Ask participants to think aloud while they read the content. You’ll get some good insight on what they find confusing and why. Ideally, you want readers to understand the text after a single reading. If they have to re-read anything, you must clarify the text. Also, ask them to paraphrase some sections; if they don’t get the gist, you’d better rewrite it.

via Angela Colter, A List Apart: Articles: Testing Content.

[T]he basic question is what it would look like if you started to build a CMS from the ground up for the flow side of the web. A CMS is traditionally about creating content, and that would be part of it, but, as Danah Boyd said, it needs to get people in the flow.This is not really a problem we’ve ever had to design for, outside maybe finance or producing live television (as two examples off the top of my head). (more…)

This triad of XML (media-neutral notation), semantics (meaning of the data), and RDF (context of the data and metadata) is the best way for a publisher to be prepared for future requirements. Such a tagging strategy leads to increased transparency, and hence to a growing potential to respond quickly and inexpensively to changing market and user requirements.

via Ingrid S. Goldstein, Why Publishers Need Agile Content: XML, Semantics and RDF | Publishing Perspectives.

At the moment, the average magazine is made from a combination of Microsoft Word, Photoshop, In-Design, shared-drives, and PDFs sent to the repro house. As each step of the analogue production process has been replaced by a digital version (film photography to digital, for example) that bit has been swapped out and replaced. (more…)

Polopoly is a Java system that revolves around the concept of “publishing queues”. And as usual, Polopoly’s publishing queues are not at all the publishing queues you may know from other systems. In this CMS, you put such queues on a page, and they’ll automatically generate presentations of items fitting the criteria. (more…)

This is not about “social media” it is about identity, about connecting an idea to other people. When I grew up, most everyone I knew had creative ideas for videos, music, art, businesses, etc. And those ideas were born and died inside our own heads. Even for those we acted on, they existed for a brief moment, within a very tiny group of people. (more…)

It is difficult to demonstrate the value of editing. When trying to find aspects of content processes to cut in order to save money, editing is often tops on the list. Against this backdrop, we continually need to justify editing as a vital part of any content process, particularly on the Web, where writers often don’t understand their audiences as well as they should.

via Andy Bechtel, Q&A with editing technologist James Mathewson « American Copy Editors Society.

EIDR is a response to the growing complexity of managing content assets across rapidly multiplying digital channels. Partnerships between different sectors and companies currently tend to be thwarted by a Babel-like confusion of proprietary systems.

Each content asset will be assigned an ID not unlike a UPC code.

via Andrew Wallenstein, Global Entertainment Industry Consortium Launches Content Registry EIDR | paidContent.

The ICSC sees the stakes as being high. Not only is lousy content devaluing professional content in their eyes, it is making the Web experience worse for the average user. “The ICSC believes that content creators and publishers should work to preserve the utility of the Internet for users and advertisers alike,” reads the report.

(more…)