19 May 2004

Macromedia to the rescue The rapid growth in popularity of intranets and web-based applications and portals means that inevitably we will all face that most searching of questions from the guy in marketing; "Hey, why can't I update the website content - its just text isn't it?" To be fair this particular marketing chap is quite tech savvy but nonetheless the thought of a non-programmer, the modern day geek equivalent of a biblical leper, prancing around a website full of Javascript and ASPX files left me cold. One of the other guys developed a Visual Studio.NET deployment project that he was going to install on the marketing chap's computer. The idea was that he could use Visual Studio.NET to edit the page content and then use the deployment tool to shove the content up live. Nice in theory, but then so are geese with gold nuggets dropping out of their butts. Nope, something else had to be done. My immediate though was Dreamweaver MX - it supports ASPX and their surely had to be some way that I could set up a project  that would prevent the marketing chap from trampling all the javascript and other code on the site. A quick trawl through Macromedia's website though revealed something cheaper, slicker and far more appealing. Ladies and gentleman, I give you... Contribute 2 It's great. It's a super ultra cut down dreamweaver designed for, you guessed it, marketing types. They don't say that on their website but you know what I mean. It's a tool designed to be given to those people in the company that need to update web content (inter or intra net) without any risk of them stomping on executeable client or server side code. The user interface is lean and crisp with hardly any confusing buttons or switches just begging to be flicked. In fact, as far as I can tell, it's the closest anyone's ever gotten to making a potential minefield a happy safe tourist resort. I'm even tempted to get a copy myself. Best of all though, aside from the wonderfully simplified web editing workflow is the rollback feature. I'm on the train home tonight safe in the knowledge that when the inevitable happens I can remote logon to my marketing director's machine, then click Rollback to put things right again. Go check it out at www.macromedia.com. By the way, the site that needed maintaining is of course my employer's site at www.edenbrook.co.uk.   comment []6:35:37 PM

Isn't convergence just incredible! I'm told, although I've yet to discover it for myself, that a good phone is like a great butler. Always there to do it's job, without question and without failing. The really good ones even have a keen insight into what you might want to do (particularly when it comes to sending SMS messages). A great PDA on the other hand is like a supermodel mixed with the best girlfriend you ever had; a thing of beauty that you just can't keep your hands off. The new PalmOne (or Handspring, depending on where you live) Treo 600 is quite literally the best of both worlds, a great pda with a fantastic phone built in. At last I've fallen in love with a smartphone - shame it's not from "MS". My long, normally quite boring, 2 hour commute to the office this morning could easily have been filmed for a new infomercial on the benefits of convergence in technology. I woke up this morning, hit the sync button on my Treo and bundled it, with my notebook into my bag. The camera would have zoomed in at that point to note the old pda and cell phone laying neglected on my desk, replaced with just one device. On the train I fired up my email client and checked to see what I got. There in my inbox was my Radio Weblog aggregators mail telling me which RSS feeds I subscribe to that had been updated. One particular piece (I forget now where it was) caught my eye. I clicked on the link shown in the mail and the GPRS icon appeared next to the battery strength display at the top of the display. A few seconds later and I was looking at the website in question, on a train! After reading the piece I felt compelled to fire off an email to someone at the office. I ran up the mail client, keyed in my work email account settings, then created a new mail. The built in keyboard on the Treo took a little getting used to, and I can see it giving me some form of hideously crippling arthritis in both thumbs when I get even older, but for the moment it's ok. I tapped Send, with my finger and boom, off zoomed the email - from a train don't forget. I checked my mail a few minutes later, recklessly forgetting that the cost of GPRS transmissions in the UK are still stunningly expensive. I got a mail from my colleague making fun of my statement that I was on a train, and of course not believeing me. I tapped the phone symbol on the keypad, knocked the little joystick thing over to the right to highlight the word camera and held up my treo for my fellow passengers to see. ZeeeeCLICK went the trio, capturing an accurate albeit grainy image of the train carriage before I quickly fired that off to the office too. And that's pretty much how my day has gone so far. Clicking and tapping my schedule into  some semblence of order with the Treo's awesome calendar feature, taking phone calls, putting people on hold so that I can try out the two calls at once feature, typing notes, the odd grainy photo and adding as many contacts as I can find from the corporate directory into my own personal contacts folder in Outlook (and thus into my Treo). It's a great gadget. It's the supreme example of technology convergence. Get one!   comment []4:16:48 PM