Information Technology

PC World recently released their list of the 15 biggest disappointments of 2007. Two of the items on that list didn't surprise me, but two other items were shocking to see on the list but in reflection absolutely true.

I wasn't surprised to see that both Apple's "Leopard" OS 10.5 (#8) and Microsoft's Windows Vista (#1) on the list. I've been talking about my disappointment on the state of the computer desktop for sometime now. I'm just glad to see others have noticed the problem so I don't look like Mr. Glum to everyone.

However, I was surprised to see two content management system related items that made the list.

I felt fear, awe, and even some admiration when I read at CNET about the latest social engineering attack dreamed up by those ingenious Russian hackers.

Those entering online dating forums risk having more than their hearts stolen.

A program that can mimic online flirtation and then extract personal
information from its unsuspecting conversation partners is making the
rounds in Russian chat forums, according to security software firm PC Tools.

Packt Publishing announced that Drupal has won their Overall 2007 Open Source Content Management System Award.

After three intense months of voting, Packt Publishing can today announce that Drupal has won the Overall 2007 Open Source CMS Award. With 18,000 votes on Packt’s website, coupled with the expert opinions from a panel of judges, Drupal succeeds Joomla! as the overall winner and receives a cheque for $5,000.

Joomla!, last year's award winner, placed second this year and was awarded $3,000. CMS Made Simple collected $2,000 with a placement in the number three spot. This year, Packt awarded open source CMS projects a total of $20,000 in prize money in five different categories.

Last week, I mentioned that Mozilla is planning to give the Firefox browser a makeover.  Alex Faaborg had mentioned that they plan to integrate the look of Firefox with Microsoft's Windows Vista and Apple's Mac OS X.  The problem was Alex had failed to mention anything about the Linux operating system.  Linux users, of course, then replied by comment that they were unhappy that there was no mention of Linux in the post.

I recently upgrade a blog of mine from Wordpress 2.2 to Wordpress 2.3.  My wife and I don't post on the blog much (looking for better ideas on how to utilize the site), but it's great to keep around to test the latest and greatest Wordpress has to offer.  In my view, the most important new feature in Wordpress 2.3 is the baseline introduction of tags (also called taxonomy or even categories in other CMS applications).

MySiouxFalls.com is a new and local online news source for the city where I currently reside, Sioux Falls, South Dakota.  At first, I was not all that excited about the site and had not plan on mentioning the MySiouxFalls.com site in my writing. We've all seen these sites before, right?  In fact, I would say that many of the visitors to this blog likely have designed or participated in building sites similar to MySiouxFalls.com.  That's not to say that there are not some things from a content management perspective worth mentioning.
 

Michael Silverman has a great article on The Content Wrangler regarding content management. The full title of the article is "Making The Business Case for Web Content Management: First, Admit You Have A Problem".  The article is a one-stop place for explaining content management, why a business or organization should implement a content management system (CMS), and tips for choosing and implementing a CMS.

Now that Summer 2007 is finally here, it is time to step back for a couple weeks and spend less time in front of the computer.  As I mentioned earlier,  I'm going to use some of this time to publish online a professional report I did on IT user support.  This report was submitted a couple years ago as a requirement for a Master of Science in Administrative Studies with an Information Systems track.  You'll get bits and pieces of it in the following weeks and once I'm done, I'll regroup them similar to the research paper I posted earlier this year.

Recently, I read some good posts regarding content management systems (CMS) on a few blogs I visit almost daily.  The posts have had me thinking and reflecting in general about CMS.  However, I won't talk too much about them so you get a chance to go on and read the articles yourself.  The first post comes from OpenSourceCommunity.org and the second post from Gadgetopia.

This is a fantastic article found on ZDNet UK not only about open source content management systems but the issues that traditional publishers are now facing in either competing or adopting with today's Web CMS.  The article is written by Mike Barrett and is titled, "CMS evolution, publishing revolution?".  The author writes: