windows live writer,Microsoft,blogging,web 2.0,adobe contribute

Pains of Blogging Answered

Since day one of use my Contribute 4 version sometimes would just absolutely refuse to post an article, labeling one error message or another.I finally get insanely frustrated with the glitching from Adobe Contribute and break down to evaluate a better blogging tool.

Under time pressure due to my December from Hell (better make that my YEAR from Hell), I finally had enough with the random glitch issue and decided to evaluate using something else that would allow offline editing (WordPress has a fairly decent editing tool built in) and would be fairly future proof.

Notice that ‘Free’ button.

It’s hard to keep from enjoying not paying out cash for a product.

Yet another entry from MSFT into the Web 2.0 space such as with the Silverlight framework which allows two-way communication from a website, and oh yes… this is for free. That’s pretty disruptive.

Note: Contribute is a fantastic tool for light web editing. The Dreamweaver / Contribute combination was a great toolset for Macromedia users keen on keeping web content updated with oversight from a supervising geek who knew DW and how the web should really work. My business usage was in setting it up for others who could modify or maintain basic web sites with it, particularly SOHO business operators.

My issues with Contribute hasn’t stopped me from owning three licenses, it’s just stopped me from upgrading them. I’ve just had doubts that it was worth an upgrade price (only like fifty bucks or so) when they weren’t adding many features into it or fixing bugs aggressively.

So… enter Windows Live Writer.

From 9 Ways to Get More Out of Windows Live Writer - Lifehack.org

In case you haven’t heard about it, WLW is an offline WYSIWIG (What You See Is What You Get) blogging tool that integrates very nicely with most blogging platforms, allowing you to create and edit blog posts from your desktop. Although it is usually great fun to mock Microsoft’s efforts, as it happens WLW is really very cool. If you regularly write for several different sites, it can really help to simplify your blogging life!

Unlike a lot of Microsoft products, WLW makes a strong effort to work with a variety of non-Microsoft services and products. So while it gives Microsoft’s own “Live Spaces” service pride of place in the setup dialog, WLW works well with a variety of blogging platforms, from hosted services like Google’s Blogger and Wordpress.com to Wordpress and other blogging programs hosted on your own servers — it even works with non-mainstream platforms like Drupal, albeit minus a few of the bells and whistles.

Update: I particularly like the glossary addition method (click for full size capture):

Simply by adding terms, I can save myself the pain of having to relink frequently used content, saving time in my blog workflow.

elearning,disruptive technology,technical communication

Here’s a thought: what influence would disrupt the eLearning Learning Management System (LMS) space?

LMS: A Market Ripe For Disruption

The LMS space is still developing and nobody is really happy with what’s currently available.

What would disrupt it more than having the capability to individually address and track around 60 million accessible stateside users who would never need a traditional $15,000 to $30,000 LMS server platform installed?

How much money is that really?

According to Wikipedia’s LMS page:

In 2005, LMSs represented a fragmented $500 million market (CLO magazine[1]). The six largest LMS product companies constitute approximately 43% of the market.

In addition to the remaining smaller LMS product vendors, training outsourcing firms, enterprise resource planning vendors, and consulting firms all compete for part of the learning management market.

The potential for the LMS market is staggering. According to CLOMedia’s article "Report Shows LMS Market Growing Apace" quoting Josh Bersin:

The LMS market grew 26 percent in 2005, reaching the $500 million mark in North America, and it has the potential to grow to the $3 billion mark because Bersin estimates only a sixth of the market has been tapped.

We hate our LMS… But we need an LMS!

People are frustrated and disappointed with LMS’ in general. So they have made do with what they’ve previously purchased and probably scapegoated and fired the manager in charge of the decision.

And now they’re scouting for a wonderful brand new LMS because somehow, magically, all will be made better with the next one.

Here’s some more information from Wikipedia, backed up by raw data:

LMS buyers are less satisfied than a year ago. According to 2005 and 2006 surveys by the American Society for Training and Development (ASTD)[2], respondents that were very unsatisfied with an LMS purchase doubled and those that were very satisfied decreased by 25%.

The number that were very satisfied or satisfied edged over 50%. (About 30% were somewhat satisfied.)

Nearly one quarter of respondents intended to purchase a new LMS or outsource their LMS functionality over the next 12 months.

So according to this data which may have changed (and I don’t have the $600 to buy the 2007 survey) there is clearly a market demand for some type of LMS answer.

Answering the LMS pains… Could you do it with an ASP model?

Another thought: what would happen if corporations requiring basic customer service position skills (retail, fast food, Wal-Mart, Starbucks, etc.) could do their training online without appreciably increasing their data overhead costs? Without the cost of training kiosks within their store?

What if my proposed eLearning audience already owned the proper hardware & was already familiar with the GUI, requiring zero to little GUI based training?

All of this wouldn’t mean much without a commerce system or tight security within the framework. Factor that cost in as well and…Now imagine that it’s already been planned ahead.

There are a couple of marketable concepts I’m researching to allow this possibility. Naturally I’ll fill you all in on it later.

That’s if my concept isn’t quickly snatched up by someone who thinks it might work and they throw money at me and NDA me.

browser,web 2.0,microsoft,ie,internet explorer,ie8,technical communication,silverlight

Quoted from Internet News: Internet Explorer 8 Passes the ‘Acid2′ Test

Microsoft announced Wednesday it has passed an early milestone for the next version of its iconic Internet Explorer. An early version of the pre-beta code for IE 8.0 has successfully passed the so-called Acid2 browser compatibility tests, Dean Hachamovitch, general manager on Microsoft’s IE team, said in a blog post.

From IEBlog, an external Microsoft blog:

For IE8, we want to communicate facts, not aspirations. We’re posting this information now because we have real working code checked in and we’re confident about delivering it in the final product. We’re listening to the feedback about IE, and at the same time, we are committed to responsible disclosure and setting expectations properly. Now that we’ve run the test on multiple machines and seen it work, we’re excited to be able to share definitive information.

While blog posts and links to videos are a good start, publicly available code is even better. We will have a lot more information available at sessions at MIX08 and will release a beta of IE8 in the first half of calendar 2008.

Dean Hachamovitch
General Manager

What do you want to bet that Silverlight will be standard equipment within IE8?!?

Flash achieved penetration of the browser market over 90% in a matter of years. Microsoft could do it in a matter of months with Silverlight merely by making it an option. IE currently has approximately 82% of the browser market share, with a high in 2004 of 95%.

For the Tech Comm Crowd:

This means that your content better be W3C compliant if you don’t want to have to go back and redo it.

Additionally, Silverlight could bridge the gap easily between IE, XBox 360, Media Center, Vista, and Windows XP after this update.

silverlight,flash,flex,adobe flash,microsoft silverlight,rich internet applications,ria,elearning

Here are a few resources for Silverlight:

Silverlight download page - if you want to install it on your system. Interesting but obvious fact: Silverlight will automatically update itself unless overridden within the IE Browser controls.

Silverlight Forums - I’ll be lurking inside here checking things out.

Why Silverlight? - Basically a marketing blurb about all the great things Silverlight will do, in plain English.

Opinions about Silverlight: Silverlight: The Web Got Richer (TechCrunch.com)

The most remarkable part of the CLR
(Common Language Runtime)
are its speed and its size. First of all, the full Silverlight download with CLR and everything else will weigh in at around 4MB - which with current broadband penetration is effortless.

Second of all the CLR is fast, very very fast. In a demonstration today showing a game of chess routines written in .NET competed against native Javascript routines and the result was a speed difference of orders of magnitude. Developers can simple take their existing Javascript and copy it into Silverlight and have it perform multiple times faster than it does in the native browser environment.

Further to that, Silverlight applications can access and manipulate the browser DOM (meaning they can reach outside and into the webpage itself) so once the Silverlight runtime is more common expect to see many developers of web applications tap into Silverlight for both a performance increase and for better visual enhancements and user experience.

Silverlight isn’t just animations in applets, far from it - it is a very serious development environment that takes desktop performance and flexibility and puts it on the web.