some time that fails to impress, as it launches into such a crowded, vibrant market. While Surface tablets may lack the vibrancy of the iOS ecosystem, if it takes off in numbers, that advantage could soon be wiped out. So, there is much to play for from all parties and it will be the mis-steps and mistakes that are more likely to be remembered than the successes. 

 

 

Source : cmswire[dot]com

Forrester Business Process & Architecture Forum Focuses on Digital Disruption #ForrForum

At its 2012 Business Process & Architecture Forum, which will be held October 18-19 in Orlando, FL, Forrester Research is focusing squarely on effectively managing digital disruption in the enterprise. In an interview with CMSWire, Forrester Research Director Steve Powers explained the philosophy on digital disruption attendees can expect to learn about.

Customer Experience Evolution Creates Disruption

“We’re seeing the whole idea of customer experience changing very quickly,” said Powers. “There is a customer inflection point where the customer will either continue to work with you or try someone else. Customer experience is a huge factor in influencing the outcome of that inflection point.”

Powers said the rapid evolution of multichannel and cross-channel customer interaction, as well as increased expectations for personalized service, present a serious technological challenge. “Traditional IT teams can’t keep up,” he said.

Agile Response Combats Disruption

As a result, Powers said marketing teams often outsource or subsource their technology needs.

“What do you, as an IT department, have to do to get marketing to work with you and not around you?” he asked.

The answer, according to Powers, is a dismantling of the traditional silos separating IT and marketing. He gave the example of one Forrester client who embedded the IT and marketing departments into a “digital experience group." This got IT involved in developing marketing tools during the initial design process, instead of serving as a “black box” at the end of the project. He also mentioned that some companies maintain a traditional IT department but divide it into a front office group responsible for designing and delivering customer experience, and a back office group responsible for functions such as ERP and HR.

Powers also advised companies to consider a best-of-breed approach when implementing customer experience technologies — but cautioned against using too many different point solutions. “No one vendor can provide all the right components,” he said. “You should use solution sets from different vendors and see how to tie them together.”

For example, Powers said an organization might use marketing automation and testing/optimization tools from one vendor and then integrate them with e-commerce and analytics tools from another.

Key Sessions on 'Disrupting' Disruption

Several key sessions during the Forrester conference will focus specifically on how companies can disrupt disruption, so to speak, by using technology and business process to turn digital customer experience trends to their advantage. They include:

• Thursday, Oct. 18, 8:45-9:15 AM - The Disruptor's Handbook: How To Make The Most Of Digital Disruption: This keynote from James L. McQuivey, Ph.D., Vice President, Principal Analyst, Forrester Research will help attendees understand the transformative effect of digitally empowered customers, assess their company's readiness for digital disruption internally and externally, and adopt the skills and policies that accelerate their organization's embrace of digital disruption.
• Thursday, Oct. 18, 11:25 AM - 12:10 PM - Implementing The Different In The Age of Digital Disruption: Craig Le Clair, Vice President, Principal Analyst, Forrester Research will explain how to make the shift from analog to digital business processes and use mobile as a catalyst for driving digital process transformation.
• Thursday, Oct. 18, 4:05 PM - 04:35 PM - Don’t Let Digital Disruption Cause Information Corruption: Michele Goetz, Senior Analyst, Forrester Research will discuss a framework for data quality to ensure that customers can rely on the information they use on any device from laptops to mobile.
• Friday, Oct. 19, 1:15 – 1:45 PM – Innovating for Disruption: Nigel Fenwick, Vice President, Principal Analyst, Forrester Research will explain how business architecture can help integrate innovation into existing planning processes.

 

 

Source : cmswire[dot]com

Apple Confirm iPhone 5 Event for 12 September

 The Cupertino-based company has sent out the invites for next week's launch event for the iPhone 5. With the iPad Mini likely shifted to October, expect Apple to focus strongly on the new hardware and software features as it struggles to offer differentiation in an increasingly level playing field of superphones. 

What's in a Name?

The Apple invite offers little in the way of hints to dig for, with a great big shadowy "5" suggesting the device will actually be called iPhone 5 rather than any of the other suggested monikers. The phone's design and iOS 6 features have been discussed to death, with most of the physical features leaked as prototype parts or actual components. 

 

Hitting New Heights?

As usual, there will be a massive wave of hype as the product is shown off in full form for the first time. Even with the new design, there are so many varied devices with screen resolutions, mega-cameras, novel materials and built-in features, that Apple could struggle to stand out from the crowd.

This time it will be the new software features that really need to shine, to help keep up Apple's momentum. After the relatively niche appeal of Siri, what can Apple add this time beyond the shown-in-beta maps and other tweaks? 

The new iPhone should be available for pre-order straight after the event (and after the Apple store has recovered from the inevitable surge and crash). it is likely to go onsale around the 21 September, but with so many users on long term contracts or having migrated to other devices, the days of huge queues flooding stores (outside China) are likely to be over.

 

 

Source : cmswire[dot]com