It may not be news to most of you that Beaconfire really values the people who work here ☺ … However, some of our really talented colleagues have had to leave the DC area, but we didn’t want to lose them.  So remote working was born!

How has it worked out?  And what do you watch out for?  Keep reading…

Long standing tradition and practice has dictated that the most productive methods of output and collaboration revolve around teams being physically located together.  A recent global trend, however, is driving that understanding in another direction.  The Internet, highly advanced collaborative worker tools, improved communications, and a new working culture are allowing people to come together on teams that are no longer co-located.

Here’s what we have learned in the process and consequently look to establish for remote teams:

#1: A sense of being a Team
Team members can feel isolated and independent even if they are working in the cubicle ten feet away. However, if team members know they are part of a team working on common goals and common deliverables, they tend to be more actively involved.  So let those remote workers know they are part of the team, and ensure they are invited (even if they have to webcam or call in) to team meetings and discussions.

#2: Establishing ground rules
It is probably more important for remote teams to exhibit a common and acceptable set of functioning behaviors.  Ground rules may include expected hours for working, lunch times, determining which meetings are mandatory (in-person, web-based, or via telephone), and establishing expectations for communication turnaround times.

#3: Leverage technology
Technology is available and improving all the time to support virtual team members.  This includes fast access to the Internet, audio conferencing, videocams, collaborative software, and shared directories.  At Beaconfire, the inclusion of video chat has been a major success.  Some remote staff even like to have video chat on during the day while they work to keep the conversation going and limit the barriers to communication.

#4: Give people shorter assignments, and check in often
Instead of assigning a six-week activity to a remote team member, assign the work in three two-week activities.  And you’ll want to check in, ideally, on a daily basis on ensure progress.  If the remote worker is working closely with other team members on smaller or more modular tasks, it reduces risk of timeline expectations not being met.  Check-in often, and especially point out deliverables that on the critical path.

#5: Communicate, as much as possible
Be extra proactive to ensure all team members understand what is expected. Remote team workers can start to feel isolated if they do not receive regular communications. The communication lines on a virtual team must be opened up especially wide.  And keep in mind the following best practices:

• Pick up the phone.  Typically, our instinct is to try and have conversations over IM/email, but very often things move much faster and people feel more engaged on both sides when we actually pick up the phone (and/or webcam) and have a conversation with someone.
• Keep it interesting – Use a variety of communication techniques.  Pick up the phone , Video chat, etc.

#6: Tips for the Remote Worker:
And what the remote worker can do to himself/herself to help -

• Be uber responsive and available.
• Use Instant Messenger to make yourself available at all times during the work day. Even if you are busy, take a second and say “in a meeting” or “on a call” or “crunching on something, how important is it?” It makes people feel less like you are remote and no one can complain that you are hard to reach.
• Communicate to your team members about your availability/status/whatever you’re working on – it really helps put people at ease when they can’t actually see you.

It’s worked well for Beaconfire so far, and we are witnessing some of the dynamics of ‘team work from afar’ and how it has reshaped our working relationships within the company.

Have a best practice that has really worked for your remote team? Feel free to share.

The CMS software arena has changed significantly in the past several years.  Back in the early 2000s it was very common to come across organizations trying to custom build their content management systems and other web software needs.  The landscape today has several mature products to choose from – whether you’re looking for proprietary, open source, or SaaS-based.  There are several mature CMS products to choose from, several options for every feature set and every price point.

Do we buy?

There is a growing trend today of selecting a proven content management solution that goes beyond being just a tool set. Most CMS products are available as Core offerings paired with a collection of defined modules, available for every business need.  This makes CMS products easy to customize.  Several of these products are able to offer standard functionality out of the box, with very little effort in terms of installation or configuration.  However larger installations are not plug-n-play approaches and very often need the shepherding of technical teams.  The obvious advantages are:

• Deployment times are quicker, allowing teams to plan enterprise-level installations in much shorter turnarounds
• Overall cost of ownership is much lower – especially for organizations that choose to go the open-source route
• Rapid integration possibilities because of each product having API-based integration options with plenty of documentation for external development teams
• CMS products in the middle/upper tiers boast enterprise level functionality and sophisticated features (workflow, version control, and multi-level search functionality often separate the men from the boys)

Does it still make sense to build?

So with this plethora of available products in the market, why would an organization choose to go the BUILD route – particularly since tech gurus and analysts confidently predict dangerous pitfalls with that approach?   The answer is that given certain circumstances and specialized needs there is still need for custom-built CMS applications.

Some organizations may just decide to go the Build-route if (a) they have available developer resources, (b) their needs are very specific and compartmentalized, and (c) they don’t have the time to conduct a thorough market analysis for product matches.  The main reasons that come into play when build decisions are made may be:

• Inflexibility: Since CMS products must cater to broad needs they are built in a very generalized fashion, forcing customizations. However even with customizations there may be certain business needs that fall outside of the capability areas.  In such a scenario organizations are locked in and often end up modifying internal structure or working protocol to map to what the product can do.
• Cost: Although this this most associated with licensing and subscription costs, organizations have also made “cost-based” decisions depending on how long they will need to properly do a comprehensive product evaluation.  Licensed products also often times come with the added burden of post-deployment support.

Bottom line: Of course it’s important to make the right decision.  Also with large software installations such as CMS’ once you buy into a product, it’s very hard (read expensive) to switch to another one.

We would always recommend to clients to pursue all the “buy” options (including commercial, open source, SaaS) before taking on a ground-up build. There is also the hybrid option to buy into a product platform and then build specific modules to cater to specific business requirements.  But looking at an established product will, in the long run, save money and time, as well as providing benefits such as consistent/periodic updates and improvements adding to the overall shelf life of the investment.

I’d buy.

As usual at Beaconfire, we like to first start with the goals and outcomes. Based on the primary goal of the meeting, it should be easy to pick a profile for the attendees. Let’s explore a few of the possible meeting goals and outcomes.

1. To transfer knowledge from the project team to the consultant. If we need to understand client thinking, around which there is some consensus, then the meeting should be the small group, best positioned to convey this information.
2. To facilitate a session for brainstorming or idea generation that is strategic, visionary and exploratory. These folks should be creative, outgoing, informed and able to work well with others. Usually includes a broad mix of folks for perspective but no decisions are typically expected.
3. To explore and brainstorm desired features or creative directions or technical options with purpose of reaching directional agreement (if not consensus). These subject matter focused meetings make it straightforward to identify those staff, volunteers or constituents that can best speak to the subject matter plus those with enough perspective to provide some boundaries for the discussion. Some decision makers may be present but ideally it is best  if they also have subject matter information to bring to the discussion. This usually limits leadership to the direct project sponsor and not other decision makers.
4. To educate, inform or otherwise brief a group of stakeholders and decision makers. This meeting is characterized by mostly presentation and summary information with opportunities for clarification and refinement of ideas and concepts that are pretty well formed. The goal here is confirmation, positive reinforcement if not outright approval.
5. To provide a forum for stakeholders to be heard, to share their perspective and ultimately to be engaged authentically for the purposes of building ‘buy-in’. In this case, the workshop may be more about appearances and the effort of engaging this audience than the actual information discussed.

Sometimes a stakeholder workshop is defined first by WHO is attending and what the impact of their needs is on how the meeting will be framed and the outcomes expected. If the audience for the workshop is one of the following, see how the meeting’s outcome might be anticipated.

• Consultants / Project Team – Sometimes, the client project team mostly knows what they need to convey to the consultant. This type of meeting will cover specific information with background context, or a pretty firm hypotheses that may need validation and refinement with the consultant experts. It is very likely that this meeting will result in directional agreement if not decisions. These meetings should be very focused, include only those needed for the topic. These meetings can be characterized by “what the consultants need to move the project ahead”.
• Client Project team extended – In other cases, the client team members may need a workshop or meeting to discuss, review and brainstorm ideas and want/need the consultants to facilitate. Surely the consultant will get much of the background and factual information it needs through this facilitation and exploration, but these meetings are less likely have decisions as an outcome. It will be a pleasant surprise if there appears to be directional agreement if not outright consensus as a result of the meeting.
• Internal or external stakeholders outside of project team – More often than not, these stakeholders are engaged for one of a few purposes:
  1. to be informed and educated about some topic, process, approach or concept, such that they’ve been ‘briefed’
  2. to give these stakeholders a chance to be engaged for the purposes of getting their ‘buy-in’ to the process, if not the outcome.
  3. to be engaged in validating concepts, ideas and approaches where there are unique perspectives that they can provide.
• Constituents are whole different set of needs/expectations around which we have numerous engagement techniques and where a “meeting or workshop” is less likely to be the proper medium.

The short-hand I use to understand which type of meeting we need to have is based on these questions:

• What does my consultant team need to know and who can best give us this information? Or who can give us the decision or validation to keep moving forward?
• What does the client team need the meeting to achieve (for themselves or for others)?

In reality most meetings have multiple goals and may involve a cross section of client stakeholders. Ideally however, the meetings can either be separated out to account for the needs of different stakeholder groups. If not, then the meeting agenda requires careful planning and savvy facilitation and a dose of good meeting karma.

Meeting facilitation that achieves a variety of goals with a mix of stakeholders whose needs don’t always align is often the primary reason a firm like Beaconfire is engaged. After all these years, it isn’t quite old hat, but we’ve seen most every combination possible and have tips and tricks for each. But that’s another blog post!

So now, imagine Shakespeare was on Twitter.

Would he tweet as himself, or as one of the many personalities he created? Would the context of his 140 characters be different depending on “who” says it, even if the source is literally the same? And what about audience – how could he reach the right one given the many personalities he has to chose from?

Welcome of the murky and challenging world of creating a clearly branded and effective organizational identity online using Twitter as your vehicle.

In these days of social media madness, identity as a concept is already tenuous & intangible at best, yet more important than ever. Is it possible for an organization to express itself within the limited construct of Twitter without losing the context of its brand and reputation? Will the syntax and character limit make you look unprofessional? How can you tell is anyone is really listening, let alone caring? And if they are, how critical is it to be “on message” all the time?

It really boils down to this: Who the hell are you out “there”? Let’s turn to the immortal words of the Bard for guidance.

“To be, or not to be: that is the question.”- Hamlet
Should you even Tweet? If you want to make your brand more accessible, expand reach & leverage your audience, yes. If you’re “Keeping up w/ the Jones’s”, don’t bother.

“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.”- Juliet
Select an @name that reflects the organization, not the person doing the tweeting. An identity crisis can negatively impact your brand & loose you audience.

“All the world is a stage, and all the men and women merely players.”- Jaques
Dress up the place! Design a background graphic that reinforces your brand and identity & create a custom icon that is more than just your logo, but not a personal photo.

“This above all: to thine own self be true.”- Polonius
Define a voice & stick to it. Consistency in tone paired w/an engaging style will gain you respect, credibility & above all else, followers. Your brand will thank you.

“Nothing will come of nothing.”- King Lear
Tweet regularly but be picky. If you only link to blog posts or RT people, no one will be interested in your tweets. Add value but don’t be afraid to jump in with both feet.

“Listen to many, speak to a few.”- William Shakespeare
Dedicate a staff member to monitor your account & do searches for interesting people & discussions where your organization can engage. Be deliberate in your choices.

“Brevity is the soul of wit”- Polonius
Think of Twitter as an exercise in focused expression. An elevator speech in 140 characters. Getting right to the point w/out fluff. (& URL shorteners can help alot).

“It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”- Macbeth
If you have nothing to say, don’t. Your tweets should interest your followers & reflect your brand’s skill with the medium. No one cares about your lunch order.

“The purest treasure mortal times afford is spotless reputation” - Mowbray
It’s very easy to dilute your brand & damage your reputation on twitter by not being strategic or careful about future impact. Think before you tweet.

“O brave new world that has such people in’t!”- Miranda
Twitter is powerful tool & a great way to reach people directly so take advantage of it. Grow a loyal following, show the human face of your org & you will reap the benefits.

For those still skeptical about getting an organization’s point of view across on Twitter without looking it like a 13 year old’s text message, don’t be. It’s totally doable. How do you know?

Each one of the points above was 140 characters or less.

{end scene}

Next month hear CEO Lynn Labeineic talk about her biggest failures as a consultant. You do not want to miss that one!

If you have ever tried to coordinate your web team and client stakeholders, you know that often, email just doesn’t cut it. Emails get lost, deleted, lose their history trail, and can be disjointed. So when trying to get web teams and their clients to collaborate, what is the killer app that helps get everyone together?

The answer…none (at least, none that I’ve seen). No one single application is perfect at fostering true collaboration from the inception of a project through to completion. A good tool used by creative designer and client to cement the vision for a Web site is probably not the same tool that will help a QA tester communicate bugs and issues to the core tech team.

We at Beaconfire use a few tools for different phases of a project. Here are some examples of how Beaconfire uses some of its tools to foster collaboration.

Central Desktop – Keeping the communication open

Central Desktop is a collaborative software suite. It offers task lists, document version control, milestones, and calendar creation. Central Desktop is the key tool we use to get all interested parties for a project on the same page. All of our documentation, deliverables, and discussion around them are tracked in Central Desktop. The software set up is very organized, the documentation versioning is top-notch, and the discussion tool makes sure we are all on the same page. And for those of us who can’t give up the email, Central Desktop allows you to email directly to the collaboration workspace.

OnTime – Making it work

When it comes time to get down to the nitty gritty — the extreme detail that goes into making your vision come to life — most collaboration software doesn’t speak “tech.” Once a project gets into development, we often bring our internal teams together to collaborate with a piece of software called OnTime. Like Central Desktop, OnTime can do many things – Project Management, Task Management, Helpdesk Tracking, etc. But for us, its stand-out features, customizability, and ability to record information at great detail make it ideal for assigning development tasks and bug tracking.

OnTime does have a customer portal, to allow clients and other collaborators in on the QA action. Usually, the level of detail we go into in OnTime is beyond the interest of those not directly involved in development. This is why we love Central Desktop for external party collaboration, and OnTime for the internal, detail-oriented collaboration required for the development and QA phases of a project.

ReadyTalk – Making it stick

Phone conferencing software is ubiquitous in today’s world. But these tools can be used for much more. When our clients are all over the country (or in some cases, the world), and we need to have a 1-2 hour training, we will record our ReadyTalk conference. It synchs the phone conference with mouse moves on my computer, and after the conference, converts it into a Flash movie. So not only has ReadyTalk allowed us to train and collaborate in real time, but also to have a handy training reference.

Confluence Wiki – Living and Learning

We have many projects going on at once. Whenever we learn a valuable lesson from our project work, rather than making our colleagues sift through all our Central Desktop discussions or OnTime bugs for our particular project, we post a lot of our lessons learned, quick tips, and gotchas on our internal Wiki, Confluence.

It’s also not a bad way to put together the dishes list for our upcoming Thanksgiving potluck.

What I do know about is what knowledge is online. Since Sir Tim Berners-Lee (Yes. He was knighted.) created the World Wide Web to link documents together on the then nascent Internet, knowledge became more than monolithic documents or books that were linked loosely via citations and references. Instead of specifying in APA, MLA, Chicago, or Turabian style where the source of a particular knowledge was, one could directly link it using something called “HyperText”, or what some know as “Hyper Text Markup Language”. Today, all websites that you see online are built with a combination of HTML, some JavaScript, and possibly some Flash or Java.

Never mind what the knowledge is built with. Let’s examine very briefly the trend of tagging and keywording content. “Tagging” or “keywording” existing content can help web site users browse through indexes of such tags or keywords similar to how a book may be indexed by the editors and publishers. What was the first representation of such archaic systems on the Internet? Search Engines. Search engines were of two varieties. Directories such as Yahoo or Excite and Search Indexes such as Alta Vista. Both had their place. If you wanted to browse through a human edited directory, you had good reason to. People had taken the time to classify and organize the websites using their God given intellect. If you wanted to search, you also had good reason to.

Since the computer was able to search all of the content in a set of knowledge automatically, search indexes could be created using complex algorithms. One of the reasons Google succeeded in the search indexing industry was because they figured that relevant pages would link to each other and the more relevant websites would have higher density of connections. Similar sites around similar sets of knowledge would coalesce using the network effect to create centers of knowledge. Further more, content that is properly tagged and keyworded can heighten the quality of the search because the search engine has the power to correlate keyword usage and the keywords themselves.

What is OpenCalais?

The Calais Web Service:  The Calais web service automatically attaches rich semantic metadata to the content you submit. Using natural language processing, machine learning and other methods, Calais categorizes and links your document with entities (people, places, organizations, etc.), facts (person “x” works for company “y”), and events (person “z” was appointed chairman of company “y” on date “x”). (OpenCalais 2009)

Now that you have a bird’s eye view of how knowledge is stored and sought online, let’s talk about OpenCalais. OpenCalais is a toolkit that can be used by Content Management systems to automatically find the best set of keywords to represent a particular piece of content. Instead of having to pour your blood, toil, sweat, and tears, you can have a machine do it for you. OpenCalais is not for consumers and must be integrated into an existing piece of online content management software, or be integrated into a custom solution.
If you have a 5-10 page website, you probably don’t need to use OpenCalais. If you have a catalog of any kind, be it books, products, article, or news you should look into integrating this tool so that your website becomes easier to search and navigate on your website as well as through external search engines. OpenCalais looks at your content and finds out if there are references to people, cities, companies, industry terms, and a number of other existing knowledge centers.

A test using the OpenCalais Document Viewer

To demonstrate what OpenCalais can extract from your content, I submitted the content of this article above this sentence to get this screenshot. I’m only showing the highlight of one found term. Similarly, the other terms that were found are connected to vast amounts of knowledge already exist intent on the internet. Those knowledge centers have relevant information and hence if your content is relevant, it is given a high content relevancy rating for each word that it finds. Apparently, my article on “Online Knowledge” only gets a rating of 35%. It’s better than nothing. I’ll try again next time. You can try yourself using their Document Viewer. If you want help in implementing this great tool, let us know by contacting us through our website’s Contact Us page.

Huge props to Kate Emanuel of the ad council for pulling it all together and inviting me to join the assembled rockstars. For anyone playing the home game who would like to see my part of the presentation, enjoy!

Driven by our desire to share what we are most passionate about on a larger stage, we have submitted five innovative, thought provoking and exciting panel ideas for consideration at the South by Southwest Interactive conference in Austin, TX this coming March. Among the overwhelming landscape of 2210 other great ideas in the sxsw panel picker (a crowdsourcing approach to selecting conference content, which counts for 30% of the overall decision-making) we bravely stand toe to toe, competing with the rockstars, the uber geeks and other movers and shakers in the tech world. South By, we are Beaconfire! Hear us ROAR!

Helen Reddy-inspired bravado aside, in order to be able to present these great ideas anywhere outside of our own conference room, we desperately need you, our dedicated community, to help us. So now we humbly ask that you not only cast a “thumbs up” vote for our panels, but also post your insightful comments on each entry to let the sxsw “deciders” see how timely, thrilling, brilliant and ya know, really cool , our ideas are. You will have to make an account first, but we know that won’t hold you intrepid souls back. Forge onwards, brave readers, and let your voice be heard! Without further ado (or any additional hyperbole) – our panels:

Yoga for Social Networkers: Striking the Right Pose
Organizer & Speaker: Amadie Hart
There are hundreds of social networks, but only one you. Instead of overextending yourself, you need to bring focus on the important things and let go of the rest. Learn how to center your social media practice and balance your online activities. Bring your yoga mat! (don’t miss the video preview!)

Will Kiva Kill your non profit? Donations 2.0
Organized by Shiloh Stark, Jo Miles and Michael Cervino
Speakers: Skylar Woodward, Director of API development at Kiva; Ian Scott Haisley, OptINnow.org, Milo Sybrant, Amnesty International
Connecting donors directly to the beneficiaries of contributions is a game-changing fundraising strategy. Will traditional nonprofits need to adopt new technologies and fundraising models as donors demand greater accountability for their funds? This vibrant, moderated discussion will include representatives from Kiva, OptINnow, and 2 national advocacy organizations.

Can double-clicking change the world? Slacktivism 101
Organized by Eve Simon & Ali Cherry
Speakers: Jacob Colker, CEO of The Extraordinaries; Premal Shah, President of Kiva; and Jason Cooper, Online organizer for Kaboom.org and at least one other rockstar “surprise guest” to be named later.
Sl’ack-Ti-vism. Noun. Taking action for social change without lifting a finger. As the latest technology allows people to “engage” from their computers/phones rather than getting their hands dirty IRL, will this impact the future of volunteerism? A panel of experts will debate the pros & cons of couch potato activism.

Data Data Everywhere: Drowning in a sea of Analytics
Organizer & Speaker: Marissa Goldsmith
A Web site gives a nonprofit access to data that makes old school direct marketers salivate. But many organizations find themselves getting bogged down in producing graphs every month, obsessing over drops in pageviews, throwing their hands up on the air, and deciding they don’t have enough resources to maintain this kind of analytics analysis. Stop obsessing about the small stuff, and start learning about creating a goal-oriented, actionable analytics plan that can help your Web site thrive.

It’s not all about you: respecting your users
Organizer & Speaker: Jo Miles
Google practices it with AdWords. Facebook learned it the hard way. The truth is, your site isn’t there for you or your board; it’s there for your users. All the clever marketing tricks in the world won’t win their loyalty if you don’t give them a little respect.

Of course, not to be all “Me me me” about this, we also kindly ask that you share some panel picker love with these other great sxsw sessions, proposed by non profit tech rockstars, social media visionaries and really, really smart people:

Crowd Sourcing Innovative Social Change
Beth Kanter, Beth’s Blog

Non-Profits and Social Media: Not the Usual Suspects
David Neff, American Heart Association

The Real Housewives of Social Media
Jordan Viator, Convio

Advanced Brand Monitoring: Let the Haters Hate
Carie Lewis, The Humane Society of the United States

Competition > Innovation > Change: Examining Competitions For Social Change
Amy Sample Ward, NetSquared

Can Social Media Change Global Consciousness?
Panelists include: Amy Sample Ward, Danielle Brigida and Stacey Monk

Evolution, Creation and Extinction (of the organization)
Ted Fickes, The Wilderness Society

Handheld Awesome Detectors: Sustainable Apps
Rachel Weidinger, Rachel Weidinger Consulting

Building an Employee Platform for Social Change
Patrice Thramer, Nike, Inc

Doing More With Less: How Not-For-Profits Leverage Technology for Change
Nancy Lublin, DoSomething.org

Digital Marketing for Non-Profits
Amy Seidenwurm, LA Phil

A Different Documentary: Online Storytelling & Social Change
Boyd Neil, Hill & Knowlton Canada

The Socially Conscious Geek: Makin’ Money While Doin’ Good
Leif Utne, Zanby

SMS And Social Change: Lessons From Senegal
Terra Weikel, UNICEF

We all look forward to representin’ the non profit sector in Austin this spring, and can’t wait to see everyone in The Beacon: Lounge with a Conscience again. (details to come – watch this space!)

Jules Verne could see us going to the moon, and John F. Kennedy  actually pushed our country to do it. Star Trek could see us using tri-corders, and Motorola created it as the first cell phone. In my opinion, the iPhone, it’s market of applications, and growing user base is the best way to gain access to and interact with information. It also helps you get in touch with people, but I think face to face is the best way to interface with other humans.

Over the course of my trip to New York City this weekend, I realized exactly how valuable my iPhone is. When I got off my bus at 31st Street and 7th Avenue, I wanted to use my gym membership at the sports club. I went online on my iPhone, looked up the nearest 24 hour gym in their network, and copied and pasted the address into the Google Maps application. In about 2 minutes, I was on my way. After I arrived and couldn’t get into the side of the building which was advertised, I looked up the phone number online, gave them a call and got in. That’s convenience.

The sports club’s web site is not optimized for the iPhone, but since the built-in Safari Browser is a full-fledged browser, I was able to navigate with some effort and get what I needed. If the web site was actually created for the iPhone, it would have saved me some time from zooming in and out, panning left and right to get around. If they had an "app" for that, I might have been able to log into it with my account and it would have been geo-location aware of where I was and tell me the nearest branches of the club. Why don’t they create an "app for that"?

This is all possible and contradictory to popular belief, the functionality that I just described doesn’t have to be developed as an iPhone Application. Much of the functionality can be created in HTML as a web application and placed on the Internet. Google has done a great job by making all of their applications as iPhone friendly "webapps" which behave like iPhone applications.

Recently, some plugins have been released to make your WordPress blog iPhone friendly. Available at Brave New Code, the WPTouch Mobile Theme and Plugin for WordPress takes your standard WordPress blog and makes it look, feel, and behave as an iPhone application with nice transitions.

Static Content Sites

Many organizations have also released informational web sites in a handy, iPhone friendly format. Their sole purpose is to disseminate information. Web Apps such as the Athens Tourist Guide :  and Pocket Cambridge : are basically lists and tables of static HTML that look nice on an iPhone or an iTouch. Do you have information that can be useful to iPhone users? There are some really easy ways to get it out there.

1. iWebKit – “Iwebkit is the revolutionnairy kit used to create high quality iPhone and iPod  touch websites in a few minutes and is based on an LGPL license. In the first 4 months of it’s existance the pack has greatly evolved from a basic idea to a project that has reached worldwide fame!”

2. iUI – It has the following

1. Create Navigational Menus and iPhone interfaces from standard HTML
2. Use or knowledge of JavaScript is not required to create basic iPhone pages
3. Ability to handle phone orientation changes
4. Provide a more "iPhone-like" experience to Web apps (on or off the iPhone)

Dynamic Content Sites

Do you have programming ability or resources which you can utilize to push out your content from your organizational and institutional databases? You can probably use the aforementioned tools in conjunction with dynamic server side languages, but you might want to look into the following options to make your life easy.

1. ComponentOne iPhone Studio – ComponentOne’s studio is a rich set of ASP.NET Server Controls which is beyond compare when it comes to giving you a competitive advantage in creating dynamic applications fast. Some of the included server controls are : Calendar, ViewPort, CoverFlow ( Like the iTunes record browser ), and MultiView ( like the Photo explorer in the iPhone Camera application ).

2. iWebKit for Grails – This plugin provides integration with iWebkit, a powerful User Interface Library for Safari development on iPhone. By using this plugin, the grail developer will have an iphone web app skeleton (CSS and javascript) but also a extended tag library helping in creating iphone web pages in an easy,clean and fast way. If you are a Java developer or your company has them, and have gotten the hang of Groovy, this might be the path for you.

3. iUI with Asp.NET – iUI is very simple and some people have taken some steps to create their own integration for ASP.NET and iUI. This page points you to some third party resources which may be helpful for you in creating dynamic iUI applications.

Possible Scenarios and Tips

How can you capitalize on the iPhone and iTouch user? Here are some ideas which may work out for you.

1. If you have a Calendar of events, you can add iCalendar format links which can let users download the event data and add it to their iPhone Calendar.

2. If you have a location or event search which requires an address or a zip code, you can use W3C’s Geolocation API which is supported by the built-in Safari browser on iPhones.

3. If you have a member’s only directory, you can create an interface which can list people’s information as well as publish their contact info in the vCard format so that they can add it to their contact lists.