Latest Web Content News & Articles

Nobody is interested in documentation, tools, videos, blogs or Twitter for their own sake. Their interest in these things is only in the context of the task they need to complete.

This week our Google lives saw the announcement of a new digital magazine, Chrome 11 perks and the power of Lady Gaga. 

Your needs evolve, technology changes, vendors get acquired…something eventually inspires a change of content management platforms. But selecting a new system is only one step and likely not the most challenging one. Migrating your existing website and content, now that's another story.

Depending on your situation, you will face any number of different challenges — missing digital assets, metadata all over the place or missing, linked resources, content restructuring. And let's not forget that it's unlikely you are migrating static web pages. 

Has Automated Content Migration Arrived?

Kapow Software has stepped up claiming a new approach to migrating content. They say they can eliminate the content freeze. After a detailed content inventory, they propose a three step approach to content migration. The process starts with extraction using their Extraction Browser, which can process dynamic HTML and extract data from Flash. From there it moves to transformation, and ends with loading the content into the new CMS.

They say their system works for all types of structured and unstructured content, including content such as email, calendars and blog posts.

The New Inventory, Extract, Map and Migrate Process

The tools look impressive during the demos. But extensive testing we've not yet done. So before you drink the Kapow Kool-Aid (and fork over the cash) make sure you dig into the details and run real tests. Their Definitive Guide to Automating Content Migration is a start.

Senior managers need to develop a much better understanding of the competitive advantage ease of use delivers.

Forrester says we are in the age of the Splinternet, where the unified Web has ended. We have reached the point, they say, where users have numerous ways to connect and interact, and they are demanding increasingly social and personal experiences.

The analyst firm asserts that requirements for Web Content Management (WCM) systems have been dragged forward through a combination of device, expectation and strategy evolution. A modern WCM must support a whole a new range of capabilities. But not all tools are there and not all marketing teams have evolved equally.

Join Stephen Powers, Principal Analyst at Forrester Research and Brian Costello, General Manager at Valassis on Thursday March 17th at 1pm EDT (10am PDT) in a complimentary webinar titled Evolving Your Web Strategy in 2011.

A few things you will learn:

• How WCM has matured and moved from an IT project to being a major tool for interactive marketers.
• How embracing mobile is about more than detecting the right device. It's about optimizing both the content and the presentation for the right device.
• How user generated content is just the first step to integrating social capabilities and  social content.
• Why targeted content will finally find its place and integrate\ion with backend systems like CRM will make it even easier to employ.

Your basic Web strategy has likely evolved quite a bit recently. This session aims to provide a valuable checkpoint and a view on what's coming in 2011 for web content and integrated marketing. Reserve your seat here.

Web content integrator Jahia (news, site) launches a beta site to demonstrate the value and interactiveness of HTML 5.

The Web dictates that you put the customer first. That means taking on more complexity yourself.

In an effort to broaden its appeal, LinkedIn (news, site) launched a social news service that will let  let users tap into articles being shared by their connections or by people in their industries.

This week the Internet giant took customization a bit further by allowing consumers to block sites from their search results. Meanwhile, new organizational features were added to Gmail and Latitude got a very Foursquare-like enhancement. 

Another week in our Google lives as come and gone, leaving behind tips for dealing with the algorithm change, a nightmarish Gmail outage, and updates to Chrome OS beta. 

A few weeks ago, Google started targeting so-called content farms, or websites with supposedly low-quality content and highly concentrated keyword density. Google first addressed the issue by releasing a Chrome browser extension that lets users block unwanted domains from search (and which returned the unwanted list to Google for further processing). Now, Google has made some algorithm adjustments that are aimed at lowering the ranking power of content farms. But this came with some collateral damage.

Over the weekend, 150,000 Gmail users came face to face with a nightmare to end all nightmares: Their inboxes were wiped clean. No e-mails, no themes, no folders, no labels. Nothing. 

We want more detail. We want more facts. The Web changes the nature of how we make decisions.

The great Google significantly tweaked its mysterious search algorithms this week in an attempt to lower the rankings of low-quality, SEO'd-out-the-wazoo content aggregator sites. 

Google touts the whole of its Chrome browser as simple, quick and efficient, but there are a lot of nifty supporting features that don't get much spotlight time. Here are 5 that are sure to help you work better and faster: 

The new Liverpool city council website is one of the best examples of a top task focused website I have come across.

Apple's digital subscription plan for apps was criticized for being too restrictive and pricey when it was announced earlier this week. What a nice window this provided Google, when one day later the company revealed its own publisher-friendly and inexpensive (by comparison) payment service.  

Internet users are relying more and more on location based services and peer recommendations than general search results. Accordingly, Google has updated their social search to feature three new levels of integration, including Twitter, Quora and Flickr. 

Google aimed to create a completely free and open standard for HTML5 video last year when it open sourced VP8 under a royalty-free licence, but patent-licensing organization MPEG LA may have officially burst that bubble with the announcement of an official call for patents that cover V8.

The boom of social media and tablet devices has lent a re-boost in popularity to more traditional forms of content, such as video (see: YouTube). Accordingly, research firm Gartner (news, site) dug around for the best of the best in up and coming video content management and delivery vendors. Videophiles, this one's for you.