Articles - Page 201

The Top 10 AI Tools for Small Business: From Automation to a Coordinated Team of AI Agents

matt-garrepy

<p></p>
<p>2012 was the first year we decided to step up and fill the void in the CMS community by bringing the Critic's Choice CMS Awards to the world. We never expected it to turn into such an amazing success and are very excited that it's received (and continues to receive) such great interest throughout the world. </p>
<p>As you know, we have two portions of the awards; the People's Choice (where the public votes and chooses their favorites) and the Critic's Choice portion (where judges select the best of the best).</p>
<p>This year, we've brought on two additional judges to work with us on the hard task of selecting the cream of the crop for the Critic's Choice portion of the awards and we've got a few new categories to consider as well.</p>
<p>Here are the categories for this year's Critic's Choice CMS Awards:</p>
<ul>
<li>Best Free CMS</li>
<li>Best Open Source CMS</li>
<li>Best SMB CMS</li>
<li>Best Enterprise CMS</li>
<li>Best ECommerce Solution</li>
<li>Best Website Builder</li>
<li>Best Forum Solution</li>
<li>Best Social Networking Solution</li>
<li>Best Hosted / Cloud CMS</li>
</ul>
<p>and our additional categories this year include:</p>
<ul>
<li>Best New CMS</li>
<li>Most Innovative Solution</li>
</ul>
<p>Over the next few days, we'll introduce you to the judges for this years awards and give you more details on their background and why they were selected. Stay tuned!</p>
<p></p>


Preparing for the 2013 Critic's Choice CMS Awards

mike-johnston

<p>A new category in this year's awards is the People's Choice for Best Hosted / Cloud CMS. This new award was designed to recognize those vendors that offer primarily SaaS (Software as a Service) Content Management Systems.</p>
<p>Here are the nominees for this year:</p>
<h3>Acquia Cloud</h3>
<p>Acquia's open cloud platform delivers scalability, security, and high performance for your Drupal sites. Acquia Cloud is the only solution that helps everyone from professional developers to large enterprises achieve success in Drupal application lifecycle management.</p>
<p><a href="http://acquia.com/products-services/acquia-cloud">Learn More.</a></p>
<h3>Agility CMS</h3>
<p>Agility helps media companies and brands maximize the value of their online content. Their content management system and solutions are geared to improve profitability of the online channel by increasing traffic, boosting advertising revenue, and promoting conversions while decreasing the time and cost of keeping content up to date. Their software is designed with the entire production team in mind offering a fresh and easy solution for content management across the board.</p>
<p><a href="/products/agility-cms/">Learn More.</a></p>
<h3>Gutensite</h3>
<p>Gutensite would be a great platform for a wide range of websites, from simple brochure sites to enterprise, mission-critical websites that need advanced customization. It has the cost advantages and the simplicity of a shared hosting website builder, but it's a platform that can grow with you, because like an open-source CMS literally anything can be customized. Gutensite for those that value good design and need customer support or a dedicated webmaster.</p>
<p><a href="/products/gutensite/">Learn more.</a></p>
<h3>CommonSpot</h3>
<p>PaperThin's web content management system CommonSpot is designed to specifically address the requirements of web content management, web experience management, brand management, social media management, document management, and community management while satisfying the needs of digital marketers and business users at every technical level. CommonSpot is a complete web content management solution that helps you publish content instantly, and intelligently.</p>
<p><a href="/products/commonspot/">Learn more.</a></p>
<p>Best of luck to all who were nominated and see you at the voting stage September 1, 2013!</p>


Announcing the People's Choice for Best Hosted / Cloud CMS Nominees!

<p></p>
<p>The popular, open-source platform MODX Revolution have today released version 2.2.9 of their CMS, alongside a significant Software Development Kit distribution.</p>
<p>The SDK distribution includes “ext-all-debug.js and ext-base-debug.js”, which developers should find handy. These distributions, along with a summarised list of the main updates introduced by Revolution 2.2.9, can be seen below.</p>
<h2>What's New</h2>
<p>Creative Freedom is the slogan used by MODX, and version 2.2.9 of their platform aptly gives their strong fan base that extra bit of creative power, through means of SDK enhancements and other upgrades. These include,</p>
<ul>
<li>Improved Manager experience and performance</li>
<li>Ext JS has been upgraded to 3.4.1.1, which supports IE10 and fixes several IE9 and IE8 bugs</li>
<li>Ext JS debug support has been added to the SDK distribution</li>
<li>Increased stability with an xPDO upgrade and several bugfixes</li>
</ul>
<p>Revolution 2.2.9 also introduces patches to help bolster security, fix bugs and enhance the user interface. For a full break-down of the changes brought about by Revolution 2.2.9, you can check out MODX's complete <a href="https://raw.github.com/modxcms/revolution/v2.2.9-pl/core/docs/changelog.txt">changelog file</a>.</p>
<h2>MODX Revolution 2.3 Incoming</h2>
<p>Perhaps the most exciting aspect relating to the release of MODX Revolution 2.2.9, is that it has been accompanied by the news that the very next update, will be the eagerly anticipated Revolution 2.3.</p>
<p>MODX have claimed that “Amazing things” are to be expected from the approaching update, which will only fuel the flames of anticipation for MODX users everywhere. </p>
<p>To find out more about MODX Revolution 2.2.9, or to delve deeper into the features we've mentioned above, check out <a href="http://modx.com/blog/2013/08/29/revolution-2.2.9-sdk-release-and-more/">MODX's official release notes</a>. Alternatively, you can cut to the chase and simply <a href="http://modx.com/download/">download MODX Revolution 2.2.9 here</a>.</p>
<p></p>


MODX Revolution 2.2.9 Released

<p></p>
<p>Webnodes AS, a company developing a .NET based semantic content management system, today announced the release of version 4.5 of their CMS, with several significant improvements including ontology merging, more options for load balancing setup and content synchronizations between installations.</p>
<h2>New load balancing set up and content synchronization</h2>
<p>Due to the size and complexity of recent web applications projects and online banking systems, Webnodes found a need for improved functions and better options for load balancing. As a natural next step, Webnodes also introduced support for content synchronization between different installations.</p>
<blockquote><p>“The setup of load balancing is now easier and more flexible than ever. Internally the system is separated into 8 core components. Where each of these core systems can be installed on separate servers and multiplied as needed. Externally, the systems acts as one installation, where all internal components automatically communicate and updates each other. The core components are: frontend servers (for html), edit servers, background worker servers, query cache server, content cache server, content delivery, text indexing servers and database server”, says Ole Gulbrandsen, CTO of Webnodes.</p></blockquote>
<p>The new content synchronization engine has several purposes:</p>
<ul>
<li>It can synchronize identical versions of the same websites located in separate hosting environments. This enables complete redundancy, extreme scalability and reduced latency.</li>
<li>The content synchronization works on websites with different content and data models (everything is based on GUIDs). It can synchronize only selected parts of content and data.</li>
<li>Development and staging environments. It can be used by developers to move content from a staging environment to a live server without any downtime.</li>
</ul>
<h2>Ontology merging system</h2>
<p>The new ontology merging system in Webnodes, makes it possible to merge together two conceptually divergent ontologies or the instance data associated with two different ontologies. With this new and unique functionality, Webnodes provides a complete framework for synchronizing content, code and data models between any Webnodes installation.</p>
<h2>OData V3 and SSL support</h2>
<p>Webnodes reconfirms its position as a leading provider of the OData protocol in the CMS segment. OData has become a well-used and popular protocol for several Webnodes clients, on how to share and reuse data in machine-readable formats between different applications and websites. Webnodes now supports all the new functions in OData V3.</p>
<p>Webnodes also supports SSL for securing OData services where clients will be providing user names and passwords and authenticating using Forms Authentication.</p>
<h2>Improved user interface with SignalR support</h2>
<p>The edit user interface has been completely overhauled and improved utilizing SignalR technology:</p>
<blockquote><p>“SignalR has proven to be a great technology that have helped us improve the responsiveness and overall performance of the Webnodes edit interface. Editors will have a much nicer user experience in version 4.5”, says Vidar Langberget – Chief Developer at Webnodes</p></blockquote>
<h2>Other improvements in version 4,5</h2>
<ul>
<li>Improved internal cache settings – average website will see a speed gain in the 20-50% range, in addition to reduced memory usage by &gt;50%.</li>
<li>“Leading wildcard” support in Lucene PNG image compression that reduces the size of a PNG image by about 40-70% without visible differences.</li>
<li>Support for SQL express 11.</li>
</ul>
<p><a href="https://www.webnodes.com/">Learn more about Webnodes.</a></p>
<p></p>


Webnodes AS announces version 4.5 of  Webnodes Semantic CMS

<p>Social Networking is huge nowadays and there are plenty of solutions on the market. This year, we've had a number of nominations for Best Social Networking Solution and today, we're pleased to announce this year's nominees for the People's Choice award.</p>
<p>They are:</p>
<h3>Oxwall</h3>
<p>Oxwall is an unbelievably flexible and easy-to-use PHP/MySQL social networking software platform that also happens to be the winner of our <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/peoples-choice-winner-for-best-social-networking-solution-is/">2012 People’s Choice Awards for Best Social Network Software. </a> There is a hosted edition (called Wall.fm) and the downloadable version which is available on the Oxwall website.</p>
<p><a href="/products/oxwall/">Learn more.</a></p>
<h3>SocialCore (formerly OneSite)</h3>
<p>SocialCore is a complete community software platform offering social network and content management tools. Build sites using a drag and drop modular layout. With our platform-agnostic approach, functionality can be extended using our widgets, plugins, APIs, and SDKs. Whether building a social destination or expanding an existing site, our tools can be used to create a new valuable experience for your users.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.socialcore.com/platform">Learn more.</a></p>
<h3>Evoq Social</h3>
<p>Evoq Social, formerly known as DNN Social, is a business solution that fosters and enhances social conversations via its online community platform. Gain valuable insights that can lead to new product ideas and new sales opportunities.</p>
<p><a href="/products/dnn-evoq-social/">Learn more.</a></p>
<h3>PHPFox</h3>
<p>phpFox is a social network software that gives you the ability to create a unique community that includes many of the features found on sites like Facebook and MySpace. It is well supported, has a large community, and is quite popular. There are numerous add-ons, themes, and various other integrations for the system that make it an excellent choice for those in the market. phpFox has also won our 2012 Critic’s Choice Award for <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/critics-choice-for-best-social-network-software-is/">Best Social Network Software</a>.</p>
<p><a href="/products/phpfox/">Learn more.</a></p>
<h3>Social Engine</h3>
<p>SocialEngine PHP gives you a simple, unbranded network that you can customize in any way. You’ll have the freedom to maintain fine-grained control over all aspects of your site and content.</p>
<p><a href="/products/social-engine">Learn more.</a></p>
<p>Congratulations to all who were nominated. Best of luck! Remember, voting begins September 1, 2013, so be sure to check back then to cast a vote for your favorite!</p>


Announcing the People's Choice for Best Social Networking Solution Nominees!

<p>This year, the Best Small to Midsize Business CMS category was quite active with far more nominations than we expected from a variety of great products that are on the market today.</p>
<p>We are very happy to announce this year's nominees for the 2013 People's Choice award for Best Small to Midsize Business CMS.</p>
<p>Don't forget to check back on September 1, 2013 to begin voting on the <a href="/cms-critic-awards/">awards page</a>.</p>
<h3>Adobe Business Catalyst</h3>
<p>Business Catalyst (BC) is an all-in-one business website and online marketing solution, built for web designers. Using our unified platform and without back-end coding, you can build everything from amazing websites to powerful online stores, beautiful brochure-ware sites to lead generation mini-sites.</p>
<p><a href="/products/adobe-business-catalyst/">Learn more.</a></p>
<h3>Ingeniux</h3>
<p>Ingeniux is the only web experience management platform architected for the cloud. Featuring unparalleled scalability, lower total cost of ownership, and innovative content management software, Ingeniux empowers organizations to manage world-class websites and vibrant online communities across desktop web, mobile, and tablet devices.</p>
<p><a href="/products/ingeniux/">Learn more.</a></p>
<h3>Evoq</h3>
<p>Evoq Content, formerly known as DotNetNuke Professional Edition, is a business solution that helps bring your website to life with captivating content and engaging interactions. Users can add and edit content through a standard browser with no IT support.</p>
<p><a href="/products/dnn-evoq-content/">Learn more.</a></p>
<h3>Percussion CM1</h3>
<p>Percussion makes it easy and affordable to design and maintain an engaging and modern website. Drive change quickly to the web to increase leads and conversion rates.</p>
<p><a href="/products/percussion/">Learn more.</a></p>
<h3>Sitefinity</h3>
<p>Sitefinity by Telerik is an ASP.NET web content management platform engineered to make managing your website a more positive, empowering and usable experience. Sitefinity is the first and only CMS to enable enterprises to take full advantage of all three mobile development strategies— Responsive Web Design, mobile websites, and mobile apps, easily and effectively—and all from one CMS user interface.</p>
<p><a href="/products/sitefinity/">Learn more.</a></p>
<p>Best of luck to all who were nominated! Be sure to check back on September 1, 2013 to begin the voting process.</p>


Announcing the People's Choice for Best Small to Midsize Business CMS Nominees!

<p>We have completed sorting through the incredible number of nominations that came in for the People's Choice for Best Website Builder and we are proud to announce the following nominees for this year's award.</p>
<p>This is a new category just added in 2013 and the response has been massive!</p>
<p>We are looking forward to seeing who comes out on top from the People's Choice perspective and don't forget, we've also got a Critics Choice portion which will be selected by a panel of judges, so if your favorites weren't shortlisted this time, they may be for the next portion of the awards.</p>
<p>Without further delay, here are the nominees for Best Website Builder (People's Choice).</p>
<h3>Adobe Business Catalyst</h3>
<p>Business Catalyst (BC) is an all-in-one business website and online marketing solution, built for web designers. Using our unified platform and without back-end coding, you can build everything from amazing websites to powerful online stores, beautiful brochure-ware sites to lead generation mini-sites.</p>
<p><a href="/products/adobe-business-catalyst/">Learn more.</a></p>
<h3>Jimdo</h3>
<p>Jimdo is the easiest way to create a website. With a simple, intuitive interface, Jimdo enables anyone to create a unique website with a blog and online store. Our motto—Pages to the People!—sums up our mission: Put the power of website creation into everyone's hands. Whether you want to start a business, promote your music, or simply share photos with your friends and family, you can create your home on the web with Jimdo.</p>
<p><a href="/products/jimdo/">Learn more.</a></p>
<h3>Squarespace</h3>
<p>Squarespace is one of the most popular website builders on the market. With an extremely easy to use interface that's sleek and “gets out of your way”, they are definitely a top contender. For those on the fence, they offer a free trial with no credit card required. Most people who get the free trial end up buying so they must be doing something right!</p>
<p><a href="/products/squarespace/">Learn more.</a></p>
<h3>Ucoz</h3>
<p>UCoz is a website builder that offers integrated ecommerce, blogging &amp; more. It is one of the top sites for Russian Speaking users and currently, there are over a million websites hosted on the uCoz platform.</p>
<p><a href="/products/ucoz/">Learn more.</a></p>
<h3>Webydo</h3>
<p>Webydo is a professional web suite that enables graphic designers to create and manage exceptional HTML websites, without writing code. With this sophisticated online software, designers can bring any design to life and with a click of a button, publish an advanced HTML website with a friendly built-in CMS for the website owner.</p>
<p><a href="/products/webydo/">Learn more.</a></p>
<p>And there you have it, folks! Our nominees for Best Website Builder in the People's Choice portion of our CMS awards. Check back on the 1st of September to begin voting. Best of luck to all of the nominees.</p>


Announcing the People's Choice for Best Website Builder Nominees!

Power your CMS on AWS

Manage your websites & apps in the most trusted cloud.

#ffffff

<p></p>
<p>A new release of Umbraco CMS has been made available. Version 6.1.4 is primarily a bug fix but also includes some performance enhancements.</p>
<p>For those who are interested, the full release log can be found here: <a href="http://our.umbraco.org/contribute/releases/614">http://our.umbraco.org/contribute/releases/614.</a></p>
<p>From the announcement:</p>
<blockquote><p>There is one config change between 6.1.3 and 6.1.4 (assembly redirect for HtmlAgilityPack in the web.config). If you're upgrading from a different version make sure to do a merge (use WinMerge for example) of all of the config files, especially the web.config.</p>
<p>A little bonus for the NuGet lovers out there: If you are using the Publish-feature in Visual Studio you should be happy to know that we now have a build script included that makes sure to copy the umbraco and umbraco_client folders (which are not included in the Visual Studio solution) to the deploy package or file system.</p></blockquote>
<p>Want to learn more about Umbraco? <a href="/products/umbraco/">Visit their profile page</a> in our CMS directory.</p>
<p></p>


Umbraco 6.1.4 Released

<p>We had a huge number of participants and tons of vendors nominated in the Best Open Source CMS category (in fact, it's the most popular category in the entire <a href="/cms-critic-awards/">awards </a> ) and we're pleased to be able to announce this year's nominees for the People's Choice Award.</p>
<p>Keeping in mind that the voting stage begins on September 1, 2013..</p>
<p>Here are the People's Choice nominees for Best Open Source CMS for 2013:</p>
<h3>MODX</h3>
<p>MODX is a free, open-source content management system and web application framework for publishing content on the world wide web and intranets. MODX allows for full segregation of content (plain HTML), appearance and behavior (standards compliant CSS and JavaScript), and logic (PHP snippets).</p>
<p><a href="/products/modx/"> Visit their profile. </a></p>
<h3>DNN Platform</h3>
<p>DNN Platform, formerly known as DotNetNuke Community Edition, is a business solution that helps bring your website to life with captivating content and engaging interactions. Users can add and edit content through a standard browser with no IT support.</p>
<p><a href="/products/dnn-platform/"> Visit their profile. </a></p>
<h3>Liferay</h3>
<p>Liferay Portal is an open-source enterprise portal written in Java and distributed under the GNU Lesser General Public License and proprietary licenses. It is primarily used to power corporate intranets and extranets.</p>
<p><a href="/products/liferay/"> Visit their profile. </a></p>
<h3>Processwire</h3>
<p>Build bigger, faster, stronger, easier. ProcessWire is a free PHP5 open source CMS built to save you time and make development fun at any scale. It works the way you do.</p>
<p><a href="/products/processwire/"> Visit their profile. </a></p>
<h3>E107</h3>
<p>e107 is a Content Publishing Solution for Website Pages, Documents, Menus, and Links powered by PHP and MySQL which gives you a totally dynamic and professional website “out of the box”.</p>
<p><a href="/products/e107/">Visit their profile. </a></p>
<p>Good luck to all who are nominated and be sure to check back on the 1st of September to begin voting for your favourites!</p>


Announcing the People's Choice for Best Open Source CMS Nominees!

<p></p>
<p>There are over 500 social media platforms on the web today, give or take a few. No one knows the exact number for sure. It's totally unrealistic to think that you can (or should) join all of these social networks, unless you have an inordinate amount of time on your hands. Thus, you should know which social media sites are worth your time and effort. Here's your guide to choosing the right ones. </p>
<h2>Social Media Domination Tips</h2>
<ol>
<li>Choose Five. You should pick a minimum of five social media platforms to join. First, join the four listed below. Then, you can choose at least one niche site, as relevant to your needs and industry.</li>
<li>Choose Big. The bigger the social site, the better it will serve your needs. There are well over a billion social media users on the planet. You'll never have a billion connections, nor do you need that many. In order to maximize the benefit of investing time in social networks, however, it's smart to choose the big ones. These will provide the greatest reach, to help you get what you want and need from a network presence.</li>
<li>Choose Niche. Although big is good, there is also value to being part of a niche social media site. For example, there are 1,748,365 members on the social networking site, VampireFreaks.com. Should you join? Only if you consider yourself a Goth/Industrial fan. This is a niche site, serving a subculture. Unless you are part of that subculture, the site will be of little use to you. Instead, focus on a niche site that provides you the networking opportunities directly in line with your occupation, lifestyle, or hobby.</li>
</ol>
<h2>The Four Social Must-Joins</h2>
<p>I consider the following four sites to be important for the best social media presence. Each one is distinct, and has its own unique advantages. Each one is large. And each one provides a great blend of social interaction and tools. </p>
<ol>
<li><strong>Facebook</strong>. Mark Zuckerburg's brainchild and rise to stardom is a familiar tale. Now, Facebook reigns supreme as the preeminent social network. With over 1 billion users (though more than 8% are fake), Facebook is a critical part of our connected culture. </li>
<li><strong>Twitter</strong>. Those who are not part of Twitter “don't get it,” thinking it's supposed to be some sort of second Facebook. Part of Twitter's distinctiveness is its simplicity, though its simplicity is somewhat deceiving. Twitter has successfully embedded the phrase “140 characters or less” into common parlance, but the impact of this microblogging platform is vast. Even, dare we say, revolutionary? Twitter is important for establishing your voice of authority within your industry. </li>
<li><strong>LinkedIn</strong>. LinkedIn is the ultimate professional network. LinkedIn overtly caters to the workforce, as opposed to teens or hobbyists. To gain an online record of your professional progress and achievements, LinkedIn is the answer. </li>
<li><strong>Google+</strong>. Google+ is on a meteoric rise to place it at the forefront of social networking. That's kind of how Google rolls. Already, one's presence on Google+ translates into improved personal branding, higher SERP results, and overall good feelings. This network is something you need to join. </li>
</ol>
<p>Joining a social network is not optional for today's Internet worker. It's an important part of being present in the workforce and contributing in a valuable way. Your current job, any future jobs, and success at your present task have a lot to do with how connected you are to a network. If you aren't on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, or Google+, now is the time to get active. </p>
<h2>Niche Social Media Sites </h2>
<p>But beyond these common-knowledge networks, there are others. The social media experts know that a truly robust online presence must go beyond common knowledge. Here is a list of seven social networks that will help to enhance your online presence, professionalism, and reputation. </p>
<p><strong> About.me</strong><br /><strong> https://about.me/</strong><br /><strong> Who it's for:  any professional</strong></p>
<p>In a day of the dwindling endurance of paper business cards, most  professionals need a digital alternative. About.me is as good as it gets. About.me provides a scaled-down version of LinkedIn, while allowing users to create their professional presence in an easily-accessible presentation. It's easy to set up an account, and doesn't require much management. About.me also does very well in the search engines, giving you higher SEO results when people Google your name. </p>
<p> <strong>43Things</strong><br /><strong> http://www.43things.com/</strong><br /><strong> Who it's for:  Anyone interested in goal-setting</strong></p>
<p>If you've ever made a goal and been sidetracked from it — which would be 99.93% of the human race — than you'll connect with the idea behind 43Things. Their premise is simple: “Changing your life is hard. Doing it by yourself is harder.” Thus, 43Things introduces the social power of goal-setting. </p>
<p> <strong>Behance</strong><br /><strong> http://www.behance.net/</strong><br /><strong> Who it's for:  graphic designers, web designer, illustrators, photographers, artists</strong></p>
<p>Behance provides a broader exposure for visual creatives. In this social network, artists can post online portfolios, and encourage discussion. The site is surprisingly simple, which helps to focus attention and interaction upon an artist's work. It's the perfect place to keep a collection of your  website designs.</p>
<p> <strong>Slideshare</strong><br /><strong> http://www.slideshare.net/</strong><br /><strong> Who it's for:  Professionals who present information, marketers, managers</strong></p>
<p>Have you ever wondered why you spend so much time and effort on a PowerPoint presentation, only to have it last for a short meeting? Slideshare allows you to save your slideshows, and allow others to learn from them. Saving your slideshows and presentations for public access is a great way to bolster your reputation as a thought leader, and to demonstrate your value. Slideshare also integrates with Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and other social sites. </p>
<p> <strong>Quora</strong><br /><strong> https://www.quora.com/</strong><br /><strong> Who it's for:  anyone who wants to find answers or provide them</strong></p>
<p>Quora is the leading Q&amp;A site. Based on your interests and social network, it provides you with relevant questions and answers. Self-labelled as the “best source of knowledge,” Quora crowd-sources answers to user's questions. It's a helpful places to not only get answers, but also to give them, thus demonstrating your own expertise in a particular niche. </p>
<p> <strong>ChaCha</strong><br /><strong> http://www.chacha.com/</strong><br /><strong> Who it's for:  people seeking answers, marketers, advertisers</strong></p>
<p>Another Q&amp;A site is ChaCha, which functions via test messages, mobile apps, and the website. ChaCha is primarily a search engine, but it provides moderation and answers to questions in such a way that gives the site unique value. By becoming “guides,” many marketers and advertisers have been able to gain better inroads with their target audience.</p>
<p> <strong>StatusNet</strong><br /><strong> http://status.net/</strong></p>
<p>Think of StatusNet as a Twitter alternative that you can make yourself. It's a free and open source written in PHP that you can install on your own network or website. The idea behind StatusNet is simple — to help people announce their status among their social network. It's customizability and portability is one of its greatest advantages. </p>
<p>What other lesser-known social networks have you found to be useful? </p>
<p></p>


How to Dominate Social Media

daniel-threlfall

<p></p>
<p>Microsoft has had a rough couple of years thanks to a plethora of new players in the market winning the hearts of consumers; from the ubiquitous Android to the unconventional Ubuntu and cultish Apple IOS, Microsoft has had its territory yanked out from under its feet. However, in the last one and a half years, it has been able to wrestle back some of its former well-earned glory by offering the public a new operating system with a bold and brazen design.</p>
<p>The Metro design principle is basically a template for design language used by Microsoft within the Windows 8 architecture It features clean and bright icons that lead up to content with an almost obvious feel without having to use real-word icons such as telephone, notebook or music note symbols.</p>
<p><strong>Breakaway Design</strong></p>
<p>This is a breakaway design concept that hasn’t been used before by its competitors, and is something that could radically change the way designers create web and phone-based apps for mass consumption. The main premise of this design comes from the idea that content should always take center stage, and design should follow a close second.</p>
<p>While this seems counterintuitive for hardcore web and app designers, this kind of design seeks to enrich the end user’s experience by taking him straight to the information or data he needs without blitzing him with stuffy design.</p>
<p>An illustration of how Metro design works is where you have a Windows 8 UI that has several differently colored panels representing phone functions such as messaging, music, maps and web browser. Once you select a panel, you’re taken straight to the application that you want to access, cutting out unnecessary steps and making the whole process much faster and sleeker.</p>
<p><strong>Eye-Catching Typography</strong></p>
<p>One of the selling points of the Metro design has to be the typography, which basically means the way information is presented. This is done via bold font that is straightforward and basic without being bland. For Metro, information is displayed using an array of differently sized letters that convey structured information. This helps the user know what data they need to pay attention to first before moving on to something different.</p>
<p>Next, we have the concept of motion which is something that makes the whole design come alive. Metro achieves this by creating a consistent set of animation and fluid motion, giving the whole system an intuitiveness that makes it effortless for users, all the while boosting overall performance and user experience.</p>
<p><strong>It’s All About the Content </strong></p>
<p>Content takes center stage within Metro, and this is conveyed in the gesture based interactions that have to operate within smaller screens such as the ones found in Windows phones such as the Nokia Lumia.</p>
<p>With everyone making the shift from physical media, Metro seeks to stay true to the new digital age by giving users an authentic digital experience that can translate well on tablet or phone screens. While many people will wonder what made Microsoft take this giant leap in design, the reality is that Metro has some undeniably attractive positives that may act as a platform for future design templates for other operating systems.</p>
<p>Here’s a 15 minute video of Metro in action:</p>
<p><iframe src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/jOG4DZV3TIY?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe></p>
<p>(Note: Microsoft now refers to the Metro design concept as Microsoft Design language as a result of naming issues with a retail partner).</p>
<p>What are your thoughts on the Metro design for desktop and mobile platforms? Please leave us your thoughts in the comment box below.</p>
<p></p>


Microsoft's Metro: Content Before Design

<p>This year has been an amazing one and we've had tons of nominations for all kinds of great projects in all of our categories. Over this month until voting begins on September 1, 2013, we're going to announce the nominees for each category in the awards.  Without further delay, here are this year's Peoples Choice Nominees for Best Free CMS  in our <a href="/cms-critic-awards/"> Critics Choice CMS Awards</a>.</p>
<h3>Processwire</h3>
<p>Build bigger, faster, stronger, easier. ProcessWire is a free PHP5 open source CMS built to save you time and make development fun at any scale. It works the way you do.</p>
<p><a href="/products/processwire/"> Visit their profile page. </a></p>
<h3>Tiki</h3>
<p>Tiki is the Free and Open Source Web Application with the most built-in features. So whatever feature you can imagine running in your browser window, chances are Tiki does it.</p>
<p><a href="/products/tiki-wiki-cms-groupware/"> Visit their profile page. </a></p>
<h3>Concrete5</h3>
<p>concrete5 is a building material for the web. Working with a web designer or pre-existing theme, a site owner can create and easily change the content and structure of a website.</p>
<p><a href="/products/concrete5/"> Visit their profile page. </a></p>
<h3>WordPress</h3>
<p>WordPress CMS started in 2003 with a single bit of code to enhance the typography of everyday writing and with fewer users than you can count on your fingers and toes. Since then it has grown to be the largest self-hosted blogging tool in the world, used on hundreds of thousands of sites and seen by tens of millions of people every day.</p>
<p><a href="/products/wordpress"> Visit their profile page. </a></p>
<h3>Umbraco</h3>
<p>Umbraco is an open-source content management system (CMS) platform for publishing content on the World Wide Web and intranets. It is written in C# and deployed on Microsoft based infrastructure. The open-source backend is released under an MIT License while the UI is released under the Umbraco license.</p>
<p><a href="/products/umbraco"> Visit their profile page. </a></p>
<p>Congratulations to all of these fabulous nominees. Voting begins on September 1, so be sure to check back and vote for your favorites!</p>


Announcing the Peoples Choice for Best Free CMS Nominees!

<p>This year has been an amazing one and we've had tons of nominations for all kinds of great projects in all of our categories. Over this month until voting begins on September 1, 2013, we're going to announce the nominees for each category in the awards.</p>
<p>Without further delay, here are this years Peoples Choice Nominees for Best Enterprise CMS in our <a href="/cms-critic-awards/">Critics Choice CMS Awards</a>.</p>
<h3>Liferay</h3>
<p>Liferay Portal is an open source enterprise portal written in Java and distributed under the GNU Lesser General Public License and proprietary licenses. It is primarily used to power corporate intranets and extranets.</p>
<p><a href="/products/liferay/">Learn more.</a></p>
<h3>Adobe Experience Manager</h3>
<p>Adobe Experience Manager is last year's Critics Choice for Best Enterprise CMS and was nominated again this year for Peoples Choice. Adobe Experience Manager is part of the Adobe Digital Marketing Cloud and is an easy-to-use enterprise CMS with a heavy marketing side.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.adobe.com/solutions/web-experience-management.html">Visit their Website</a></p>
<h3>Cascade Server</h3>
<p>Cascade Server is a web content management system that uses push technology and is developed by Hannon Hill. Cascade Server is built with Java, and comes bundled with Apache Tomcat as its Servlet container.</p>
<p><a href="/products/cascade-cms/">Learn more.</a></p>
<h3>Episerver</h3>
<p>EPiServer is a .NET Content Management and E-commerce product company providing robust, flexible and highly customizable software solutions for the next generation of websites.</p>
<p><a href="/products/episerver/">Learn more.</a></p>
<h3>Sitecore</h3>
<p>Sitecore is a web content management system software company that provides enterprise website, intranet, portal and marketing automation software.</p>
<p><a href="/products/sitecore/">Learn more.</a></p>
<p>Congratulations to all of these fabulous nominees. Voting begins on September 1, so be sure to check back and vote for your favorites!</p>


Announcing the Peoples Choice for Best Enterprise CMS Nominees!

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