Microsoft Windows 8: How Bad Could it Be?

Anyone who has purchased or tested Microsoft's Windows 8 operating system can tell you the system is confusing. But just how poorly has Microsoft fared with its biggest Windows overhaul in nearly two decades? 

It depends. If you are talking about the tablet version with touch controls and a stylish look, then maybe not so bad. In fact, there may even be room for cautious optimism. However, (gulp) if you are talking about upgrading to a new version of the familiar feeling, productive, extremely popular Windows system, well, there's bad and there is utterly useless.

Windows 8 Not Making it to the Enterprise

Microsoft has made a calculation that it needs to be more invested in the consumer tech world. Of course, it has seen the popularity of the iPad, and perhaps its response was a bit heavy handed. Its Surface tablet is on sale now, but by next year, does anyone think the iPad will have not destroyed it in the marketplace?

You would think a Microsoft computer would run things many people run on their non tablet versions. You would be wrong. Yes there is a special Office version that runs on the Windows 8 RT system for tablets, but things like the Chrome browser, Adobe Reader and iTunes will not work. Only sanctioned Microsoft apps will run on Windows 8 RT.

For non tablet devices, the Windows 8 system is, as you may have heard, really two systems in one. The tile based layout that matches the tablet version is what appears on boot up. The more familiar desktop is underneath this layer, and there are some handy upgrades, but reviews are coming in from groups like Forrester and from prominent tech heads like Jakob Nielsen and David Pogue, and they aren't good. 

Dead on arrival, Forrester researcher David Johnson said in his blog about Win 8 in the enterprise. Only about 24% of enterprises surveyed said they were planning on upgrading, and even they had no specific plans yet.

There was much more fanfare over Windows 7 in 2009 than for Windows 8 in 2012.

Windows 8 just came out, and Win 7 is only about 4 years old, so those both no doubt play into many companies' lack of commitment. Four years from now, that could change, but Windows 8 will likely have the most impact on IT when it comes to people bringing their own tablets to work, Johnson said.

Weak on Tablets, Terrible on PC's

Microsoft has made a misguided effort with Windows 8, usability expert Jakob Nielsen said in his review. Menus are too scattered, tools are confusing, and the biggest mistake is that the idea of Windows is now dead. Windows, being the concept of many views into the system. Microsoft has discontinued this feature, and Win 8 will only allow one window open at a time. Bad for power users, Nielsen said. 

For example, it forces people to remember which things they were searching for just before they launched a new window to search for something else, and that means added complexity resulting in memory overload, Nielsen said. On the tablet side, swiping gestures did not appear to be intuitive at all owing to the fact those swipes will do different things depending on where the touch originated.

In Pogue's review for the New York Times, he points out the seemingly nonsensical layout of the browser search bar in the tile view and in the desktop view. In the tile view, the search bar is at the bottom, and in the desktop view, it's at the top. The learning curve for Windows 8 looks a bit like Mt. Everest, Pogue said.

In software releases, as in mountain climbing, many steps have to be taken. Microsoft has taken the first step on its journey of creating one OS for pc's, smartphones and tablets with Windows 8. They didn't get it right, but the vision is certainly there. Future releases can only get better from here, and by the time the next one comes out, perhaps more people will be ready to upgrade, and by virtue of necessity, perhaps willing to accept a few mistakes along the way. 

 

 

Source : cmswire[dot]com

Facebook Tests Thread Commenting; Likes Play a Key Role

Facebook is experimenting with a new comment structure. The social network is testing a threading comment system that aims to make comments more conversational.

Within the last year, Facebook has gone through a string of minor updates, including the change from Walls to Timeline and allowing users to edit their comments.

It's All About the Conversation 

This week, Facebook has introduced a possible update to their commenting system. The company has started a testing a thread-based comment system because they've noticed that sometimes comments tend to get buried if a lot of people are replying to a single thread.

With this new feature, users will still be able to reply to an initial post, but will also be able to reply to a particular comment. All of the comment replies will be curated together, making the thread easier to navigate so users won't overlook important comments and can also ignore those they don't find relevant. 

This change isn't only beneficial to individual users, but businesses as well. Posts made by companies about their products or services may receive hundreds of comments and likes a day. With this new feature they’ll be able to sort through what their fans are saying to make sure they have addressed all of their costumers concerns. As for customers, they’ll be able to easily find comments that are similar to what they wanted to say and either comment or like it — without having to weave through 100 comments or risk posting the same information twice.

To Like or Not to Like

Facebook’s like button, which was introduced in 2009, is also playing a pivotal role in this new comment system. Comments with the most likes will automatically be rotated toward the top of the comment section. This will allow the most popular comments to be the focus and allow users to highlight the most relevant or interesting replies.

It’s unknown at this time if Facebook plans to stretch this new update beyond its trial users and offer it to the entire network.

Being Compatible with Facebook

Facebook aren't the only ones that have been rolling out updates that aim to improve customer experience within its social network.

Earlier this month, HootSuite added six new Facebook related features for its users, including demographic targeting. While in October, Dropbox integrated more with the Facebook social network by adding a file sharing button in groups.

 

 

Source : cmswire[dot]com

Bing Ads Introduces Location Targeting For Advertisers

Bing Ads, the advertising platform from the Yahoo! Bing Network, has announced that they've integrated location targeting within their advertising system. With this update, advertisers will be able to improve on how well they and their ads can connect with their current and potential customers.

Similar to Google’s AdWords, this new location targeting tool enables users to choose to whom and where they want their ads to be appear. By being able to choose where an ad is displayed, advertisers can target customers in either a local worldwide capacity based on their location or the websites they’re visiting.

How does Bing Ads Location Targeting Tool work?

User first have to click on their location options setting, where there are basic and advance options to choose from. With basic options, users choose which places they don’t want to include as a target location. With the Advanced Targeting options, they can customize how their ads are displayed.  

• The first advanced option allows users to direct their ads to “people in, searching for, or viewing pages about your target location.” This option will direct ads to users who are either in an advertisers target location or who have mentioned the location in a search. For example, if someone’s search included Los Angeles then ads for the city would appear to that person, even if they weren't in Los Angeles area.
• The second option is to “to show ads to people in your targeted location.” This option will only show ads to people within the advertisers targeted location, so even if they are located in Toronto and search Washington, they won’t see ads related to Washington, only those that are related to Toronto.

Bing as a Formative Search Engine and Advertising Tool

The Bing network has gone through a variety of updates in recent months to make the system more efficient.

Bing Ads, which was originally called Microsoft AdCenter was renamed in September and at that time the company also updated their web interface and improved ad rotation controls.

Over the summer they started to improve how their search functions work. In July, their search engine system was updated to include paid ads, while in August, the company added Quora to their search engine to help results be more relevant and topical.

More recently, BingAds updated the reporting tool to help users be more efficient and productive, while making both recent and archived information easier to find.

 

 

Source : cmswire[dot]com

Eloqua Introduces AdFocus to Manage Display Ad Targeting

This morning, Eloqua announced AdFocus — a tool that allows marketers to manage their display ad targeting within Eloqua's marketing automation system. The release of AdFocus gives marketers a way to monitor and manage their paid marketing alongside other marketing efforts such as email and affiliate marketing.

The ability to monitor display ad targeting within Eloqua's marketing automation system is useful since display ads are a growing area of focus for business-to-business (B2B) companies. According to a recent Forrester report, this paid media is expected to make up 36 percent of all interactive media purchases by 2016.

As the focus on display ads grows, it will be important to narrowly target personalized display ad content to a niche target audience. And the using the data kept in a marketing automation system to personalize ads can help marketers pinpoint their target audience.

AdFocus Helps Create More Personalized Display Ads

Most display ads fail to reach their intended audience. A recent study by DemandBase, a personalization and targeting platform, estimates that 67 percent of all display ads are seen by the wrong audience. AdFocus is designed to help marketers reach their audience more effectively by using prospect data, such as their current lead score, already stored in the marketing automation system. Eloqua's AdFocus can use this information to serve up a personalized ad for the intended audience via DemandBase.

For instance, AdFocus allows marketers to display certain ads solely to prospects that are in the lead nurturing phase. For these individuals, marketers can display an ad with a call to action that is educational in nature and send them to an informational page rather than a sales page. Meanwhile, marketers can target existing customers with ads with an upsell offer rather than asking them to purchase a product they already own.

Screenshot of Eloqua AdFocus display ad rules.

AdFocus also allows marketers to directly display personal information about prospects (e.g. the Account Manager that operates their account) directly within an ad. This kind of individualized approach to display ad targeting provides a more direct approach to speaking to any prospect which, Eloqua believes, improves the success of lead generation efforts.

A final feature of AdFocus is that it allows marketers to automate their display ad targeting efforts. Traditionally, marketers have to go out and research websites and industry publications they'd like to use for their display ad targeting and then manually target those publications. DemandBase can automate this process by analyzing and selecting which websites and publications are the best fit for the prospect profile marketer wants to target. After that, marketers can use AdFocus to immediately start displaying ads based on the defined rules for the ad.

AdFocus Helps Compare Marketing Efforts in a Single System

By logging all of this information in a single system, marketers will be able to compare and contrast the return on investment of their marketing efforts side-by-side. With comparisons of earned, owned and paid marketing efforts in a single system, marketers can get a better grasp on what works for them and how their earned and owned efforts can work in conjunction with paid marketing efforts like display ads.

 

 

Source : cmswire[dot]com

Bing Ads Report Updates Ease Online Advertising Processes

Bing has updated the reporting capabilities for Bing Ads hoping to make both the reporting tool and the overall Bing Ads system easier to use and therefore, make users more productive.

Bing Ads, which was originally called Microsoft's adCentre, is a system within the Yahoo! Bing network that helps advertisers and marketers with their digital marketing campaigns. During the name change improvements to the system included a new web interface and improved ad rotation controls.  

Better Ad Reports

The updated Bing Ads reporting feature was initially launched in late October as a test. It allowed users to choose whether or not they wanted to test the new version. At that time, Bing said they wanted to not only get feedback on the new product, but increase how quickly users could move from one campaign to another.  

Now that the feature is a permanent part of the Bing Ads, some of the updates include:

• Reports are organized through a streamline navigation, which enables users to work on and run multiple reports at one time.
• Users can not only search for reports from a few days or a week ago, but also for reports that are up to 366 days old.
• Bing has updated how the date range works, so when a user switches from one project to another the date range will appear the same from the first report to the second.
• With the Reports View tool, certain reporting reporting features such as the time and date perimeters don’t have to be manually set, as they will automatically be included in a campaign project.

A Year of Bing Updates

As was mentioned, earlier this year Microsoft changed the name of Microsoft's adCenter to Bing Ads, but that's not the only update to the Bing system.

A few months ago, Bing announced that they’d be improving their search engine by adding paid search ads, which are similar to the ads that Google runs on its search results pages. Around this time, Bing also become more connected to social media platforms by adding a sidebar. The sidebar allows users to connect other accounts, such as Facebook and Windows Live to Bing.

In August, Bing updated their Maps tool and added Quora to their search engine. By updating their Spa Spatial Data Services (SDS) in Bing Maps, Bing removed features that were slowing the system down, such as the legacy tools. In integrating Quora, a question and answer forum, with the Bing search engine the company made sure that search results are more relevant to what a user initially searched.

 

 

Source : cmswire[dot]com

Box Unveils New Mobile App for Windows 8

Microsoft isn't the only company making an announcement surrounding the newest version their Windows Operating System. Box has also announced that they have designed a new version of their file managing app — specifically for Windows 8.

More Than a File Manager

Earlier this year, Box announced a new app for the Windows Phone, but with the launch of Windows 8 they are expanding on what their product can offer Windows users.

The new Box app was announced in conjunction with the launch of Windows 8 today, while Simon Tan, Box’s Product Manager of Mobile elaborated on the details in a blog post. Tan confirmed that the new Box Windows app would have all the features of its predecessors, such as being able to manage individual files and folders, adding collaborators by email and working with colleagues through document collaboration.

The Windows 8 version of the app will include a variety of features to enhance the user experience. They include:

• A Semantic Zoom feature allows users to avoid using the ‘pitch to zoom’ technique, as they can see all of their files and folders with an easy to read summary, where they can pick a file by letter, date or size.
• Files can be easily managed with either a sibling folder tree tool or hierarchy drop down tool.

• Files and folders as links can be shared via a Windows 8 Share charm.
• Box is part of a cloud file system, which allows users to not only create, upload and download files into other sources, but also is a ‘file source and file target.” As a source and target, information or files from other apps can be stored or opened in Box.
• Not only can files be edited within Box, but any changes made outside of the app to a file will automatically be saved to the Box version when it's opened with the app.
• Box can be linked with Live Tiles,so that any updates to the Box system are seen on the start screen, while individual file and folders can be pinned to tiles.
• Box for Windows 8 is currently available in English, French, Italian, German, Spanish, Dutch, Portuguese, Russian and Chinese. Other languages will follow when the app is updated.

Security Features

The security features available for Windows 8’s version of Box are similar to those available to mobile users; they include SSO login support and a passcode lock.

 

 

Source : cmswire[dot]com

My Other DAM is a Self-Service Intranet Portal

Running a digital asset management system without a self-service DAM intranet portal is like buying gas in Oregon — the “drivers” (end users) must rely on an “attendant” (a person in charge of managing digital assets) just to get to work.

It’s illegal to pump your own gas in the US State of Oregon. Anytime you take a pit stop in southern Core Cascadia you must wait for an attendant to come over, grab your cash or plastic, and start pumping. You then wait again for the attendant to come back over, remove the nozzle, and hand you a receipt. God forbid the tank unexpectedly stops pumping mid-refuel. It’s a nice regional perk on a cold and wet Portland day but infuriating when you’re in a hurry.   

Why don’t they just let everyone pump their own gas like the other 48 sane states? (New Jersey has similar laws.) A big reason is security. Back when this legislation passed, there were concerns about equipment safety and so it was decreed that only ordained gas dispensing professionals would be allowed to operate the pumps.

Controlling the Flow

The same concern is also true for the security of your DAM. You don’t want anyone helping themselves to whatever images and videos they find and then blowing themselves or the company up. Someone might pump a high-res TIFF file into their screen-res PowerPoint presentation, similar to putting gasoline into a diesel engine — the thing just isn’t going to run right. Another security concern is someone using something they shouldn’t, perhaps something not properly licensed or released or just plain embarrassing (like putting curb feelers on an Audi R8).

While permissions in DAM provide some security, what works best is an interface designed specifically for the common DAM motorist. Something that is easy to use, provides relevant search options, and connects the end-user and the DAM collection. Most importantly, it should allow users to find what they need on their own without relying on someone else.

Getting Around the Gatekeepers

Let’s take a look at the other role in this analogy: the gas station attendant. They’re pretty busy with other customers, and would rather be doing other things like being inside their warm booth or smoking cigarettes (30 feet away of course).

People in charge of managing digital asset management collections feel the same way. The DAM manager would rather be working on something besides being an asset concierge. Instead, as a gatekeeper they become a bottleneck and are frequently interrupted with requests for assets. As one DAM attendant recently bemoaned, “They need my brain to find anything!”

So what does this DAM intranet thing do? It helps the motorists get to work and helps the attendants work more efficiently while maintaining their sanity (or what’s left of it). A self-service DAM intranet portal usually offers one or more of the following functions:

• A simple user interface, compared to the expert interface of the main DAM application 
• Easily customizable search interfaces that display relevant options, as opposed to all search options
• The ability to pre-filter search results based on metadata rules. For example, only publish assets tagged with the keyword “approved”
• Options for downloading assets in alternative formats. For example, links for downloading JPEGs for PowerPoint and TIFFs for print
• Digital rights management and watermarking capabilities.

As a native Oregonian, it was easy for me to figure out how to pump my own gas when I first traveled out of state. The pump interface was easy enough, I didn’t spill any gas and I didn’t blow myself up. If you’re currently exploring or using DAM, I encourage you to travel outside your state and consider where a self-service DAM intranet can take you.

Title image courtesy of RetroClipArt (Shutterstock)

Editor's Note: Ed knows his DAM. Want to read more?

— Digital Asset Management Trends

About the Author

In his current position at Extensis, Edward Smith is the in-house expert for all things digital asset management related and contributor to the DAM Learning Center.

 

 

Source : cmswire[dot]com

Wrike Debuts Live, Project Management Tool with Real-Time Collaborative Text Editor, Email Sync

Project management system Wrike has debuted a new collaborative editing platform called Wrike Live. The new platform offers real-time shared editing of documents and tasks to keep teams on task and in the loop, so to speak. Here's what you need to know.

Modern Tools for Teams Large + Small

Online collaboration tools are key to a business's success, and one of the best features of Wrike Live is how well it syncs up with email. Wrike Live can turn emails into project timelines (illustrated in a Gantt chart format). Email a task to someone and cc it to wrike@wrike.com — the task will automatically be added to the project plan and displayed in chart format. It's a nice visualization that is easy to understand and process.

Wrike's Dynamic Timeline feature is a handy tool for managing tasks.

Wrike Live features a simultaneous co-authoring tool for teams working together on any project. There's no saving, no refreshing and all participants see updates as they happen. That goes for document collaboration as well as tasks and projects, something Wrike says is a first in market feature.

Furthermore, Wrike debuted its Activity Stream that displays a three-pane view to navigate between a live overview of project updates, details of a task and a project's structure. In this shared workspace, people can share files and images, discuss work and see each others' actions. The Wrike team likens it to feeling the pulse of a project.

Activity Stream shows an overview of a project and all the updates needed to stay on top of things.

Don't Forget the Cloud

There's a 30-day free trial of Wrike available, and the full release package for teams of 50 or more is US$ 200 per month. That allows for unlimited projects and collaborators and 100 gigabytes of storage. From there, prices range down to US$ 50 per month for up to 5 users.

Additionally, Wrike is available as a Google App for syncing even more workflow items. We posted a video below to demonstrate the real time updates of Wrike Live. There's no audio, so don't be surprised when you press play and it's silent.

 For more on project collaboration, check out this recent CMSWire article.

 

 

Source : cmswire[dot]com

WoodWing Enterprise 8: New Collaboration Tools, Support for Adobe Creative Suite 6

WoodWing's Enterprise 8 multi-channel publishing system has been released. It includes new collaboration features, performance updates, and support for Adobe's digital publishing system.

Because WoodWing is popular among newspaper and magazine publishers, support for Adobe Creative Suite 6 — particularly its two key components, InDesign and InCopy — should be welcome.

New Features + Future Release Teased

One of the main highlights of Enterprise 8 is an annotation feature that will look very familiar to long-time users. Commenting on in-progress documents is now possible, notes can be approved or rejected, and comments can be answered. 

New collaboration features like commenting on in-progress documents had been requested by WoodWing customers.

Under the hood, performance updates have made uploading large files into Content Station up to three times faster. That's because WoodWing has added the JSON and AMF protocols in Enterprise 8. AMF is the format used by Adobe Flash, and that means Enterprise 8 can build Flash movies across all devices.  

Additionally, Enterprise 8 has made some internal changes to accommodate any future upgrades or support for publishing industry requirements. Woodwing has hinted that those future updates could include better reporting and digital asset management tools. 

Also inside Content Station, the Planning Tab has been extended to allow issues to be created across channels. This should speed up starting tasks and creating dossiers (what WoodWing calls articles or stories). The final new feature is a tool for setting up a specific workflow for archive files (such as zip files) or presentations that may have an alternate route in the workflow.

Adobe-WoodWing Partnership

For the past year, WoodWing has been an Adobe partner on its Digital Publishing Suite, and that is one reason for the tighter integration of Flash and InDesign. However, with the addition of the JSON protocol, Enterprise 8 is also more extensible with other third-party software. That means any of WoodWing's authorized partners can integrate Enterprise 8 and Content Station with their preferred add-ons.

 

 

Source : cmswire[dot]com

Microsoft Extends Mainstream Support for Windows 2008 to January 2015

Microsoft has decided to extend the mainstream support window for Windows Server 2008. The change is likely welcome news for businesses running the operating system that don’t have immediate plans to move to Windows 2012.

Stay of Execution

Microsoft originally planned to transition Windows Server 2008 from free, mainstream support to fee-based, extended support on July 9, 2013. Customers will now receive two additional years of free support, which will end on January 15, 2015. The company made a similar move with Windows XP (whose support will finally end in April 2014), but the Windows 2008 support extension was not driven by customer demand. It was due to the release date of the next version of Windows.

Microsoft typically offers five years of free, mainstream support for every Windows release. However, the release date of a product’s successor can also impact the free support duration. Customers receive free Windows support for 24 months after a new version of Windows ships, if that date is later than the normal five year window. Once mainstream support ends, customers have five years of optional, paid, extended support. During extended support, security updates remain free, but other updates require a fee and a hotfix contract. Once all support windows end, Microsoft stops releasing all updates or fixes for the product.

The Future of Microsoft’s Software

In addition to the support Window extension, Microsoft also released a new Community Technology Preview (CTP) for SQL Server Service Pack 1. The release includes:

• Improved AlwaysOn Availability Group migration
• Better query capabilities over XML data
• Better SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) for Express users

Microsoft’s profits are heavily driven by Windows, Office and its server products. However, the company’s dominance continues to be challenged by cloud-based alternatives. It’s obvious that while Microsoft must focus on continuing to innovate the capabilities of its core product families and strengthen its cloud offerings, the company should also consider its support strategy. 

Engaging with Microsoft’s support organization is not always a pleasant experience. Additionally, some customers may develop a lower tolerance for software having an end-of-life model when most cloud solutions offer lifelong updates (for a monthly- or use-based fee, of course). Microsoft and other vendors may need to start rethinking their release and support strategies. 

 

 

Source : cmswire[dot]com

TIBCO Shows Off Spotfire 5 Analytics for Big Data Discovery

TIBCO, makers of Spotfire analytics has released version 5 of its simplified system for making data based decisions, building predictive models and perhaps finding that key insight that could be ground breaking.

Spotfire 5 Features

Spotfire 5 has been rebuilt to provide faster data visualization, predictive modeling and scalability.

"These capabilities are exactly what enterprises are looking for to be able to discover the value hidden in their data," Lars Bauerle, TIBCO Spotfire VP of product strategy said in a statement.

Spotfire 5 is meant to capture data from multiple sources and offers custom reports and dashboards, but also do that in a faster, more intuitive way. Because Spotfire integrates with Microsoft, Oracle and Microsoft SQL Server Analysis Services cubes, version 5 can take advantage of its in-memory system for faster parsing of large data sets.

All that means is for those systems that are more closely connected to Spotfire (unlike systems that must be accessed remotely, for example), data can be indexed faster and with less compute power than with previous versions. That is good for scalability and speed.

Spotfire 5 interactive analytics is a good fit for the high tech manufacturing, retail, life sciences, and financial services industries.

Additionally, because Spotfire does not require a deep knowledge of business intelligence to know how to use it, companies can set the system up faster and begin using it across departments even faster. 

Data Evolving, Companies Responding; Mostly

This month, CMSWire is focusing on how companies can improve customer experiences using the right data and proper strategies. Because so many analytics packages are only really good at either reporting static information or simply providing complex stats, Spotfire 5 is positioned to battle on both of these fronts. TIBCO promises an analytics platform that is dynamic, and not overly complex to use. 

That means people across enterprises could benefit from any insights found, and those findings could be implemented faster to provide real action. As with any enterprise undertaking, it's wise to think long and hard about taking on a new analytics package, and remember to have some clear goals already set out.

 

 

Source : cmswire[dot]com

Kentico CMS 7 Goes GA: Mobile Web Development, Automated Marketing Simplified

Kentico has released version 7 of its ASP.NET based Web CMS

Kentico has been working to integrate its fledgling electronic marketing system, Kentico EMS, into its CMS platform, and now the entire system is ready for the cloud.

Cloud Based Customer Experience

Kentico is trying to stay ahead of competitors by merging two powerful, but often underutilized systems. Content management and marketing, if used properly, are obviously key for many companies. But so often, organizations either don't take advantage of the systems or they don't take the time to learn about them in the first place. 

Traditional CMSes have, of course, made things simpler on the content side, and now Kentico is positioned as a customer experience solution for those who need this kind of dynamic SaaS-based platform in a .NET environment.

Kentico's automated marketing system in v7 includes A/B testing for E-mail Marketing campaigns, integration with Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+, SEO improvements, Salesforce.com and Data.com connectors and support chat.

Social media sites with posting and/or integration capability in Kentico 7.

Simplified Admin and Mobile Access

Building mobile websites or even converting websites to look better on mobile devices is easier with v7. There are emulators that can show what a site will look like on iOS or Android devices, for example. Mobile detection and responsive behavior features are also included.

For admins, there's a new feature for accessing editing tools without going through the dashboard. Admins can log in to a website and use a simplified interface instead of the Kentico Desk (dashboard). This includes access to those admin tools from a mobile device; great for quick fixes away from the office. Additionally, there is a new visual workflow designer for adapting document options like conditions and timers with a drag-and-drop tool. No programming necessary. 

Simplified editing tools for admins.

Support for Latest Microsoft Technologies

As a .NET based system, Kentico 7 has build in support for Visual Studio 2012, Microsoft .NET Framework 4.5, Windows Server 2012 and Windows 8. If Windows 8, Windows Phone based smartphones and the so called Surface tablet ever take off, Kentico could see much wider adoption rates with this kind of adaptive technology. That's assuming a lot, but even if Microsoft's mobile arsenal underwhelms, Kentico 7 looks to be a fine option for building websites with Microsoft based development tools. 

 

 

Source : cmswire[dot]com

Gearing up for Salesforce #Dreamforce 2012, Chatterbox Details to Come

Salesforce will host the Dreamforce 2012 conference Sept. 18-21, but CEO Mark Benioff has already announced the cloud storage system Chatterbox at another tech conference.

Chatterbox will be Dropbox for the enterprise, Benioff said, but it's just the start of a busy week for anyone who's thinking of adding to their Salesforce package or looking for new vendors altogether.

The focus at Dreamforce this year is social enterprise, and keynote speakers are divided up among the sales, customer service, marketing, collaboration and small to medium business categories. Additionally, entrepreneurs like Virgin Group founder Richard Branson, strategist Anthony Robbins and, of course, Benioff himself will be addressing the crowd at San Francisco's Moscone Center. 

General Colin Powell (Ret.) will also be speaking because he is now a limited partner in the powerful venture firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. Tuesday night's opening gala will feature the musical stylings of funk-rock pioneers The Red Hot Chili Peppers.

Keynotes to Note

Among the various segments at this huge conference, the Data segment features keynotes from companies like Pandora and CareerBuilder on how Data.com helps their companies. Furthermore, for SMBs, executives from Square and Yelp will be giving keynotes about their Salesforce experiences.

For those who are curious about specific products like Chatter, there are good sessions to attend on all four days of the conference. On Tuesday, there is a session right after lunch called 'Chatter: Best Practices for Chatter - The Engine of the Social Enterprise' that could be helpful.

On Wednesday there is 'Chatter: Finding the Right Talent, and Empowering Employees' in the early afternoon. Thursday, check out 'Chatter: ENGAGE - The 6 Steps to Success with Chatter' right after the Chatter keynote.

CMSWire at Dreamforce

CMSWire is attending Dreamforce this year, and we'll be covering new products like Chatterbox in particular. Salesforce has promised other new products, and those will be our main focus as well. Look for me there and say hi!

 

 

Source : cmswire[dot]com

Livefyre Debuts StreamHub Engagement Management System

Livefyre has announced a new engagement management system called StreamHub, and it takes the company's interactive commenting system to a deeper level, with more features and control.

StreamHub will be available to existing Livefyre customers right away, and for publishers especially, the new features should help drive traffic, increase social interactions about their company and generally make those websites even more interactive. 

Conversations Across Networks

Livefyre already integrates social media into its commenting system, but StreamHub adds an engagement dashboard for customizing layouts and tailoring the conversation by categories like topic or location.

By making it easy for people to link social media to comments, conversations can go back and forth across networks and mobile devices. StreamHub has two main components; Core and Curate. Core is the bulk of the system, and once that is set up, customers can opt for the Curate feature. StreamHub Core adds the engagement dashboard, and the ability to easily filter content to tailor a website with the kinds of ideas that build engaging relationships.

Here's how the dashboard works:

StreamHub expands a website's reach, and with Curate, can even pull in content from around the Web.

Engaging Comments and Liveblogging

Through Twitter's API and RSS, content from around the Web can be pulled into a liveblog, chat or comment stream with Curate. Using hashtags or @ mentions, anything relating to the topic at hand can be gathered from the Web to be used on the host website. 

Livefyre is working on doing the same thing with Facebook, although that feature is not ready yet. The company did not give any hints about other social networks this feature could extend to, but it sounds like it holds bigger potential. 

Curate has real potential to make more personalized online experiences.

One unique way Curate changes liveblogging is the ability to reply to individual posts. Say you are watching the iPhone 5 launch, and a stream of images is going by. With StreamHub, it's not necessary to reply to the whole event, but instead only the images you find relevant. Those comments can be tagged, and followed and replied to just like in a more static page. 

What social platform would be complete without analytics? StreamHub can create customized reports and is compatible with Google Analytics or Omniture. Tell us in the comments if you are an avid commenter and if you think you would like to have your social media integrated like in StreamHub.

 

 

Source : cmswire[dot]com

Umbraco Web CMS 4.9 Focuses on the Editor Experience, Rich Media

The open source content management system Umbraco may have dropped version 5, but the refocus on version 4 has brought some nice improvements and a number of bug fixes.

The free, ASP.Net-based Umbraco is designed for building websites — from small campaign or brochure sites to large media-based sites — and complex Web applications.

Umbraco, which bills itself as a  “priceless CMS at the cost of virtually nothing,” was first released in version 2.0 in 2005, which was also when the first developers conference, called CodeGarden, was held. Unfortunately a turn in the wrong direction resulted in dropping the next major version of the Web CMS to go "back to the basics".

“The early days of Umbraco was the result of a wonderful collaboration between three guys in Copenhagen,” wrote one of those guys, Niels Hartvig, on the Umbraco blog. He added that, “almost eight years later — I’m smiling again” because of the new release.

Focus on the Editor Not the Developer

Umbraco 4.9 features a revised editor, easier integration of third-party videos and images, and a new media library. In addition, the new version includes more than 50 “big” bug fixes, incorporated from submissions by over 20 contributors.

The application now supports HTML5 uploads to the media section, and there’s a new folder content overview that can be filtered and from which common actions can be applied to media items.

The Media button in the Rich Text Editor now supports the oEmbed standard in its embedder, and the code editor for templates, scripting and XSLT templates has been upgraded. Creating and inspecting relation types can now be conducted from the backoffice.

Umbraco 4.9

Umbraco Gets Its Focus Back With a Little Help

Hartvig said, “September 2012 feels like October 2004 on steroids.”

He also noted that, in the past quarter, the number of improvements submitted by external contributors for the Umbraco core is higher “than any other quarters combined.”

Umbraco said that, for this Microsoft platform, it is in the top five most popular server applications and among the ten most popular open source tools. Umbraco HQ is the privately-owned commercial entity that provides support, a bug-fixing warranty and productivity-enhancing add-ons for the open-source product.

Umbraco HQ said the application is used by over 110,000 active websites, including the Davis Cup, Heinz, Peugeot, Hersheys and Microsoft’s Official ASP.NET website. HQ is based in Odense, Denmark, and maintains offices in Bellingham, Washington and Southport, Australia.

 

 

Source : cmswire[dot]com

The Service Economy and the New Role of the Enterprise CMS

The enterprise content management system as we know it is about to undergo a transformation and take on a new purpose.

Content management vendors have been scrambling to throw as much social technology as they can into their systems by inserting a social engagement layer on top of the existing document repositories that have long been a fundamental necessity of the modern enterprise.

But the sea change of social applications for business use was underway long before these vendors added comments, “likes” and activity streams to the CMS. What’s more interesting is to ask why they are scrambling to add social and collaboration functionality. Why have they been trying to move even closer to the end-users?

Today’s workforce increasingly makes its own choices about which applications to use for productivity and social. Consumerization and BYOD have severely limited the opportunity for existing IT-centric content management vendors to move into the social and collaboration market in any meaningful way. It’s not about selling to the IT department anymore; it’s about appealing to an entirely new type of workforce that was bred during the rise of the service economy.

Employees are calling the shots these days. There’s no doubt about that. But how are they changing the role of content management? Here are the two big trends I’m seeing.

The Reign of End-Users and the Invisible CMS

Dropbox has over 50 million users that upload over a billion files every two days. Box has 11 million active users, penetration into 82 percent of the Fortune 500 and there’s an endless influx of new “Dropbox for the enterprise” players. Evernote has 20 million users and the list goes on.

Employees are choosing their own productivity applications and the adoption rates are putting even some of the most successful enterprise applications to shame.

The traditional enterprise content management market can do little to stop this. And few consumer-workers will choose a heavy IT-centric content management system over newer, cooler options that have consumer technology DNA at their core.

As employees use an ever-increasing array of apps to do their work, the enterprise content management players are going to have to find ways to get content to the end-points (read: apps) that employees rely upon the most. Box OneCloud is a great example of this strategy in action. It puts all of your content at the fingertips of employees who spend their days in a variety of unique, but integrated applications.

If you’re a sales executive working in Salesforce most of the time, you should be able to access much of the content you need without leaving that ecosystem. Why? Because jumping through hoops to access your content interrupts your workflow, and hinders productivity.

The same goes for the VP of Marketing, who wants to access content while working in Omniture, or the Director of Operations who wants to pull up the revenue projections while working in Freshbooks so that she can save back revised data and share it with the CEO.

 

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Source : cmswire[dot]com

Alfresco Records Management 2.0 Provides Granular Controls, Mobile Access

Alfresco announced its next generation Records Management 2.0 platform, and the updated system now fully integrates with Alfresco Enterprise 4 including more granular controls, mobile access and email features.

As more and more enterprise and even government level IT move to the cloud, tracking documents and records is going along for the ride. Records Management 2.0 is just such a vehicle.

Secure, Mobile Content Management

Alfresco 4 debuted early in 2012 and in June, the company released a cloud based version of its open source CMS. With Records Management 2.0, the cloud based transition is complete. Not every document needs to be available for mobile downloading, of course, but things are moving in that direction with this release.

Records management may not be the sexiest aspect of an IT department's mission, but it's become painfully obvious there's a growing need to keep secure documents protected. One way to do that is to make documents easier to identify and sort.

A new multi-level file plan in Records Management 2.0 allows for creating deeper record structures beyond the main levels as defined by the U.S. Department of Defense. 

Additionally, because the system has been redesigned to support Alfresco Enterprise 4, mobile, social and cloud capabilities in the Enterprise CMS can be leveraged as well.

New Features

Records are now simpler to search with easier to define queries, and favorite searches can be saved for records more frequently called upon. With a single file repository, less content needs to be migrated so there's less of a chance of losing information.

Furthermore, there's a Web-based interface and native IMAP support so it's easy to file emails without installing a plugin. RM 2.0 shows up as a mail folder so filing records can easily be done with drag and drop.

For those needing to respond to Freedom of Information Act requirements, Alfresco has included workflow and hold tools like better transparency.

 

 

Source : cmswire[dot]com

Mobile and the Era of Fragmented Communication

In the lead up to the Olympic Games this month, London added Wi-Fi to its subway system in an effort to help keep communications among visitors open. But last week it was clear that mobile engagement issues were taking their toll when an increase in social media began interfering with mobile networks on which the games themselves depend.

The International Olympics Committee asked viewers to "use another means" to send texts and tweets because the activity was overwhelming operator networks. Many users turned to over-the-top content (OTT) to offset the networks and streamline communications as a result.

Over the Top and In Demand

These issues may be surprising, considering the advanced infrastructures in place and our increased expectations for faster than fast networks that power our mobility. However, a new study by tyntec, found that US operators are better prepared to more effectively deal with and profit from OTT services compared to European operators.

Previously, tyntec reported there was great opportunity for younger populations to utilize OTT services, which can help users communicate more efficiently and lowers costs associated with traditional SMS technology. This new report continues to emphasize the opportunity available as well as the discrepancies that exist across countries to implement and facilitate these services.

The report by mobileSQUARED and sponsored by tyntec, OTT: How Operators can overcome the Fragmentation of Communication shows a considerable discrepancy in attitude and a huge lag in uptake between Europe and the US:

• 100 percent of US mobile operators are already partnering with OTT providers, while only 18 percent are currently doing so in Europe.
• 25 percent of European operators have already seen losses in revenue by up to 5 percent. The US has yet to see any decline in revenue.
• Almost 75 percent of European operators anticipate OTT will impact revenue losses by up to 11-15 percent in the coming years. In comparison, the US is bracing for losses of up to 30 percent.
• 42 percent of operators believe that over 40 percent of their customer base will be using OTT services in 2016.
• OTT blocking and “walled gardens” are preventing adoption in Europe; whereas, the US is well positioned to profit from OTT, in part, because of our flat rate plans and infrastructure. 

Overall, the study suggests that European mobile operators feel more threatened, with 79 percent of European operators indicating that OTT clients on smartphones are a threat to traditional SMS and voice-based services.

An Era of Proliferation and Fragmentation

When we talk about OTT services, what exactly do we mean? Applications like Skype and What’s App are best known, with Skype leading the OTT charge with over 900 million users spending over 1 billion minutes a day. And while in 2012 20 percent of global smartphone users actively use OTT services, it is predicted to reach 45 percent by 2016.

So why the fragmentation? As OTT services expand and attract more users, it’s expected that more companies and developers will look to capitalize and flood the market with OTT services. Until then however, a majority of the existing proprietary OTT (Over-The-Top) communication service providers do not permit cross-platform functionality, therefore limiting the capability of their services. As the report puts it:

Consequently, the rise of these OTT services has created an era of fragmented communications in which consumers cannot easily communicate outside the ‘walled gardens’ of their respective service/app. This weakness presents mobile operators with an ideal opportunity to adopt a key role in enabling OTT services and associated revenues, as they seek new business models to offset the decline in voice and messaging revenues."

Here, Thorsten Trapp, CTO of tyntec discusses the latest figures and forecasts of the whitepaper and what they mean for Operators.

Global events like the Olympics help to showcase the era of fragmented communications, helping us all better understand the need for more interoperability and the opportunity the industry has to improve mobile communications. But it shouldn’t require such wide-scale events to highlight the lag — anyone who has ever sent a text only to have it arrive hours after, can appreciate the utility of OTT services.
 

 

 

Source : cmswire[dot]com