Green approach and reusability.
As the days go on, the general public seems to become more and more concerned with being “green.” Especially because in many cases being green means saving some money. And the best part is that creativity has been put to work, and many brilliant ideas about energy (and money) savings have emerged. I truly believe that tough times make us better people because it is by solving problems that we create great solutions. And one place where content management is doing its part is not only in saving on paper but on recycling words!! I’m talking about reusing content, approved content that is; which saves one of the most precious non-renewables elements on the planet, time.
How much is your time worth?
From my perspective, the Industrial Revolution has had one major cause or purpose: saving time. The beauty of online shopping is that you save the time of going to the store. But reusing content moves this concept to a brand new level. It is true that we had been using the “copy and paste” before the first typewriter was invented. But, wouldn’t it be nice if when you update the “original” file then the file to where you copy that section gets automatically updated too? Let’s say you have a contract, and you copy sections 2 and 3 into another contract you’ve been writing at the same time. Then you realize you made some misspellings. The bad news is that you need to fix the typos. The good news is that the second contract got automatically updated! The question is: Is there anything out there that would make auto-update possible?
XMetal and the true power of XML
Any software engineer knows that XML is one of the most powerful tools that we have available to us today. However, most users don’t realize that XML is being used in almost every application helping with communication protocol, database systems, configuration files, presentation, etc.
Until l started working with XMetal I was pretty sure I had seen XML doing everything it can do. XMetal brings the uses of XML to a brand new level.
XMetal allows you to reuse content, the popular copy-paste functionality, while keeping the use of physical space to a minimum. For the user “it works like magic”, allowing you to simply grab and drop existing content into a template using a user-friendly graphic interface. What amazes me the most about the product is not just how easily it integrates with Documentum, nor the possibility of creating content on the fly by linking existing files which allows for auto-update, but more importantly, the fact that after a couple of weeks of having this product installed, a full demonstration was being performed by a non technical person, and she was was actually enjoying it!
What content authoring and collaboration tools, similar to XMetal, allow you to save time, drive efficiencies, and reduce waste? How are you being “green” with your content management processes and systems?
