Author Archives: David

Four Levels of Engagement in the Blogosphere

Posted on by David
11

I used this device in a presentation last week to frame how you can have different levels of participation in the online world these days. The four levels are:

  • 0: Unengaged
  • 1: Listening
  • 2: Commenting and Connecting
  • 3: Fully Engaged

Let’s tackle them one by one.

0: Unengaged

This one might also be called “Blogowhat?” You aren’t listening to what people are saying online and have no idea what people are saying about your company, ideas, products, employees, you name it. You are not plugged into the online conversation.

1: Listening

At this level, you are regularly reading key blogs in your field or industry. You have subscribed to relevant keyword alerts on Google and Technorati. You search Wikipedia for articles that are relevant to your issues and analyze how well they do or do not represent them. You share what you hear and learn throughout your company so that others are more aware of what is going on. This is still largely passive but at least you are following along.

2: Commenting and Connecting

This level includes all of 1 plus actively commenting on relevant blog posts, adding comments to a Wikipedia discussion page, contacting bloggers directly to share your side of the story, etc. It also includes making connections with groups and individuals using social networking tools, such as LinkedIn, Facebook or MySpace. You are going beyond listening by reaching out to those who are leading the online conversation.

3: Fully Engaged

Finally, you are publishing your own blog, podcast, vidcast, etc., putting out your own story. You link to others talking about issues you care about, giving your perspective. You have a full presence in the online conversation.

Moving from 0 to 1 is a huge leap and requires learning a lot of skills and knowledge about the online world. Moving from 1 to 2 is much easier to do, although developing an effective tone for interaction may take some experimentation. Finally, moving to 3 is a bit of a leap but should be pretty smooth if you have been commenting actively for a while first.

What do you think?

Update: Added Connecting to level two. Thanks to Kathryn Lagden for the suggestion in the comments!

IA's Miss the Point

Posted on by David
2

This thoughtful post by Christopher Fahey is a great example of how information architects tend to miss the point of their projects: The Holy Grail of Information Architecture. If you read through this post you hear a lot about process and tools and what form the ultimate deliverable from the project should take in order to be most effective. Christopher has concluded that standard deliverables aren’t the Holy Grail of an IA project but he doesn’t quite make the leap to what is: achieving the objectives of the organization.

The point of information architecture should be to help the organization in question to better achieve its goals. The output of an IA engagement should be the achievement of those business goals, not necessarily a nifty flow chart and set of wireframes. Selling widgets, providing membership value, business networking, politics, whatever the purpose of the site: IA should help to achieve those ends more effectively and efficiently. If you can provide that value simply by reviewing and discussing a site in a meeting, great! Don’t get hung up on the deliverables. Do focus on the outcomes to which you are contributing.

Will Card Sort for Conference Registration

Posted on by David
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Fred at Gulo Solutions points out that ASS&T’s registration form for the IA Summit implies that job prospects are not all that good for information architects. Two registration categories for the unemployed!

I would guess that is a holdover artifact from the dot-bomb. In any case, the categories should be adjusted in order to eliminate or de-emphasize the implied failure of IA as a career.

The Adobe PDF XSS Vulnerability

Posted on by David
1

Nasty little cross-site scripting attack via PDFs hase been discovered: Chris Shiflett: The Adobe PDF XSS Vulnerability.

Any site that has PDFs is vulnerable. The interesting thing is that it doesn’t compromise the server of the web site. The attack can gain access to the site visitor’s computer by passing some code in the URL referencing the PDF on a site. The post I link to provides info on how to upgrade your own computer and what you can do on the server side to prevent this from being used.

Outlook 2007 to Use Word for Rendering HTML E-mail

Posted on by David
2

According to SitePoint, Microsoft Breaks HTML Email Rendering in Outlook 2007:

That’s right. Instead of taking advantage of Internet Explorer 7, Outlook 2007 uses the very limited support for HTML and CSS that is built into Word 2007 to display HTML email messages.

Egads! This will be quite a boon for newsletter designers, once they figure out what will work in Word 2007. It will be a horrible pain for the rest of the world. Given Word’s atrocious history of HTML mark-up, I shudder to think what hoops designers will have to employ to get decent rendering.

Perhaps my traditionalist preference for plaintext will come back into vogue.

(Spotted via Simon Willison.)

Bernard Golden on Amazon's Computing Services

Posted on by David
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Bernard Golden, a noted open source guru, posted an excellent summary of what Amazon is doing with on demand computing services: CIO Blogs – Amazon: Books, DVDs and … Infrastructure?

Amazon’s role in this is truly amazing. It has in stealth created a vision of a new style of computing, delivered in market-appropriate, market-transforming fashion. I’m astonished they’ve turned in this direction (what, single-handedly creating ecommerce wasn’t enough?), but believe they’ve limned one path forward for the IT industry.

Read the whole post to learn more about how Amazon is striking out into a blue ocean.

Unprometheus

Posted on by David
1

Ben Martin has pointed out an interesting scenario for ASAE, who just canceled a small program that is highly valued by the few members who have participated in it. ASAE’s Prometheus program is an open space event for senior association execs that is purposely kept small in size. This is a great opportunity to facilitate the formation of self-guided group while moving an unprofitable program off the books. Will they see it as an opportunity or a pain in the neck? I hope the former. (Read Ben’s post for an excellent summary of the situation.)

Google Deprecates SOAP Search API

Posted on by David
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Google has deprecated their SOAP Search API. This means that people who already have keys to use the system can continue to do so but no new ones will be issued. Ongoing support of the SOAP API is questionable as well. Google suggests that people now use their AJAX Search API. Here is a good discussion (read comments and follow links) of concerns about how the AJAX API is not a complete replacement for everything that was available in the SOAP API.

Update: Here is another interesting post, Beginning of the end of for open web APIs?, that is worth checking out on this issue.

WYMeditor

Posted on by David
1

Here is a new WYSIWYG editor for use in web-based content management interfaces: WYMeditor. It won’t give your users true “what you see is what you get” views of the content they are editing but it does enforce strict adherence to XHTML markup. If you have to have highly structured content then this might be a good tool to add to your system.

Spotted via Gadgetopia.