Web News & Articles

Google quietly rolled out the latest Chrome update over the weekend. Most Windows users won't notice the update, although Mac OS X Lion users will be pleased with a few UI optimizations for the Mac version. This update will be more exciting for developers, though, as Google has already activated Native Client application support through sandbox.

Businesses are increasingly warming up to the use of mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets for productivity and improved collaboration. But while there is the need to ensure their data is secure when accessed on mobile devices, not everyone can afford big IT departments and dedicated hardware to manage their tech-related assets. With this in mind, Research In Motion (news, site) has launched a cloud-based management service for BlackBerry devices.

Portability is often an important aspect of running an application on the web. This means that the best apps are those that can run on different platforms without the need for extra add-ons or plugins. Zoho Meeting (news, site) has recently improved its web interface by implementing a new HTML viewer for online meetings.

Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) may have gotten his start on Saturday Night Live, but he wasn't joking around this week when he wrote a letter, as chairman of the Senate Judiciary privacy committee, to the chairmen of Apple and Google, calling them to task for collecting users' location data and "requesting" change.

It takes money to keep the web open and accessible. This week the Internet Society, a nonprofit group dedicated to the open Internet ecosystem, announced that it was donating US$ 1 million to the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), the global organization responsible for Web standards and accessibility.

HTML5 defines the 5th major revision of the core language of the Web. In a recently published work the W3C details the differences between HTML 4 and HTML 5 and provides insight into the thinking behind the changes.

Last October, DAM developer MediaBeacon (news, site) hired Tom Rieger, ex-IBM, Informix and FileNet director. At the time we asked what he was going to do there. The integration of MediaBeacon’s DAM platform into IBM’s (news, site) Lotus WCM and WebSphere Portal probably helps answer that.

When it comes to selecting the best-fit Web Content Management (WCM) software, a great deal of confusion continues to haunt vendors and buyers alike. Industry analysts have done little to make this any easier. It's time to move beyond Web CMS.

Spring just days away and even closer is the SXSW Interactive event in Austin -- stay tuned for some live coverage out of Texas.

And for now we're busy bidding farewell to the working week. But just before we do so, here's a big thanks to the current CMSWire sponsors (follow them on Twitter). It's you who have kept our wheels turning and the keyboards merrily clacking. We are thankful.

Current Sponsors

• Acquia -- Providers of enterprise support and hosting services for the Drupal CMS.
• Ademero -- Affordable document management solutions for small and mid-sized businesses.
  
• Bridgeline iApps Content Manager -- A SaaS Framework for applications, content management, commerce and analytics.
• Bitrix CMS -- Full-featured content management and Enterprise 2.0 solutions for small and medium size businesses.
• CMS Watch -- The analyst firm covering and uncovering the details of the content management industry, including an in-depth SharePoint report.
• CoreMedia -- CoreMedia's enterprise-class web content management system enables organizations to manage customer engagement across a range of touch points.
• Day Sofware -- Winner of the 2009 Infoworld Best Web CMS award.
• Ektron -- Makers of one of the leading .NET web content management systems.
• EMC - Sophisticated document management systems for departments and mid-sized organizations.
• Ephox -- Rich web content editing which blends ease of use with an enterprise API.
• eTouch SamePage -- The enterprise-grade wiki solution that combines the best of wikis and blogs to effectively support and streamline collaborative team efforts.
• eZ Systems -- Makers of the eZ Publish open source web content management system.
• Gilbane Group -- Conferences, reports, webinars, consulting and more. Gilbane keeps the industry talking, meeting and informed.
• JBoye Events -- High impact gatherings and reports for web practitioners. 
• Kapow Technolgoies -- Tools for automating content migration tasks.
• Open Text -- Realize the full power of SharePoint enterprise content management via Open Text integration.
• Percussion -- The Percussion CM System empowers enterprise marketers to create, manage and optimize content across multiple channels.
  
• SDL Tridion -- Enterprise web content management for multi-lingual and multi-national organizations.
• Sitecore -- Enterprise grade web content management with a strong eye towards .NET friendly tools and APIs.
• Siteworx -- A full service interactive agency, Siteworx designs scalable systems for human interaction.
• Telerik Sitefinity -- A light-weight, modular and accessible ASP.NET web content management system that pleases both the developers and the marketers.
  
• TERMINALFOUR -- An enterprise class web content management and portal system targeted at medium to large organizations.
• …and of course dear old uncle Google

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Now on their third beta release, the WordPress team is promising big things with version 2.7. After completing the first round of bug fixes from the beta 1 and beta 2 releases, the WordPress team is making sure that the full public release is a quality release with minimal issues.

Alexander Limi led the “Future of Plone’s User Experience” session this morning at Plone Conference 2008 in Washington, D.C.

Limi talked about the future of Plone’s User Interface. We won’t see anything new that he’s working on, but we are talking about new ideas.

Here at CMSWire, we’ll be the first ones to tell you how awesome we, who work in the web and technology fields, are. As for data to back up our claim, well there’s not a lot of it. So, that’s why the folks at A List Apart, the webzine for web designers, developers, information architects, project managers, writers, editors, marketers and everyone else who makes websites has taken it upon themselves to once again survey us so that a “true picture of the way our profession is practiced worldwide” can be represented.

A couple of weeks ago…

I came across a comment that I found interesting:
“Web 2.0 hasn’t shown any real bottom line improvement, despite all of the hype over the past couple years.”

Now I think that there have been some rather remarkable successes of Web 2.0. Wikipedia being the single most staggering example. But, there is some truth, I think, to the comment.

The part that I deem important, is that Web 2.0 may not live up to the “hype”. Based on some of the articles on Web 2.0 you’d think that by simply adopting a Web 2.0 suite of tools any given organization will have an epiphany and increase productivity. That is, quite obviously, not the case.

The wait is finally over. After only three short months, the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) has released their report from the Web of Services for Enterprise Computing Workshop.

To manage search on your website, don’t manage the technology or the content. Manage the task. Success is about finding, not searching.