Gisteren op de internationale Data Protection Day werd de ‘Ik beslis’ campagne gelanceerd door de Belgische Privacycommissie (of ook bekend als CBPL; de Commissie voor de bescherming van de persoonlijke levenssfeer). Ter ondersteuning van de campagne heeft The Reference gezorgd voor de website die te bewonderen valt op www.ikbeslis.be en www.jedecide.be.
Deze campagne wil op een positieve manier kinderen, jongeren, ouders en leerkrachten informeren over de implicaties van de technologische vooruitgang –negatieve én positieve – en hen te wijzen op hun rechten. Dit alles heeft de Commissie verwoord in één kerngedachte: ‘ik beslis’!
By Anja // 21u27 // category: Dive deeper, SEM
Het einde van het jaar nadert en dan zijn de lijstjes weer van de partij. En wij ook! 8 experten inzake search werden gevraagd om hun mening te geven over search in 2010. Lees hier hun voorspellingen en besteed extra aandacht wat onze Pieter erover te vertellen heeft. Als consultant van het competence center Emakina/Perform, gespecialiseerd in Search & Analytics, is zijn vooruitblik gebaseerd op een jarenlange ervaring vol interessante cases.
Gisteren werd onder luid digitaal gejuich de totaal vernieuwde bibliotheek portaalsite live gezet: www.bibliotheek.be. The Reference heeft zowel grafiek als development (Drupal Open Source CMS) opgeleverd.
Dat is niet alles, volgend jaar volgt een tweede fase van het project… Wordt vervolgd!
The Web Content Management (WCM) market is a very evolving and very competitive landscape with thousands of providers of WCM solutions in several ranges. For decision makers it’s not always easy to reveal which solution is right for them. Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for WCM (MQ) aims to help decision makers understanding the fresh vitality in the WCM market.
WCM solutions in their traditional form are no longer enough from a business perspective; the several mergers and acquisitions during the last years in the WCM landscape show that WCM solutions are synergizing with other ECM components like Digital Asset Management (DAM), content-centric collaboration, records- and document management (DM). On top of that organizations often augment WCM tools with capabilities including multivariate testing, search engine optimization, ad-insertion, search and recommendation technology to help achieve the desired results from their overall Web presence.
Gartner identifies the following key trends currently shaping the WCM market further:
- enhanced usability for non-technical users
- increased popularity of open source solutions
- greater interest in Software as a Service (SAAS) offerings
- growing importance of dynamic context-based content delivery
Although there is a clear trend towards open source, no single open source solution was able to make it to the MQ. In fact, Garner’s exclusion criteria make it somehow impossible for an open source solution to enter it. For instance “the total software revenue (licenses, updates,…) of the vendor should exceed 8 million dollars”. Of course the ‘pure’ open source solutions will probably never ever reach that figure, since they are totally free of license cost! Maintenance and support is often provided through a network of partners and not directly by a vendor.
There is also inconsistency with the Forrester Wave for WCM (which is, by the way, not including any open source neither). Forrester Research ranks Oracle “only” sixth after SDL Tridion, Autonomy Interwoven and a few others. Gartner ranks Oracle (=Stellent) as the leader in their MQ because of its ability to integrate with other Oracle products, including their CRM system. I’m not really a fan of big monolithic ‘vendor locked-in’ solutions reaching far beyond the boundaries of what I’d define as WCM and which is opposed to the ‘loosely coupled’ & ‘separation of concerns’ principle.
Another thing to keep in mind while reading the report is that many of Gartner’s evaluation remarks have to do with a vendor’s “marketing effectiveness”, “communication” and “awareness”; things that might be more relevant to investors and other vendors but not so much to buyers. The report is from that perspective often too high-level and strategic ignoring the details that are often so important. Consider Tony Byrne from CMS Watch who states ‘To evaluate a WCM solution the vendor’s story does not really matter, what they actually do matters’.
Even though the MQ contains valuable information about the WCM market our advice is not to use it as your only source in the decision process for your WCM and to look at it from the right perspective.
And keep in mind that you should talk to a web agency that has hands-on experience in implementing the WCM solution. Because in the end, practical experience proofs to be invaluable.
By Sigrid // 15u31 // category: Events, News
Do you want to…
… optimize your website for search engines yourself?
… successfully advertise your products or services with Google Adwords?
… interpret visitor statistics and learn how they are the driver for a more successful site?
Then we have just the thing for you: a series of 5 trainings, all focusing on improving the performance of your website. Our previous trainings were a great success, so we organized 5 more for you!
Google Analytics: Actionable Business Insights
Some of the addressed topics:
Learn how to define key performance indicators for your website
Learn how to use Google Analytics data to get real actionable insights
Learn how to use advanced segmentation and custom reports to your benefit
View full agenda or register here
Google Analytics: Advanced Implementation
Some of the addressed topics:
Advanced configuration and optimization of your Google Analytics account
Learn how to customize the tracking code for campaigns, e-commerce and web 2.0 applications
Learn how to take benefit from segmenting and filtering on a profile level
View full agenda or register here
Conversion marketing: Landing Page Optimization
Some of the addressed topics:
Learn how you can improve conversion by building the perfect landing page
How to measure and understand conversion with web analytics
See the benefits from split testing to increase conversion
View full agenda or register here
Search Engine Optimization: become a SEO expert
Some of the addressed topics:
Understand all aspects of optimizing your website for search engines
How to increase relevancy, authority and trust of your site (from the search engine’s perspective)
Key performance indicators for measuring your (or your agencies) SEO success
View full agenda or register here
Search Engine Advertising: become a Google Adwords expert
Some of the addressed topics:
Learn how to set up a successful campaign with targeted ads and keywords yourself
Essential keyword and bidding strategies giving you a vast advantage over the competition
Integrate your SEA campaign in your other media for maximum success
View full agenda or register here
By Sigrid // 11u55 // category: News
Het Gentse digitaal agentschap The Reference ontwikkelt in opdracht van Bibnet een nieuw online kennisplatform voor bibliotheken. Het doel van het platform is het uitwisselen, beschikbaar maken en opslaan van kennis die in openbare bibliotheken aanwezig is. Dit platform is niet bedoeld voor het ruime publiek, maar voor bibliothecarissen en bibliotheekmedewerkers, en voor beroepsmatig geïnteresseerden uit de ruime omgeving van Vlaamse openbare bibliotheken.
De inhoud van het kennisplatform wordt voornamelijk informatie met een meerwaarde voor bibliotheken, én met een niet commerciële inslag. Blogposts en bijdragen aan websites of sociale netwerken worden geaggregeerd en weergegeven binnen het platform, maar gebruikers kunnen ook zelf commentaar of bijdrages publiceren.
In de eerste fase van het project zal het platform vooral informatie verzamelen en beschikbaar stellen. Nadien worden er community functionaliteiten toegevoegd die de interactie binnen het platform moeten stimuleren. The Reference staat in voor de volledige ontwikkeling van het kennisplatform. Het agentschap nam eerder al het redesign voor www.bibnet.be en het vernieuwen van bibliotheek.be voor haar rekening.
By Nikolaas De Geyndt // 13u04 // category: Trend watch
Pretty much everyone, at some point, has googled their own name just to see what might pop up. To further that natural desire to know what’s associated with your name on the Net, a group of MIT tech pedants, led by Aaron Zinman, has launched Personas. After entering your name, the program, which creates a personal online data portrait, “scours the Web for information and attempts to characterize” your Web identity.
By Sigrid // 15u17 // category: News
Bibnet tekent akkoord met het Gentse digital agency om haar website bibliotheek.be volledig te vernieuwen. Bibliotheek.be is een toegang tot de bibliotheekcollecties in Vlaanderen en bundelt nuttige informatie voor bibliotheekbezoekers zoals adres- en contactgegevens van bibliotheken en nieuwtjes over de bibliotheekcollecties.
The Reference zal de website nu uitrusten met een nieuw grafisch concept, een vernieuwde architectuur en een nieuwe content management systeem: het Belgische open source Drupal platform. Deze vernieuwingen kaderen in een grondige modernisering van Bibliotheek.be.
By Sigrid // 17u00 // category: Events
ReMix brings the best of MIX09 in Las Vegas to Belgium: it brings us international speakers presenting on the best of MIX09, as well as local cases, with a story focus on User Experience (UX). One of The Reference’s innovating projects, the Message Center for Synergics, will be featured by Microsoft at ReMix during the opening keynote.
The Reference will attend the event and we would like to invite all our clients to join us. Learn all about tools and technologies for building Rich Internet Applications. A grab from the sessions: Silverlight 3, Expression Blend and SketchFlow, Surface and the Natural User Interface and more. Some top speakers joining us: August de los Reyes, Brad Abrams, Arturo Toledo, Adam Kinney and others. You can reserve your seat through the website: http://www.microsoft.com/belux/remix09/
In late 1995, Anja Cappelle started browsing the web every day fanatically looking for the most interesting articles about the expanding internet. She quickly started to share these interesting news stories in the ‘Internet Business Summary’ magazine, an online magazine reporting on internet news for non technical readers.
Today, 14 years later, things haven’t changed much: Anja, now our Managing Director, is still on a daily hunt for the most relevant and interesting news stories. The variety of topics has grown as much as the Internet has, but Anja always seems to know what is going on (we’re really wondering how she does it). That’s why we asked Anja to start sharing these stories again. We’ve added a widget to our blog (in the right column) and connected her Twitter account to her shared list on Google Reader. That way, you’ll have something to read every day and you’ll be on top of the latest Internet Business news!
A glance back in time: Internet Business Summary in 1998:
(You can also still browse the IBS magazine a bit here and here (The Internet Archive).
© Copyright 2008 The weblog. The Reference. All rights reserved.
The Reference - Stapelplein 70 bus 201 - 9000 Ghent - tel +32 (0)9 234 05 36 - www.reference.be
Powered by WordPress.
RSS for recent posts
Gisteren op de internationale Data Protection Day werd de ‘Ik beslis’ campagne gelanceerd door de Belgische Privacycommissie (of ook bekend als CBPL; de Commissie voor de bescherming van de persoonlijke levenssfeer). Ter ondersteuning van de campagne heeft The Reference gezorgd voor de website die te bewonderen valt op www.ikbeslis.be en www.jedecide.be. 
Loading ...
Anne B
