Content in Motion: What iTunes Can Teach Us About Managing Web Content

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Content in Motion: What iTunes Can Teach Us About Managing Web Content

3/29/2005

By Piet Niederhausen

GUEST COLUMNIST PIET NIEDERHAUSEN SAYS CAMPUS WEBMASTERS NEED TO THINK IN TERMS OF DYNAMIC CONTENT NOT STATIC WEB PAGES

Terry Calhoun’s introductory note: Piet is a very active subscriber to the UWEBD (University and College Web Developers) discussion list who frequently shares his thoughts and expertise on what is simply the very best list of its kind. Interestingly, one of the topics that keeps coming up frequently is how to handle, create, manage . . . whatever . . . event calendars. Such calendars demonstrate the broadest possible range of content providers and epitomize what Piet calls “content in motion.”

The Impact of iTunes

Not long ago, my music collection consisted of albums. To listen to a track, I found the right album, put it in a player, and selected a track. If I knew of a similar track on a different album, I might remove the first album, get out the second one, and find the track. But because that required extra knowledge and effort, usually I listened to music one album at a time. iTunes fundamentally changed the way I use the content in my music collection. Once an album is digitized, its tracks are liberated. They can be sorted and grouped at will. My favorite tracks can be referenced from many places. I can tag each track with meta-information and create containers, called playlists, where relevant tracks will automatically appear. The tracks and their meta-information, encoded according to standards, are portable to various digital devices and can be shared. I can adapt my music to create the experience I want to have. My music is in motion.

Analogous Changes in Our Web Sites

Content on the Web is undergoing a similar transition. Not long ago, most important Web content was hard coded into static Web pages. Web pages were considered a little more advanced than prior forms of content presentation because some Web pages contained links to each other, and because many Web pages were indexed in global search engines. Fundamentally, however, each piece of content was arbitrarily trapped in a document, and it took extra knowledge and effort to get to related content.

An increasing number of Web sites are liberating their content from the confines of the Web page. We are creating structured content, tagging it with metadata, and letting each piece of content roam. We are sorting and grouping our content and creating containers where relevant content appears automatically. (Many of those containers are dynamic Web pages, but others include RSS feeds and Web services). Our content, abstracted from its presentation and encoded according to standards, is portable to different devices and can be shared between applications. We can adapt our content to create the experiences we want our users to have. Our content is in motion.

An Example: Event Information

In higher education, a classic example of content that should be liberated from Web pages is event information. Colleges and universities abound with events, from performances to club meetings. Events are initiated and managed by many different organizational units. Those units have Web sites and can use them to list their events, but only a small audience of visitors to those sites will see the information. Therefore many of us have developed or acquired Web calendar systems, applications where authorized administrators can enter event information and metadata. Events are then displayed individually, in department and institutional calendars, in email newsletters, perhaps even in personalized portals and RSS feeds.