Life as a Chip

Mobee's inductive Magic Charger for Apple's Magic Mouse really is magical originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 03 Sep 2010 05:19:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

One thing we enjoy doing here at the office is celebrating the successes of our clients, particularly when we are able to help meet their interactive goals. Ozburn-Hessey Logistics, LLC (OHL) was recognized today by the Nashville Chapter of the American Marketing Association (NAMA) for their website redesign project as a finalist for the Achievement in Marketing Awards in the Business-to-Business category.

On their blog, Michelle McManus writes:

Today, Karen Hall and I (Michelle McManus) attended the Nashville American Marketing Association Achievement in Marketing abbreviated award ceremony as OHL was selected as a finalist in the B2B category for our website redesign project.  We launched late 2009 and have included many of the modern interactive capabilities and have a cleaner look as well as a more streamlined navigation. I encourage you to provide feedback about our site, OHL.com, as well as Excellence.ohl.com, Media.ohl.com.

I did not get a chance to deliver an acceptance speech but will gladly share what I intended to say here on this blog post as well as show you the beautiful recognition piece.

My speech, should I had delivered it, would have said:

It is with great honor that I accept this award on behalf of OHL.  To be recognized by this organization is truly an achievement in marketing.  I want to acknowledge the members of my team; you had the courage to think differently, making this honor possible.  I also want to recognize our partner, CentreSource.  Chip Hayner and Aaron Briggs are two of the best people to ever have on your team.  Aaron Briggs is one of the most detail oriented, strategic thinkers ever and Chip Hayner pulls rabbits out of hats for a living.

Thank you all so much.

~Michelle McManus

We cannot possibly create world-class interactive solutions without the support of clients who are passionate about their business. We join OHL in celebrating their success, and cannot wait to see what the future holds!

The video was announced today on the Official Google Blog, which details exactly what elements went into its creation. Dubbed “The Wilderness Downtown” (an undertaking created by writer/director Chris Milk) the video is a new kind of musical experience, reminiscent of — but much more advanced than — hypertext storytelling of old.

Basically, you surf over to “The Wilderness Downtown” page using Google Chrome (don’t use Safari, the program will murder your browser), and type in the address of your childhood home when prompted. If Google Maps has enough footage of home sweet home, you’ll be pulled into a multi-browser movie of your own making.

The experience of watching this highly personalized video is not easily described, but basically the story of childhood ending as time rapidly slips away becomes your own as trees shoot up out of nowhere on your old street, culminating in an opportunity to write a letter to a younger you. Check it out when you have a moment to really watch the whole thing, sans any other browsers.

HTML5 + Music = Awesomeness

Mashable’s own Christina Warren and I chatted a bit about the technical aspects of the “The Wilderness Downtown,” and she pointed out that it really shows off the capabilities offered by HTML5. As the Chrome Experiments page details, the new audio, video and canvas tags in HTML5 are used to full effect.

“In addition to timed-playback, synchronized effects and custom windows sizes for the video and animated content, this video also features custom rendered maps directly from the Google Maps API,” Christina told me. “Using SVG, the drawing application, for the postcard aspect of the video adds an interactive and personal touch.”

“More than just a one-off proof of concept, the end project (the video) shows just what is possible with HTML5 and emerging web standards,” she added.

Using Social Media to Score a Number-One Album

Not only is the video a hit in terms of technology, it also marks yet another interesting venture on Arcade Fire’s part with regard to the release of their third album. Arcade Fire — which has been around since 2004 — has really set the precedent for online promotions and fan experience this time around.

After the album dropped on August 3, the band teamed up with Vevo, YouTube and American Express to put on a live-streamed show at New York City’s Madison Square Garden. The stream attracted 3.7 million viewers, according to Google, and boasted a ton of interactive features: “Choose Your Cam,” which will let the audience control their viewing experience by switching between the director’s stream and the second camera, as well as a projection of fan-provided images, all depicting childhood suburbs. Also, bonus, Terry Gilliam — of Brazil fame — directed the live stream.

In addition to this show, Amazon also partnered with Merge records — the band’s indie, North Carolina-based label — to offer The Suburbs at a discounted price of $3.99 during the week of release, helping the band sell 156,000 copies in the U.S. by August 11, and score the number-one spot on Billboard’s album chart, according to The New York Times. (The album is currently at number seven on the Billboard chart.)

The live stream — as well as all the buzz around the album — soon attracted the attention of Twitter, who reached out to Merge and the band to ask if they’d like to participate in the micro-blogging service’s new @earlybird program, a Twitter account designed to tweet out special deals from selected advertisers. Twitter launched the deal — a CD discounted to $7.99 — on August 12 to coincide with the band’s appearance on The Daily Show.

“We knew that Arcade Fire had a big Twitter following already and we’re always trying to get new followers, and Arcade Fire is one of our biggest bands, so we thought this was a great time to try to branch out our fan base and the band’s fan base,” says Lindsey Kronmiller, who does online/radio/video promotions for Merge.

Although the band (curiously enough) did not tweet about it, the record label garnered a pretty good amount of attention for the deal, which was Twitter’s first @EarlyBird promotion around a band. (Some criticized Merge for hawking CDs rather than records or MP3s, but given Merge’s free domestic shipping policy, records would have been extremely expensive to ship, and since Amazon had already had a digital deal, it seemed best to go with a physical product.)

Like The National before them — who, despite the leak of their new album High Violet, nabbed the number three spot on the Billboard Top 200 chart after one week of sales, thanks in part to a Vevo live stream — Arcade Fire has managed to catapult themselves into the public eye via the web.

Yes, they’re not exactly underground when it comes to popularity, but on a scale of your cousin’s ironic polka band to Lady Gaga, Arcade Fire are not exactly fameballs, either. Yes, the album has gained this level of attention because it was hotly anticipated and, well, good, but the band has managed to attract much more praise by tapping into relevant channels — channels where fans both new and old reside. Much like the now-fabled Old Spice Guy campaign, Arcade Fire and Merge’s use of social media is sure to be a model for album releases to come.

Now, enough business talk — check out “The Wilderness Downtown” post haste.

More About: arcade-fire, chrome, earlybird, Google, music, trending, twitter, vevo, video, youtube

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Continue reading The Girl with the Insanely Long Gear List

The Girl with the Insanely Long Gear List originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 25 Aug 2010 17:57:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Shared by chayner
Just set this up for Kristen to help her journal during her pregnancy. :)

Filed under: Utilities, Productivity

Dear diary,

Today I found OhLife. It's an interesting service for maintaining a private journal. It aims to do the same thing Penzu does, but offers a different take on things to help people journal more consistently: Writing is done over email.

Once you sign up, you get a nightly email, asking how did your day go. You simply reply and jot down whatever it is you have to say about the day. OhLife receives your email and files today's entry into your private archive.

This is not very different from setting up a daily reminder and using a Gmail label as a journal. But what's nice about OhLife is that it includes a random "blast from the past" with every email you receive. Meaning, you get prompted to write what's new today, but you also see a random entry from some time in the past, and so are instantly reminded of the value of maintaining a diary. After all, today's routine becomes tomorrow's memory.

I think this is a brilliant way to maintain a personal diary. It's simple, it's free, and you don't even have to log on to the site to write.

The site itself is a study in simplicity. Beautiful design, bold text, and an overall welcoming vibe. If I ever want to maintain a journal, this will certainly be one candidate.

OhLife helps you maintain a personal diary over e-mail originally appeared on Download Squad on Sun, 22 Aug 2010 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

VENN-DIAGRAMS
Source: Tenso Graphics ,

Shared by chayner
This is just painful... Oh well, there's always 2011!

• -webkit-transition-property
• -webkit-transition-duration
• -webkit-transition-timing-function
• -webkit-transition-delay

• Transition: An implicit animation of CSS properties between an initial and a final value.
• Transform: A modification to the appearance of an HTML element by manipulating it in a 2D or 3D space.
• Translation: A particular type of transformation that moves the HTML element in 2D or 3D space.

window.setTimeout(function() {
  card.style.WebkitTransition =
    ‘-webkit-transform 300ms ease-in-out’;
  card.style.WebkitTransform = 
    ‘translate3d(0, 0, 0) rotate(5deg)’; 
}, 0);

card.style.WebkitTransform = 
   ‘translate3d(-700px, 0, 0) rotate(5deg)’;

Filed under: Drama, Foreign Language, Thrillers, Casting, Remakes and Sequels

Continue reading Rooney Mara is Lisbeth Salander in 'Girl with the Dragon Tattoo'

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On Friday Twitter started a mass roll out of its “Followed By” and “You Both Follow” features, which we covered in more detail in June (It seems as though Tlists, a feature which allows users to see what Twitter lists you are on, have yet to launch full force).

While Facebook and Foursquare have had “friends in common” social graph features for awhile, it’s been more difficult to directly convert these concepts to Twitter because the concept of “friend” v.s. “follower”/”followed” is hard to parse.

But, after playing with the new features for a couple of days, they have proven to be incredibly useful. They’re as or if not more useful and definitely more grammatically correct than “Who To Follow. And they’re especially more useful than Facebook’s “Mutual Friends,” despite the fact that Twitter allows for one-way relationships whereas Facebook is by design two-way, where both parties have to agree on the relationship to connect.

Mapped out on the above chart, the “Followed By” feature shows you which of your friends (labeled as “Connected”) is following a user. Implicit in this feature is the fact that following someone is the equivalent to an endorsement, which makes it valuable to see which other people you follow have “endorsed” the person you are currently examining. In the case of @meowmeowbeat (the user I’m considering following or “Examined” in this exercise) it’s @parislemon, who I know to be a stand up guy.  Maybe he’s onto something?

Thus is also the case with the  “You Both Follow’ feature. If you’ve landed on the Twitter profile of someone whom you’re evaluating whether to give credence, a delineation of their taste in people, or who they have endorsed that you have also endorsed might be the tipping point as to whether or not you should follow. @meowmeowbeat seems to be well connected in the tech reporting community, so the account is probably worth a follow in my case.

The infinite chains of possible one way connections leaves Twitter with the leeway to launch many more features based on their complex directed social graph, hence the hypotheticals above. While someone who “Follows Both Of You” might just be a spammer, the “People They Follow Who Follow You” connections might be a lot more telling about a user’s social caché. In any case, a user which you have deigned worthy of polluting your Twitter stream (whether or not they follow you back) may say a lot more about you then the fact that you’ve accepted your junior high lab partner’s friend request on Facebook. Would you follow that same person on Twitter?

Because of an inordinate amount of friend requests accepted from old college roommates and (at least for me) social media consultants, people seem to care more about who follows them on Twitter than who they’re friends with on Facebook. And Twitter’s decision to roll out these displays of a more intricate Twitter social graph is leading to better connections. Facebook’s “Mutual Friends” on the other hand now looks somewhat limited, in Twitter social graph terminology the degrees of separation of a mutual friend on Facebook would be, “Person who you follow, who follows you back, who also has this same follow/follow back relationship with the person you’re currently looking at.”

Now if only @meowmeowbeat would follow me back …

Filed under: Action, Animation, Warner Brothers, Comic/Superhero/Geek

Continue reading Watch This: 'Secret Origin: The Story of DC Comics' Trailer

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Taskforce, a beta service that integrates with Gmail via a Chrome extension or Firefox plug-in, refocuses the user’s e-mail experience around three central components: action, information and broadcast. The new snooze-like functionality provides a potential cure to the bloated inbox problem and archive dilemma that most Gmail users face on a daily basis.

Taskforce users can now convert an e-mail message into a task and click the reminder button — a.k.a. snooze button — to set up an alert for a future date. The process allows users to treat e-mails as future tasks and clear out their inbox in the meantime.

Taskforce is currently a private beta service, but the blog post on the feature update suggests following the team on Twitter and requesting an invite for faster approval.

[img credit: Anthony!!]

More About: e-mail, gmail, software, taskforce

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We are thrilled to congratulate Evan Owens from our team as a Nashville 30 Under 30 award winner this year.

Nashville’s Top 30 Under 30 recognizes the city’s most active young philanthropists while benefiting the CFF. Honorees were nominated by co-workers, friends and family for their charitable and professional endeavors. The top 30 honorees were then selected by the Top 30 Under 30 selection committee during the month of June.

“This honoree class has once again shown that Nashville is full of young professionals that care about their city. We hope the community will help the CFF congratulate and honor them by supporting the Top 30 Under 30 celebration in September,” said Top 30 Under 30 co-chair Anne Elizabeth McIntosh.

Nashville’s Top 30 Under 30 will be on Sept. 11, 2010, at Public Square Park downtown. Tickets can be purchased in advance for $50 or $75 for VIP entry. Evan will be selling tickets to help this great cause. If you are interested please email him at evan@centresource.com

Visit www.nashvilletop30.org for more information.

As you may know, Facebook has been doing some pretty stupid things recently that can cause your privacy to be shot on Facebook.  Fortunately, there are tools out there to help you adjust your privacy settings to be more protective of your information.

I came across this tool tonight: http://www.reclaimprivacy.org/

Basically, drag the bookmarklet to your bookmark bar, log into Facebook, and then click the bookmark.  It will run some tests to see where you’re protected, and where you’re potentially exposed.  I was surprised even how much I hadn’t protected, despite trying hard to be extra cautious.

Many people are altogether shutting down their Facebook accounts… I haven’t gone that far, but I do think that using Facebook with the default privacy settings is outright insane.

Happy (and safe) Facebooking!

As you may have seen in the national news, a series of storms over the weekend have caused the worst flooding in Nashville in decades. At least six people in Middle Tennessee have lost their lives, and countless more have lost homes and businesses. More than 2,000 people stayed in storm shelters last night. We are truly blessed to report that all of our team is accounted for and is safe, but our hearts and prayers go out to those who are not as fortunate.

This morning, CentreSource CEO Nicholas Holland (@nicholasholland) has asked our team to get out and support the volunteer efforts that are underway in Nashville. Groups are organizing in various parts of the city to be ready with food, bottled water and other basic needs.

Here are a few of the service opportunities that we are aware of right now:

• Hands on Nashville (partnered with Metro Davidson County)
• Nashville Red Cross
• Community Foundation of Middle Tennessee

Our Germantown neighborhood office remains open with only minor damage, and our staff will be available via e-mail to help with any of our clients’ needs. If you need assistance with your project, please contact your Strategist.

There has been a lot of discussion about the changes that Apple made to the upcoming version of the iPhone OS 4.0 Terms of Service:

3.3.1 — Applications may only use Documented APIs in the manner prescribed by Apple and must not use or call any private APIs. Applications must be originally written in Objective-C, C, C++, or JavaScript as executed by the iPhone OS WebKit engine, and only code written in C, C++, and Objective-C may compile and directly link against the Documented APIs (e.g., Applications that link to Documented APIs through an intermediary translation or compatibility layer or tool are prohibited).

As both developers and consumers, CentreSource is affected by this decision in two ways.

While we’ve traditionally been a PHP shop, we have developers who are versed in JavaScript, ActionScript, Ruby, ASP .NET, Perl, and even a little Python.  When the iPhone Software Development Kit (SDK) was originally released two years ago, we played around with it, but the learning curve of teaching ourselves Objective C (the language required to use the SDK) ultimately led us to make the decision to explore utilizing a third party development tool called Titanium to create our iPhone apps.  Titanium is an application that allows you to write in a simpler/unified language, and then the tool recompiles the code to the Objective C required by Apple.

According to the new changes, applications like Titanium — or the about-to-be-released Adobe Flash to iPhone converter — are a no-no.  Why?  Commentators and speculators say it comes down to two main reasons:

1. Apple wants complete control.  In order to develop for the iPhone OS, you have to use Apple’s tools… On an Apple computer… With an Apple developer’s license…  Apple controls the entire development environment from the moment you start writing your code (on your Apple computer) to the point you start making money through releasing your app in the App Store.  Apple is able to dictate how, where, and when your app gets created and distributed.  While some see this as a monopolistic abuse of power, I see this as directly benefiting the fact that…

2. Apple has complete control.  By controlling the entire development environment, they are able to provide the tools and resources to allow app developers what they need to create applications that maximize the potential of the iPhone OS.  If they release a brand new set of features to their SDK (as they did last week), they are able to immediately integrate these features into their toolset for the developers to use.  When using tools like Titanium, developers are forced to wait until the 3rd party company changes their tools to be compatible with the new SDK before they can start using them.

Similarly, many argue that by “neutralizing” the tools used for creation, you’re not able to fully utilize the specific features for the end product. Think of any application that was created for a specific platform — Mac or Windows — and then think of applications that were “ported” to the other platform. No one will argue that Office on a Mac or Handbrake on Windows are anywhere close to the application on the platform it was originally written for.

From a development perspective, we’re not tremendously affected — primarily because we’re already fairly cross-versed in development languages. Adding Objective-C to our arsenal — while an inconvenience and time consuming — is by no means a deal breaker for us, especially given the benefits that Apple provides.  For most of us, we’d have to learn another language / SDK of some kind in order to develop iPhone OS apps — why not just go right to learning Objective-C.

From a consumer perspective, I believe this is great news. Imagine the scenario that Louis Gerbarg of /dev/why!?! presents:

Imagine if 10% of the apps on iPhone came from Flash. If that was the case, then ensuring Flash didn’t break release to release would be a big deal, much bigger than any other compatibility issues. Since Apple doesn’t have access to Flash CS5’s runtime library code or compiler frontend, they might be put in a position where they would need to coordinate with Adobe to resolve those issues. Shipping a new release where Apple breaks any specific application, even a top seller, is not an issue if the release is compelling, most apps work, and Apple has the option of working with the vendor to help them fix their app. Shipping a release where they break a large percentage of apps is not generally an option. Letting any of these secondary runtimes develop a significant base of applications in the store risks putting Apple in a position where the company that controls that runtime can cause delays in Apple’s release schedule, or worse, demand specific engineering decisions from Apple, under the threat of withholding the information necessary to keep their runtime working.

Clearly this is not an ideal scenario for Apple or for their consumers. Apple’s imposing restrictions are a protective move for themselves and their consumer — ensuring the high level of user experience that Apple has come to be known for, and not letting 3rd party vendors effect their reputation.

Is this bad news for Adobe? Youbetcha. They are increasingly grasping at straws to stay relevant in a marketplace that is leaning more towards HTML5, and turning “Flash” into a bad word. I agree with some of my colleagues that Flash still has an appropriate place on the web, and heavens knows how many ActionScript developers are bummed about this decision that effectively eliminates them from developing on a platform that accounts for 45% of mobile browsing.

At the end of the day, when the dust of iPhone OS 4.0 finally settles, there will still be a plethora of apps (good and bad) in the iTunes App Store. This decision will be long forgotten by all those involved (well, except maybe Adobe), and the consumers will remain happy and buying phones.

As for CentreSource? Bring on Objective-C!

** Note: my opinions may be a bit biased… This whole post was written on my Apple iPad — which is awesome by the way… But that will be a saved for a separate blog post!

For anyone (like myself) who has been religiously following Google and the amazing things that they have done to improve people’s experience on the web, you would have noticed a pattern in December 2009 of “speed.” The reasons for their speed obsession are clearly justified; a user’s experience on the web is made or broken by the speed at which they are able to browse, including the initial page load, the responsiveness of the interactive components, and the number of clicks to get to retrieve their desired information.

As such, Google has been busy releasing various tools to help with user’s experiences on the web:

Google Chrome

Ok, so this technically came out for Windows in 2008, but was released fully cross-platform in 2009. Chrome (and its subsequent big brother “Chrome OS”) is an open-source browser that borrows components from Apple’s WebKit and Mozilla’s Firefox (both open-source projects) and aims to “add value for users and, at the same time, help drive innovation on the web.” As of January 4, 2010, Chrome had officially passed Apple’s Safari browser to become the 3rd most popular browser behind Internet Explorer and Firefox.

Real-Time Search

As Twitter has grown in popularity, it has quickly become the first source for breaking news, mostly due to the ease and speed with which you can post information. In Q4 2009, Google signed a deal with Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, and FriendFeed (among others) to allow search results from each of their sites to be propagated into the Google search result page. The benefit of this is that one can get to-the-second results of what they’re looking for — all in one place.

Webmaster Tools

While improving the end-users’ tools can greatly improve usability and performance, Google acknowledged that individual site optimization is key to a successful user experience by releasing a variety of webmaster tools to help web developers identify slow parts of their site, and provide tips on how to improve those areas. One group of tools was added to Google Analytics under the new “Site Performance” section, that gives an analysis of your site’s performance relative to the rest of the web, as well as particular suggestions on improving page speed. This is particularly helpful in identifying over-arching tips and tricks that can improve the loading speed of your site as a whole.

The second tool is a Firefox extension called “Page Speed” that takes the analysis provided in the “Site Performance” section, and moves it to the browser, allowing you to view specific recommendations on a page-by-page basis. This is particularly helpful in identifying very specific ways to improve the speed of a particular page that might be loading slower than others on your site.

The third tool is a Chrome extension called “Speed Tracer.” This tool is more geared towards the performance of web applications, focusing less on the initial load time, and more on the strain that using the website itself puts on the user’s browser. Using Speed Tracer, you can pinpoint exactly what scripts, actions, or files are causing your website to appear to slow down.

Public DNS

The nerdiest most technical tool that Google announced was their hosting of a Public DNS server. DNS, or Domain Name System, is an essential part of the web that helps translate domain names (”blog.centresource.com”) into the unique Internet Protocol (IP) addresses of the computers where the website files live. By providing a Public DNS, Google plans to not only optimize the hundreds of DNS requests that the average user makes every day, but also to gather data about user’s browsing patterns “to improve the browsing experience for Internet users globally.”

When your company has had so much success at planning and building world-class Web sites for companies and organizations of all sizes, it is easy to start to think “Hey, what about our site? When are we launching the new one? Can we put a treasure map on there? Can Chris take our pictures?” The answers to the last three are: “today,” “absolutely” and “if you ask him nicely.”

Capping off months of on-again, off-again work (Hey, we’ve been really busy!), we are proud to announce that the new CentreSource.com is finally available to the world. The new site invites you to meet our team, learn a bit about our process, see why our clients are the best and to chat with us about your undying love of cupcakes (or anything else you want to talk about).

Have a look!

CentreSource is once again sponsoring the midstate’s leading tech-driven “unconference,” BarCamp Nashville. This free event will be held from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. this Saturday, October 17 at the Cadillac Ranch on Broadway in downtown Nashville (map). At last glance, there were more than 60 presenters that had created sessions on topics on everything from Web development to entrepreneurship. We are also very proud that several of our team members will be presenting at this year’s event:

• Nicholas Holland - From Cave Walls to Facebook Walls
• Chip Hayner - Choosing the Right Tool for the Job
• Brent Shaffer & Travis Roberts - Test Your Might: Symfony vs Rails - Framework Combat
• Nicholas Holland (again!) - iPhone Development … or “Welcome to Crazyville, Population YOU”
• Jared Scheel - Whoa! Creating Engaging User Experiences
• Aaron Briggs - Getting a Pants-Free Education: E-Learning and Instructional Design

Visit the BarCamp Nashville Web site to register today!

On the drive into work today, I was listening to “This Week in Google“, one of the amazing podcasts from the TWiT network, hosted by Leo Laporte.  In the most recent episode, one of the guests spoke briefly about how he felt that he could let non-direct Twitter messages and Facebook wall posts to him go without reply, but he felt obliged to respond to emails and direct messages.  This got me thinking about the “Social Obligation” that I feel with various forms of communication.

In each of the mediums mentioned (and I’ll throw in SMS, blog comments, and forums), the person leaving the message is able to post directly to you — the biggest difference is that some of the messages are public and some are private.  Ironically, the items that are private (direct messages in Twitter / Facebook, SMS, email) seem to be the ones that I feel most obliged to respond to, whereas it feels “ok” to leave the public comments hanging without response.  I’m not sure if I think that “someone else can reply for me,” or if being public is less personal, and therefore less necessary to respond.

On the flip side, there is a particular expectation that we set whenever we send a message to someone.  I may not expect Sally to thank me personally for the birthday greeting I posted on her Facebook wall, but if I post a public message to @SouthwestAir or @ComcastCares, I have an expectation to get a response.

What do you think?

• Which social obligations do you feel?
• How do you feel when you post a public or private comment to someone and they don’t respond?
• If your company or business is on Twitter, do you respond to every public or private message?

At CentreSource, we have a motto that “outcomes always outweigh the output.”  Through this, we try to focus on meeting the individual goals of our clients, versus focusing on the process of how they get done.  One goal we often hear is that our clients would like an easy way to update the website themselves.  By using a Content Management System (CMS), we enable our clients to accomplish this — without having to install anything on their computers, or know too much about how websites work.

Over the history of CentreSource, we’ve worked hard to choose the perfect CMS to be able to meet the individual needs of each client and project that comes our way.  There was always a balance that had to be struck — it couldn’t be too cookie-cutter, or else we wouldn’t be able to do everything that the client was asking.  Conversely, it wouldn’t be cost efficient if we had to custom build a CMS for our clients each time.  By focusing on the outcome  (the client’s goal of an easy-to-update website), we decided that the best single CMS option was not a single option at all, but instead a “toolbox” approach that would allow us to use the appropriate tool for each unique job.

WordPress

For basic blog / news sites with a few “static” pages, there is no better option out there than the open source platform, WordPress.  WordPress has a simple, intuitive administrative interface, and is designed and built around the concept of two types of content: posts and pages.  Thanks to their fairly extensive documentation and an incredible user community, there are thousands of WordPress tutorials, examples, and plugins available that can help you to maximize the capabilities of WordPress to it’s fullest.  Although there are some plugins out there (one in particular called Flutter) that allow you to expand WordPress into a more feature-rich CMS (with multiple content types, for example), we have found that doing so is like pushing a boulder uphill.  It can be done, but it’s more work than it’s worth — especially with other, more feature-rich CMSes out there (see below).  All in all, though, WordPress is an excellent basic tool for basic websites.

Sitemason

Next in our toolbox is a local company that CentreSource has used since we first open our doors, and has never let us down since.  Sitemason is a proprietary CMS that has expanded over the years to allow its users to edit pages, news, forms, polls, photos, and calendars.  Once you’re trained on their administrative interface, adding and editing content is a breeze, as heavy-hitter clients like Vanderbilt University, ABHOW (American Baptist Homes of the West),  Waller Lansden Dortch & Davis, or TrustCore Financial can attest to.  Their team of developers are constantly refining and adding to their tools, taking guidance and recommendations from the users and developers that use their system.  As a result, Sitemason has proven to be an invaluable tool for our low- to mid-level sites.

Drupal

Over the past few years, Drupal has taken off as the de facto CMS for open source developers.  Advertising itself as not only a CMS platform, but also a CMS framework, Drupal has an extensively flexible core that can be used to build modules to do just about anything you might want.  Drupal’s bread and butter is its ability to create custom content types (a piece of content with defined custom fields), and then a system to view the content in many different ways (lists, grids, tables, blocks, etc).  Additionally, Drupal specializes in social-based tools, making it a perfect platform for bands, politicians, or churches.  For any high-level content-based site that is too demanding for WordPress or SiteMason, Drupal is the perfect tool for the job.

Symfony

While not really a CMS, the Symfony framework allows us to custom build anything that can’t be done with the tools above.  Symfony is a PHP framework that provides an architecture for developers to build complex web applications faster.  Using Symfony allows us to build the exact tool that our client is wanting — something that is necessary in circumstances where the workflow is just as important as the final outcome.  Using Symfony, we’ve been able to build complex order and shipment fulfillment systems and social-based file sharing and recommendation systems — sites that would not have been able to be found “out-of-the-box,” but that were needed based on our client’s goals.