The site, eWeek, posted a little slide show in honor of Presidents Day. The slide show lists "10 U.S. presidents who held patents, thought globally and believed in the power of the press—and macaroni". To the best of my knowledge, none of the presidents have actually managed their own Web site. What a shame for a US President to not experience the true joys of being a geek.
I have been doing a lot of reading lately. More specifically, I have been reading a lot of IT reference books. In fact, I venture to say that I'm probably one of the few people who ever brought a book on version control systems to the hospital while waiting for neurosurgery. I really didn't get much read that day, but I think I still get bragging rights!
John Newton, Alfresco, has written an interesting posts regarding "Web 2.0". I find the article interesting because I think Newton does bring up some new ideas or at least something that hasn't been talked about in some time. Newton has observed that the main audience for those of Web 2.0 appear to be users that tend to think on the right side of your brain. Newton also takes it one step further by saying perhaps it is time we start taking into account the personality types of users when it comes to CMS development.
This was a real revelation for me. However, I don’t think that John and Caterina shared my excitement. Maybe it’s already bleeding obvious. The next day I did a Google search on “Web 2.0” and right brain and didn’t find a lot. However, for me it is profound and it is something I think that we can apply immediately to the development of Alfresco. I am going to explore the concept more and I believe that there are implications from Myers-Briggs personality types in how they interact with the Internet.
Taking this further, this might also mean why those who are "left brainers" are kind of annoyed with this whole Web 2.0 terminology. It has been my experience that while the general public still craves Web 2.0 those involved in the project are exhausted of hearing the phrase be used so much these days. If you know anything about Myers-Briggs personality types you know there may be some truth to why some of the strongest groups that dislike the Web 2.0 concept appear to be the hard core developers.
This fork of Joomla to improve accessibility interested me
Accessible (a8e) Joomla! is a Joomla! fork that conforms to accessibility guidelines and web standards. A8e Joomla! will follow regular Joomla! releases. The project should implode when regular Joomla! finally conforms to the standards.
Accessibility of Internet sites is very huge within the federal government and addressed by Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act, 1998.
I have never really worried whether I was certified or not. This Computerworld article gets right to the point:
Depending on whom you talk to, certification programs are either borderline rip-offs that provide little useful knowledge, or valuable hiring tools that make it easier for IT execs to pick the most promising new employees.
Available from vendors focusing on their own products, or outside organizations offering multi-vendor training, these certificate programs are expanding to fill the many specialized technology subsets that have multiplied along with the growth of data storage and other IT areas.
Now this isn't to say that I don't have a few IT certifications under the belt and didn't receive some benefit from them. One of the most intensive IT certifications of recent years was in IT security and another to "please" the crowd was a certification for migration to Microsoft's Server 2003. By the time I was done with those certifications though, I didn't know enough to get the job done.
Congratulations to the Ruby language folks for converting their CVS repository over to Subversion (SVN). From what the "experts" tell me, it is not easy moving your developers over to another version control system. At least that's what was hinted when I asked the question, CVS or Subversion?
A few weeks ago, Federal Computer Week, had an article about the role Web 2.0 may have in the federal government. Is there a place for wikis and other tool now included in most modern content management systems in the federal government?
The article hints that Web 2.0 may have place more behind the scenes then in public view.