Jeffrey Berthiaume

Thu, Dec 18 2008, 7:23p - Crowdsourcing

Thu, 18 Dec 2008 19:23:19 -0800

The next level of Social Networking

Social networking is the current big internet trend. Every brand wants to create a network where people can collect and manage "friends", in order to own an ever-expanding network of customers.

While creating a social network collects an audience for a brand, any social network that is newly created has to become popular enough for people to be willing to sign up for "yet-another-network". In order to get people coming back and participating, there needs to be some sort of recurring motivation. Simply letting people post comments on other friends' pages is not enough to encourage usage and retention.

The next level in the social network equation is a concept called crowdsourcing. Basically, crowdsourcing (or community-based design) is the outsourcing of a task to a large group of virtual strangers. Similar to a flash mob (which is a gathering of a group of strangers to perform certain tasks in a randomly defined location), crowdsourcing asks large groups of people to perform discrete tasks, in order to complete a larger project.

SETI @HOME

The Search for Extraterrestrial Life had a program that anyone could download, which would run on their computer and analyze radio data recorded from outer space (to try to find signals that could only be created by another intelligent species). Each computer would analyze tiny snippets of a signal, and send information back and forth to SETI's main computers. In this way, programs that would take decades to run on their computers, could be run in weeks or months on thousand of volunteer's computers around the world. However, the SETI program was a fully-automated process, with no "human" interaction – which is where crowdsourcing comes in.

reCAPTCHA

A recent example of crowdsourcing is a service called reCAPTCHA. CAPTCHAs are those little squiggly codes (five to ten letters) that you have to type in, in order to prove that you are a human (and therefore not an email spam program). reCAPTCHA takes it to the crowdsourcing level, by using text from books that could not be digitally "read" by software algorithms (because they were so blurry, or distorted), in order to have real humans type in what the words say. They have been able to create text versions of archives from the New York Times and digitized text from the Internet Archives. According to an article in The Register (13 December 2007), reCAPTCHA delivered about 30 million images a day...which results in about 3,000 man-hours of free labor (according to Wikipedia).

Back in 2007, I was working with a team of people on a sports trivia content-based website. Unfortunately, we didn't have any initial content, and the client didn't have the budget to license the vast universe of data that we needed (the equivalent of every sports statistic possible). None of us were sports trivia experts (those that were specialized in a sport or two) and this was simply too much information for a small group to consider managing.

Case Study: Trivinger

To solve this, we came up with a crowdsourcing microsite called Trivinger (after a "trivia-scavenger hunt"). The idea was to randomly generate a trivia question (based on some predetermined data that we had generated), which users could directly answer (or search for the answer on google and then enter). For example, we knew the names of all of the teams for baseball, football, etc. and we knew possible positions for each sport – which meant we could start by asking "who is the quarterback for the Dallas Cowboys?" Once we had multiple answers that matched (for us to consider an answer "correct", we looked for at least 3 matching answers, or a minimum of 80% matching if there were more than three answers). Once we knew that, we could start asking more personal details such as "what year did Tony Romo join the Dallas Cowboys?"...

This system allowed us to let users populate our data, but also protected us from bad answers. (For example, once a question was answered, we did not allow the same question to be answered again in the same state/zip code). Because we had millions of possible questions, it was unlikely people would be able to gang up and put invalid data in the system.

Then, in order to encourage people to answer these trivia questions, we ran a prize program. For every correct answer, the user would win a series of points (scaled to be higher the more finely detailed the questions got – for example, more points if people knew what high school a certain person attended, especially if they had more of a background team position – basically, the more obscure the question, the higher the points). We already had a cost for what an accepted answer should cost us, which gave us the cost per points, which allowed us to give away a flatscreen TV (and know that it was worth a specific number of points). Users could save up their points (waiting for a larger prize) or use their points on a series of smaller prizes (which changed depending on what we wanted to buy). Our client was also looking into getting sponsors for prizes (making the cost negligible).

One of our favorite parts of this system was that it encouraged cheating – we even had a search bar (with dropdowns for Google, MSN, and Yahoo!) directly integrated into the form, so users wouldn't have to leave the page. Spidering and scraping websites could only give us so much information – there was a human element to this that we needed, and we appealed to people's gambling and prize-winning nature in order to populate our database. From all perspectives, this was a highly successful venture.

Conclusion

When designing "viral" or "social network" programs, opportunities for crowdsourcing should be considered as ways to get users more fully engaged (and continually re-engaged) as well as an opportunity to collect a database of content that would otherwise be impossible to collect, or at the very least cost-prohibitive.

Sat, Oct 18 2008, 9:22a - Google 10¹⁰⁰ Concept: Autism Journal - Needing To Be Heard

Sat, 18 Oct 2008 09:22:48 -0700

Google sent out a call for entries called Project 10¹⁰⁰, asking people to submit project ideas that they could invest in, in order to help a large number of people. The following is one of the project proposals that I submitted.

Your idea's name:

Autism Journal - Needing To Be Heard

Please select a category that best describes your idea.

Community: How can we help connect people, build communities and protect unique cultures?
Opportunity: How can we help people better provide for themselves and their families?
Energy: How can we help move the world toward safe, clean, inexpensive energy?
Environment: How can we help promote a cleaner and more sustainable global ecosystem?
Health: How can we help individuals lead longer, healthier lives?
Education: How can we help more people get more access to better education?
Shelter: How can we help ensure that everyone has a safe place to live?
Everything else: Sometimes the best ideas don't fit into any category at all.

What one sentence best describes your idea?

An online autism journal, where everyone who works with an autistic child can record their interactions and observations...which can then be tracked over time.

Describe your idea in more depth.

A lot of people have interactions with an autistic child on a daily basis. Parents, grandparents, friends, teachers, sitters, caregivers -- all spend time (whether one-on-one or in a group) with this child, and all have personal observations on how this child behaves.

NTBH is a system where each of these people can quickly and easily record these observations, which can later be analyzed to see what progress, if any, is happening with the child. The system will be designed to scale information so the lack of data, or inconsistent observations, will not impact the results.

In addition to the journal database, NTBH.org will be a clearinghouse for links and resources related to anything about autism. Because most autism websites have specific agendas or beliefs, NTBH will be an agnostic forum for members to discuss any and everything related to treatments, therapies, or prevention.

What problem or issue does your idea address?

Once a parent finds out that their child falls within the autism spectrum, they immediately start looking for therapies and possible ways to help their child understand how to communicate with the outside world and eventually be able to socialize with others. Because there are so many different types of therapies (and people believe in so many different and contradictory causes and therapies) it makes it difficult for them to sift through all of the conflicting information. This system would help them evaluate and organically evolve the therapies they use, by showing them rates of behavioral improvement over time. Additionally, it helps support and encourage these parents when they are able to see that their child has surmounted a hurdle or made progress in interacting with others.

If your idea were to become a reality, who would benefit the most and how?

About five years ago, I worked with a school for autistic children. While I was there, I designed an initial version of this journal (based on ideas from other teachers and parents). The parents were very excited about the possibilities of this database/journal and are still using a similar system using Microsoft Access.

These parents were using the system to see how their child improved over time (for example, suppressing repetitive behaviors, or making eye contact more often). The problem with someone having a personal journal or local database is that they can't benefit from how other parents are using a similar system. An ASP model (with clear privacy protections) would allow them to feel secure in the use of the system, but be able to take advantage of improvements made based on feedback from other parents.

What are the initial steps required to get this idea off the ground

A prototype of the journal (as well as the public-facing site) will be created and soft-launched. A local autistic support group with 10-12 children would be the initial user-base. This will help in the initial collection and processing of data, as well as the design of reports using real-world data. Eye-tracking usability studies will also be used to evaluate performance and usability.

After the alpha test, the site will be updated with design and functionality changes, and then it will be launched in beta. Marketing will be done locally at first, to keep the number of users manageable and allow for additional testing. An active user forum will collect and manage user requests.

Then, after three months of active beta participation, the site will be launched nationally. Data will continue to be evaluated and the system will continue to be enhanced and evolved based on user feedback and usage statistics.

Describe the optimal outcome should your idea be selected and successfully implemented. How would you measure it?

The primary measurement is usage statistics -- how many people are registered users, and how often do they use the system on a daily/weekly basis (as well as how many users are using it concurrently). However, once the system is in full production and is being used across the nation, there will be able to be reports generated that show trends of parents using certain therapies (obviously, with all personal information removed). This information will be able to show success statistics of different therapies, as well as rates of progress for specific tasks or interactions.

Based on the results of this system, this method of journaling (in a database-driven, numerically focused way) can be then re-purposed into systems for tracking and reporting other, non-autism-related developmental problems.

Thu, Oct 16 2008, 5:22p - Google 10¹⁰⁰ Concept: Global Cultural Archive Foundation

Thu, 16 Oct 2008 17:22:43 -0700

Your idea's name:

Global Cultural Archive Foundation

Please select a category that best describes your idea.

Community: How can we help connect people, build communities and protect unique cultures?
Opportunity: How can we help people better provide for themselves and their families?
Energy: How can we help move the world toward safe, clean, inexpensive energy?
Environment: How can we help promote a cleaner and more sustainable global ecosystem?
Health: How can we help individuals lead longer, healthier lives?
Education: How can we help more people get more access to better education?
Shelter: How can we help ensure that everyone has a safe place to live?
Everything else: Sometimes the best ideas don't fit into any category at all.

What one sentence best describes your idea?

Creation of a virtual library with an avatar representation of each culture and language in the world, mapping the entire course of human history.

Describe your idea in more depth.

In the novel _Beyond This Horizon_ by Robert Heinlein, due to their world's utopian economy, long-term projects with no (expected) possible economic return are favored above all else. The Global Culture Persona Foundation is a similar project, in that it must span multiple generations in order to ever be realized.

The goal of this foundation would be to create, manage, and maintain a virtual Rosetta stone -- a living, evolving content repository of global history and culture. It would become the representation of our global cultural heritage.

Initially, by using virtual personas (for example, using AIML and the technology created by the alicebot.org foundation) this Foundation would build multi-lingual, multi-cultural personalities that would be scripted to be experts in their time, culture, and history. They would be able to "converse" about historical facts, as well as analyze events as seen through the viewpoint of people of their time.

Unlike the Cyc Knowledge Base, AIML bots are able to be maintained and developed and evolved, but personalities can be scripted without having to take care of every distinct possibility. For example, an Egyptian priest persona would be able to talk about religious ceremonies, practices, and beliefs...and would be able to respond to simple cultural questions...but would not have to know that a bird can fly , or because a bear is a mammal, it doesn't lay eggs. In other words, this system of personas would not be expected to reason -- they would just be scripted to parrot back pre-determined answers. However, as these scripts are tested, the answers will be trained and re-trained to evolve the personality until eventually, they will seem nearly human.

What problem or issue does your idea address?

History erodes. Culture fades. Archeologists are constantly struggling to rebuild, recreate, and reimagine past history, because historical and cultural records are so susceptible to entropy.

The mandate that this Foundation would live under would be to create a system and a knowledge base that would survive throughout time. Future scholars would be able to ask questions from a different cultural perspective and be able to truly understand their cultural heritage.

If your idea were to become a reality, who would benefit the most and how?

Knowledge and understanding is the greatest gift we can bequeath to future generations. However, the benefits to this would be almost instantaneous, as different groups working with creating these personas would be interacting, training, and analyzing information -- and each year as new scholars join the Foundation, they will continue to explore and discover new insights based on the work of their past contributors.

What are the initial steps required to get this idea off the ground

Initially, a Foundation would be created with a charter to collect and maintain a cultural archive. The first main project of the Foundation would be setting up an AIML development environment, where groups of contributors can develop personalities (or work with existing personalities) based on different times, places, and cultures. They would then dive as deeply as possible to catalog as much of that cultural and historical segment as possible. Different teams of scholars from different universities would be organized to compete and make their persona as deep and rich a personality as possible. Every year, different teams would come in to continue to evolve their personas, while scholars all over the world would be able to test and work with any of the personas while pursuing their personal cultural and historical lines of study.

Describe the optimal outcome should your idea be selected and successfully implemented. How would you measure it?

Success would be measured by the initial launch, the number of teams who sign on to build and maintain these personalities, and by how people use and interact with them. Eventually, the Foundation should evolve to pursue other knowledge-base archival projects (such as solid-state devices to store data, images, and video, or methods that could be used to off-load this knowledge to satellites in space).

Tue, Oct 14 2008, 9:35a - Google 10¹⁰⁰ Concept: Electrical Engineering Game

Tue, 14 Oct 2008 09:35:42 -0700

Your idea's name:

Electrical Engineering Game

Please select a category that best describes your idea.

Community: How can we help connect people, build communities and protect unique cultures?
Opportunity: How can we help people better provide for themselves and their families?
Energy: How can we help move the world toward safe, clean, inexpensive energy?
Environment: How can we help promote a cleaner and more sustainable global ecosystem?
Health: How can we help individuals lead longer, healthier lives?
Education: How can we help more people get more access to better education?
Shelter: How can we help ensure that everyone has a safe place to live?
Everything else: Sometimes the best ideas don't fit into any category at all.

What one sentence best describes your idea?

Game about exploring an agricultural-era world, picking up and assembling devices based on arcane texts...which depict everything as circuit diagrams.

Describe your idea in more depth.

The game character within this computer-based role playing game is a boy or girl whose only option is to become a farmer (or potentially a member of the priesthood). Shunning those options, he or she decides to travel the world and embrace their wanderlust spirit.

As they travel the world, they find and collect "spiritual" devices from the ancients/gods. Soon, they come across a crashed spacecraft with two books and two skeletons -- one book is an advanced textbook, and the other is a children's book -- entirely in pictographs and alien writing. As the character reads the book and starts to put the devices that they find together, they soon learn that they can create simple circuits...as well as construct more advanced devices. (The alien pictographs are actually real-life electrical circuit diagrams, such as those found in any book of circuit design)

The rest of the game has them assemble devices to solve puzzles of greater and greater complexity, while exploring the world and solving the mystery of who these ancients/gods really are...while getting a solid understanding of real-life circuit design.

What problem or issue does your idea address?

This game is designed to encourage true learning and the adoption of real world skills in children of a very young age. Understanding electronics and "the way things work" is not only for nerds and geeks -- this brings it to a much wider audience. Growing up, I played a game called Rocky's Boots where AND, OR, and NOT gates were assembled to solve puzzles. This stayed with me throughout my life, and 10 years later, while my classmates were struggling, I was able to breeze through advanced Boolean operations and EE316.

If your idea were to become a reality, who would benefit the most and how?

The children who play this game will become the technocrats of the future. Five years later, when they are able to pull out an advanced electronics textbook and realize that they can speak the language...that will be the pay-off. A fully immersive game that can teach an actual skill -- from trouble-shooting electronics all the way to being a potential career opportunity -- makes the rewards of the game benefit the player long after they move on from the original game...especially in our increasingly wired society. (Additionally, this game will encourage not only debugging skills, but also design and invention)

What are the initial steps required to get this idea off the ground

The first step is working with a good game story writer to brainstorm and finalize the major elements of the game - interface, environment, gameplay, NPCs, etc., as well as working with a game architect designing puzzles based on different game elements (and making sure that different pieces will work together seamlessly and are reusable in different puzzles). After that, developing a prototype of the game interfaces (and environment), working with graphic designers/animators, building an alpha, testing, beta, etc. -- the typical game development cycle. Future steps include working out multi-player playability, console and potentially mobile applications, and (possibly) AIML based NPCs (so they can continue to learn and evolve as well).

Describe the optimal outcome should your idea be selected and successfully implemented. How would you measure it?

The optimal outcome is that this game would break the typical gaming life cycle of pre-release excitement, launch/reviews, initial spike of purchases, drop- off of purchases, and relegation to the dollar bin. This game could continue to evolve and regenerate interest, as well as be adopted by schools and taught in course curriculums. There could eventually be off-line competitions, tie-ins with Engadget, hacking hardware contests, O'Reilly's Made magazine, etc.

Mon, Oct 13 2008, 3:25p - Google 10¹⁰⁰ Concept: Kidnooz

Mon, 13 Oct 2008 15:25:11 -0700

Your idea's name:

Kidnooz

Please select a category that best describes your idea.

Community: How can we help connect people, build communities and protect unique cultures?
Opportunity: How can we help people better provide for themselves and their families?
Energy: How can we help move the world toward safe, clean, inexpensive energy?
Environment: How can we help promote a cleaner and more sustainable global ecosystem?
Health: How can we help individuals lead longer, healthier lives?
Education: How can we help more people get more access to better education?
Shelter: How can we help ensure that everyone has a safe place to live?
Everything else: Sometimes the best ideas don't fit into any category at all.

What one sentence best describes your idea?

Kidnooz is an online blog application for kids (ages 7-13) where they will be able to update their friends and family with news about themselves.

Describe your idea in more depth.

This is a COPA-compliant blog interface, designed in a single-click "Wizard"-style, very kid-friendly design. This application will be designed with individual task completion in mind -- almost as a linear application without extraneous clutter (or distractions like banner ads or marketing messages). There would be both an English and a Spanish version of this site.

When I was seven, my father brought home our first computer. He told us that we weren't allowed to play games on it (it was only to be used for work and school), but I discovered that programming and testing games was an acceptable loop-hole. Granted, the games weren't that great (text adventures with Indiana Jones, in space, fighting zombies) but I learned quite a bit. A few years ago, I volunteered lead a class of third-graders through using the internet. I had the opportunity to have them test some Flash games that I helped build for Sony Metreon, and I also was able to observe how they used browsers, what attracted them, and how they navigated from site to site. That led me to design a communication and social network style system for them that they could play around in, but that would also protect them while encouraging them to explore, learn, and grow.

Certain security measures will be enacted to ensure children's safety. Parents must be involved, both to help set up the account, and to have oversight over the child's activities. A vulgarity filter (similar to ones I've built for Blockbuster and Qualcomm) would be implemented, as well as additional monitoring. The information architecture will be designed in such a way as to make it very difficult for users to casually browse and interact with users they do not already know (whether personally or through some other medium).

What problem or issue does your idea address?

Most children have a point in their life where they struggle with reading and writing. Once they get over their learning hump, these things become easier�but some struggle with this for years (and possibly end up as adults who hate to read or write). However, if these children are engaged in an activity that inherently encourages them to pick up and practice these skills, they're more likely to conquer them -- especially if they are rewarded for doing so. In this case, the rewards are the same satisfaction of publishing a document and connecting with friends�the same internal reward system that causes adults to blog. Additionally, having this site function the same in both Spanish and English will help school children who are struggling with making the transition (or dealing with bilingual vocabulary issues).

If your idea were to become a reality, who would benefit the most and how?

Kidnooz benefits all children -- not just developmentally challenged, or hyperactive, or dyslexic children. Once they are shown the site and given basic instructions from a parent or guardian (like when they would go to cartoonnetwork.com or a similar site) they'll be able to run home after school, get on the computer, write a quick note, and publish it to their friends. The feeling that they get of communicating with the world at large (even within a site that protects them) is the same as the feeling a child gets when they make a personal magazine or newspaper -- but even better, this one encourages real-time feedback from their friends and classmates!

What are the initial steps required to get this idea off the ground

I have initial wireframes that I have designed and would need to finish, which will then need to be tested with a real classroom of children. After testing for a week or two, new designs will be created which will then be implemented -- and a beta site will be launched. Additional testing and a soft-rollout will occur (as well as making sure the site is architected to be stable and scalable) prior to a full national launch (and then further usability testing, including eyetracking, and the design and development of additional features -- that will not impact the simplicity or the functionality that is required).

Describe the optimal outcome should your idea be selected and successfully implemented. How would you measure it?

The best possible outcome would be that kidnooz would be adopted by school boards nationally (or the Department of Education) similar to the way other programs are introduced and propagated. Realistically, the creation of a series of lesson-based programs designed for teachers, as well as supplementary information for parents, should be implemented in concert with a national marketing campaign. Interfaces for parents to track progress and monitor their child's usage would also be implemented.

According to the 2006 US Census, there were 28 million school-children, aged 7-13. If only 1% of them used the site, that would still be 280,000 users�which would be a good initial goal for the site (5,600 students per US State).

Thu, Jul 31 2008, 11:18a - Content Management Workflow

Thu, 31 Jul 2008 11:18:00 -0700

Overview

Although all corporations have business processes that complicate workflow (for example, because of legal issues, or historical business reasons), a process that is mapped out in detail and vetted with all responsible parties as a part of the business requirements will help make the implementation of a content management system much smoother.

The following is an example of a process workflow that, although somewhat generic, can be adopted for a number of content types and organizational structures.

Organization (Process Workflow)

Typically, the design of a workflow process starts from the perspective of the "types" of people working within the system. These "types" (or roles) represent the different permissions or privileges that can be performed by those users on different content objects.

When generic descriptions are used (such as "actors" meaning "people who act within a system", or "content objects" meaning "things that represent the content that will be manipulated or displayed -- such as a text article, an image, a set of images, a combination of text and images, video, Flash movies, etc.") it makes it much more difficult to understand how a system needs to be implemented. It helps to imagine a generic article (composed of text and images), such as a blog article or a news posting, as the "Content Object" that is being manipulated in the following diagrams.

Likewise, the roles being used below are placeholder names for whatever roles are within an organization that perform the following tasks:

Copywriter: This is the person who creates the initial "copy" or submits the initial content for the system. They can be either internal or external (for example, a freelance journalist) which is why they have very few permissions.

Channel Manager: The next level of person is someone who would manage a "channel" of content -- such as "sports", "movies", "fashion", etc. This allows for people who have a particular area of expertise to control their area, without getting involved with or distracted by all other content in the system.

Content Manager: In a newspaper or magazine, this would be the Editor-In-Chief, the person (or in this case people) who are primarily responsible for the overall live publication of content.

An additional role of a Researcher is not represented below, but an example of a Researcher would be someone who would be able to access the system and read all articles within the system, but would not be able to change their state.

The following figure shows the states that a Content Object can have when under the control of a Copywriter:

There are three states: Create, Draft, and Submit.

Create allows the user to create a new article. It is not really a state within the system (blank articles wouldn't be allowed in the system) but it helps to represent the beginning state -- such as when the form fields are being filled out on a screen.

Once the article is submitted, it would be saved to the database in a Draft state. Any successive edits and saving will continue to save the article in a Draft state (representative by the arrow coming from and pointing to the Draft state in Figure 1).

The Submit state occurs when the Copywriter is finished with the article and is ready to submit it to the next stage of peer review. This takes the article out of the Copywriter's hands, and into the Channel Manager.

In this workflow, roles are inherited. This means that a user with a higher role can perform all of their functions as well as perform the functions of any lower role. The Create, Draft, and Submit states can all be managed by Copywriters, Channel Managers, and Content Managers. They may not be able to see each others articles (those permissions will be set per user) but they will each be able to start an article from the Create state.

Figure 2 shows how a Channel Manager takes an article from the Submit state, and is able to Review 1 it (which, like Create, is not a state per se, but is a function that the Channel Manager is able to perform). This allows them to view the article.

Then, they will be able to Reject 1 it (with comments, for the original Copywriter to edit in Draft mode and re-Submit), they can Edit 1 it themselves, or they can Approve it, which will pass it on to the Content Manager.

The reason there is a distinction between Edit 1 and Edit 2 (or Reject 1 and Reject 2) is because the state of a Content Object (in this case an article) will need to be kept up to date. It would be much more difficult to retrace the steps of an article or track changes, if the article was simply in "Edit" mode -- we wouldn't know exactly where the article is in the system without specifying these distinct states).

Once the article is Approve-d, the Content Manager (or Editor-in-Chief) is able to Review 2 it, and then either Reject 2 it back for editing (with comments), Edit 2 it themselves, or Schedule it to be launched.

The Schedule task (as well as Expire and Unexpire) are more relevant for information that needs to be published at a certain time (such as for an "issue" of a magazine). This process could instead go directly from Review 2 to Launch, and then allow manual expiration back into the Edit 2 state (if time-based scheduling is not needed).

Content Management Team Structure

Based on this process flow, the entire system could actually be managed by a single person (who had the role of Content Manager).

As more content is entered into the system (or based on business requirements) a new person could be added and given the role of Copywriter. Then, as they became more familiar with the system, they could be given the added responsibility of a Channel Manager. New people could easily be added to or removed from the system.

When this system was implemented for a major international corporation, the team managing content in the US consisted of about 12 people (three Content Managers, six Channel Managers, and four full time Copywriters, as well as additional content coming in from third-party Copywriters). A version of the site was created for Mexico, which was entirely managed by only one person. Three months later, when their site had more content as well as more users, three additional people were brought on in Channel Manager roles to develop additional content.

Content Management System Usability

Although users of a content management system are usually internal people, there are still usability issues that should be addressed, in order to ensure adoption and usage. (If users are forced to use a system that they don't like, their work will suffer and they will be likely to abandon it at the first opportunity)

One important question to ask is: how technical are your users? Can they edit text fields as html (manually creating inline links) or will they require some sort of rich-text environment for editing text?

Don't forget: the more functionality you add, the harder is it to train someone and the more potential bugs are introduced.

For example, a text field that accepts html marked up text is pretty easy -- it's a standard textarea form field, and it just saves anything inside of it to a database. Adding a panel for that text field that renders fonts, links, and inline images makes things easier for a less technical user, but may cause problems on different browsers and may make it slower to load each screen of the Content Management System.

This usability and functionality trade-off also impacts training and usage. The easier it is to get in and get out of the system, means it's more likely for a user to continue to use it.

Conclusion

It is easy to talk about building a content management system by saying "certain users will enter content, and we'll launch it on the site", but once it comes to the actual implementation, a lot of companies get bogged down in processes and procedures that end up making the content management process more inefficient than the system they are replacing. Defining a process, roles of the different users using the system, and how content itself moves through a system -- and making sure that these are approved by all business owners -- goes a long way toward ensuring adoption and usage of a solid and robust content management system.

Jeffrey Berthiaume

Thu, Dec 18 2008, 7:23p - Crowdsourcing

The next level of Social Networking

SETI @HOME

reCAPTCHA

Case Study: Trivinger

Conclusion

Sat, Oct 18 2008, 9:22a - Google 10100 Concept: Autism Journal - Needing To Be Heard

Your idea's name:

Please select a category that best describes your idea.

What one sentence best describes your idea?

Describe your idea in more depth.

What problem or issue does your idea address?

If your idea were to become a reality, who would benefit the most and how?

What are the initial steps required to get this idea off the ground

Describe the optimal outcome should your idea be selected and successfully implemented. How would you measure it?

Thu, Oct 16 2008, 5:22p - Google 10100 Concept: Global Cultural Archive Foundation

Your idea's name:

Please select a category that best describes your idea.

What one sentence best describes your idea?

Describe your idea in more depth.

What problem or issue does your idea address?

If your idea were to become a reality, who would benefit the most and how?

What are the initial steps required to get this idea off the ground

Describe the optimal outcome should your idea be selected and successfully implemented. How would you measure it?

Tue, Oct 14 2008, 9:35a - Google 10100 Concept: Electrical Engineering Game

Your idea's name:

Please select a category that best describes your idea.

What one sentence best describes your idea?

Describe your idea in more depth.

What problem or issue does your idea address?

If your idea were to become a reality, who would benefit the most and how?

What are the initial steps required to get this idea off the ground

Describe the optimal outcome should your idea be selected and successfully implemented. How would you measure it?

Mon, Oct 13 2008, 3:25p - Google 10100 Concept: Kidnooz

Your idea's name:

Please select a category that best describes your idea.

What one sentence best describes your idea?

Describe your idea in more depth.

What problem or issue does your idea address?

If your idea were to become a reality, who would benefit the most and how?

What are the initial steps required to get this idea off the ground

Describe the optimal outcome should your idea be selected and successfully implemented. How would you measure it?

Thu, Jul 31 2008, 11:18a - Content Management Workflow

Overview

Organization (Process Workflow)

Content Management Team Structure

Content Management System Usability

Conclusion

Sat, Oct 18 2008, 9:22a - Google 10¹⁰⁰ Concept: Autism Journal - Needing To Be Heard

Thu, Oct 16 2008, 5:22p - Google 10¹⁰⁰ Concept: Global Cultural Archive Foundation

Tue, Oct 14 2008, 9:35a - Google 10¹⁰⁰ Concept: Electrical Engineering Game

Mon, Oct 13 2008, 3:25p - Google 10¹⁰⁰ Concept: Kidnooz