Let's Start at the ... Very End!

Apps, apps, apps. I need a good appetizer recipe for a holiday party, so I will be turning to Epicurious, AllRecipies -- and maybe even download the new Mario Batali Cooks! to find something yummy.

Why am I telling you this? Because if we want to join into the app craze -- we have to think a bit differently - like at the end, first. Or more specifically, what we want the end product to be. I know that probably sounds quite intuitive but for many companies just getting a mobile app out there seems to be more important than getting the right mobile app out there. And no wonder. With Chris Anderson and others now running around screeding the "Web is Dead" we are in a panic to push our sites to mobile.

Which is all well and good from a replication standpoint -- but not so good if what you really want is a killer app like those Angry Birds. Admittedly most of us aren't in the gaming business, but if your business is communicating with you audience -- then you need to put yourself in the shoes of your audience -- where ever those shoes may be.

For instance, the American Institute of Physics provides a digital platform for its 180 scholarly & trade journal constituents. Long journal articles are not going to do it for audiences looking for information  -- while say, atop a ladder. Instead they are building out specific apps that let readers ask the app specific questions -- what part do I need? -- and get a specific answer.

This requires a completely different mindset; instead of pushing information to the reader -- the reader is pulling the information required. Instead of a product -- media companies are providing a service. Its only by anticipating the types of questions readers might ask (under various conditions -- do they travel, are they outdoors in a field, at a desk) that publishers can begin to start developing highly sought-after applications.


A top 10 app for the Android right now is Greg Milette's Digital Sidekick. Responding to a Google challenge to develop for 'Droid, Milette chose to take advantage of the voice recognition tools -- and his love for cooking. Understanding the workflow of preparing recipes, he opted for a recipe reader that would allow the cook to ask basic questions without having to quick looking at a recipe: What temperature to preheat the oven? How much flour do I need? The app keeps track of which portion of the instruction has been read -- and can pick up where the person left off - despite any interruptions.

Milette designed hooks to import recipes from AllRecipes.com – but readers can also cut and paste from any site to put their own favorites to create their own cookbook.

Now Milette's app is unique in that he isn't packaging up his own content for an app -- he is relying on content created by others. Had he had his own repository of recipes he would have needed to prepare his content ecosystem so it would allow this re-assembly of recipes into this new talking cookbook.

In most cases, this is not an easy task - unless you are storing the content as XML -- and have an easy way to index it, find it and deliver it. Most media and enterprises have relied on databases that were built to efficiently handle structured data that is in columns and rows. Unfortunately these RDBMS databases do not handle unstructured content -- like articles, recipes, video and images -- very well at all. A flexible  content ecosystem today requires:

• a database that is purposely built for unstructured content - perfect for XML
• a means of enriching the content (with both semantic and administrative metadata) 
• a way to transform the XML from one schema to another so it can be delivered

By knowing what our finished product should be, we can take an audit of our content -- and see what is missing, determine the granularity of the enrichment (should people be able to search by types of cuisine and whether or not it is an appetizer or a dessert?) and which types of additional content may be needed -- that would be brought into the ecosystem -- and re-assembled and delivered.

These are not easy tasks without the right tools, particularly if you want users to add their own -- or 3rd party content -- which may not follow the same XML schema as your recipes did.

At Intelligent Content 2011, my MarkLogic colleague Fernando Mesa and I will be giving a plenary talk on creating this very agile content ecosystem -- and offer some terrific real world examples of how others are quickly creating applications that merge in disparate types of content -- and preparing these apps for all sorts of delivery mechanisms. It should be a terrific session -- not to mention warm -- since it is in Palm Springs. You should definitely come -- and bring your ideas which will allow us to brainstorm apps that will be killer for your audience.

Younger than a toddler & worth $6Billion???

Man, newspapers really should be kicking themselves.

Just hours after I wrote about the Deal of the Day mavens, Google announces an astronomical bid of $5.3 billion for the upstart Groupon and another $700k in incentives. According to analysts cited in a New York Times article,  the Chicago-based neophyte, is pulling in $500 million in revenue -- and achieving profitability. That is a staggering amount of revenue for a relatively simple business model. The company has about 3100 employees in 300 markets -- so do the math -- that's about 5-10 feet on the street selling online ads to all the little local spots that most likely can't afford to have its own Web presence.

That Google is interested in Groupon's connection to these micro-retailers is a no-brainer. For years Google has been trying to figure out how to get into the local market -- even trying to woo newspapers to virtually rent out their sales force to sell local ads. It was a bust. And of course it was!!!

Those of us in the industry assume every company is as digitally aware as we are. And that's hogwash.

When a small business is born -- it starts with an idea that is usually financed with a severance check.  Whether its a service or a retail shop -- unless those entrepreneurs have relatives that can provide HTML, graphics and editorial -- the Web offering is often anemic at best. In my opinion that is why Groupon is successful. They serve the low end of the market that the Clipper magazines and Weekly Shoppers do -- but via the Web. I don't know if it is part of its business model now -- but if I were Groupon, I would create a directory and let each of its customers keep the Web page created for them up on the Web for an annual fee. My bet is, this is likely the only (or at least the best) Web presence these small companies have.

Almost two years ago, I wrote about how newspapers are not serving this "down market." Dailies should have been all over this model -- and created it on their own! The Groupon/LivingSocial/TownHog template is staggeringly easy to build. Which is why some analysts are gagging on Google's gutty move. “A multibillion-dollar valuation for a company that is in a business with virtually no barriers to entry and is younger than my toddler is absurd,” said Sucharita Mulpuru, Forrester Research retail analyst, wrote in a note to clients on Tuesday morning.

Low barrier to entry, younger than a toddler -- and raking in $500 million. And so why aren't newspapers doing this?? I know creating a directory of deals may not earn you a Pulitzer Prize -- but last I checked the old cash cow of Classifieds weren't so sexy either. And with the money coming in -- at least you could continue to afford the journalists.

Deal of the Day

Newspapers and city magazines ought to be kicking themselves (yet again). Several start-ups have emerged in the last 12 months rolling out dazzling deals of the day for savvy bargainistas. GroupOn and LivingSocial have been the front runners, with TownHog nipping at their heals. All three are out canvassing merchants around various cities for compelling wares and services to dangle before audiences looking for "such a deal!"

I first bumped into GroupOn several months ago when searching for play tickets in Toronto. LivingSocial I read via HuffingtonPost -- and while researching this article I tripped over TownHog. All three have a similar model that advertisers love: pay nothing upfront to have someone else market your product. There is only a charge to the advertiser if the product sells. And what could be a better deal for retailers trying to drum up business than a risk-free promotion! Further, for a deal to go through, a certain threshold of takers needs to be met, if not, there is no deal. This incents consumers to virally promote the deal among their network.

Of course there are drawbacks: Retailers need to know that they can handle the demand if the deal is truly a great one. (I had a meeting with one national brand -- whose IT department found out that the company would be offering 50% off from Web site sales -- just 7 days before the offer went live. They were terrified that the servers would crash. They didn't.)

And, I have heard rumblings that some of the deal-meisters pay retailers at a slightly slower rate than others (can't confirm that). My brother-in-law has been trying to get a GroupOn rep to call him for a few months -- so perhaps there are some growing pains.

There are some newspapers like Media General & McClatchey that are catching the tiger by the tail and partnering and sharing revenue with these daily dealers. In Media General's case, Groupon is selling and developing the clever creative for offers -- while Media General markets the offering. (In some cases this creative is the ONLY web presence the retailer may have.) No word on the revenue split.

Here's the deal though: Media General like all newspapers OWNED the local market when it came to sales and fulfilling creative in print. How in the world could they let some outside organization get close to their customers -- and offer the marketing platform?? At least be the sales arm for the venture! It certainly seems that this is short-sighted at best -- and yet another lost opportunity for local news organizations to find a model that makes them relevant and solidify their reason for being.

Mobile Ingenuity

From how to mobilize to how to monetize, mobile is the topic célèbre for this season's tradeshow circuit. While many of the first generation offerings are ho-hum, there is promise that more and better is on the horizon.

The first-gen initiatives are, not surprisingly, a redux of what is in print and online. This replication consists of taking what is in a print and making the PDFs available in an eReader such as the Kindle, Nook or iPad. The product is largely contained – meaning there are no links out to the Internet. Most periodicals are using a 3^rd party developer such as Zinio or Texterity to convert the print to PDF. While others, such as Wired, splurged to create custom editions that are augmented with rich media and layouts specific to the medium. There is definitely an audience for eReaders – but it is highly unlikely to be a large enough one to save magazines’ bacon.

Optimization is the next step in the mobile maturity process. Any site, be it a periodical or a business should consider creating a truncated version of the Web offering – optimized for the mobile device.  Few are doing this well at all. Most are thinking of regurgitating the entire Web offering onto a tiny screen. This reminds me of a meeting I was in 15 years ago. I was making my case to the board of directors New Jersey for autonomy in putting our daily newspapers online – when one of the executives stood up with a boom box wrapped in a newspaper. “We wouldn’t read the newspaper on the air,” he said, “and we shouldn’t be putting the newspaper on the Web in the same format.”

And with mobile, the same argument holds; The medium demands a new product offering -- which brings me to the last phase in the maturity model. Appication are specific and compelling applications that allow users to self navigate. What is a specific and compelling app? Well it depends on the audience, and ostensibly, publishers know their audiences. Newspaper publishers, which know of every retail outlet in their Designated Marketing Area (DMA), could use temporal and geolocation data to provide restaurant lists. If the time is at 7am – diners would have greater relevance than fine dining restaurants. Because papers know of every retail location in an given DMA, they could also provide for fee search for local businesses. Let this audience search on how many fast food restaurants in a given radius, etc.

These types of apps fit in the sweet spot of publishers – although I give it 50:50 odds that newspaper in particular will “get it.” Part of the problem is that mobile is a new medium that will cultivate its own experts -- its own handlers. Yes, there may be some overlap now -- Chris Anderson's Wired editors and graphic artists lovingly create three versions of each issue: one for Web, two for iPad -- landscape and portrait orientations. But frankly, that is a luxury for staffs that have been butchered during this period of declining revenue. Secondly, and related, is that publishers can not inherently attract the best programmers out there. Best programmers want to go where they can innovate and lead – not be crammed into job band that is nestled between a Reporter III and Editor I.

So what is the solution? A shift in thinking internally. Papers have to think of themselves as software publishers – not just news publishers. They need to think like the folks that create games, utilities, and tools that we can’t live without (or at least will pay some modicum of money for). They will need to cultivate a workforce that is given the opportunity to experiment – and even fail – all in the goal of moving forward. And they will need an agile environment one that allows them to “mash up” disparate types of content – geo, temporal, internal, external sources. The technical piece is the easy part – the change in thinking – well, perhaps it is optimistic, but I think publishers are finally getting around to thinking a bit differently. We’ll see.

Editors Need to Work the Fry Station Too

Wonderful homage to editors by Greg Hadfield at TheMediaBrief.com -- with a bit of a tweak at the end. Hadfield praises the editors of past for being the "Manager of the football club," (if he were American, no doubt he would have likened them to the quarterback.) In any event -- the editors of lore inherently "got it" -- they knew the news that the audience wanted -- and getting the story and the edition right consumed them. They got it because they lived and breathed it.

But that isn't yet the editor of the digital age. Yes, they "get" the importance -- but they haven't yet gotten the medium as it relates to their audience. Hadfield chides them for not worrrying about the Home page -- as they did the Front page. And no wonder. Our top editors of today haven't yet come up through the ranks having worked the fry station.

Eighteen months ago I challenged CEOs and Publishers for exactly this same issue. Unlike editors, publishers and CEOs of past, today's top executives were well into their career when along came the Internet. They can wax poetic about waxing copy, remember their hands grimy with ink, but since they didn't spend their formative years clicking, tweeting and commenting -- they are merely fans -- and not the quarterback of today's media groups. And it shows.

It's why the bloggers are so far ahead in many ways than the traditional media. They have programmed their pages, figured out how to manipulate HTML, stay on top of new widgets and discovered how to get an audience -- and engage with that audience. They live and breath their blog -- they imbue passion.

I've said it before and I will say it again: McDonald's won't allow you to become a manager if you haven't worked the fry station. Today's editors, publishers & CEOs need to know that without these rudimentary skills -- they aren't fit for the job.

Bob Abel: The Father of the "Interactive Experience'

Robert “Bob” Abel is largely an unknown name in the world of interactivity. Which is unfortunate because he easily could be known as the Father of the Interactive Experience – and the originator of the Mashup. For me, Abel was the inspiration for my career -- which was to connect reporting -- with storytelling.

An Emmy and Golden-Globe winning film producer, a 33-time Clio-award winning advertising executive, Abel is considered a seminal figure in the world of computer animation and special effects in commercials and motion pictures (using computer-controlled cameras). So what do you get when you cross a creator, a curator, a curiosity for computing power and an insatiable drive to connect with audiences? You get Bob Abel, interactive producer.

Back in the late ‘80s, Apple introduced a unique technology called the HyperCard. It combined database capabilities with a graphical, flexible, user-modifiable interface and was the first consumer product that introduced the concept of “hyperlinking,” being able to access external information with a single link. Abel realized the potential of the technology and set about creating a very ambitious production called “Guernica.”

Inspired by the anti-war painting by surrealist Pablo Picasso, Abel wanted others to be able to witness and explore that chaotic time period. Using HyperCard and videodisc technologies, Abel let users explore Picasso’s interpretation of the mayhem and tragedy following the aerial massacres of Basque civilians in Guernica, Spain, a cultural bastion of art and history during the Spanish Civil War. Picasso’s imagery is of course symbolic in and of itself with its strewn body parts and dying animals – and Abel enriches these symbols by providing access to archived interviews, footage and news coverage by different witnesses to history.

By choosing from an array of “witness” tools, users could click on various portions of the painting – the horse, the bull’s tail (a plume of flames and smoke), the women – and glean different types of information about the painting, the artist, the economy at that time -- or the war itself. Each tool allowed the user to obtain different types of information embedded in the painting – for the richest possible user experience.

Abel saw the potential of mashing-up disparate types of information around a narrative. While a person may skim right past the 2D painting hanging on a wall in a museum or printed on the page, Abel believed that they would stop and interact if it was embedded with information. In fact, Abel saw titles like "Guernica" as the ultimate educational tool – self-paced and self-directed.

This archtype of interactivity that was lauded by many, sniffed at by some who couldn’t fathom the huge price tag, didn’t actually deliver on all promises. Abel’s ambition outpaced the storage capacity of the videodisc, and while the experience should have been seamless, the tools of that time were primitive. The interface (necessarily) had so many windows and drop downs – and screens (NTSC interlocking on computer screens was not available yet, so video would open a window on a second monitor) it was hard to get your bearings. I believe Jonathan Gibson was the interface designer -- and while it was a kluge – it was utterly brilliant.

In truth, Abel was years ahead of the technologies out there, and his death in 2001 cut short his ability to see how user-driven experiences would become the Holy Grail for media companies. Although, I can’t help but believe, that this artist/executive/visionary would be disappointed in the convergence efforts by the media in general. Bloggers have keenly understood that assets are enriched when accompanied by links -- but the media still seems obsessed by the linear flow.

When given a chance to present complex information in this method of self-paced exploration, at best they create a list of links out to archives (at worst, they do nothing). Worse still, they have yet to truly harness the power of computing – the power of perspective.

Abel knew that to pique curiosity you need a narrative. And while media and news companies have the very archives that Abel’s videodisc called out to – I have yet to see one attempt to mashup information in the way that Abel managed to do with both Guernica -- and another effort, underwritten by IBM, to commemorate the 500th anniversary of the voyage of Columbus to America. Abel titled it: "Columbus: Encounter, Discovery, and Beyond" (a multicultural experience). Massive in scope, it drew from 2,300 articles and had 400,000 soft links. A whopping 180 hours of instruction.

As today’s media struggle to find their relevance, perhaps what they are really missing is the consummate storyteller, the producer – who can weave together all of these loose threads of information into a rich tapestry of the likes of "Guernica."

Even 'Techies' May Just Not Get It

I’ve been involved in the technology world for over 15 years. And one thing I can say with certainty is there is no such thing as a technical person who “gets it all.” Technology, like any discipline, has many facets and segments. Folks that understand networking will know nothing at all about web services. People that are experts on search won’t have a clue about how encryption works. Database gurus can be imbeciles when it comes to managing wireless networks.

The challenge is that all of are guilty of painting all technologists with a broad brush. “He’s a techy so he’ll understand.” This creates two problems: 1) technical people tend to speak in the patois that is unique to their discipline – and never learn to speak in metaphors to ensure clarity, and, 2) we defer to the technical person in a company to make critical decisions – thinking s/he is getting it – when in fact, s/he might be as in the dark as we are, or worse!

Why do I mention this? It has to do with effective communication – or lack thereof by people who sell technical things/ideas/services to technical and non-technical people. And by communication I mean the human kind – not the networking type. The importance of this cuts on both sides of the fence.

If you assume everyone in the room understands the nuances of your technology you are potentially taking your product right out of the game. Let me show you how:

Company A has 3 professionals in the room. A “technical” domain manager – who is supposed to be the domain expert, a business one – who knows the business needs, and a higher level technical manager – who will actually sign the check. By only effectively communicating to the domain expert you have essentially eliminated the other two from the decision making process. If the domain expert doesn’t “get it” – or feels threatened by the new technology – you don’t have a snow-balls shot of making the sale.

If, on the other hand, you can effectively communicate with all three professionals – with metaphors, anecdotes and statistics – one person’s bias can be overridden by the other two.

So tips to communicating your technical product to a mixed crowd:

Assume everyone is not as technical as you are
This doesn’t mean speak in a condescending way – but enlighten with stories as you explain. People may have a rudimentary knowledge of your technology – but unless they are involved in the bits and bytes – probably are not going to be aware of the nuances. Use metaphors to make your points. A colleague and I both use “chocolate” as a metaphor for XML. Many people will never grasp the details of XML – but they can understand the concept of how melted chocolate can take on the characteristics of a mold – just like text in XML can be poured into a template.

Stop speaking in your patois
A Microsoft Word document cannot be understood in a WordPerfect application – unless it is saved in a neutral format. Do the same when you speak. Words like “shred,” “transform,” “hash” are technical concepts – that may mean slightly different things to people whom are technical – and may mean nothing at all to people whom are not. And technical people are the last people to ask for a definition. If they don’t understand what you are trying to convey, chances are they’ll just boot you. Instead define jargon and offer examples.

It’s About the Benefits, Stupid
Features are usually only of interest to Product Managers – and those clients whom have requested them. Benefits are what piques interest – and makes sales. But benefits are in the eye of the beholder. Technical people may look for speed, scale, ease of deployment. Business people will value increased efficiencies, minimal disruption to current workflows. Investors want to know how the product will hold up against competition. Analysts want you to pander to their language.

Former German Chancellor Willi Brandt once said, "If I'm selling to you, I speak your language. If I'm buying, dann mussen Sie Deutsch sprechen." You might find that by speaking the language your customers understands, translates to more sales.

The Role of Journalism Within the Press

The decade-long introspection of “the future of publishing” has twisted pubishing executives into Gordian knots. “Information wants to be free,” “Content can not be free.” “The Wall Street Journal charges,” “The WSJ has unique urgent business news – paid for with corporate expense accounts, not consumer ones,” so sayeth the pundits.

Pay-wall or no paywall, from mono-channel to multi, publishing has been forced by the disruption of the Internet, to evolve or perish. But should the burden of change be solely on the medium? Or should the creators of content be looked at as change agents – actively looking to revise the product? The challenge is the content creators have, in large part, been journalists. And as a group, they abhor change.

Publishing and journalism have been inextricably linked since the advent of the printing press, and journalism, throughout the world, is often understood to be a bulwark of democracy.

Indeed, when New York Weekly Journal editorial writer James Alexander lampooned New York's Royal Governor William Cosby for terminating New York's Chief Justice after the judge had ruled against the sovereign appointee. Governor Cosby had been appointed by King George II, to head the young colonial province in 1731. A vindictive and aristocratic ruler, Cosby had tried to justify the sacking in the Journal -- but the editorial page fought back. Finally, Cosby sued the paper's publisher, Peter Zenger for seditious libel. At the time, English law protected government against critics. In what has stood as a landmark ruling, Zenger's attorney, Alexander Hamilton, passionately defended the publisher and established that truth is an absolute defense against libel.

That victory for truth was a victory for democracy, and thereby elevated journalism, journalists and the press to be referred to as the fourth estate as well as the fourth branch of government. Keeping a watchful eye on democracy required being unfettered from the influences of commerce; hence the firewall between the newsroom and advertising had been inviolable. And with this sacrosantness -- came absolute power. Nary anything could be added or subtracted from the paper -- without the blessing of the newsroom.

However, in a world where publishing has been stood on its head by the disrupter of all disrupters, the Internet, forcing a rapid evolution of the medium, the sovereignty of the newsroom is at stake. If digital newspapers cannot survive – is it because the business model is bad – or because the product has not adapted to the needs of the people?

Early-stage investor Charlie O’Donnell asserts that people will pay for content if the product (and the payment model) are right, and cites products that are perfectly relevant to people’s lives. Outsell Analyst David Worlock concurs that an evolution is needed. He observes that “our customers have turned from a content-sharing and information-sharing environment to one that wants us to solve a problem.” Which may explain the rapid adoption of apps that help us find restaurants in cities, sales in malls, and sitters in NY.

But will people pay for that which journalists create? I am not debating the value of journalism to society. Journalism is often described as the (factual) reporting of trends, news and events, while the definition of the fourth branch of government was any group that supplied checks and balances on the government. For years the press held the edge of being sole watchdog of democracy. But in the new media, bloggers have assumed that role as well. That doesn’t mean that watchdog journalism needs to go away, but the press can’t stand on its laurels of thinking it is the only arbiter of the truth. As such, the value of watchdog journalism, like good parenting or nutritious food, is often lost on its benefactors -- until it is absent.

Will tomorrow's journalist morph into an oracle of answers to problems poised? It is possible. As journalists have more access to and comfort with technology, they will begin to mine the rich resources of their audiences to create news stories, including voices found in tweets and comments, and maybe some will be set up as experts in given areas. Some will also begin to lose some of their objectivity and proffer analysis along with their news, a trend seen recently in The New York Times, and commented on by its new Public Editor Arthur Brisbane.

But the real change will be in the hierarchy of the press. While we should continue to expect a veracity of our journalists, no longer should they have veto power over new technologies, new services, new sources of revenue for the entire organization. Keeping journalism at its best means freeing it from the shackles of holding the monopoly on content creation.

'Human Metadata' Shapes Experiences

I haven't had a chance to read Guy Deutscher's book “Through the Language Glass: Why the World Looks Different in Other Languages,” being published this month by Metropolitan Books, but I read a fascinating excerpt in today's The New York Timess' Sunday Magazine.

Deutscher, an honorary research fellow at the School of Languages, Linguistics and Cultures at the University of Manchester, looks at different languages to examine whether they impose different contexts for its speakers. He cites for example how English speakers can be inexact about the gender in the following sentence: A friend came over last night., while in most other languages we would know whether that "friend" was male or female. (Totally unscholarly aside: might the English language ability to obfuscate gender allow us to create nonsensical laws like "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" and influence perceptions of homosexuality around the globe?)

Most languages required the individual to store gender with objects, (although not uniformly: the German bridge is feminine —the Spanish is masculine), whereas others use a mind-expanding geospatial method. Native Americans and indigenous Islanders apparently use N, S, E, W coordinates to relay location, whereas English and European languages use an egocentric method — in front, behind, etc. More interestingly, that "geospatial data" is actually stored in human memory!

Language apparently forces us to store a type of human metadata with every memory that shapes experiences, connotations and denotations. It is easy to infer how publishers providing mashups that rely on multiple types of metadata would enrich the experience to those who may think differently than the way the media originally thought they would.

6 Things About Unstructured Content You Need to Know

Unstructured data. As a writer I hate that term. I remember the first time I heard reference to it: sitting in a meeting and technical people were talking about all the unstructured content that publishers produce. How could they be speaking about articles as unstructured? If anyone has made it through kindergarten they have learned that they must follow a linguistic pattern or structure in order to communicate effectively. But in the lexicon of geekdom, any article, picture, powerpoint, video, song, user-generated content -- your kids' text messages -- are all: unstructured. Any "data" that does not fit nicely into a column or a row -- is considered unstructured.

Now, as much as I hate the term, there is a logic that places all content that didn't fall neatly into a table to be called unstructured versus structured. It was evident when classifieds first went online. Dumped from mainframes where customers paid by the character, people created their own short-hand to say 4BR House 4 Sale. Turns out though, that all that unstructure (which I prefer to say as free-form)  makes it very hard to search on. Don't believe me? Go to Craig's List -- which tries to impose structure on advertisements by putting it under broad categories and locations. Other than that -- it is pretty freestyle. Nannies are caregivers are sitters (baby or otherwise) -- and plural or otherwise. And search on one of those terms at the peril of not finding it under the other.

On the flip side are the sites that allow only structure: information fits neatly in a row or a table and has descriptive titles like Type of residence, # of Bedrooms, Siding, Price, MLS # etc. Having that structure makes it easy to query or search on that information. You probably have heard of SQL -- which is the acronym for Structured Query Language. Relational databases use SQL to find content -- by looking in the appropriate fields. Which is all well and good for content like financial information, inventories, human resources stuff. But what about the rest of the content that floats around a corporation? The memos, sales presentations, business plans, schematics, Web sites -- the stuff we sometimes refer to as: Knowledge - and which in geekdom is called unstructured content, are the digital assets we need to carefully manage.

So here's 6 Things You Need to Know About Unstructured Content.

1. It's everywhere. Analysts, pundits and people in the know estimate that more than 80% of content produced in an enterprise is unstructured
2. Content is containerized. Unstructured content resides in containers like .doc, .ppt, .tiff -- and you must have the right software application to read or edit it.
3. Managing unstructured content is hard. Because content resides in containers it is hard to know what it is in each one. 
4. XML is crucial for reuse and sharing. Sometimes called atomic or neutral format, XML is a language used to transmit content -- without burden of the container. Neutral content can be then "poured" into any template (Word, Web, PDF -- mobile apps!!!) for easier repurposing. If you have unstructured content (and most likely you have lots of it) it should be stored in an XML format.
5. Good metadata is essential. Once content is in an XML format, enrich it with semantic metadata. This is critical to letting knowledge workers find out what each asset is about
6. Native XML databases provide agility & efficiencies. Relational databases (RDBMS) are great for organizing and querying structured data -- while XML databases rock for unstructured content. You can make an RDBMS work with XML, but you will lose a lot in database performance (upwards of 30% is estimated by Forrester). ) -- Heck I will use a knife to tighten a screw -- but sometimes I need to go and get the Philips head.

Now let's look briefly at what all this means. You have tons of content that doesn't fit into tables and rows. Storing content in their original containers of powerpoints, word docs and PDFs makes it extraordinarily hard to share and repurpose this content -- since it's hard to search it -- and cutting and pasting becomes the only alternative. And when we are talking about sharing and repurposing, remember all the great mash-up apps that your content might be perfect for -- if only it were in a neutral format.

Look, I don't like the term Unstructured Content -- but the acronym of CTDFWICAR (Content that doesn't fit well in columns and rows) is hardly memorable -- and way too long. Semi-structured content (because XML actually follows schemas -- which makes it semi-structured, but that's for another day) is only half as horrible as unstructured. In any event, while it may be free-form -- this type of content is the lifeblood of any organization -- and deserves its own special database to help keep it valuable.

No Net Neutrality? The Ultimate Tax on Businesses & Society

Wanna watch conservative and libertarian eyes twitch: tell 'em we need more government oversight. No doubt they would point to the all-but-impotent Federal Communications Commission (FCC) as yet another example of how government mucks things up. And they would be right, with only themselves (and Congress) to blame.

Set up in 1934 to "ensure that the American people have available -- at reasonable costs and without discrimination -- rapid, efficient, nation- and world-wide communications services," the FCC has been loaded with commissioners more concerned with areola than meaningful access. And the laws they have made (1996) deregulating the telcos but not dealing with the last mile until nearly a decade later, increased competition - but only to a point. The "last mile" is the euphemism for the customer -- and every long-distance new competitor that emerged in the 1990s -- had to pay the incumbent Bells a "toll" to bring the long-distance wire to the customer. Fast forward another 10 years, and through roll-ups, the FCC managed to pave the way to a new unregulated monopoly -- Verizon.

Which brings us to today's topic Net Neutrality -- or rather, Verizuhn'sNet, or as my favorite curmudgeon Jeff Jarvis decries: The Schminternet. Google and Verizon cobbled together a self-serving policy. Per the FCC edict: there would be no discrimination -- on wired services. But wireless and managed services? New ballgame. In fact, the business model already exists: it's called cable -- and you can only get your HBO if you pay for the mega movie package. Telco and Internet Law Professor Susan Crawford calls this a "science-fiction-quality loophole."

That Google has decided to cross the line and work with Verizon to end the Net-Neutrality stalemate is because the FCC created a blackhole instead of policies -- not that the courts have helped. None of the adults decided to man up -- so the corporations are. Funny, the libertarians and conservatives don't trust government -- but they want to trust the folks most likely to profit from any policy changes. Fox. Henhouse. Anyone?

So while the FCC is impotent and will remain so if the commissioners -- and Congress -- who pass insipid bills who are too busy fundraising rather than studying up on the subjects on which they are making laws,  perhaps we can rouse that other slightly older federal agency the FTC, who is supposed to be worried about trade and commerce, consumer protections and anti-competitive monopolies to see that what this mumbo-jumbo really is: a tax on small businesses and individuals. If they can't afford to pay, they won't be able to play. This regressive tax would unlevel the playing field -- stifling job creation and innovation by blocking those too small to ante from Schminternet services.

Oh and just in case there is any, ahem,  (no doubt) unintended discrimination, according to the GooVer proposal, one can file a complaint. A $2m penalty would be incurred by anyone in violation (see loopholes above to see if you have a snow-balls chance of winning).

And of course if the FTC won't step, we can always pray to the folks at FaceBook to do the opposite of whatever Google wants.

Australian sells 8500 iPad apps first month

Interesting news tidbit: The Australian, the Aussie national paper owned by News Limited, part of the Rupert Murdoch news dynasty, launched its iPad app this week. And while the paper pales in circulation to the two metro papers of Sydney and Melbourne, with only 135,000 for its Monday-Friday edition and double that for Saturday, it sold 8,500 apps in its inaugural month.

According to Nick Leeder, deputy chief executive officer of The Australian, the app, which costs $3.99 a month, the number sold far exceeded expectations -- and has proven to a useful albeit "brutal" feedback tool. "The first thing they said was 'we want more content.' There are certain things The Australian stands for that we didn't have in the original app, more Opinion and Media," explained Leeder. Readers also said they wanted content and functionalities that would be found on an iPad app -- "and that's progressively being rolled out."

Not too shabby to have a focus group that pays you to participate. But if there is one thing we all should have learned by now is that audiences will give you some latitude at ramp-up -- but you have a very small window to give them what they want before they go ... er, walk-about.

Mixing, Mashing XML into Content Derivatives

After much deliberation, I have changed jobs, moving from Nstein (now OpenText) to MarkLogic, a provider of “purpose-built databases for unstructured content,” which means we handle all that data that doesn’t fit nicely into rows and columns – you know content like documents, articles, books, graphics -- which is often (and best) represented in XML. Over the years I have written about the importance of semantic metadata but it is but a scintilla of types of metadata that can be appended to content -- as long as that all-important infrastructure is in place. It was so last year to be absorbed in knowing what content you created -- now what is important is to complement that content with information from other resources.

What does this mean to information providers, publishers and other types of media (and if you read my blogs, you know that I believe all of us are publishers!)? Well consider the iPad. Selling at a head-shaking rate of one every three seconds (despite the recession), more than 13 million will be in consumers' hands by Christmas. Add to it the hordes of other mobile devices: iPhones, Blackberries, Androids, eReaders ... and you have 12 percent of the market looking for content for their gizmos. Which in itself can be a challenge -- since content doesn't just magically play nicely on every device. Most of that content will need to flow into its own native application to really exploit the devices' features, which mean that content needs to first be available in a neutral format.

And while you are exploiting the gizmos features ... remember that if gizmos are everywhere their owners are -- there will be an increased desire for what is known in the military as situational awareness ; deriving additional, contextual information that relates to the user -- usually time (temporal data) and space (geo mapping). Think of a soldier needing to know what threats are in the area where he currently is -- or where he is going. Publishers too should think in terms of creating new derivative, situational content. For example, what types of information might a business person want while on Maple and Elm at 8am in the summer -- versus at 8pm in the winter? Or what location-based weather patterns does a commodities trader want when looking at crop futures?

This need for situational awareness provides a great opportunity for publishers to take their knowledge bases and mix it with external resources -- such as public information from NOAA, Google Maps, LinkedIn, or proprietary information from partners. The key to mixing and mashing is having content in a mutable format -- and a database that can handle it. Extensible Markup Language, or XML, is a highly flexible text format, a W3C standard that is sometimes called atomic or a neutral format. It is designed to be easily stored and retrieved -- void of any display format. Which means it "pours" nicely into any layout. MarkLogic's database in my mind then is akin to a gourmet mixing bowl that takes in XML and allows it to be stored and retrieved into any application.

XML is hardly new as it was designed for large-scale publishing, although there is an increased awareness around it due to the Web and blog feeds, and is a great way to describe unstructured data. Unstructured data can reside in regular relational databases (RDBMS) -- but they tend to get bogged down. By storing this unstructured data on a database built specifically to handle these datatypes -- you can search and retrieve much more quickly. Forrester Analyst Noel Yuhanna told me estimated that by unburdening RDBMS of unstructured data -- they saw a 30% lift in database performance, which is huge.

In any event, the real advantage to having content in XML -- and residing in a database built to handle it -- is that you can easily mix and mash it up into new types of content, ready it for new delivery platforms, or ease syndication. And you can do all of this in a matter of weeks not months -- which is terrific since we don't yet know what other new gizmo might be in readers' hands -- least of all by Christmas.

My Dad & His iPad

On Sunday, my 81-year old dad became one of the 3 million+ iPad users out there. My 12-year old described grandpa's zeal and excitement as "'like a child at Christmas."

Indeed, Dad has brought his new tablet everywhere, stopping people to show them his new gizmo. And while he professes that "the iPad is for people under 18 or geniuses -- and I am neither," he protests too much. He wasn't in the house 10 minutes before he was typing in our address in Google Maps to show the street view of the house. After I set up his email for him, he had a FaceBook message inviting him to join -- so he did. As I was pouring through my own email, I looked over and did a double take: he was busy creating his own profile. "How do I put my picture on here?" he asked. (Good Lord, I have a teen, a tween and a senior account that I now need to monitor. I logged on after he left to change his privacy settings.)

Deciding on this digital device was not too difficult. Dad had been wanting a laptop for some time, asking if he could repair the 6-year old MacBook that had been handed down from me to my kids -- and now sat inert under a chair, with missing keys and the plastic frame on the monitor pulling away. (What does one do with old computers? I have 20 years of obsolete carcasses under various pieces of furniture.) There was no repairing that Mac. I debated over new ones: a laptop seemed like such overkill -- perhaps the mini -- with a large monitor? Finally I settled on the iPad.

We went to the Apple store and I had him hold it -- and play with the on-screen keyboard. Frankly, it was that feature that had me most skeptical. Would he like this virtual keyboard? did he need a physical one in order to interact? The demo unit had the iBooks app installed, and after opening one of the books -- he instinctively used his finger to flip the page! There was no training - he just did it. He kept insisting that he was a dinosaur and this was too difficult -- but there he was opening and closing apps, browsing and turning pages.

Much has been said about what the iPad is not -- no ports, no cameras, no phone, and that is precisely why it is perfect for Dad -- and the millions of seniors like him out there. Who needs all those extras when all they want to do (in the words of my Dad) is "browse." Less in this case is much, much more -- more ease, more confidence and more fun. The large screen is perfect for failing eyes -- and while I worried that the "pinch" to zoom would be too difficult -- boy was I wrong. He was telling my son that he was changing the font to Palatino -- cause he liked it better! I thought my Dad would like it -- but I was so wrong, he loved it!

Because the iPad is anti-Flash (and won't support those types of streaming media) some sites won't work on the iPad without a specific app. According to a survey of 1147 organizations by StreamingMedia.com's Jan Ozer reveals that 28% of all respondents have or will have an iPad compatible app or site by year end, with another 10% planning for the end of 2011. This fairly fast rate of adoption underscores the importance of this new tablet. But the delta of those not adapting their sites reveals there could be a fair amount of frustration and confusion as well. The challenges for senior users are: One, they have to realize that not all sites will play and that their iPad is not "broken" -- and two, they need to know to look for the correct application. Searching and downloading an application is not an intuitive action for an octogenarian (or for those 10, 20 or 30 years younger, either). There is no metaphor from his time period that I can conjure up to help him understand it. (For the iPad vs. laptop, I compared it to driving a car with an automatic transmission versus cranking the engine and shifting gears. You'll lose some control, pay a little more, but all in all, life will be easier. That made sense to him.)

So while the tablet appears to be a terrific device for seniors -- Dad still needs a tad of technical support, which his grandsons are happy to provide. Which might be the nicest thing about the iPad -- it provides a common platform for interaction between three generations.

Drowning in Data: Unplugging to Think Again

Quite the week to rail against the machine and highlight the perils of being über plugged in. The New York Times introduced us to the Campbells, Brian and Brenda, with he so consumed by data that an offer to buy his company sat unopened in his email inbox for a good 12 days, while she, like the football widows of lore, looks for ways to peel him from his gadgets to get him to partake with the family.

While the evolution of technology initially untethered us from our offices, we now drag our office with us. What was once a time saver is now a time consumer. The Twitter, the Facebook, the texting, the email. In her blog, Marci Maddox, Director Global Product Marketing for E2.0 at Open Text shared a line from Forrester's Tim Walters at the Forrester IT Forum when he said: 

Humans have lost the battle of information overload – only the machines can save us now.

Marci and I exchanged some emails on this and I offered that new technology will provide us with more ways to filter, to derive meaning from those burgeoning in boxes. She returned: "How often do we let computers handle the meaningless stuff and it seems that we are marching toward a moment in time where we will truly let the machines run us.  Reminds me of iRobot and a conversation I had with my daughter on what distinguishes a computer from a human."

As I pondered I began examining my own obsession with information. How I created my own taxonomy of folders to help me find things again -- for when I have "more time" -- only to realize that once it is filed it is forgotten. Like Lucy in the candy factory, more is coming so quickly, who has time to "catch up?" There is no more time to go back. And yet I can't stop the futility.

In Tracy Kidder's eponymous book The Soul of the New Machine, engineers breathe life into a next-gen computer -- giving it soul -- as they give pieces of themselves to it. Today, machines and technology seem to foster our individual most compulsive desires, teasing us until we are fully junkified:  Can I get more Twitter followers, he wrote to me so I must write back, I need to update my blog, I need to get through my emails, I need to keep up with my many personas over all these social sites. So integrated are our lives with technology that a mere vacation threatens to create a Tsunami of emails, a void in the Twitter-sphere, a stale blog. If you aren't participating do you continue to exist?

Would Rene Descartes' famous intonation "I think therefore I am" succumb to "I updated therefore I am?" And when we "stop" do we cease to exist? Or by constantly interacting have we ceased living? This theme was loosely explored in Iron Man 2, where the machine initially saves the comic book hero played by Robert Downey, Jr., only eventually to be killing him.

In the Times article, Stanford research is cited that explains the addicting lure of technology. Researchers found that a portion of the brain acts as a control tower, helping a person focus and set priorities. More primitive parts of the brain, like those that process sight and sound, demand that it pay attention to new information, bombarding the control tower when they are stimulated. In past lives, man would rely on this primitive brain function to let him know danger was near. Alerts and chimes have the same effect: drawing our attention.

With multi-taskers, the research finds, we can not distinguish essential alerts and chimes from non-important ones. So as we change our ring tone to let us differentiate between loved ones, work and other, it is virtually impossible for those wired in to ignore any alert. We are training ourselves to react -- but can we still think? There is no doubt that focusing is near impossible with all these distractions pulling at us. And, yet, for a highly connected person, the abrupt removal of technology -- can be just as disorienting. A week's vacation, where I truly unplugged, interrupted my rhythm and flow -- and getting back up to speed was like trying to jump into a turning rope; clumsy, off-balance and daunting.

The downtime was a realization of how exhausted I had become and an awareness of how technology had become the master of my life.

Will we be able to eventually find a balance between machine and life?  Perhaps. The good news is “the bottom line is, the brain is wired to adapt,” said Steven Yantis, a professor of brain sciences at Johns Hopkins University.

Maybe our evolution will include learning to surf. Like water, ride the information wave, don't try and control it. The information will be out there when we need it. And we still exist without it.

What is the Value of Your Information Archives?

So just what is the value of old content? Back in the day, we called content that had an immediate shelf-life perishable, while content that could endure was called evergreen. It's hard to get anyone to agree on the value of content archives, and indeed ROI models essentially don't work because the value is in the eye of both the holder -- and the audience.

Are the Wall Street Journal's archives important? The Journal makes its money selling immediate news to an audience that demands instantaneous. That doesn't denigrate the value of the archive -- but the primary value to readers is immediate, up-to-the-minute, highly specialized financial information. Conversely, general news sites have it a bit tougher since general news is seen more as a commodity; available for free from multiple sources. For these sites, the archive actually gains more value over time, particularly if it becomes a means of driving traffic to the site, as Dorian Benkoil writes (and concurred by virtually every SEO specialist) for the Poynter Institute's E-Media Tidbits column.

Benkoil's Poynter compatriot Michelle Minkoff finds another use for "old" content: providing historical, primary source content to commemorate anniversaries. In the ongoing saga of historical revisionism, Minkoff sees a value in being able to dust off the annals and touts The Spokesman-Review of Spokan, Wash., for how it handled the 30-year anniversary of the eruption of St. Helens. Coverage included an interview of photojournalist Christopher Anderson as he described the picture that landed on virtually every newspaper. Additionally, Anderson took his lenses back to the same vantage point -- showing us what it looks three decades later.

Historical retrospectives work for virtually any industry on any topic. People want to know what "was'' the day/year they were born. For my father's 75th birthday I gave a bound keepsake edition of The New York Times. We all got a kick out of the cost of men's suits (two pairs of pants, one jacket!), Singer sewing machines and farm equipment. A business that assembles a slide show of then and now may find that it becomes a viral success -- driving traffic and stickiness.

For fee, for free, for traffic, for loyalty, the best way to determine the value of your archives -- is by getting it out there -- and see if your audience responds.

Newsweek (Finally) Wants to Embrace the Web -- But is it Too Late?

I can't sum up my feelings when I heard Jon Meacham tell Jon Stewart on the Daily Show, that Newsweek needs to "fully embrace the Internet." However I can describe my reactions: rolled my eyes, shook my head, and muttered, "about (effing) time." Really, I don't have anything against Jon Meacham, (and he is really smart) but I do have an issue with really smart people having had their head in the sand for the past 15 years, and not having "fully embraced" the Internet.

Stewart and Meacham hailed the importance of Journalism -- and lamented the subsequent lack of business model that supports the gathering of general news. Meacham "speculated" that Newsweek had it backwards -- where you are solely focused on the digital -- and then spin up a magazine! Yes!! Yes!! By gotcha he got it. Why this wasn't obvious 10 years ago, or even 3, when WaPo's management wrote this memo, outlining The 10 Web Principles, is beyond me.

Well, it isn't a mystery really. Writers have been skeptical of the Web for all the wrong reasons, putting more value in having something in print than in pixels. The reality is, and trust me, I have tested this on a whole bunch of journos and it is like light dawn's on marble head, news on the Web (and the corresponding byline) will be consumed by more people than in print. And for some reason that matters to journos - which is the reason you find Meacham on broadcast, writing books or even Twittering. They want their names out there; they want to know they are an influencer.

So while wanting to embrace the Web is a good thing albeit a bit overdue, sadly Meacham and Co will  find  that the work flow has been honed and hewn over the past 77 years to be a print-first paradigm -- and to shift Web-first is going to be ghastly difficult because the entire infrastructure needs to be ripped out. This is not an intractable situation -- but it is a problem, because it will require a capital budget expense -- which is hard to justify when the company is on the block.

I hope for the sake of investigative journalism, for balanced journalism, for war coverage and domestic issues coverage, Newsweek can sort it out. It's not too late yet, but it the clock is chiming.

The Perversity of PowerPoint

Fresh from a holiday to Barcelona and Italy, I have been busy attacking my "to read" pile, when I came across this story, which illustrates the perversity of PowerPoint. And while it has nothing to do with digital publishing per se -- it has everything to do with effective communication.

This image was shown to General Stanley A. McChrystal, leader of American and NATO forces in Afghanistan, to convey the complexity of the war.

And while the image certainly succeeded it also lead Gen. McChrystal to quip: “When we understand that slide, we’ll have won the war” -- which was followed by uproarious laughter -- probably not the creator's intention.

Finally. It may have taken a four-star general to opine what many of us have felt for years: that PowerPoint is not the medium for all things -- and certainly not for something as complex as war strategy. But think about something else: How many wo/man-hours went into creating this? You don't just slap this together (despite the fact that it looks like it was). Hours and hours were spent trying to pull something together that fell flat with its audience. And how many hours of productivity were lost by the members of the audience who had to sit through a mind-numbing presentation.

Effective communicators hate slide decks. They know that to connect with their audience -- they need to "read" the non-verbal cues and have listened to the conversations going on just before -- and tack accordingly. An effective communicator interacts with his or her audience -- hard to do when one is supposed to follow a scripted slide show. Personally I find decks to be cumbersome and counter-productive, and would prefer to go low tech -- or at most to use slides that illustrate a point.

A deck is a crutch -- usually, and I am on a limb here, for people who don't know what is going on -- or, more charitably, for those who do but who are nervous in front of crowds, or finally, for those who have a message to get out -- and don't care about the audience. PowerPoint is an anthama to the Hallmark slogan "When You Care to Send the Very Best." Stick a Don't in there.

While we talk about cost of time to produce these beasts of boredom -- how about what it costs to actually sit through them?? Dave Paridi, co-author of "Guide to PowerPoint," calculates the losses  from poor PowerPoints -- looking merely at the work to it takes to clarify a poor presentation. Frankly I think he way understates the losses.  Nowhere does he address the amount of lost productivity from the people who had to sit through the poor presentation to begin with -- and could they have received that information in some other format that would have been faster and more effective.

The reality is, we don't create a video for every instance of communication, and PowerPoint should not be the de facto messenger either. Think of slides as exclamation points -- and use sparingly.

Getting Man & Machine to Communicate

"Semantics is hot," declares Seth Grimes, "but only in a geeky sort of way." And then Grimes offers 11 different ways semantics is impacting -- search. In fact Semantic Search takes two geeky subjects and, when conjoined, attempts to become a precision tool for finding what the user really wants.

But what does the user really want? And here is the crux of the problem. The machine needs to discern the true question the user is asking when searching -- but the challenge is the machine and man do not share the same language. Man wants to ask a question -- well, naturally -- meaning highly unstructure. And machines need people to be structured. NLP, Natural Language Processing, is where the machine finally understands human-speak. (We're a long way off still -- but heading in the right direction.)

It helps if we know Boolean -- but few do. Really smart people I know may know that putting a + sign between words means AND, but few know that the - (minus) sign means NOT. Nor do they think to put phrases in "". Really smart people I know forget that really smart people don't know Boolean -- which leaves many really smart -- and not so smart people --having a dismal time when they are searching for things. (To prove my point -- this article on 10 Google Search Tricks has been in the top 10 in popularity for the last 10 days.)

Which circles back to why semantics is hot. Generating semantic metadata means machines can locate content about this -- when a person asks for that. It presents content to us by clustering content under categories -- so we may browse through and find what are looking for. Semantic Metadata is a great first step to getting man and machine to communicate.

Having Fun With Semantic Metadata

Last week, I hosted a webinar on Semantic Metadata for the company previously known as Nstein (now Open Text) -- along with two of my colleagues, Sheila Woo and Matt Mullen. Despite putting it together in just under 10 days we still had over 250 registrants, which proves my point that interest in Semantic Metadata has created a "hockey stick" graph; slight incline for 10 years -- and soaring upward now.

Matt and Sheila are uniquely well-versed in how semantic metadata can assist the largest of information providers, so it was an engaging webcast. We looked at how Semantic Metadata can boost Audience Engagement, how it can increase traffic and stickiness, how we could improve productivity and contain costs -- and how it can provide a unique search tool on both the back end and the front. When we polled the audience, more than 40% said they could imagine using Semantic Metadata to improve audience engagement. This tracks with Gilbane's analysis that Audience Engagement is the number one focus of enterprise Marketers.

When we turned it loose for questions we must have piqued the imaginations of many -- because over 25 questions flew in. The range was from how long does it take to implement (the obvious answer is the ever-annoying "it depends) to how do I create a taxonomy (this is Sheila's forté - so she riffed on that) you can go generic with an IPTC taxonomy or do an analysis of all your assets to create a custom taxonomy.

People were particularly intrigued with the idea of putting a "linguistic fingerprint" on assets --using a combination of linguistic and computational analysis -- so you can find content that highly similar to another. Or, as we say, "relevant content."

We had someone ask how you could use Semantic Metadata to improve information security, that was my baby: consider adding it into an email process to determine if sensitive information is being sent out through the firewall.

The truth is, Semantic Metadata, which is the data that describes in rich detail the "aboutness" of something, can be incorporated into virtually any application that incorporates "unstructured" data. If you are a content freak like I am -- it's time to consider becoming a semantic metadata geek.

History of Indexing & what exactly is 'semantic metadata?'

The Internet is the biggest library in the world -- with all the books on the floor.

-- unknown

I'm sure most of us have never spent even a minute or so pondering about the classification system that keeps libraries sane. But they weren't always pristine. According to editors at TheStraightDope.com, when Melville Dewey spent his junior year (1872-73) working in Amherst College's library, he was frustrated by the disarray of Amherst's collection. A real self-starter (apparently) Dewey examined how other libraries were organizing books. One method, which dated back to the Han Dynasty (206 BC - 9) was to assign books a given a spot on a shelf and log in a journal the location and book title. Another mode was to alphabetize the entire collection -- which created a fair amount of juggling when new books came in! Other libraries (harkening back to the Hellenic era) chose to organize by subject. But what constituted a subject? Sir Francis Bacon in the 1600s, said there were three branches of knowledge: history (deriving from memory), poetry (from imagination), and philosophy (from reason.) The Vatican said there were a pithy two: sacred and profane.

Dewey channeled his frustrations and within four years took the best of all the methods and developed a standard of classification and indexing that still exists today. The system consisted of combining "the analytical simplicity of decimal numbers to an intuitive scheme of knowledge, one that would fluidly accommodate all the books ever written, and all the books that could be written as well," said Mathew Battles, Library Historian. Further, Dewey's systems worked for any asset -- not just books.

Alas, Dewey's system for libraries has not been the way the Web sites are indexed -- although that is starting to change. Like Dewey, companies are starting to create federated classification systems for all of their content, creating Taxonomies and Authority Files for centralized knowledge management. Another term for this type of information is semantic tags -- or more accurately, semantic metadata. Most of the efforts to create semantic metadata have been largely manual, which, as Chris Hill says "is a losing proposition" with the deluge of content now being acquired and developed. The typical approach is tag "after the fact" is problematic as well - as it tends not to be comprehensive nor complying with classification standards that have been created.

As Nstein Technologies spokeswoman for the last 3 years, I've spoken on the subject of semantic metadata quite a bit, usually as the lone voice in the room uttering those words! So I was amazed last month when at two different DAM conferences semantic metadata was uttered by virtually every speaker! Yet, it was apparent that few in the audience understood the scope of what metadata could be.
It seems we are at a point in history when every knows they need metadata -- but really don't know the "aboutness" of the subject!!


So a trio of us are hosting a webinar next week on "Semantic Metadata 101: Your Assets are Bare Without It." Linguistics expert Sheila Woo (and Director of Product Development) and Nstein's Sales Engineer will be joining me on Wednesday, March 31, 10am EDT/ 3pm GMT.

If you are involved with managing large repositories of content, you head up knowledge management, you are a CMO looking to leverage content to drive readers, engage and cross promote products and services, then join us. They'll be plenty of time for questions -- just bring your own cookies and coffee.

Nstein's New 3S Boosts WCM Maturity

My first foray into Web content management (WCM) was back in early 1995 when we built a system to manage the content of two daily newspapers – including more than $100 million in Classified advertizing. We cobbled together a series of flat files with a nasty grey background that tiled. It wasn’t pretty but it served our needs at the time.

My second round at Web content management was in 1996 – when we realized that despite using HTML includes, trying to update the look and feel of two daily newspapers was improbable – and bordering on impossible – without putting everything into a database. Further, we were thwarted from our secondary goal of slicing and dicing content from our papers and our six radio stations into new “topic areas.” It was a manual laborer’s nightmare. Intrigued by CNET’s flexibility and ability to scale with large data sets, in early 1997, we became a beta site for Vignette’s StoryServer, which was a commercial product of CNET’s prototypical (and revolutionary!) WCM. (StoryServer is largely recognized as the first “real” WCM.) With it we could create new templates and indicate which stories would flow onto those templates. And when my company was bought by Gannett 6 months later, we had a fine infrastructure upon which to move the other three New Jersey papers. Later, long after I left, Gannett’s New Jersey papers were moved onto yet another platform – ostensibly to centralize many of the Gannett papers across the nation.

In his research, Forrester’s Stephen Powers did a fine job outlining this type of WCM evolution in his "Web Content Management  Maturity Model,” looking at the four different stages that companies fall into when it comes to addressing Web needs – from the Basic “just get it up there” stage to the Engagement stage. In this last plateau, executives (versus IT) sponsor building a framework that impacts marketing, business, IT and all business goals.

Of the 261 enterprise executives surveyed by Powers and his team, most companies fell in between the second, “Tactical,” and the third, “Enterprise,” stages. The challenge for Information and Knowledge Management (I and KM) professionals is that they “miss opportunities to treat WCM as critical plumbing rather than as an application silo, and they fail to see how WCM fits in to a broader persuasive content architecture,” writes Powers.

And while Powers rightly suggests these professionals use his guidelines to determine where they are on the Maturity scale to drive conversations internally it is also an initiative fraught with political landmines unless one happens to be working for enlightened despots!

There is another way. Nstein Technologies, which has been on the forefront of developing semantic analysis solutions for over a decade, has just launched its 3S platform. 3S allows Web content from disparate sites, of varying levels of maturity, to be automatically semantically annotated – and then “mashed” together so it can be sliced and diced into new topic pages. That static sister site that focuses only on carpeting now can easily be mashed together with content from another WCM that focuses on furnishings. The result – a richer engagement for your audience to be sure, but also the ability for business owners to create new, highly targeted sites that are subsets of the amalgamation of the two (or more) sites. Nstein smartly made the management of these microsites easy. Simply create a query and marry it to a theme – or template. It’s that simple. Nstein also allows the management of ad banners so you can promote products or services specific to this mashed up content.

Understanding where you are on the WCM maturity model is without a doubt important. But if management’s "maturity model" is lacking, Nstein’s 3S helps bridge these WCM stages quickly and painlessly.

Media M'nA Expected Up, Tools for Sharing/Repurposing Needed

Interesting report issued by Ad Media Partners, analyzing a survey of senior executives within leading media (traditional media and digital media) and marketing services (advertising, marketing services and digital marketing) businesses on prospects for industry mergers and acquisitions for 2010.

(Note: Blogger seems to have a problem with ampersands, which I don't recall encountering before, thus, I am abbreviating mergers & acquisitions with M'nA.)

Four out of five respondents (83% in marketing services and 80% in media) anticipate that M'nA by strategic buyers will be up in 2010. This is a dramatic turnaround from 2009 results when less than one-third of those surveyed anticipated activity would increase.  Executives overall weren't so certain about financial buyers, with half saying they would be active, and approximately 40% saying financial buyers would be flat.

As to be expected, the top two drivers for M'nA were:

• Attractive Buying Opportunities 52%
• Strategic Refocusing 49% 

Of course the success of any merger is predicated on the buyer achieving its goals to leverage assets and achieve some level of economies of scale. This will put greater pressure on IT departments to ensure that systems are aligned if not consolidated. Should be a great opportunity for DAM and other vendors who can help leverage content from various silos -- with minimal disruption to productivity.

Brother, can you share your content?

A woman's hand rose in the audience. "But what if you can't get your colleagues to share their content. How do you make them do it?" It wasn't the first time I had heard the question -- God knows I said it to myself often enough when I was running the interactive division of a media group in trying to get a feed from one of our two daily papers -- in a format we could use.

With all the discussions on digital asset management, the theorists often leave unmentioned the largest obstacle of all: internal politics. While I don't have numbers on how wide-spread it is, I do know that when I re-asked woman's question to the audience about whether they had dealt with this issue -- they were nodding and raising their hands. And while on a call on Friday with my co-panelists at the upcoming Create-a-Sphere symposium I suggested this as an obstacle --- and everyone chimed in, in agreement.

Like the filibuster option in politics, it seems the minority can just say no to sharing content -- and what are beleaguered colleagues to do? Running to the board and saying that so-and-so won't play nicely would certainly qualify as a CLM. But board members and senior management alike that don't provide tools and policies to thwart this very toxic power play ... will end up with the same disastrous stalemate seen today in government. Line managers won't complain they just won't get the job done. And the entropy can be costly.

According to the Butler Group, up to 10% of staff productivity is lost trying to find things.  And searching for something that you know should be there -- but just can't find is probably the biggest time waster of all. More recent research from IDC supports that and notes that a company that employs 1,000 information workers can expect more than $5 million in annual salary costs to go down the drain because of the time wasted looking for information and not finding it.

Is there a Holy Grail to this? Yes, and it begins at the top of the food chain. The C-suite needs to acknowledge that knowledge is power -- and therefore some people don't want to share. (And your most powerful managers -- may be your worst offenders.) Creating a Lord of the Flies environment is not the answer. Some people may thrive in that environment but the majority don't; they will either begrudgingly go along (and go without) or quit.  Instead there needs to be an enterprise-wide initiative to invest in technology that automates processes -- to neutralize the human gate-keeper. These technologies fall under the heading of DAM - digital asset management solutions -- but also are known more narrowly as BAM (brand asset management) and MAM (multimedia asset management) and sometimes more broadly as ECM (enterprise content management).

Technologies vary depending upon 

• the types of assets being stored -- largely text, photos, videos?  
  
• the frequency of searching for them -- everyday or once in a while? 
• the applications -- recombination and repurpose, or e-discovery?

These technologies need to be embedded enterprise wide into the workflow. Techniques include automating the ingestion of all assets into a single repository -- either physically or virtually and creating a method to standardize metadata (I'll dive into that topic on another day.)

A sane digital asset management solution eliminates the insanity of having employees dropping to bended knee saying "please sir, can you share your content?"

The New Age Farm Team

My kids' Apple laptop died over the weekend. It had been a trusty little MacBook -- mine for three years before I passed it onto the kids two years ago. When one had a paper due and the other had to jump onto Castle Learning to do, what would be, roughly two hours of quadratic equations, they both immediately vied for their parents' computers -- which were both in use doing bills and an informercial for Nstein -- I knew I had to break down and buy another computer immediately.

And while I am uncertain which Smart Phone to invest in (only because of network), I have no such trepidations about computers. I was upgrading the kids to the MacBook Pro -- the Intel version of the Mac -- precisely because I needed my kids to be on the same OS and applications as I was. It wasn't an issue of technical support so much as literacy. Apple is very good at backward compatibility, but the changeover to Intel a couple years ago did preclude some newer software from being available to the old computer. Which was a pity. I've been dying to create some really terrific videos -- but to sit down and take the time to learn the idiosyncracies of a new program (that wasn't my clients') was impossible. And I am horrible at Illustrator -- and would like to change that. My hope is that my kids can master these programs and get me up to speed. Let them be my R&D team and built in technical support. How full circle that technology actually could bring us back to a time when families worked and survived together.

Of course when it came to teaching me Madden football -- they put me in a punt defense -- when they were on 1st down.

Marketers' Credo: Thou Shalt Create Great Content

Content marketing guru Joe Pulizzi is a key believer in using great content to foment and cement relationships. He published what should be a marketer's credo with his 30 Content Marketing Truths. They boil down to the brand being a relationship -- not a tag line; and, that the customer relationship doesn't end with the payment.

Those two "truths" (#8 and #2, respectively) are the crux to what I call Persuasive Marketing. Persuasive Marketing is a process of identifying, targeting and communicating with key influencers throughout the industry. Key influencers being customers, luminaries, analysts, media, academicians, partners and even employees. When key influcencers vocalize their experiences -- their respective peers take notice -- and join in on the conversation.

The core to creating relationships is with good content. Don't believe me? Think about when you are at a cocktail party; people gather around those with compelling stories and anecdotes. Or when you are interviewing for a job; if the conversation is loose and flowing interest ensues. Think of your brand as a news magazine and create content that intrigues and interests your audiences. Give them a forum to talk about their challenges, create content that inspires, shares anecdotes, relays how-tos. Ultimately you are creating a mechanism to relate and gain trust.

I recently spoke with Luuk de Jager, Senior Director, Central Marketing Office Online for Philips Consumer Lifestyle. He shared with me that Philips content is split between customer centered and product centered content, with the former being more important to all audiences save for business partners -- which is why the Philips' sites are peppered with articles on ambiance, designing with light, finding the right fixture, finding the right bulb.

Philiips has invested literally millions of dollars on content that has nothing to do with selling product but rather is about engaging the customer. Unfortunately this "soft" approach is foreign to most companies, and hence, as Pulizzi opines, more than 90% of all Web sites "suck" because they go on and on about how great the company is. Really? As my writing coach used to say, "show me, don't tell me."

There is a tremendous opportunity right now for enterprises to take advantage of the missteps and misfortunes of the traditional media. People are hungry for information that solves their problems. The media used to be where people turned, but with cutbacks, scandals and the search engines, people are finding corporate content to fill their needs.

The enterprises that recognize that great content (not just articles, by the way, but illustrations, videos and photographs) leads people to experience your brand -- and in turn, spend the time influencing others. Building your sphere of influencers has to be a key goal for 2010 -- and having a steady stream of great content will help your sphere grow quickly.

If a Phone Doesn't Ring -- is it an iTouch?

I received an iTouch for Christmas.
I haven't taken it out of the packaging yet.

Not because I don't love the Touch -- but because I can't imagine schlepping both my Blackberry and my Touch everywhere -- when God knows, all I would want to use is my Touch. So why is it still sitting on my kitchen counter staring at me out of its sleek, plexicase, the ends still hermetically sealed? 'Cause I really want to ditch my Blackberry and eliminate the need for the Touch by getting the iPhone. And I can't do that because Apple has tethered its fortunes to AT&T. You have to wonder what Steven Jobs thought when AT&T announced, in a brilliant marketing move, that the iPhone would not be available for sale from its Web site to any customers in the New York City and surrounding areas.

Most of us in the digerati were head-shaking shocked when we heard the news, broken by the Consumerist, that rationing the iPhones was AT&T's boneheaded response to the fact that its data network is just to jammed to handle any more traffic. According to TheiPhoneBlog, AT&T PR responded that it reserves the right to "periodically modify our promotions and distribution channels." But a later statement from AT&T, reported by All Things Digital, said that it was guarding against online fraud.  Puh-lease.

AT&T has been behind the technology curve since the breakup, and while its partnership with Apple has been a boon to the brand, it has also been its bane. The iPhone is a data gobbler -- the 100k apps are the reason for its popularity -- and a factor in AT&Ts sagging network. It's gotten so bad that everyone is taking potshots. During his Weekend Update for SNL, Seth Meyers noted the growing rumor of Google's new smart phone. He quipped:  "You know what also is a challenge to the iPhone -- making phone calls." You can just imagine someone at AT&T saying -- enough already, just stop selling the damn thing there.

This type of co-marketing is not what Jobs had in mind. I'm praying that the New York City bungling means Apple can cite breach of contract -- and make an announcement in February that it is opening the phone to other networks. Otherwise, I just can't bear signing a 2 year contract and I just might have to take the shrink wrap off my iTouch ... which is basically what the iPhone is in NYC.

Can't Find Foundem - Conspiracy?

Saw an interesting Op-Ed piece written by Adam Raff, founder of Foundem, a vertical search firm in the UK that provides comparative pricing on electronics, airline tickets, home & garden items, etc. The crux of Raff's opinion piece is that online search provided by behemoths like Bing, Yahoo -- but in this case, in particular Google -- need to have oversight. He is so passionate about this need for adult supervision that he has dubbed his quest "Search Neutrality" and is hoping to generate enough interest so that the discussion on "Net Neutrality" will incorporate search as well.

Net Neutrality, is a principle whose proponents include activists, consumer groups, many technology application providers (including Google) who are pushing for a law that gives all people equal access to the Internet broadband on a first come first-served basis. SaveTheInternet.com states that

Net Neutrality prevents Internet providers from blocking, speeding up or slowing down Web content based on its source, ownership or destination.

Opponents say the whole issue is much ado about nothing and could prevent Internet Service Providers (ISPs) from taking needed action during denial-of-service (DOS) attacks,  The Net Neutrality movement is being addressed country by country, and in the US, the FCC is open to comments at this time. And besides, say a cadre of net engineers, the Internet isn't perfect anyway, and this law may prevent a new one from emerging.

Translated, the fear is that without the law ISPs could possibly discriminate against some websites by slowing packets to and from the server. While opponents fear that legislators could never possibly create a law that would be fluid enough to yield to innovation.

Back to Raff, his own site's treatment by Google, which is detailed here, has made him aware of the phenomenal power search engines hold over Commerce. Raff believes he has evidence that Google did penalize Foundem -- simply for being a vertical search company. He further contends that Google's own products are given preferential treatment at the top of search results. With 90 percent of the search market, Raff argues, Google needs oversight.

It is an interesting arguement -- more so, because of the ubiquity and popularity of search. We all have an expectation of being indexed by search engines -- for free. Conversely, do we have an expectation when we search, that all information that is relevant -- is being presented to us? Are these anti-trust issues? Or communication ones? Does Google et al have the right to block or discriminate certain sites -- when no money is changing hands?

It is quite possible that by virtue of its supremacy, Google has put itself in a situation where, like Microsoft before it, it becomes a victim of its own success -- and people just don't trust it.