DAM Lowdown: Updates from WebDAM, FocusOpen & Razuna, Expert Insights

Following the vacation season, DAM news is beginning to bloom again: updates for WebDAM, FocusOpen and Razuna, MediaBeacon and Aspera join forces, experts look at digital asset management trends.

WebDAM, FocusOPEN, Razuna

WebDAM Solutions has launched new features for its digital asset management solution. Designed to increase efficiency and streamline productivity, the new features include the ability to present and control PowerPoint presentations inside WebDAM, and to have WebDAM handle format conversion for downloads. The new capabilities come on top of collaboration functions added in July.

Open-source DAM vendor FocusOPEN has updated version 3.4.3.1 of their system. New features include preview rollers, API extensions and security improvements, plus a variety of bug fixes.

And another open-source DAM solution, Razuna, has announced user interface changes designed to make the system  “more intuitive and easier to navigate.” The files detail page now combines info in one place, for instance, an entry page has been added, and folder navigation has been cleaned up.

MediaBeacon, Aspera Get Together

DAM solutions provider MediaBeacon and high-speed data transport vendor Aspera have announced a global partnership and technology integration. “MediaBeacon’s robust search tools let users find what they’re looking for,” Aspera’s vice president of marketing Richard Heitmann said in a statement, “and Aspera delivers the digital assets at line-speed.”

DAM Trends, Need to Know

Extensis’ DAM expert Edward Smith took a look at digital asset management trends last week here at CMSWire.com — including larger collections, integration with other systems and increased server-side/cloud processing.

And DAM pro Henrik de Gyor surveyed What a Digital Asset Manager Needs to Know on Tuesday. One of our favs: “Love information and data. Really. It may not love you back, but it is a give and take relationship. You get what you put into it….”

 

 

Source : cmswire[dot]com

Weekend Reading: It's Not the Data, It's What You Do With It

While the hot weather is hanging on in NYC, this week marked the end of vacation for many as students went back to school and the mobile device announcement season kicked into high gear.  

Our contributors helped launch the beginning of the school year with some looks at how to put data to work for you, future trends in the digital asset management world and an explanation of just what semantic web technologies are and what they do (and a hint at how they will change the future of enterprise information management). 

If you're like me and you miss the syllabuses from schooldays, consider this yours for the week.

Putting Data to Work

Four Actionable Steps for Google Analytics Users

Bob Clary (@webucator): As an avid Google Analytics user, I sometimes find myself overwhelmed with all of the data! I could spend days and days trying to determine actionable steps to help improve my website and online marketing endeavors, but that's just not realistic. I'm sure it's the same for you. So I want to provide you with four actionable steps you can do right now within your Google Analytics account.

My, That's Big Data (Or Is It Just a Big Pile of Data?)

Virginia Backaitis:There’s a difference between a big pile of data and Big Data.

It’s hard to believe that this needs to be said. But try this. Ask someone what Big Data is and see if you don’t hear words like petabyte, exabyte, zettabyte, yottabyte and the like dominate their answers. Most common definitions of Big Data revolve around quantity and data/information storage. 

To Meet the Needs of the Customer 

Holiday Promotion Checklist: Seven Factors Your Deal Needs to Have

Diane Buzzeo: Last year, customers turned to e-Commerce retailers in record numbers for their holiday shopping — outpacing forecasts with a 25 percent increase in online sales. According to eMarketer, 2011’s e-Commerce boost warranted a 2012 online shopping prediction of US$ 224 billion, up more than 15 percent from 2011. With the gifting season creeping closer, it’s time for e-Commerce retailers to get their holiday promotion strategies into shape. 

Customer Experience: A Cost Benefit Analysis of Simplicity

Gerry McGovern (@gerrymcgovern): 

Simplicity for the customer causes complexity for the organization.

When Manish Chandra was launching Poshmark, a shopping party app, one of the design decisions he faced related to the payment system. It was relatively easy to plug PayPal in. However, Chandra was focused on making everything really easy for the customer. So, instead of using PayPal, his developers spent two months developing a system where payments could be made in two clicks.

The result of Chandra's relentless pursuit of simplicity for the customer was a mobile app that has been a big hit.

 

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Source : cmswire[dot]com

Reddit Is Getting A Dwolla and Stripe-Powered Fundraising Button

Redditors have used "the front page of the Internet" for all kinds of good deeds--from raising Haiti relief funds to sending a bus monitor on a permanent vacation. New tools could make those efforts easier.

Being “the front page of the Internet” comes with power, and Redditors have often, if not a bit spontaneously, channeled that power for fundraising.

Among their good deeds: giving a bullied senior citizen bus monitor a $700,000 vacation budget, scrounging up $31,000 overnight to help a three-year-old who needed a bone marrow transplant and contributing more than $180,000 to Haiti earthquake relief efforts.

Now, for the first time, Reddit users will be able to execute some of these fundraisers within Reddit-branded pages.

Starting today, managers of the site's topic pages, or Subreddits, can opt to accept donations to specific non-profits by installing new donate buttons on their Subreddit pages. The TwoXChromosomes Subreddit, for instance, will add a button to support She's the First, an organization that supports girls' education in the developing world.

The buttons and the donation system they're attached to, Reddit Donate, were developed by payment startup Dwolla in partnership with another payment startup called Stripe. It will launch with 12 non-profit partners, including Kiva, Charity: Water and DonorsChoose.

Many Subreddits are already active fundraisers. The atheism Subreddit, for instance, helped raise more than $200,000 for Doctors Without Boarders by directing traffic to a third-party fundraising page.

Without a Reddit tool for accepting donations, most fundraising Redditors have, like the athiest group, pointed each other to crowdfunding sites such as Indiegogo, independent funding sites and custom landing pages on charities' websites to contribute.

At times it can be unclear, however, where the money is actually going. Money raised for the bullied bus monitor's vacation, for instance, was collected on an Indiegogo page that was not set up in her name, but a Redditor's name. If a less scrupulous person had created the page, the story may have lost its happy ending.

“We want to protect our community, and for it to know that if it donates $100, that its going to the right person and not to various fees,” Erik Martin, the general manager of Reddit, tells Fast Company.

Dwolla removes credit card numbers from transactions--and with them a handful of third-party financial service providers–-and thus is able to charge an impressively low fee of $.25 for transactions more than $10 (transactions involving less than that are free). Money travels directly from donors' bank accounts to non profits' bank accounts. Stripe keeps the credit card in the process and charges 2.9% plus 30 cents per transaction.

Reddit has taken other steps to support charitable efforts initiated in its site, but none so significant.

Earlier this month, the site named Crowdtilt its official fundraising partner. A newly-launched startup, Crowdtilt enables anyone to raise money for any kind of project, and it promised Reddit to wave fees and verify that donated money ends up where it is intended.

It's difficult to verify how organizations that aren't registered non-profits are spending their money, so the Dwolla and Stripe button only applies to non-profit partners for now. That leaves out individual-specific causes Reddit is famous for supporting.

Ben Milne, the CEO of Dwolla, tells Fast Company that if Redditors embrace it, there's likely room for the project to evolve. For now, the new feature formalizes a giving habit that has already become part of Reddit's reputation.

“It’s just like anyone could always raise money for their project," says Milne, "but it got way easier when Kickstarter launched.”

Source : fastcompany[dot]com