What is the continuing role of electronic portfolios?  An article in Campus Technology reviews the issues related to ownership of the content, and what happens when the student graduates.  A student-centered approach seems most logical to me — effective use comes when the student feels ownership of the content and  sees a practical use for its existence (like getting a job).  If they find the portfolio tool useful after graduation it seems short-sighted for the school to terminate the relationship.  If the institution accepts that the student ‘owns’ the content, and that the school simply provides a service — just like facebook or any other such service — then this relationship, and any risks, should be clear.  You have an acceptable use policy, and if users abuse the policy their accounts get shut off.  But this also means accepting some institutionally uncomfortable, or at least potentially uncomfortable, situations.  Welcome to the world of user-centric content!

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As much as I love Apple and freely admit they make great products, I also have concerns with Apple’s closed-system approach. While there are some valid points to Apple’s ‘let us do the driving’ philosophy, I think users are better served when technology platforms are open.  So how cool would a Google tablet be?  After all, if they want to beat Windows at its own game, what better strategy than ripping off an Apple idea?

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Jay Collier at Bates ponders the strengths of Drupal and WordPress MU.  In my experience WordPress is quicker to get going with, and for most web sites it can rise to most any challenge.  And it is the king of multi-site installations.  Drupal has a steeper learning curve, but can better support needs such as a work flow-content approval path, or something less traditional, like a content repository system.  In meeting a business need the technology is normally the least important element — what are your goals, who is the audience, what do they need, etc. — those are the important questions.  Once you have those answers you go looking for a technology.  My advice?  Look at WordPress first — if it doesn’t do what you want, in a quick straightforward way, keep looking.  But in my experience that won’t happen very often.

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Keep Your Graphic Designer on a Short Leash in this month’s Website Magazine suggests that elements such as wild background colors, garish text, visual embellishments (eye candy) and animation/video distract website visitors from important content.  In a case study of a redesign of the CREDO website they found an 84% improvement with a simplified design.  The case study used a new service called AttentionWizard.com which uses computer algorithms to approximate eye tracking studies of a web site.  The idea is these will reveal what point on the page the visitor’s eye should land on.  If it is what you want them to see — like a buy now button — bingo, you are doing well.  If their eyes don’t land anywhere, or on the wrong things it is time to make some adjustments.  I thought it would be fun to compare the Yale and Harvard main websites using the service.

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Yammer use took off in our workplace late last year, but since everyone has returned from the Christmas break interest seems to have dropped off somewhat.   Maybe something like TeamBox, with its richer toolset, might be more attractive.  Teambox organizes communication around projects.  Users are members of projects, and a project has communication divided into conversations, task lists, pages and files.  The concept seems to have similarities with Google Wave, but at first glance the user interface seems a lot more familiar.  And TeamBox is open source allowing installation on your own server — so you can own the data.  And can customize the app (built with Ruby on Rails).  Now I just need a project to test it with… Read the rest of this entry »

Starting sometime early next year the New York Times will start charging for content on its web site.  Is this the start of a new internet business model, or the last gasp of a dying industry?  Times will tell (pun intended).  But it seems to me that they are on the right track.  The charge will only affect more active site visitors, who presumably see value in the content and would be willing to pay for that.  Occasional site visitors won’t need to pay.  Makes sense, but how do you track this?  Will those casual visitors still need to log-in somehow?  Enter your email here?  Or maybe limit how many articles can be viewed from an IP address in a day?   It will be interesting to see how they pull this off without scaring users away.

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