November 29, 2004
Intranet Trends to Watch For
Line56.com: Intranet Trends to Watch For
A quick link to an article about intranets I found this summer. A few key points that are worth highlighting.
1) employees will demand better. Better aesthetics, better applications, more timely information, etc...
2)The growing tension between the intranet becoming a proper corporate tool, with the corresponding interest from the legal department and records management and even more distributed publishing.
Posted by Tim Wayne at
03:26 PM
Phishing during the Holidays
According to the Anti-Phishing Working Group (APWG) phishing activity has increased in recent weeks as the holiday season approaches. APWG data indicates increases in the number of phishing attacks, the number of phishing email messages, and in the number of phishing sites.
For those unaware of the term, phishing involves the use of email spoofing techniques to entice consumers to go to web sites (which mimic actual web sites of known financial organizations) and unknowingly give out their bank or credit card information to criminal groups who will use this information for fraudalent purposes. The APWG uses the following description:
"Phishing attacks use 'spoofed' e-mails and fraudulent websites designed to fool recipients into divulging personal financial data such as credit card numbers, account usernames and passwords, social security numbers, etc. By hijacking the trusted brands of well-known banks, online retailers and credit card companies, phishers are able to convince up to 5% of recipients to respond to them."
Internet users are advised to ensure the authenticity of messages and web sitse before providing any personal and/or financial informaiton.
For more information and the latest trends report, see: http://www.antiphishing.org.
For advice on how to avoid phishing scams, see: http://www.antiphishing.org/consumer_recs.html
Posted by David Jakob at
10:53 AM
November 24, 2004
W3C's 10th Anniversary
In 1994, the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) was created to "Lead the Web to Its Full Potential." In 2004 the W3C celebrates its tenth anniversary and to mark the milestone the Consortium is organizing a one-day symposium. Taking place on December 1, 2004 for Members and invited guests, the symposium offers an opportunity to reflect on the progress of the Web, W3C's central role in its growth, and risks and opportunities facing the Web during W3C's second decade.
For more information see:
http://www.w3.org/2004/09/W3C10.html
Posted by David Jakob at
11:34 AM
Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0
The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) Working Group of the W3 Consortium has released an updated "Working Draft for Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0". The primary aim of the WCAG is to provide guidance and resources to the Internet community to explain how to make Web content accessible to people with disabilities and to define target levels of accessibility.
From the W3C site:
"This draft focuses on guidelines, attempts to apply guidelines to a wider range of technologies, and uses wording that may be understood by a more varied audience. Following WCAG checkpoints makes Web content accessible to people with disabilities and to users of a variety of Web-enabled devices."
For full text of the draft, see:
http://www.w3.org/TR/2004/WD-WCAG20-20041119/
In addition, the WCAG Working Group released a First Public Working Draft of Client-side Scripting Techniques for WCAG 2.0 (http://www.w3.org/TR/2004/WD-WCAG20-SCRIPT-TECHS-20041119/) and three updated Working Drafts:
The drafts give guidance on using HTML, XHTML, ECMAScript and Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) to create accessible content.
Posted by David Jakob at
11:20 AM
November 23, 2004
On-line communities
I have been hearing about building communities on-line for a while now. While I understand the advantages of building a vibrant community of interest or community of practice there are more examples of failed on-line communities (newsgroups destroyed by trolls, blog comments turned off due to spamming) than there are successful on-line communities. The Daily Kos is a successful political site because it is made up of individuals within a fairly narrow political stripe. While discussions may be lively, the participants by and large share a great deal of common ground and common assumptions.
Kuroo5hin, another blog/online community interested in building a more vibrant community, has A Simple Plan to address some of these issues.
Posted by Tim Wayne at
01:33 PM
November 18, 2004
Welcome to the new and improved XIST web site
Welcome to the new and improved XIST web site. We are now using web log ("blog") technology as a main component of our web site, to better manage content and as a means of offering an ongoing dialogue on topics in our area of interest and expertise: information management (IM). As information managers we have found blogs to be informative, entertaining, and mildly addictive. I'm sure we will be linking to some of our favourites over time. We hope that this site becomes a place to communicate new ideas, rehash older assumptions and generally learn from each other. Our comments are open. Please let us know what you think.
We first became interested in blogs as a way to keep up with what friends and others were thinking. One of the great things about blogs is that you get insight into what the blogger reads and finds of interest. Following the links from blog to blog and from site to site reminds us of the early days of the web: even in an electronic world of infinite information there was a feeling that within a community of practice, or a field of interest, you could get to know the key people and their ideas. We hope to provide you with some ideas in the area of information management and the application of new technologies to IM practices.
Blog technology also offers a fast and efficient way to publish content to the web. At its essence, blog software is simply an easy-to-use but sophisticated content management system. The software allows contributors to worry about the content of their message not the technical details of packaging and managing it. Blogs are certainly helping to realize the concept that on the web everyone's a publisher.
Another key development in our interest in blogs was the ability of most of the software used to blog to produce RSS (Really Simple Syndication). RSS allows automatic syndication of content to disperse locations, different software applications, and different digital appliances. It's a new take on the concept of pushing information to your audience. RSS [http://www.xml.com/pub/a/2002/12/18/dive-into-xml.html] is an XML based format that can be read by an RSS reader. RSS readers can be built into web browsers (I use Sage with Firefox), stand alone or available as a web application. (Bloglines is a well designed, free web based RSS reader that has become very popular). With a RSS reader I can monitor many blogs and other RSS services. I can get updates without my e-mail inbox getting jammed or having to remember to check a series of bookmarks in my web browser.
For a good overview of RSS take a look at http://www.reallysimplesyndication.com a site set-up by Dave Winer to expose people to the possibilities of RSS.
Over the next few weeks XIST will be developing our blog roll (or list of blogs we like and use). If you are interested in jumping into the world of RSS take a look at the 221,512 feeds at http://www.syndic8.com. Bloglines maintains a list of popular feeds at http://bloglines.com/topblogs.
XIST currently has a few feeds going. If you want to subscribe to our main blog the feed is available at http://www.xist.com/01/index.xml. You should keep an eye out for the little orange XML box. This is a standard way to link to an RSS feed. Once you are looking for them you will notice many sites have them.
We hope you enjoy the ideas we share on our blog and share a few of your own with us. Interested in writing in our blog? E-mail us.
XIST Management and Staff
Posted by Tim Wayne at
12:09 PM
