>>> ADRIAN >>> my comments inside
Re-Purposing Content & The Chicken or the Egg
I was talking with a client yesterday about their site and trying to help them generate content, and suggested looking at a resource they already had: their quarterly magazine. Many associations produce a magazine or newsletter throughout the course of the year (whether it be annual, quarterly or monthly). These magazines are usually very polished productions, meticulously laid out, with a wealth of valuable content. The problem (if there is one) is that after they get sent to members you have no idea if they are truly getting the complete value out of the magazine.
>>> ADRIAN >>> This is pure speculation.
Due to busy schedules, a lot of your members may only read an article or two and not be getting the value out of it that you are putting into it.
>>> ADRIAN >>> That’s the same with any magazine, or newspaper or book even – and it has been that way since the dawn on publishing.
Most of you re-purpose those magazines by turning them into PDF documents and posting them for download, but that still requires the users to download them, and page through them online (or print them) - which also means that your hard work isn't being fully utilized.
>>> ADRIAN >>> Why isn’t it? What’s your point. What level of perfection do you expect?
So what we recommend is going further and truly re-purposing everything you can by using blogs or wikis! Instead of looking at the magazine as a whole item to be posted, break it up into the individual articles and post them out there for members to read as blog posts.
>>> ADRIAN >>> Brings into question the value or blogs vs. features – and our features/tutorials are too meaty for blogs.
Every one of those articles can be cut and pasted into our tools and are then ready for reader comments and ranking online. Also instead of posting them all at once, post one or two articles per week. That way each week one article is getting focus and your members just have one thing to focus their attentions on.
>>> ADRIAN >>> Or conversely, users get tired of e-mails and e-newsletters and value good old fashioned hard copy print.
If your magazine has 10 or 12 articles...you've just created 3-4 months of valuable content without having to do any more work.
>>> ADRIAN >>> yes, good point, but we’d over-fragment most of our content if we did that
The only work you've got to do is to create a site level blog so you can start posting articles to it. If you've visited the website for any publication these days you'll see them doing this all the time (Entertainment Weekly for instance posts the articles out of their magazine online about 5-7 days after the print version hits the stands).
So what's the Chicken or the Egg?
In the scenario above, we're assuming that you produce the magazine and the re-purpose the articles into blog posts. BUT...you could do the reverse. Have your magazine staff post articles as they come in onto the website first and start generating feedback and comments from your members on those articles.
>>> ADRIAN >>> yeah, either way works, I don’t see it as a ground breaking difference
The writers of the articles can the get some great questions/feedback from your members, and update their article for publishing in the magazine.
>>> ADRIAN >>> That’s the first good point you’ve made
The magazine becomes the OFFLINE archive of the content for those that haven't had a chance to come online to read. The "pros" of this method is that it tells your members that to get the most recent information and content to log into the website each week, and that their comments and feeback can directly affect the publication...the "con" of course is that all of the content is now online before the magazine comes out...so the magazine doesn't have as much value as it used to. But in a world that is trying to be more "green," doing things this way my be the wave of your future.
>>> ADRIAN >>> But, it would create administrative nightmares, too much email discussion and who’s going to pay for all our time to do this.
>>> ADRIAN >>> This guy is living in his own perfect publishing paradise utopia – and is somewhat detached from reality as a result.
Thursday 30 April 2009
Friday 10 April 2009
A blog to ISUG members to inspire....
It’s my pleasure to be able to welcome you to the new ISUG member’s blogging area with my first post to the community in my role as ISUG Editor.
It was a couple of years ago when I first started tuning into what is sometimes called the ‘blogosphere’; and at that time it was not really taken seriously as a communications channel in a professional sense. Print journalists working for so-called ‘proper’ media outlets and publishing houses dismissed blogs as puerile, unprofessional and amateurish at the time.
Times have changed.
About 18 months ago, in my role as a freelance technical journalist, I got my first chance to start blogging professionally for an IT news site that is part of CBS News in the form of CNET’s ZDNet.co.uk
To say that it changed my life is no understatement. I often spend my non-connected hours thinking of great angles for stories and how I will write them.
I urge you to join the blogging community and get involved. Remember, a blog gives you great freedom in terms of expressing your opinion. As a journalist, when I write a news story I have to report the facts with no opinions of my own. Any opinions I do feature must be those of other people (industry analysts for example) and must be reported as such.
A blog is different.
You can express your own opinions in your blog. You can talk about personally experienced technology problems and share your thoughts with the ISUG community.
So please join us and start to blog along with the rest of the global ISUG network. It just might change your life too!
It was a couple of years ago when I first started tuning into what is sometimes called the ‘blogosphere’; and at that time it was not really taken seriously as a communications channel in a professional sense. Print journalists working for so-called ‘proper’ media outlets and publishing houses dismissed blogs as puerile, unprofessional and amateurish at the time.
Times have changed.
About 18 months ago, in my role as a freelance technical journalist, I got my first chance to start blogging professionally for an IT news site that is part of CBS News in the form of CNET’s ZDNet.co.uk
To say that it changed my life is no understatement. I often spend my non-connected hours thinking of great angles for stories and how I will write them.
I urge you to join the blogging community and get involved. Remember, a blog gives you great freedom in terms of expressing your opinion. As a journalist, when I write a news story I have to report the facts with no opinions of my own. Any opinions I do feature must be those of other people (industry analysts for example) and must be reported as such.
A blog is different.
You can express your own opinions in your blog. You can talk about personally experienced technology problems and share your thoughts with the ISUG community.
So please join us and start to blog along with the rest of the global ISUG network. It just might change your life too!
Wednesday 8 April 2009
BRIDGWATER PLUMBING SOLUTIONS CORPORATION
All reasonable work undertaken.
Prices unmatched in the county.
Call us now for a free estimate.
Leave a message, send an email, or if you wish... drop by and visit our sumptuous offices where our glamorous office manager Teresa-Lynn will offer you a refreshing alcoholic beverage while our head engineer Adrian runs nervously and repeatedly between Home Depot and Wickes Building Supplies asking questions of every assistant he can find to try and work out what your problem might be.
We guarantee you'll end up with a spaghetti-like arrangement of pipes, flanges and re-cut fittings (see example picture attached) that will make you the envy of the neighborhood.
Don't delay, call today, new pipe-work is just a phone call away.
REMEMBER OUR MOTTO: "We sure like pipes, and we like pipes to be right!"
INDEMNITY CLAUSE: Some pipe-work may result in bathing that leads to infectious non-curable tropical diseases, do not use our pipes if you are currently wearing blue clothing or breathing more than 50 times a minute.
Prices unmatched in the county.
Call us now for a free estimate.
Leave a message, send an email, or if you wish... drop by and visit our sumptuous offices where our glamorous office manager Teresa-Lynn will offer you a refreshing alcoholic beverage while our head engineer Adrian runs nervously and repeatedly between Home Depot and Wickes Building Supplies asking questions of every assistant he can find to try and work out what your problem might be.
We guarantee you'll end up with a spaghetti-like arrangement of pipes, flanges and re-cut fittings (see example picture attached) that will make you the envy of the neighborhood.
Don't delay, call today, new pipe-work is just a phone call away.
REMEMBER OUR MOTTO: "We sure like pipes, and we like pipes to be right!"
INDEMNITY CLAUSE: Some pipe-work may result in bathing that leads to infectious non-curable tropical diseases, do not use our pipes if you are currently wearing blue clothing or breathing more than 50 times a minute.
Sunday 1 March 2009
What goes up on this blog
I am posting certain items here that I don't post on ZDNet.co.uk here:
Check out my blog at: http://tinyurl.com/Bridgwater
... and I may use it more in future for tech writing. I may even post travel and food related pieces too.
AdrianB
Check out my blog at: http://tinyurl.com/Bridgwater
... and I may use it more in future for tech writing. I may even post travel and food related pieces too.
AdrianB
Friday 27 February 2009
Lisbon: the new Rome?
Portugal’s capital city of Lisbon boasts an abundance of stunning seafood, welcoming locals and fascinating historic districts. Adrian Bridgwater spent a week feasting on in its sights, sounds and more than a few sardines.
For me, Europe’s finest urban metropolis must be Rome. The food, the wine, the colours and the culture are unmatched. But if you’ve done the coliseum and you’ve had all the pizza you can stomach, then take a look at one of Europe’s other historic city gems and give Lisbon some consideration. It’s a city of both modern and ancient elements and it has a cuisine and way of life that endears you straight away. One day in Lisbon and you’re hooked, there is just so much to explore.
The first thing that strikes the attentive visitor to any Portuguese destination is the language. You’d be forgiven for thinking it sounds like a mixture of Spanish and Russian. It has the bounce of Spanish, but some of the rasp of some strange Russian or Slavic tongue. That said; it’s worth trying to adopt a few phrases. After all, it really is impolite to go to any foreign country without at least being armed with “hello” and “thank you”.
Know your onions
A famous traveller once said that, “To know any country, you must first eat its onions.” Or was it a TV cook? I’m not sure. Either way, I like the sentiment. I think it says that you must drink in a place’s local food sources in order to know its people. As far as Lisbon is concerned, it’s more a case of sardines than onions. They love these little healthy oily fish with a passion so unbridled that it’s common to see wives grilling them everywhere in the streets during day and night.
Hungry after my flight, I wandered the back streets straight into this olfactory assault on my senses and simply had to have some. My search was proving hard and it was looking like I might have to settle for tourist-special spaghetti or even worse a Big Mac, until I found some at last. But be warned, the Portuguese throw those little guys straight on the grill bars with a handful of salt and serve them up without gutting them. So eating sardines is dangerous if you follow my line of thinking. But with a little care you can quickly learn to to pull the flesh away from the rib cage leaving the innards still on your plate.
Lisbon sings the blues
If you ramble down the central Rua Augusta and upward into the precipitous cobbled alleyways of the Bairro Alto district not only will you find sardines, you’ll also come across the Fado. This is the Portuguese version of the blues, a plaintive, crying song with an exotic, Middle Eastern feel to it that gives it a special edge, but makes it difficult for the uninitiated to understand. Fado is pretty much restricted to the city of Lisbon and to the city of Coimbra. The Lisbon strain is supposed to come from the quarters of Alfama and Mouraria and, again like flamenco, has long represented a way to escape from poverty.
Lisbon has a history of great exploration. The Portuguese pioneered a golden age of discovery setting sail from Lisbon from the fifteenth to seventeenth centuries. Most notably, Vasco da Gama set off for India in 1497 – and he got there of course! Today, as well as the huge Padrão dos Descobrimentos statue jutting to the harbor, there are bus stops, cafes and t-shirts in his honour from Lisbon to Goa.
It’s worth a wander around these landmarks just so you can take in the full majesty of the city’s past. But Lisbon is city that looks after its tourists; as soon as you reach cultural overload there is a plethora choice of little friendly cafes to drink down cold glasses of the local Super Bock beer or perhaps even some chilled white Port before you move on to the more regular red. So convivial are these hostelries that I opted to eat only on the small tapas-style food portions they offered each evening. Mostly I did this standing at the bar, talking to the locals and drinking far too much of whatever was on tap.
há Caracóis!
My spirit of adventure did get the better of me one night I have to admit. I walked past a friendly looking bar and decided that it would be rude to pass without consuming at least one bottle of Portugal’s refreshing rose wine. The bar was promoting itself with a welcoming sign with a silly snail picture on it that said, “há Caracóis!” Settling myself at the bar I ordered a drink, got talking to some passing farmers and decided that I would have a plate of the little clams they were all eating. About fifteen clams into my feast, I saw a pair of tiny antennae winking at me and realised I had a plate of at least a hundred miniature snails. It is since my visit that I have learned that há Caracóis! is in fact Portuguese for, “We have snails!”
Every corner of Lisbon is worth exploring and you can do much of it on foot or using the local trolley-bus tram system. These things are just great. All clanking bells, wooden seats and ratchets and levers. It’s not so easy to work out how to buy a ticket from the machines. But once you’re on, there is no finer way to see the city’s delights. A walk up to the castle at the top of the city is a must but even with a map it’s hard to find your way through to the summit. The views are worth the effort though - and the cool breezes are a suitable reward for your stresses and strains.
Arabian Lisbon
I think the magic you get from Lisbon comes from a combination of its history and its food, wine and people. There is a long history of Arab and Moorish influence and much of this can still be seen if you open your eyes. It is as far back as the year 711 that Lisbon was taken by the Moors and the nearby Algarve region still retains a link to the Middle East. In fact, Al-Garb in Arabic means something along the lines of, “The furthest land West in the setting sun.” Showing that this really was as far West as the Arabs got. Many of Lisbon’s place names that survive today are derived from Arabic, the Alfama is the city’s oldest district and comes from the Arabic “al-hamma”.
If you’re lucky enough to be in Lisbon for more than a couple of days, it’s worth planning a few day trips. Even if all you is go twenty minutes further down the coast to eat fresh fish in a water front café and escape the hear of the city, you’ll know it was worth it the minute you get there. A word of local advice, if you order sardines and find that they have run out you may instead get offered a fish called Carapous. Just go for it, they’re like big sardines.
The real beauty of the city is probably best appreciated if you just take up a seat on a ledge somewhere down the city’s central street, the Rua Augusta. It’s from here that you’ll see all manner of life go by. There is plenty of tourist-driven nastiness; did you really come to Lisbon just to get a henna tattoo? But there is also real life here. Old men pass with guitars, trying to busk for enough change to buy dinner. Local fishermen walk by on their way home with blistered faces and sore overworked hands. Young children playing happily in this safe city that is untroubled by many of the worries associated with modern 21st century living. This is real life and this is the real Portugal.
Custard, paprika & baby goats
Most of what I enjoyed about Lisbon didn’t come from my guidebooks and it was this voyage of exploration that endeared me to the city so strongly. OK, every city guide worth the ink it’s printed on will tell you to try Lisbon’s famous custard tarts. But they don’t tell you to go into the little delis and buy as much of the smoked paprika chorizo sausage as you can carry, it is almost blood red in colour and is intensely powerful. The books don’t tell you much about traditional cooking either so it was only by trial and error that I wound up eating baby goat one night – really, no kidding!
If you don’t know much about Portugal or only thought of it as a tacky tourist destination please explore a little further. As a final note, if you do feel like going to a bullfight, even the small ones are very exciting and no – in Portugal they don’t kill the bull. The only dead beef you’re likely to encounter will be in your hamburger from the vendors outside. Mind you, the meat tastes very fresh, so I’m not altogether sure.
For me, Europe’s finest urban metropolis must be Rome. The food, the wine, the colours and the culture are unmatched. But if you’ve done the coliseum and you’ve had all the pizza you can stomach, then take a look at one of Europe’s other historic city gems and give Lisbon some consideration. It’s a city of both modern and ancient elements and it has a cuisine and way of life that endears you straight away. One day in Lisbon and you’re hooked, there is just so much to explore.
The first thing that strikes the attentive visitor to any Portuguese destination is the language. You’d be forgiven for thinking it sounds like a mixture of Spanish and Russian. It has the bounce of Spanish, but some of the rasp of some strange Russian or Slavic tongue. That said; it’s worth trying to adopt a few phrases. After all, it really is impolite to go to any foreign country without at least being armed with “hello” and “thank you”.
Know your onions
A famous traveller once said that, “To know any country, you must first eat its onions.” Or was it a TV cook? I’m not sure. Either way, I like the sentiment. I think it says that you must drink in a place’s local food sources in order to know its people. As far as Lisbon is concerned, it’s more a case of sardines than onions. They love these little healthy oily fish with a passion so unbridled that it’s common to see wives grilling them everywhere in the streets during day and night.
Hungry after my flight, I wandered the back streets straight into this olfactory assault on my senses and simply had to have some. My search was proving hard and it was looking like I might have to settle for tourist-special spaghetti or even worse a Big Mac, until I found some at last. But be warned, the Portuguese throw those little guys straight on the grill bars with a handful of salt and serve them up without gutting them. So eating sardines is dangerous if you follow my line of thinking. But with a little care you can quickly learn to to pull the flesh away from the rib cage leaving the innards still on your plate.
Lisbon sings the blues
If you ramble down the central Rua Augusta and upward into the precipitous cobbled alleyways of the Bairro Alto district not only will you find sardines, you’ll also come across the Fado. This is the Portuguese version of the blues, a plaintive, crying song with an exotic, Middle Eastern feel to it that gives it a special edge, but makes it difficult for the uninitiated to understand. Fado is pretty much restricted to the city of Lisbon and to the city of Coimbra. The Lisbon strain is supposed to come from the quarters of Alfama and Mouraria and, again like flamenco, has long represented a way to escape from poverty.
Lisbon has a history of great exploration. The Portuguese pioneered a golden age of discovery setting sail from Lisbon from the fifteenth to seventeenth centuries. Most notably, Vasco da Gama set off for India in 1497 – and he got there of course! Today, as well as the huge Padrão dos Descobrimentos statue jutting to the harbor, there are bus stops, cafes and t-shirts in his honour from Lisbon to Goa.
It’s worth a wander around these landmarks just so you can take in the full majesty of the city’s past. But Lisbon is city that looks after its tourists; as soon as you reach cultural overload there is a plethora choice of little friendly cafes to drink down cold glasses of the local Super Bock beer or perhaps even some chilled white Port before you move on to the more regular red. So convivial are these hostelries that I opted to eat only on the small tapas-style food portions they offered each evening. Mostly I did this standing at the bar, talking to the locals and drinking far too much of whatever was on tap.
há Caracóis!
My spirit of adventure did get the better of me one night I have to admit. I walked past a friendly looking bar and decided that it would be rude to pass without consuming at least one bottle of Portugal’s refreshing rose wine. The bar was promoting itself with a welcoming sign with a silly snail picture on it that said, “há Caracóis!” Settling myself at the bar I ordered a drink, got talking to some passing farmers and decided that I would have a plate of the little clams they were all eating. About fifteen clams into my feast, I saw a pair of tiny antennae winking at me and realised I had a plate of at least a hundred miniature snails. It is since my visit that I have learned that há Caracóis! is in fact Portuguese for, “We have snails!”
Every corner of Lisbon is worth exploring and you can do much of it on foot or using the local trolley-bus tram system. These things are just great. All clanking bells, wooden seats and ratchets and levers. It’s not so easy to work out how to buy a ticket from the machines. But once you’re on, there is no finer way to see the city’s delights. A walk up to the castle at the top of the city is a must but even with a map it’s hard to find your way through to the summit. The views are worth the effort though - and the cool breezes are a suitable reward for your stresses and strains.
Arabian Lisbon
I think the magic you get from Lisbon comes from a combination of its history and its food, wine and people. There is a long history of Arab and Moorish influence and much of this can still be seen if you open your eyes. It is as far back as the year 711 that Lisbon was taken by the Moors and the nearby Algarve region still retains a link to the Middle East. In fact, Al-Garb in Arabic means something along the lines of, “The furthest land West in the setting sun.” Showing that this really was as far West as the Arabs got. Many of Lisbon’s place names that survive today are derived from Arabic, the Alfama is the city’s oldest district and comes from the Arabic “al-hamma”.
If you’re lucky enough to be in Lisbon for more than a couple of days, it’s worth planning a few day trips. Even if all you is go twenty minutes further down the coast to eat fresh fish in a water front café and escape the hear of the city, you’ll know it was worth it the minute you get there. A word of local advice, if you order sardines and find that they have run out you may instead get offered a fish called Carapous. Just go for it, they’re like big sardines.
The real beauty of the city is probably best appreciated if you just take up a seat on a ledge somewhere down the city’s central street, the Rua Augusta. It’s from here that you’ll see all manner of life go by. There is plenty of tourist-driven nastiness; did you really come to Lisbon just to get a henna tattoo? But there is also real life here. Old men pass with guitars, trying to busk for enough change to buy dinner. Local fishermen walk by on their way home with blistered faces and sore overworked hands. Young children playing happily in this safe city that is untroubled by many of the worries associated with modern 21st century living. This is real life and this is the real Portugal.
Custard, paprika & baby goats
Most of what I enjoyed about Lisbon didn’t come from my guidebooks and it was this voyage of exploration that endeared me to the city so strongly. OK, every city guide worth the ink it’s printed on will tell you to try Lisbon’s famous custard tarts. But they don’t tell you to go into the little delis and buy as much of the smoked paprika chorizo sausage as you can carry, it is almost blood red in colour and is intensely powerful. The books don’t tell you much about traditional cooking either so it was only by trial and error that I wound up eating baby goat one night – really, no kidding!
If you don’t know much about Portugal or only thought of it as a tacky tourist destination please explore a little further. As a final note, if you do feel like going to a bullfight, even the small ones are very exciting and no – in Portugal they don’t kill the bull. The only dead beef you’re likely to encounter will be in your hamburger from the vendors outside. Mind you, the meat tastes very fresh, so I’m not altogether sure.
Wednesday 25 February 2009
It’s “Virtual Reality” Time in the Data Center
This is my Editor's Letter for the next issue of ISUG Technical Journal
Now that we’re past President Obama’s inauguration and well into the global economic slowdown we can, I hope, start to concentrate on a few home truths and hard facts as we look at the daily realities faced in the IT industry. Economists argue that recessions are in fact a healthy part of economic cycles that always rise and fall to flush out the ‘dead wood’ and unproductive units within any type of business. If that theory is true, then perhaps now we can look around us and start the road to recovery. So what role will the data center play in this process?
In the midst of this doom and gloom, Sybase has just recorded the most successful period in its corporate history with better than ever financial results and you can read more about this in the news pages of this issue. While Sybase IQ and Sybase 365 have been key to the company’s recent successes, there are other means by which organizations are rationalising their data stacks to be more profitable.
Virtualization has spent the last couple of years getting a huge amount of press coverage despite it remaining still nascent with limited adoption in many environments. Now, in 2009, the situation is changing and virtual realities are being brought to bear with an increasing amount of server consolidation being seen. Additional layers are now being considered such as virtual delivery of desktop applications and there are further implications (such as billing and management) this throws up for the hosted service providers that supply these services.
What this means to you as a DBA, developer, or software engineer of any description is that we find ourselves faced by somewhat of a new playing field upon which to operate. The phrase Return on Investment may no longer be confined to the corporate boardroom and you are just as likely to hear your project manager start using it now. Efficiency, productivity and profitability may be words that you have to form a new or at least a closer acquaintance with. I hope the pages inside this months ISUG Technical Journal serve to arm you with food for thought and valuable technical advice in this new more challenging technology landscape.
Tuesday 24 February 2009
Hello world
This may, just may - become an extra diversion for me.
Too many blogs spoil the broth, after all.
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