Category: User Experience

  • I get it

    It just clicked for me. Many facets just snapped together into focus. One, explaining why I post in so many different blogs (channels, brands), that almost promiscuous thrill of starting a new blog at the drop of a hat. Another, some recent conversations with business people who understand blogging and are using its process-flow as…

  • A CSS Method for Category Filtering?

    Would it be possible to put check boxes next to my navigator links and have them drive CSS logic to hide entries that are only associated with unchecked categories? Would this be something like the Jakob/Zeldman buttons for switching from serif to sans-serif? I think I may need to ask a CSS guru, such as…

  • Techdirt.com

    Back when I started talking about business applications of (or lessons from) blogging, Mike Masnick sent me an interesting message about Techdirt.com, a multi-author (slashcode) technology/business news blog that’s been running continuously since 1997 (that is, since before the word blog was coined). One interesting thing is that Mike and his team managed to monetize…

  • TopStyle Blog Information

    Not working on Windows most of the time lately, I haven’t had a chance to try TopStyle yet. I wish they’d port it to OS X! Anyway, I went from some blog to the Eatonweb portal and then through the TopStyle text ad where, after reading press-release type information about using TopStyle with Dreamweaver MX,…

  • Again, Please, In English?

    Nick Denton takes Traction to task for the buzzword bingo in their press release: Oh no, the corporate wordmanglers have got hold of blogging. “Traction is a leader in next generation Enterprise Weblog software, delivering interoperable, inexpensive, rapidly deployable, open and easy to use tools for groups and teams to communicate, share, organize and link…

  • Woe at Macromedia

    Scott Kessler writes in Business Week that Macromedia has suffered from its acquisition of Allaire and continues to see soft demand for its products: Macromedia’s wager was poorly timed. Some 17 months after the company bought Allaire, demand for its products is still weak and there’s no recovery in sight. In effect, the company doubled…

  • E-commerce (with PayPal and Dreamweaver) on a Budget

    Chapter 21 of Dreamweaver Savvy described how to build an e-commerce site. Here’s some useful advice from Macromedia for adding PayPal services to such as site: The PayPal eCommerce Toolkit extension for Dreamweaver MX allows web designers and developers to quickly and easily add e-commerce functionality to a website. [Macromedia Designer & Developer Center]

  • InformationWeek Asks 'Are You Blogging Yet?'

    Thanks to Ken Dow for the link. In this article John Foley looks at blogging as a professional tool, especially from the journalist’s perspective: As a journalist with more than 15 years’ experience myself, I’m more excited by the prospect of blogging than threatened by it. So, my business is in the midst of transformation…

  • Trellix and Blogging, Part 2

    Per Scriptingnews, here’s a discussion of the integration of Blogger with Trellix, a step toward folding the blog model into more full-fledged content management system solutions.

  • Dreamweaver Installed Base vs. User Base

    Scot Hacker jots in his personal blog about going to a Macromedia demo in S.F. and still preferring his native coding environments to Dreamweaver MX. He wonders if the large numbers of developers installing Dreamweaver are actually using it day-to-day. Read his post and some followup comments to find out more.

  • plasticbag Slags and Defends Dreamweaver and Blogger

    Also from plasticbag.org, a twist on the anti-webtool attitudes you sometimes see from hardcore or longstanding hand-coders. Tom Coates makes the point that the tools used to make work easier or to enable shortcuts are not responsible for the lousy design that may result. At worst, shortcuts facilitate laziness and open the doors to more…

  • Traction Targets the Business Market

    Following my referer log to McGee’s Musings on klogs, I stumbled across yet another blog tool—Traction—this one specifically aimed at the enterprise market. I haven’t investigated the feature set and pricing yet, and I’m curious about how it might differ from ordinary blog software. I was just talking to a business client today about using…

  • B2E Corporate Blogging

    In a column (Blogs are HUGE) at the Macromedia site, Ed Krimen discussed the way they are using blogs to promote their products: While most of the feedback about the blogs has been positive, there has been some concerned feedback, especially from the blogging community. Companies like Macromedia don’t normally use blogs to communicate with…

  • Corporate Weblog Pros and Cons

    Blunt Force Trauma cites this Seattle Times article on corporate blogging.

  • KM Blogging Hurdle: Sharing?

    Rick Klau links to thedownsideofknowledgemanagement.com, regarding the hurdles involved in using blogs for KM (or “knowledge sharing”), adding: In any event, I like the recognition that there’s more to KM than just software – that unless someone is committed, responsible and incented to make the thing work, it will be hard to succeed. BTW, I…

  • Too Easy to Collaborate?

    Michael Helfrich of Groove Networks recounts a telling exchange with a client from his days at the Lotus/IBM Knowledge Management project: “You mean that one of my supply chain people could share our schedule data with a supplier?” he asked. “Sure, but they could do that with email, or the phone too. Heck, they could…

  • PEP (Personal Expression Platform)

    For several years now I’ve been slowly spec’ing out an ideal personal publishing platform for posting a peck of pickled peppers…. Uh, sorry. No, actually I mean a system with a well designed content database at the core and a great deal of flexibility both in how to submit content (client, web, email, handheld, wireless?)…

  • Building Link Taxonomies

    Say, does Radio offer any link management features? I realize that the blog model says that only the latest or most-linked-to sites are of interest, but it seems that categorizing these links (beyond simply the category/channels built into Radio) might be worthwhile. For one thing, I could tell if I had already cited a link…

  • Corporate Blogs

    The growing idea that businesses and other enterprises can benefit from using blogs to categorize relevant external links or contextualize and prioritize their own knowledge stores continues to show up in media such as this (don’t laugh) WorldCom article.