You say my eyes are pretty and my smile is nice
Well, I’ll sell it to ya at a reduced price
You don’t understand it – my feelings for you
You’d be honest with me, if only you knew
- HONEST WITH ME

We’ve all read plenty of CMS Evaluation RFP response documents. And we’ve all sat through many a long CMS Vendor demo. Maybe it’s just me, but they’re all starting to look pretty similar. Most vendors say yes to nearly everything, and the top products have interfaces and patterns that are converging. Many experts are agreeing that having long lists of requirements doesn’t help anyone anyway. So, how do you differentiate between these things?

When picking a CMS, I think the actual product is only about half the story. The other half revolves around the intangibles including the vendor themselves, their support, their roadmap and priorities and, very importantly, how much you trust them. So, to mix things up a bit, why don’t you ask the vendors a few of these questions during your next RFP or Q&A session. When you interview a candidate for a job, you always throw in a few odd questions to keep them on their toes. Let’s do the same to the vendors.

1. Who was the last vendor to beat you in the last round of a selection exercise? Why do you think they won? – This doesn’t have a right answer, but every vendor has lost a few. It would be interesting to see how they answer this.
2. If, in a few years time, we decided to move away from your product, how would I go about migrating all my content into a new system? – I want a system with a nice content export and a vendor willing to admit it is a possibility.
3. How many active developers do you have on your developer forums? – This is something you can check. If you ask in the demo and you think they’ve made up a number, say “Show me”.
4. All of these are important, but please rate these in order of your priority: a) Product Features b) Performance and Stability c) Usability d) Security – Again, no correct answer. I’d expect most to say c) as customers give this as the biggest selection criteria. But still interesting to hear what they say after they’ve repeatedly said they’re all important.
5. How much would I expect to pay a contractor developer that is skilled with your CMS, and are they easy to find? – If a vendor says they don’t know, they’re probably talking horseshit.
6. Assuming your CMS license cost 10 groats, how many more groats would you guesstimate we need for our entire implementation? – I’d expect them to say somewhere between 10 and 40, depending on the project. But fun to hear what they say. Implementing costs more than buying.
7. Why are the URLs on your demo site/corporate site so ugly? – Most of the demo sites have crap, non-SEO friendly URLs. If the implementation of Friendly URLs is as easy as the vendor claims, what haven’t they done it on their own sites.
8. If we selected your CMS, how would you recommend we went about selecting an implementation partner? – Three kinds of answers here: a) we’ll build it for you b) we have an extensive partner network or c) we recommend Company XYZ. I’m skeptical of a), but even if you like that option it’s a good discussion to have with the vendor.
9. How important is accessibility to you, and why doesn’t your site (which is presumably built with your CMS) validate? – They almost never do. I did a W3C validation test here not so long ago. Most will blame the implementation. Say will say it wasn’t a requirement, which I don’t buy. They fact that they don’t validate 100% isn’t a disaster, but it has got to look like they’ve tried.
10. Your product also includes modules for analytics/search/community/collaboration/outbound email. When should I use these instead of the existing products I own for these, and what benefits do your products give? - Many vendors seem to use features that I wouldn’t consider core to Content Management in order to differentiate. I like my CMS to be focussed, but I’ll concede that sometimes getting other components as part of the same product might be interesting. But ask things like “So, how does your analytics compare with Omniture” and see what they say.

Even better, during the meeting you could have a screen running a Twitter search for the vendor’s name. You’ll see a fair bit of “Looking at XYZ” and “XYZ Industry News”. But you’ll also see a lot of  “A Pox on XYZ and all of their houses” from angry developers.

Assuming it isn’t illegal to ask this kind of thing, I’d love it if people gave it a try. Or do you already have similar questions you ask that I could add to the list? One day I might be sitting as the same meeting as you and we can both enjoy some questions we haven’t heard twenty times before.

Man alive, I’m burnin’ up on my brain.
She knows when I’m just teasin’
But it’s not likely in the season
To open up a passenger train.
- SILENT WEEKEND

Complete change of scenery today. I haven’t thought about puzzles for many years, but a recent post reminded me how much I like them. So I figured I’d dredge up a list I put together about 13 years ago and publish them here. You should be able to figure them all out over a beer without pen and paper. Seeing as I didn’t invent any of these myself, you’ll also probably be able to Google the answers if you’re the lazy, low-down cheating type. I’m not going to include the Monty Hall Problem as it starts too many fights. Credit to all the people that created these. I can’t remember where I found them all.

Problem #1: The Dangling Cube

Take a hollow glass cube, exactly half filled with a coloured liquid. If you place the cube flat on a table, the surface of the liquid, seen from above, makes a square. What two dimensional shape does the surface make if you dangle the cube from a piece of string attached to one of the corners?

Problem #2: The Mutilated Chess Board

You have an 8×8 square (say a chessboard), and 32 dominoes each exactly the same size as two squares. It is easy to cover the chessboard (64 squares) totally using the 32 dominoes. Now, you take away one domino, and cut off two opposite corners of the chessboard (a1 and h8 for the chessplayers). Now you have 31 dominoes and 62 squares. Is it still possible to cover the board. If so, how? If not, why not?

Problem #3: Fly on the Windshield

You have two trucks, 200km apart. Both trucks are heading towards each other at a constant speed of 50km/hour. On the windshield of one truck is a fly. He flys at a constant speed on 70km/hour from the windshield of one to the windshield of the other. When he hits a windshield, he turns instantly without slowing down. He continues to do this until the 2 trucks collide, squashing the poor fly. The question is, how far does the fly travel before getting squashed.

Problem #4: The Annoying Piles

You have 10 piles of 10 coins each. One pile consists of 10 counterfeit coins, while the other 9 piles consist of 10 real coins. A counterfeit coin weighs 11g, while a real coin weighs 10g. You have a scale (a normal kitchen scale, not a balance scale). What is the minimum number of weighings needed to determine which pile is counterfeit? You are, of course, extremely unlucky.

Problem #5: A Bridge Too Far

Four people want to cross a bridge. It is a very rickety bridge, so at most 2 people can cross at the same time. Unfortunately, it is also very dark, so in order to cross the bridge, the group must be holding a flashlight. The have only one. So, clearly 2 people must cross, 1 must come back, 2 go across etc. The four people take 1, 2, 5 and 10 minutes to cross the bridge. If 2 cross together, it takes the time of the slower to cross (if 2 and 5 crossed together, it would take 5 minutes). What is the minimum time needed for them all to cross.

I got asked this in interviews with Microsoft

Problem #6: Casanova’s Conundrum

One night at a bar, you meet 3 beautiful girls (or guys). You really want to sleep with all 3, but you only have two condoms. Each of the four people involved suspects all the others may have some kind of infectious disease. The question is, how do you arrange to have sex with all three without anyone having any chance of catching a disease from any other? (I’m sure there is another less graphic way to state the problem, but I like this one).

Problem #7: Annoying Algebra

Simplify the following multiplication:

(x-a)(x-b)(x-c) .... (x-y)(x-z).

That is, the are 26 terms in the multiplication. It does simplify considerably.

I got asked this in the South African Mathematics Olympiad where you had 30 mins per question.

Problem #8: The Mad Hatter

There are three black hats and two white hats. Three people, each with one hat, line up in a row like so: A B C. C can see both A and B, B can only see A, but A can’t see the other two. They can all hear each other. When person C is asked what colour hat he is wearing, he says he doesn’t know. When person B is asked what colour hat he is wearing, he doesn’t know either. When person A is asked, he knows and says it correctly. What colour hat is each person wearing?

Problem #9: The Mystery of the Missing Dollar

You and two friends decide to spend a night at a hotel. Rooms are 10 dollars per night per person. You each take 10 dollars (30 in total) and give it to the bellboy to go and order your rooms. When the bellboy gets to the reception,
he sees that there is a 3 for 25 dollars special. He pays with the 30 dollars, so gets 5 dollars change. As 5 dollars cannot easily be divied amoung 3 people, he give each person back 1 dollar, and keeps 2 for himself. Now, each person has paid 9 dollars (10 paid, 1 change), so they paid 27 dollars between them. The bellboy has 2 dollars. But 27+2=29, not 30. Where is the missing dollar?

Problem #10: The Gender Mind Bender

There is a town in a remote part of the world with a large population, and some strange habits. They all believe that one boy per family is enough. So, each couple continues to have children until they have their first boy. After this, they have no more children. Assuming that there is a 50 percent chance of each child being a boy, what will the ratio of boys to girls settle at after 20 generations? Why?

On a night like this
I can’t get any sleep,
The air is so cold outside
And the snow’s so deep.
- ON A NIGHT LIKE THIS

Well, it just is. It’s something I’ve been thinking about a fair bit these days, normally in the middle of the night. I’ve been burned a couple of times recently by extremely unpleasant content migrations, and extremely unpleasant nappy changes. For those on the other side of the pond, a nappy is a diaper.

Some of the similarities are:

• The content is often extremely difficult to classify, and the consistency of the content is extremely variable
• Bad content never smells very good regardless of the quality of the repository you try to store it in
• Sometimes the state of the content is a symptom of some other illness
• You never have all the tools you need within easy reach, and it gets really messy if you don’t know what you are doing
• There is always more content than you thought was possible, and if the system is in a bad state, the content export can take much longer than expected
• There is no chance you can completely automate it
• It often involves running scripts throughout the night – it is never just a day job
• You thought it was out of scope until you find yourself doing it
• Shortly after you think you’ve finished migrating the content, you find more content to migrate

Trust me. I’ve migrated a lot of content, and I’ve changed a lot of nappies. Fortunately, there is one big difference – it is much harder to extract the content from the source than to put it into the target repository. Thankfully, when changing a nappy, the content only comes out. And content never pisses in your eye.

I been wond’rin’ all about me
Ever since I seen you there.
- SPANISH HARLEM INCIDENT

Well, I normally wouldn’t play this game. But I also normally wouldn’t be lucky enough to be on Kas Thomas’ esteemed blogroll. If he tags me and says play, I’ll play. I’m nowhere near as interesting as Kas, and I’ve never been a pilot. And there is nothing about technology or Content Management either. Move along, folks, nothing to see here.

• I am a born and bred South African. Studied at the University of Cape Town, although my working life has been based from the US, the Netherlands and, for the last 10 years, London. I can sing the South African National Anthem in Xhosa if I’ve had enough enough to drink.
  
• I am a chess geek. I thought I was good, I won the South African under 18 championship once. Since I started traveling, I’ve realised I’m just crap. Did you know that Iceland has 9 chess grandmasters out of a population of about 300,000. South Africa has 0 out of 47 million. These days, I play better chess when I’ve had enough to drink.
• There’s a pattern emerging. I used to drink far too much beer, but now get a hangover after three or four pints of Guiness.
• I have a wonderful 11 month old son. He has done 12 international flights. He’s one of the reasons I don’t drink too much any more. He’s also the main reason my blog entries are written between 12:00 and 2:00 am and I’m not getting enough sleep. He rocks. His name is Noah. It might have been Dylan, but my wife said that would be confusing because …
• I have two Persian cats. One is named Dylan (after Bob, who supplies the intros to all my blog posts) and the other is Poo (’cause she looks like one).
• I love cricket and rugby. Watching, not playing. I dress my son in a South African shirt for the games so I can taunt him when he grows up to be an England supporter. Did I say we’re currently Rugby World Champions. And #1 in the world one day cricket rankings?
• I did the first year of a Bachelor of Arts (Economics, German, Astronomy, Religious Studies) when I couldn’t find a supervisor for my thesis on dynamic shortest path algorithms in 2D strategy games (think old Warcraft or Command and Conquer). Can’t remember anything from Economics. Mein Deutsch ist nicht gut. Astronomy was probably the most enjoyable thing I ever did at University. I’m not a religious man.
• I won the Girl’s Prize in a Maths Olympiad once. I used to call myself Jonny but they read it as Jenny. They called my name out a few times before I had the balls to stand up. Which technically I shouldn’t have had. So it’s Jon now.
• I monetised a FaceBook app that I wrote ( with James) in my spare time. About 100 man hours netted £0.42 in ad revenue. But how many people made anything at all from their apps. I’ll link to the app for prosperity, but one of the many changes to the FaceBook API fux0r3d it badly.
• I’m the worst artist I know. Unlike Kas, I couldn’t draw my way out of a paper bag. You can’t even tell if my stick figures are male or female. And I can’t choose colours that look good together either, although I do use a lot of pastels.

Well, that’s me done. Let’s never speak of this again. It’s all tech from here on in. Find yourself a real post from my useful new index page. Irina, Julian, Lee, Pie and the rest of you on my blogroll. Anyone care to step forward? You’re it.

Here’s a Meme ID just in case: 42a4263e9ae40c23da79bd43370fd814

Nothing like a bit of rugby. Did I mention we're currently World Champions?

Black crows in the meadow
Across a broad highway.
Though it’s funny, honey,
I just don’t feel much like a
Scarecrow today.
- BLACK CROW BLUES

It’s been yet another busy April Fool’s day. Sites like Techcrunch and Slashdot have enormous lists of tech related scams, but my favourite are listed below. There isn’t any particular order.

Warner Bros. Acquires The Pirate Bay Maybe I shouldn’t, but I just love those guys at The Pirate Bay. Following the lawsuit has been pretty funny, and I seriously hope nothing happens to them. Their home page now has a “Warner Brothers Heart Pirate Bay” image on it. And if any of you have some downtime, reading the letters on their Legal Page is quite possibly the best way to fill it. Be sure to read their response to the various takedown notices.
Introducing Joopal Finally, the difficult decision for Open Source CMS implementers is over. Drupal and Joomla! have finally decided to collaborate and have brought us Joopal. It has “the power of Joomla! with Drupal configurability”. Some of the comments on the thread are also pretty fun, with fans of both CMS systems having digs at one another. Now I’m eagerly awaiting Tridignette and Docuwoven.
Pay and Get Back your Original Facebook I’m one of the many that really doesn’t like the way FaceBook keeps changing things. It’s like supermarkets that keep moving products around to make you buy more. In fact, I’ve pretty much given up on FaceBook now. While I appreciate the fact that they’re extremely agile, it is also annoying as hell if you’re an old dude like me that fears change. Not only that, their last API change broke my first FaceBook App! But the good news is that “beginning today Facebook users will have an option to pay a yearly sum of $24.99 and get back their favorite Facebook“.
Twitter switch for Guardian, after 188 years of ink Now this is something that could actually happen one day. This time last year, we could have had an April Fool’s joke saying “Skittles Ditches Corporate Site For Twitter”. Anyway, not only are The Guardian becoming a Twitter-only publication, they’re also converting their entire archive into Tweets. My favourite is probably “JFK assassin8d @ Dallas, def. heard second gunshot from grassy knoll WTF?“. Read the article, and the history at the bottom. A classic.
Gmail Autopilot by CADIE – The easiest email could possibly be. This one got a lot of publicity of course. The world’s first Cognitive Autoheuristic Distributed-Intelligence Entity (CADIE) has been released, and Google are kind enough to let you use it for free to automatically reply to emails. Looks extremely useful, and will make you rich by automatically closing multi-million dollar deals with Nigerian bankers.
Introducing Opera Face Gestures The browser wars are hotting up. Using Face Observation Opera Language (FOOL!), they are able to “recognize pre-determined facial expressions and match them to commands on the Opera browser.” The video of the idiot operating the browser is awesome, and the handy guide to the gestures is pretty fun too. Nice one.
Internet Explorer 8.1 Eagle Eyes Leaked Maybe spurred on by Opera’s announced, Smashing Magazine have leaked news of Microsoft’s new browser – IE 8.1. aka “Eagle Eyes”. They actually did this quite early yesterday, and I know a few people that fell for it. It unveils a host of new features that actually look quite real. Eagle Eyes will even support Mozilla based add-ons and those tested “worked flawlessly (some of the developers even claim that – in terms of performance – they work much better under IE 8.1 versus Firefox 3).“
ECM Vendors Throw in the Towel at Philadelphia Summit Love this. And maybe even a hint of truth in it. Combining April Fool’s and the G20 summit, the guys at CMS Watch announce the death of ECM. The twenty main ECM vendors (the E20) declare the whole concept a waste of time. My favourite quote: “I can totally understand it,” says CMS Watch principal Alan Pelz-Sharpe, “hell, we can’t even manage our own documents.” CMS Watch recently reverted to its f: drive after a failed, four-year effort to implement a commercial document management system.
Up, Up, and Away – Cloud Computing Reaches for the Sky If, like me, you’re sick to death of hearing about Cloud Computing, this is the one for you. I’m just going to re-quote the intro and hope you’ll read the rest: For a while the cloud was simply a metaphor meaning “a bunch of computers somewhere else.” Until now, somewhere else meant good old terra firma, the Earth itself. After extensive customer research we found that this rigid, antiquated way of thinking just won’t cut it in today’s post-capitalist world. They need locational flexibility, the ability to literally instantiate a cloud where they need it, when they need it.
SlideShare Rockstars Let’s end on a slightly controversial one. To summarise, SlideShare made every presentation look like it had been viewed 100 more times than it had in reality. They then mailed users telling them that “they must have done something right” and that they should tweet their success to #bestofslideshare. They’ve had a bit of a backlash from users that didn’t find it funny. They say on their blog: “We sincerely apologize if we annoyed you … we notice from the reactions on twitter that some people are not amused.” Personally, I think it is hilarious. It’s April Fool’s people. Live with it. People still falling for it too.

Ring them bells for the blind and the deaf,
Ring them bells for all of us who are left,
Ring them bells for the chosen few
Who will judge the many when the game is through.
- RING THEM BELLS

It seems Top 10 lists are all the rage these days, so before the month ends, I figured I’d jump onto the bandwagon and present my Top 10 Tech Lists of the Month. As far as I can tell, all these lists were first published in March 2009.