Content Management Matters ™

If you can't get enough of social networking -- and clearly we can't -- make sure and pencil in the 4th annual Social Networking Conference taking place July 10-11 in San Francisco. The San Francisco chapter will focus on my favorite topic, enterprise social networking and on mobile social networking. The keynote speaker will be Britt Selvitelle of Twitter, who's talk, cleverly entitled "What's Love Got To Do With It?" will touch on why it's not enough to make passionate users, but also "passionate creators" (a reference to Twitter's wildly popular API, no doubt).

Oh those young persons! How they love their social networks.

New research results indicate that millenials (those born between 1981 and 2000) are also eager to embrace mobile Web 2.0 technologies, which include cell phone-based blogging, multimedia sharing, location-based socialization services, gaming and chat.

It's said that Las Vegas is the place where dreams come true. And such was the case for sixteen lucky projects who were awarded a total of $5.5 million dollars from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. The second annual Knight News Challenge is a contest that funds ideas to transform community news through digital technology It selects recipients whose ideas reflect a focus on mobile technology.

Zoho certainly has the can-do spirit these days. It has launched two new web apps in the last week—an effort that is exhausting, yet exhilarating. Especially, because Zoho is focused on making things easier for People. And who doesn't love people?!

Continuing in their efforts to revolutionize the global mobile ecosystem, Yahoo! has announced its newest invention – Yahoo! onePlace, a mobile content management system that will let you stay informed about the things you care about (or are required to care about).

Is this an attempt to tie us even tighter to our mobile devices causing an even more continuously connected world that can’t live without the Internet? Shoot, guess it’s time to bring my CrackBerry out of storage – just when my shrink said I was cured.

Back when cell phones were only phones and not mobile devices, many of us noticed that too many interfaces were poorly supported or not supported at all. Now with the advent of the iPhone and other savvy mobile devices, users are able to enjoy mobile-friendly interfaces and applications.

This concept is not lost on FatWire Software, a leading web content management provider. They recently announced that they will resell, service and support netomat, Inc.’s Mobility Server to complement FatWire's web content management and Web 2.0 collaboration solutions.

Yahoo! is to open up its mobile platform to developers in a desperate bid to steal a march on Google on the Mobile Web.

The move was announced at the CES in Las Vegas and is just one of a number of Mobile Web initiatives launched by the beleaguered company, which sees Mobile as the medium-term battlefield where the war with Google will be won or lost.

Forrester has released a list of 10 reasons why Apple's iPhone is no friend to IT.

You can probably think of a few already: the prohibitive cost, the first-gen factor, and fidelity to AT&T.

Gotta love conference season. Catch Content Convergence and Integration 2008 this March 12-14 in Vancouver, BC, Canada.

The three-day event covers mobile, digital asset management, forward-looking XML, and plen'y of social media stuff. Days are segmented as follows: Day one for content, day two for technology, and day three for user relationships.

The Star Tribune has tapped hosted Web CMS vendor Clickability ot bring a little mobility to its content offerings.

Since the Clickability integration, StarTribune.com added more collaborative workflows for its staff and improved its access speeds by four times.

Clickability will also help Star Tribune monetize its content on the mobile frontier. Star Tribune is also working with DoubleClick to improve ad conversions.

Zoho has just released Creator Mobile, which enables users to access private or shared Zoho Creator files from their handhelds.

Creator Mobile currently supports IE, Opera, Safari, and WAP browsers. And while it may be fairly browser-agnostic, it's pretty partial to the iPhone, aesthetics-wise.

Try the bad-boy out at the Zoho Creator Mobile subsite.

Spending a lot of time away from the office lately? Planning to impress with yer spanking new iPhone?

Well there’s good news for you dear reader. The W3C established Mobile Web Initiative has got you and all the standards you can swallow in mind. And they aim to lay plans both for bridging and filling the gaps between our disparate devices.

Soon those people you see twiddling their Blackberries or tickling their iPhones will be doing more than checking email and watching YouTube. Thanks to an alliance between Armedia and VSR Networks, EMC Documentum users will soon be able to manage content from their mobile devices.

Jamba, a global provider of digital entertainment services, has just tapped IMImobile to bring content to the mobile frontier, joining brands like Airtel, Vodafone, Cable & Wireless and Google.

IMImobile provides carrier-fit messaging platforms and gateways, as well as voice platforms and content management systems.

On its VAS Network Center in Hyderabad, IMImobile will manage Jamba's mobile services and provide technical support 24/7. Its suite includes community and user-generated content apps, video streaming, caller ring back tones, and interactive portals.

Jamba is part of a joint venture between News Corp and VeriSign. It boasts offices in Berlin and Los Angeles, and it operates mainly in the creation and marketing of mobile ringtones.

Apple has announced that its beloved iPhone -- which has worked so hard to punish steadfast iPhone unlockers in the past -- will be availing itself to outside applications (a la Facebook). This means developers will be able to create little widgetey apps that run native on the iPhone when installed. (Current iPhone-specific apps -- like Typepad or EditGrid's solutions, for example -- have to run through the phone's Safari web browser.)

The software toolkit will be available this February. (Note that the toolkit will also work for the iPod Touch, which is pretty much the iPhone without the calling capabilities.)

The Baltimore Sun calls this move a step closer to "realizing [the iPhone's] potential as an ultra-portable mini-computer."

Ironically, a Microsoft employee predicted this was the direction mobile would be taking just last July. In 10 years or so, it could be bye-bye laptop.