After covering the Typeroom Light beta earlier, I sent a few questions over to the makers, and they’ve sent back some interesting answers. I should have mentioned that the Typeroom I tried out was a lite version (think 3.2 lager, but without the bubbles). The pro version seems like it will have more options, many of which seemed right in line with my questions…

1. How does Typeroom Lite work with CSS and site templates?

TypeRoom Lite does not actually work with templates. TypeRoom Professional however, does.

One of our most important design considerations when creating TypeRoom Lite was that it had to be instant. We needed a way to introduce people to this concept of "remote CMS", and instead of going through the explanations, we wanted to just show the view (using their own site as the subject of demonstration).

So while TypeRoom Lite is being released as a product in and of itself (with a free and paid version of TypeRoom Lite), it also has another and possibly even more important, role as a means to preview of the technology on which we are basing our complete CMS.

2. With the premium version, will the system be able to cope with RSS, Permalinks and other essential characteristics of Blogs and syndicated content?

The short answer is yes. The long answer is that we are planning on releasing a minimal version of the professional version to start with so we can iterate with the help of the community.

Typeroom is a content management system which takes a different approach to traditional Content Management. Instead of using databases and managing content directly, Typeroom works more like Adobe Contribute by allowing traditional html pages to be edited in real time. With the service due for public testing shortly, I have had a Beta test of the setup and have a few observations.

The editor is web-based, and a user simply enters a url into Typeroom’s site and navigates to content they wish to edit and selects ‘edit this page’. Typeroom then displays a copy of the page and opens a WYSIWYG editing environment. This is a multi-paned approach, with the editing at the bottom and a preview panel above that updates in real time. Text and images can be manipulated from the editing pane, and there are various formatting options. The look is not dissimilar to TinyMCE or other familiar WYSIWYG platforms. Impressively, they have a drag-and-drop interface for adding images, and an auto-align by simply dragging images around the editing area. This feature, if it works consistently, could be of major advantage to non-technical users, because it eliminates the need to assign either a style or an attribute to an image to make it flow consistently. 

Publishing makes use of either FTP or a Typeroom account, which presumably stores FTP information. An interesting feature, though, is the ability to ‘publish’ by sending a revised version by email to a webmaster.

The good folks over at ZDNet.com have published a couple of posts from my blog. In a bid to increase the scope of their topics, ZDNet have created a blog called Web 2.0 Exlporer, which is made up of guest bloggers’ posts. In this blog, two articles of mine have been posted. Please feel free to go and have a look (though it might be boring reading it twice!)

How Smart Can a Link Be?

Web 2.0- Don’t call it that!

Let me know what you think (either using ZDNet’s TalkBack feature or my Contact Form)!

I just read an ingenious article over at Copyblogger about mixed messages and Yogi Berra- more famous for befuddled witicisms than for being one of baseball’s all-time greats.

Dean Riack transformed some of Yogi’s most famous statements into aphorisms and translated the meanings for us. A perfect example:

Yogi: “Ninety percent of the game is half mental.”

Translation: Think before you act…

I love this kind of article: a mixture of wit and helpful advice easily read and well-formed.

Thanks Dean!

When social networking is the topic, I imagine most people think of Facebook, Myspace or LinkedIn—sites fundamentally  derived from self promotion and entertainment. Despite the high language used to discuss social networking and Web 2.0, most of my time spent on them is all about having fun or trying to look better to others (which is what LinkedIn is primarily for). But what about the idea that the world is now connected? Why do I spend most of my time online ‘socialising’ with people I already know, or participating in interests in which I’m already interested?

After all, the idea of a network (on online community) is to create and maintain connections between people and groups. It is only a matter of time before connections are made which open eyes.

Bloggers in Burma have been using the web to broadcast their message not to let the world close its eyes to the community disaster there. YouTube has been mentioned to contain many thousands of clips from soldiers in or from Iraq. This is a serious source of information, a broadcast network between communities. And it seems that this call for help could be so easily ignored if it weren’t for the persistence of the messages: ignorance as a refuge is shrinking daily.

But where’s the 2.0 in this Web? Where is the sharing and the interaction from these blogs and discussions? Have a look at Kiva.org, the most inspiring website I have seen in months.