A Guide to Simplified Web Publishing

Google Buzz is Built For The Open (Business) World

by on Feb 10, 2010 (0) Comments

Google today announced  Google Buzz, a new social networking feature that lets Gmail users share links, photos, and other updates with their network of contacts, or with the whole world, right within Gmail.

Unless you live under a rock, your probably already aware of the release of Google Buzz. What makes Buzz worth writing about is the openness of it and the business implications. This article, How Google Buzz Is Disruptive: Open Data Standards, on the New York Times  web site goes into some detail about the business implications of the Google approach. Google Buzz is a destination and a piece of Google real estate, but it’s also a tool, through its APIs for building open solutions for collaboration and customer relationship management as well as social networking.

The fact that Google Buzz is getting so much coverage in the New York Times Technology section speaks to the business potential as much as the underlying technologies. The one sentence take away here is that Google Buzz represents a real business opportunity.

Open Standards Coming of Age

by on Feb 02, 2010 (0) Comments

A week ago Sun Microsystems sent me a link and an invitation to download a free guide to working with OpenDocument (ODF) and Microsoft Office file formats. Unlike the last five or ten invitations they had sent me, this one sounded interesting and I downloaded it.

This document is divided into three sections: Advantages of ODF, Best Practices for Common Scenarios, and Action Plan. Well, yes, it’s one part technology and one part marketing. None the less, it’s packed with information. I’m not going to spend much time summarizing it, you can download and read it yourself in five minutes.

This document is a great resource.  It offers some good advice on using ISO standard ODF documents with Microsoft’s proprietary Office file formats and PDF format documents to build robust ECM solutions.  Best practice #4: Use Connectors for Content Management Systems, provides some real insight into using ODF file formats with Microsoft’s SharePoint Server and the Open Source enterprise content management system, Alfresco. Two extensions from Sun, the Sun Connector for SharePoint Server and the Sun Connector for Alfresco make StarOffice and OpenOffice.org ideal clients for these Content Management Systems. Users can load, search, browse, edit or check-in/out documents that are stored in the Microsoft SharePoint server or the Alfresco server directly in StarOffice or OpenOffice.org. Continue reading ›

DIY Hosting Options and Open Source Software Proliferation

by on Nov 02, 2009 (0) Comments

Recently I read an an article about Open-Source software in the White House. The article was actually about the migration of the White House web site from a proprietary publishing platform to the open source content management software–Drupal.

This article on the New York Times Bits Blog was interesting for several reasons.

First, this web site, the web site of the President of the United States, a web site that would probably still be up and running after a nuclear attack, is now published with open source software. Use of open source software is sure becoming wide-spread. Tim O’Reilly wrote and the Bits Blog article linked to a post examining the implications of the use of open source software in government.  Some open source projects are so rock solid today, it’s hard to imagine a rational reason not to use them. Drupal, for one, and the Apache web server, for example are probably comparable to or better than equivalent closed source solutions. Continue reading ›

Free Web Site Hosting Using Google App Engine

by on Oct 10, 2009 (11) Comments

Hosting

Hosting

Cloud computing is currently in fashion for web site hosting. Unfortunately, it’s often also expensive. Enter Google’s App Engine, with free pricing for small sites consuming little bandwidth, and the best cloud hosting choice becomes clear.

The App Engine Dashboard, think of it as your control panel for the applications you host on App Engine, is quite nice. With a free Google App Engine account you get slots for up to 10 application, or you may prefer to think of them as web sites. The Google App Engine Launcher is a mini-IDE for local development on your personal computer. The launcher supports Win/Mac/Linux environments, but I’ve only used the Win version.

The App Engine Launcher combined with a simple editor like NotePad++ make for a great iterative development and publishing environment. That was one of the first things I noticed about this tool when I used it. When you install The App Engine SDK complete with Launcher and then install a current version of Python on your computer, you have a slick system for editing and publishing your web site. Many people I know fell in love with Microsoft’s FrontPage web site publishing tool, and used it long after Microsoft stopped selling it, simply because it was so good for quickly editing and updating sites. You can use the launcher to create and maintain multiple web sites locally and publish them to the Web with a button click or two. Once everything is set up, the publishing process is almost automatic. Continue reading ›