Content Management News

How should a website handle errors? What kind of information and messages should be presented to the user? And will a one-size fits all approach do the job?

Our own 404 page is pretty lame, so weÂ’ve been thinking about the various ways in which we can improve things, as part of our year-long project to provide you with a glorious new E-consultancy website (due in early-2009).

I have also analysed the 404 pages of 10 of the most popular news sites, to see how other publishers are faring.

It turns out that GooglebotÂ’s addiction to text has reached a new level following the announcement that it can now index text from scanned documents.

By using Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technology the search engine can now make sense of the content of scanned documents saved as PDF files.

Usability as a criteria for judging internal software solutions is not only overlooked but often undervalued when compared to one of its big sisters, so called ‘cost reducing features’.

With the penetration of enterprise software throughout businesses all over the world, will we as end users ever experience user friendly internal software, to the levels to which we are accustomed with the latest ‘user centered’ web applications?

WiredÂ’s senior editor Paul Boutin has climbed aboard the 'blogging is dead' train, pointing to Jason CalacanisÂ’ decision to quit blogging as a primary reason to bail out.

The article starts: “Thinking about launching your own blog? Here's some friendly advice: Don't. And if you've already got one, pull the plug.”

Last week, Opera released the results of a survey conducted using its MAMA (Metadata Analysis and Mining Application) search engine.

The engine, which currently indexes 3.5m web pages, is designed to track "how web pages are structured."

There was an interesting post yesterday on TechCrunch about the use of Google Trends to drive editorial.

Apparently, a number of publishers are leveraging the data from Google Trends to find hot keyword trends, and taking advantage of the blazing speed at which Google spiders new content on blogs and content sites to produce content catered specifically to those hot keywords.

I haven't exactly been a big fan of YouTube (and its parent, Google) but there are signs it is moving in the right direction.

On Tuesday, Google announced on the YouTube blog that it would be adding "click-to-buy" links on the pages of videos owned by the site's partners.

Billions of dollars in market cap. Gone. In minutes.

It wouldn't be surprising to learn of Apple shareholder heart attacks after a rumor that Apple CEO Steve Jobs suffered a massive one resulted in a quick but rapid drop in Apple's stock price last Friday.

So you have a PDF document that you want to share with the world. Or you have a PowerPoint presentation that you want to make easily accessible to your company's stakeholders.

You could upload these documents to the web in their original form but there's no guarantee that those downloading them will have all the software required.

The importance of good copy cannot be understated. Whether you're writing copy for your website, an email newsletter or offline marketing materials, copy can mean the difference between a sale and a lost customer; success and failure.