The Newspaper Association of America opened last week a NEXPO ‘97 with “pre-show”. The afternoon roster was a “Web Publishing 101” instead of “nuts and bolts,” with lots of brand names are abounding, these leading bleeders condensed to what is essential in operating as an Internet service provider, web publisher or web server operator.

Blogging these days without an RSS Feed is like blogging before the 1990s. The only way people will know whether you have new posts would be to go directly to your site and wait for it everyday. Most readers don’t have such time and luxury to do that these days. Thus, the creation of the Really Simple Syndication (RSS).

In a nutshell, RSS is a godsend for those who wish to be updated on the latest news, events on their favorite website, without logging into the site. It’s also a great way for publishers to send out their information to a wide audience. This has changed the way people read the news i the internet these days, as it saves more time for them to scan over a lot of sites in one look.

In order for you to enjoy RSS you must have an RSS reader as well. There are a lot of readers in the internet, and all you need to do is google them. Have a grand time RSS’ing!

Smart’s Publishing, publisher of client newsletters for insurance agents and brokers, introduced its interactive newsletter delivery system at the Benefits Selling Called DART. The system sends agents’ and brokers’ client newsletters in an email-optimized format. The DART system will then indicate which messages bounced and why, helping users eliminate cold prospects and maintain their lists. When DART users call on their clients, they will know what products and services to discuss, thanks to DART’s tracking and feedback features.

When agents and brokers sign up for the DART program, they receive their own password-protected account that they can access at any time. DART also stores information from past mailings, so users can compare results they get from different lists or different newsletters.

When you write for the web, just write what you really want to say. Go directly to the idea you are presenting. Do not assume that you and the readers share the same wavelength that when you make analogies, they will be able to grasp your point. Web readers scan what they read and if they don’t get your point the first time then they won’t be interested to go further. Avoid making fun of other people because this will backfire on you, making you look bad. Making fun of yourself is a great comic relief but doing it to other people would appear like you’re bad mouthing them.

Most Web users only glance over pages, they do not read word-for-word so to get their attention, design your document to stand out and be noticeable. Highlight as many items as you can: boldface rendering, colored backgrounds, and hyperlinks. Refrain from highlighting whole sentences as this diminishes the interest it generate, instead, highlight only the words that differentiate the paragraphs. Use bullets or numbered lists to draw attention to essential points. An inverted pyramid style would grab more attention than the regular format. Reading the conclusion would pick the interest of the reader to find out what led to it.

The two are some of the most prominent open-source Content management Systems (CMS) around and many argue on which one is better when it comes to overall performance. Drupal has garnered a lot of the web development market with many years of experience in the industry. Joomla has a somewhat newer fan base having less but overall they have a gap that is so little to differentiate. The major differences lie in the way Drupal is very easily scalable for dynamic organizations who may have frequent need for expansion. It allows better distribution but while it leads more in the enterprise arena, Joomla is easier to handle for non-geeks or people with less experience in web development. Read the rest of this entry »

The AP as it is called has hardened its stance on the information they say is theirs, hardening their stance by threatening legal action for people and blogs that scrape their content. This is the battle that is engulfing the internet where most of traditional media is finding it hard to accept the utter openness of the web. The internet is a truly public place and as we have seen again and again, ownership of material in court is utterly futile and quite useless. Why, well everybody sees the internet as public domain and that anything they see they can tell, even if the privacy statement says you don’t, can’t and shouldn’t. Read the rest of this entry »

Cookies is one of the ways the web has evolved into a more secure place though it is quite archaic today, it was the foundation of the web during the rise in popularity of the entity we call the internet. Many people these cookies can be useful such as the ability to have pre-set passwords and personal information filled in when verification is needed by a page and many more but with rising concern on privacy and other security issues that have arisen from downloaded payload of malicious attacks by malware, people tend to delete them for security’s sake. Government’s have been using them to validate people who access their sites and it is used by search giants such as Google for its analytics system that tracks the number of visits a site gets from the internet may they be returning visitors or new hits to come up with a graphical picture of the usability of a page. Read the rest of this entry »

Content Management Systems though quite different due to enterprise applications is somewhat similar to mashables in the social internet, allowing content management that results in analytical information that can be used to analyze and determine the effectivity of the overall system. Autonomy Interwoven, one of the CMS companies plying the net announced a seemingly mashable type content management system that includes active customer listening in terms of interactions that not only listens to the CMS but to other channels such as the social web/media, email and web content (from other sources). Their multi-channel optimization system allows customers to gauge the effectivity of their venture into the CMS market making prompt adjustments to content as necessary and other social influences that may be part of the overall web experience. Read the rest of this entry »

There are a number of ways to license any sort of work you publish on the net.

One is Creative Commons, which is only recommended for written content, photographs, and graphic work. A number of licenses are available at the website, each covering specific means an author prefers his or her work to be used by others if ever.

Another is the Free Software Foundation, which advocates open source software. Along with the Open Source Initiative, they both provide free licenses which are specifically made to protect source code and software from abuse and misuse.

So protect your work now and get licensing for the fruits of your hard work!

These licenses are also recognized legally, so may opt to enforce them in an actual court of law if you so desire.