Ace Online Schools has posted a collection of virtual tours. Cool stuff.

Interesting article in the latest Interactions magazine on storytelling in organizations. Gary Hirsch and Brad Robertson describe a framework called the "story plotter" which they use to classify stories into 4 categories along 2 dimensions: positive and negative; current and what could be. The 4 categories are: Stories of fact (current, positive): these are stories that have happened in the organization's past can can be used to guide its future. Stories of contradictions (current, negative): these are stories (or like Snowden would like to call them 'antistories) that are currently being told about how the organization is contradicting its stated values. Stories of possibility and revolution (positive, what could be): these are stories that can used to direct the organizations actions towards a desired state. Stories of fear and anxiety (negative, what could be): these are stories of concern that people have about the organization (or in Snowden's terms, the 'hell' state). Interesting classification. Definitely not exhaustive, but like the authors argue, actionable.

Jakob Nielsen's latest Alertbox "Social software is not a trend that can be ignored. It's affecting fundamental change in how people expect to communicate, both with each other and the companies they do business with. And companies can't just draw a line in the sand and say it's okay for employees to use Web 2.0 to communicate with customers, but it's not okay to use it when communicating with each other."

Donna Spencer has written a simple yet comforting piece on how she thinks through the draft IA for a small website. "When you have made something up - and I don’t care whether you do it on a whiteboard, in a spreadsheet or in your head - then start thinking about whether it will work for the users, and whether it will work for the content. Revise and play with your idea until these things start to fall together."

I stumbled upon this site by the Australian Government's Department of Finance & Deregulation. They have a comprehensive collection of guides and checklists for managing their online properties. The collection covers IA to content strategy to intranets to KM. Cool!

An article from the New Scientist has Palo Alto Research Center in California warning that Wikipedia's growth is tailing off and extreme governance could be behind it. "Chi thinks that Wikipedia now includes so much information that some editors have turned from creating new articles to improving existing ones, resulting in more disputes about edits. Such disputes are not a level playing field because established editors sometimes draw on extensive knowledge of Wikipedia's guidelines to overwhelm opposition in a practice dubbed 'wikilawyering."

Jean Hollis Weber wrote this article in 2007 but it's still relevant today given the recent focus on content strategy. "This article provides information that will help you in planning and developing a style guide. You’ll find information about the purposes of a style guide and guidelines for what should (and should not) be included, whether to develop one or more style guides, and how detailed the style guide should be. At the end of the article, you’ll find a sample style guide outline (in PDF format) that illustrates many of the details discussed in this article."

Jeff Cram has written about 3 types of content management system projects. The technical migration The visual design The strategic redesign I think this captures a lot of projects I've done over the years. However, I'd like to add 'The politically motivated' to the list. These are projects that make you wonder why they are "on" in the first place. [Via ColumnTwo]

J.Boye has published an article that lists "[CMS] vendors you should examine closer and potentially send your RFP to? Interestingly J.Boye is a vendor neutral consulting firm, so this list might turn out to be quite influential.

Eric Reiss shares web writing tips that he has gathered over the years. It sems that George Orwell’s rules are a must-have in any such list. George Orwell, the English author of 1984, Animal Farm and other classics, has six rules of writing. Here they are - they’re all gems: 1) Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech that you are used to seeing in print. 2) Never use a long word where a short one will do. 3) If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out. 4) Never use the passive voice when you can use the active 5) Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday equivalent. 6) Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous!