WP Robot helps you build up your content

If you’ve spent too many sleepless nights trying to build up enticing content intended for your site’s visitors, you know how much of a toll it can take on “the rest of your offline life”.

Since none of us, in their right mind, that is, wants to waste their life away publishing content which might be found elsewhere, for free, a WordPress plug-in like WP Robot might save you so much time, it might even end up saving both your bank account and your family (since you’ll spend way more time, with those you love).

There’s no way spending hours in front of your computer will ever make sense so let WP Robot get your RSS content from leading sources like eBay, Amazon, YouTube, Flickr, Oodle and Twitter or from lesser known sources which you’re quietly leveraging into a value added archive which will grow more enticing, over time, especially when the original sources stop carrying the content, in which case, you need to “pull” the full articles and not just the exerpts.

Either way, WP Robot gets your content on auto-pilot.

Even when you sleep, WP Robot grows your article base to make your web destination as useful and interesting as possible. All that without requiring your presence. Ah! Blissfully perfect!

Of course, keeping an eye on what’s being posted with WP Robot is a must because you don’t want the content to display badly. Furthermore, you absolutely want to correct some chunks of content in what’s being reposted to maintain quality, diversity and rather importantly, uniqueness.

If you still have a few hours to kill, you may even decide to write up a few articles, on your own. Since you have so much automated content being published, your manual articles will help distinguish your web site from all the other who don’t have these “unique” wise words!

Is WP Robot for you?

The real question is: how can it not be? Seriously, posting content is such hard work, you deserve a “WP Robot break”, once in a while. How about now? Now would be a good time for you to bank on the combined SEO-power of WordPress and that of WP Robot’s ability to pull in RSS content from some twenty (20) major sources.

At around 200$ for the entire plug-in (with the modules), you’re bound to quickly recoup your investment. Just open up a niche site and see your advertising revenues soar. You may even advertise your own company, in these otherwise newly generated free content destinations.

With WP Robot, you buy peace of mind with a plug-in which delivers results. This is impressive given the plug-in connects with several platforms which don’t necessarily allow extensive RSS grabbing (for re-publishing purposes).

So there you have it: WP Robot is a web editor’s best “discreet” helper to get your newly acquired content published, on a regular basis.

What social networking vendors offer, for businesses…

The social networking scene has taken the web by storm as Blogger, Wikipedia, Facebook, MySpace and countless others expand peoples’ reach way beyond their physical community to realms that span across cyberspace.

It so easy.

People create a profile and voilà !

They’re set to share content, ideas and opinions.

Social networking, especially for those who know their way around, is insanely cool. It’s no surprise that so many organizations are looking to setup their own, internally. Once a business social network is up and running, if it’s done right, employees and managers can connect among themselves with ease.

One theory, with regards to business social networks, is that good ideas get validated and bad ideas get discarded more quickly, which leads to faster product development — but it’s just a theory.

In general, companies will benefit, in various ways, from the content that’s being created, shared, added upon and archived for later use.

Any company can make social networking yield benefits but like most new things, it would be foolish to attempt to qualify its financial bottomline usefulness with hard metrics. For the time being, it’s more a matter of getting in early than trying to catch up, later on.

So assuming you’re ready to launch your internal social network, which solution should you choose? Well, that’s for the IT guys to decide but to get the ball rolling, consider the following vendors…

• Drupal
  • Open source.
  • Great at community-driven sites.
  • Blogs and profiles.
• IBM Lotus Connections
  • Paid software.
  • Helps you execute tasks more quickly by using dynamic networks of coworkers, partners and customers
  • Blogs, profiles, social bookmarks, communities and more.
• Jive Software
  • Licensed software or hosted SaaS.
  • Integrates the “enterprise 2.0″ capabilities of collaboration software, community software and social networking software.
  • Wikis, blogs, profiles, social bookmarks, tags, discussions and more.
• MS-SharePoint
  • Paid server software, MS SaaS or hosted by 3rd parties.
  • In its own words: connecting people, process and information.
  • Wikis, blogs, profiles and communities.
• NewsGator
  • Paid software. Extends MS-SharePoint.
  • Empower employees, customers and partners to collaborate, communicate, and innovate in order to create business value through social computing.
  • SharePoint add-ons for tags, tag clouds, expert search, discussions and more.
• Scuttle
  • Open source.
  • Light on the more advanced features but does social bookmarking like it should.
  • Social bookmarking.
• Socialtext
  • Paid hosted service or on-location server appliance.
  • Used for all employees to get a collective view of what’s going on and share content.
  • Wikis, blogs, profiles, social bookmarks and microblogging.
• Telligent
  • Lease the software or buy perpetual licenses.
  • Designed for high-volume communities where performance and up-time are critical.
  • Wikis, blogs, profiles, groups and communities, social analytics and more.

And as you continue searching for vendors, expect to find lots of other worthwhile finds. Keep in mind that the big software firms are currently being swarmed by waves of smaller firms offering solid codesets and eye-pleasing visuals so expect the heated competition to go on, for a while.

In case you were just thinking about this…

Yes, open source has an advantage over most paid and hosted solutions: it’s free!

It’s also instantly available through a simple download and there’s no licensing fee, whatsoever. If you can make up for a little less “business-class support”, open source scripts will likely end up being your first and all-time best choice. Keep in mind open source projects evolve all the time and all those upcoming updates will also be… free. Which is nice.

And don’t forget that open source projects usually come with mountains of useful plug-ins which add bleeding edge features to your core script. Plus the fact you can dive right into your code and tweak just about anything you want. No encryption here.

But perhaps open source is not your thing.

If that’s your case, paid scripts (or software) or hosted solutions is where you’ll most likely end up as very few organizations develop their own social networking engine from scratch.

With such solutions, the deeper your pockets, the more features you’ll get.

And you’re not too picky, customizationwise, you’ll be up and running rather quickly. Software as a service (or “Saas”) is where many mid-sized companies like to do business because everything’s hosted externally. There can be some cost saving at first but as the content volume grows, it can inflate the rent to the point where it’s not that much of a deal anymore so watch out for that. Do your mathematical projections before you sign-up.

Paid software is generally hosted in-house and it’s generally yours for life but remember that the upgrades might cost you a lot of dough, over and above all the other technical maintenance cost. Again, do your mathematical projections before rearranging your server room to accomodate a business social networking software solution.

If you still feel anxious about deploying a social network in your enterprise, seek help from the vendors themselves or from local IT firms which specialize in web 2.0 stuff.

All in all, if your organization is still unsure about wether it’s worth it to have an internal social network, consider that employees will get access to blogs, wikis and tools that let them communicate, collaborate and share information.

The real bottom-line question might be, how much is it worth, to your enterprise, to have its employees using applications it controls and manages? Once that question is answered, everything else aligns itself accordingly.

Tags: social networking, social networks, internal networks, company social network, enterprise, business, social networking vendors, ibm, lotus, jive, sharepoint, saas, hosted solutions, paid software, .net, microsoft, blogs, wikis, search, information, connect, share, content, server

Enterprise IT warming up to mashups

If you’re new to the whole mashup scene, now is still a good time to get a feel for the impressive capabilities of application conglomerations which, for the end-user, is akin to mashing up various content to match specific needs.

From a technical standpoint, which is what enterprise IT folks want to know most, mashups are applications built from multiple pieces of data or other applications.

While the very concept of “mashing up content” isn’t new (think desktop clutter), today’s mashups are all about the web, driven by such technologies as web APIs, RSS content, wikis and social networking environments.

The most entrepreneuring IT coders might feel comfortable jumping into mashup management modules using PHP coupled with AJAX but for those who prefer large solutions from well established vendors, some of the most popular enterprise-level mashup platforms include IBM’s QEDWiki, Microsoft’s Popfly and Xignite’s Splice.

Why should enterprise IT managers take notice of mashups?

For one thing, Gartner expects around 30% of businesses to use mashups this year and the growth, according to most industry observers, should be strong for many years to come.

Furthermore, whatever provides an edge to a company should be investigated. Mashups empower the end-users like never before but also enables developers to help customize the work interfaces, in a highly collaborative manner, thus making it easier to reach higher levels of productivity and general workflow efficiency.

Everybody in an typical business is likely to highly benefit from mashups. Consider today’s popular applications using the power of mashups: CRM, billing, operations, accounting, partner systems, ERP, ECM and other proprietary data repositories that benefit from being mashed up for finely defined tasks.

While the typical application is about information delivery, it would be fair to think of mashups as self-service platforms.

It might also be anticipated that companies that focus on innovation, which may include making good use of mashups, are the most likely to save time and money, make better business decisions and reduce missed opportunity costs.

Tags: mashups, business decisions, knowledge workers, innovation, content, api, rss

Companies need to deal with mashups

Do you remember when you were young and you mixed and matched the different “food zones” that your mom had carefully delimited in your plate?

You were looking for best tasting combination to satisfy your personal preferences. Right there and then, you were mashing up food so your meal would taste the way -you- like it.

Fast forward in 2008, mashups are based on the same food mixing logic only this time, data is being rearranged to fit personal preferences.

Web users “mashup their data” all the time, mainly on their desktop but also, more often now, online.

The rise of AJAX coding has jazzed things up quite a bit, within even the most mundane (static or lightly dynamic) web pages.

In a no-frills scenario, with just a few mouse clicks, a user can decide that a given “mashable start page” will include (1) local news, (2) the titles of the last 10 emails received, (3) a link to the top 20 pop radio hits and why not, (4) the local sports team’s interactive calendar — these snippets of information are called blocks and typically, they can be rearranged by the user for his own needs.

In clear, users are now more in control of which information they see and how it’s presented to them. This approach fits perfectly with the “web 2.0 thinking” but is that the kind of flexibility companies are looking for?

As usual, home computer users bring some of their computing habits to the office and wether they’re prepared for it or not, the enterprise IT has to deal with them. Mashups are simply the latest in a long list of emerging technologies to cross the “home-to-office” bridge.

Opposing views over innovation VS governance spawn heated debate over mashups because while rearranging data might make the worker happier and more efficient, the governance efforts might hit a wall trying to follow-up with “infinitely personalized” work environments and online tools.

By keeping in mind that a mashup is a web application that combines data or services from more than one source into a single integrated application, it’s easy to anticipate the rise of the user as the end of the line “programmer” of information in the way that best fits his needs so in this kind of “mashed future”, the governance people fight an uphill battle.

Governance should be careful not to stiffle innovation, including the emerging mashups, because old IT -and- antiquated work methods could hurt a company in more ways than one.

Once a user has tasted the sheer power of mashups, it’s likely going to be quite frustrating going back to rigid, user-unfriendly interfaces presenting all the wrong information within a marathon of different “screens” that just don’t foster any level of heightened productivity… and work satisfaction.

With the powerful drive from web services and SOAs (service-oriented architectures), governance proponents should probably bite the bullet now and embrace mashups instead of hurting innovation by enforcing rigid rules that nobody but them are likely to appreciate… and approve of.

Tags: mashups, data, information, gui, interfaces, content, web 2.0, governance

Your very own article directory

Lots of content gets created every day and if you’re looking to make money from this continuous content stream, you can either join the authors who write up valuable posts or join the publishers who market them.

Most web developers know about the authoring part and since it’s a lot of fun, there’s no reason to stop -but- perhaps it would be nice to also open up your very own article directory, namely to make money on that side too.

If you’re familiar with PHP / MySQL and have access to a web hosting account, you’re already halfway there. All you need to make the magic happen is the article directory script which will automate the article submission, presentation and promotion.

The Article Directory Pro script does exactly that and although it’s not free, the selling price shouldn’t be an obstacle. It installs quickly (and flawlessly) and even includes hundreds of private label rights articles to get your directory started.

Once your article directory is setup, you’re free to set your advertising the way you like. Market your new web resource intelligently by using a snappy domain name accompanied by visually appealing visuals. Over time, the content should build up and your revenues will probably be sufficient for you to pay the monthly rent.

Now, here’s the secret tip expert web developers won’t tell you: the real power of such a web script lies in using it for a vertical or, if you prefer, a niche.

For instance, you could use this script to publish only university research papers (or excepts, whichever fits), for sports reviews (hockey, baseball… you name it), for traveler experiences and so on.

There are so many interesting verticals to explore that this approach will likely make your article directory rather unique and therefore, a lot more valuable than just any other “horizontal” article directory. Get a head start with this finely coded script and work your way from there.

Working a vertical with this kind of script really helps build up the interest in that specific field. While it may take a little longer to get the ball rolling, once you’re established as a credible source of “vertical” information, your visitors will come in much higher numbers.

Oh, and another thing (pun to Steve Jobs) – make sure to submit your article directory to the leading sites which market them as this will help you bring in your first serious authors to use your article directory.

Have fun with this nicely positioned script!

Tags: article directory, content, authors, publishers, php script