: the slipper strategy, or rather, why small dogs come in pairs. This is quite possibly the pinnacle of personal/anecdotal commentary on a personal site. At least of the light variety.
Tom makes a great
point today at plasticbag.org. I enjoy using Blogger, but as a point of principle it’s important to have a variety of tools available for content management.
Personally, I don’t think it’s viable to ever do a site, even a small site, without integrating a means to manage the writing (at least) without messing with the raw html files. I’ve done lots of small sites for people who haven’t made a big commitment to a web strategy – they just want a little website.
When I do a site like that I am available to make updates – but those sites have usually been done as a favour, for free. I don’t always have the time to maintain them fully. So I generally try and download most or all of the update responsibility for updates to my “client” – usually a friend or someone like that. And they always mess them up.
So for me, it’s really important that there are options available for content management, that the tools are being developed.
I’m starting to put this idea to the test today, when I (finally) have my first real meeting with the nice people at Santropol Roulant, for whom I’m putting together a small team to build a site as a donation. The idea is to do a well-designed, professional quality site for the organization – an important meals on wheels service here in Montreal. So we’re going to start to define the project today, and implicit in the project definition will be to include content management tools so they can “own” the daily management of their own site.
OK, before I get going
to work this morning, I just came across the strangest thing on the Macwarehouse Canada site. A little deconstruction is in order.
- Apple Canada’s current e-commerce regulations prohibit any Apple authorized reseller to sell Apple product on-line through the Internet. As a strategic partner of Apple Canada, we support that position and will continue to follow their strategy.
This might as well read, “OK, Apple just fucked us, but we’re gonna suck up anyhow cause we’re getting rich off catalog sales.” - Micro Warehouse has decided that this restriction should not be a factor in collecting important information from our customers.
“We still want to invade your privacy though kids, so we’re going to datamine you for all you’re worth, which frankly might not be much but hey, this is e-commerce, baby!” - We have developed the following program that supports Apple Canada’s e-commerce strategy and benefits the customer.
“We have developed the following BS so we can nominally support their screwed-up policy while selling you, dear customer, down the river.” - A value add feature has been added to all Apple product on our website.
“Look at how great we are at using pass buzzwords like ‘value add’! Boy are we ever smart! We can suck up to Apple AND trash their policies in one fell swoop!”
Boring news of the day (II)
OK – this isn’t news today. But this whole Microsoft dot-NET thing – uh, a bit behind, aren’t they? I think it’s bs masquerading as a strategy. Let me repeat – I think it’s total bs – everything about it. It’s ONLY there so that if the Supremes do break them up, they can “legitimately” say, “well, see, we had this whole revolutionary strategy, but you bastards in gov’t won’t let us do it so it’s all your fault”. They’re simply trying to up the ante a little bit – or a lot – to make it harder for the Supreme court to uphold Judge Jackson’s decision.
That might sound cynical, but it’s not – it’s simply realistic. Two things. One, if MS wanted to make this work in “the MS way”, even a little bit, their actions would make the stuff that’s already been ruled illegal look like jaywalking. That’s why everyone else is having so much trouble in this space – it’s a very delicate thing to get a system like dot-NET working. Second – everyone else is already there. Netscape/AOL – been there for a year or more. Sun – been there for years, spent hundreds of millions already (can you say ‘Jini’?). Nokia/Motorola/Ericsson/etc – they’re there already, taking baby steps. Apple is there, in a way. WAP is there. Userland (and particularly Dave Winer) is there, and has been for ages. IPv6 – something like dot-NET is precisely what it’s about – only more ambitious, more open, and maybe even more realistic. Oh – don’t forget Loudcloud, Andreeson’s new-ish project – which definitely treads on similar ground.
