Perch

• Developer API — The API enables additional features to be added to Perch as apps, without adding bloat and complexity to the original lightweight product.
• Dynamic pages — One of the first apps to be made available for Perch is dynamic pages, which allows you to add new pages to a site, an oft-requested feature.
• Content filtering and reuse — Itʼs now easy to dynamically filter a multiple item region to show only items of interest, and content can be pulled from one part of a site and automatically displayed on another.

There’s a few other neat updates as well, like the ability to customize the interface with your own CSS and JavaScript, and improved image management.

Perch costs £35 ($51) per domain (you can switch between domains as required), with no ongoing fees. You can try out a live demo here.

Let us know what you think of Perch 1.5 in the comments.

Related GigaOM Pro content (sub. req.): Report: The Real-Time Enterprise

The organizers approached me to develop a web site to aggregate these posts in real-time before, during and after the event. In the process, I learned how such a site can reinforce the development of community.

I’m sure that you’ve been to events where good ideas are hatched and projects are planned, but often, despite the best of intentions, activity loses steam after the event is over, and nothing much gets done. It’s too early yet to judge the long-term effectiveness of this particular event, but I’m optimistic that it will make more of a difference than many such gatherings.

The electronic component of the event was relatively simple. We created a content-managed web site that would act as the hub for the many places that participants would post their contributions and reflections. We didn’t require participants to use a specific CMS tool (although they were welcome to use ours). Instead, before, during and after the conference, participants were encouraged to use existing technologies with which they were familiar to document their thoughts, and we then created links to their contributions.

Before the Event

The web site went live a couple of weeks before the event began. By that time, event announcements and registration had already been posted to a section on the sponsoring organization’s web site. Participants had been asked to interview another attendee as a “get-to-know-you” exercise. The results were to have been posted, but very few did so — I suspect because the CMS used by the sponsoring organization has a significant learning curve.

In the future, I would recommend creating the event-specific web site much sooner, and using a simpler CMS-, group-blog, social-network or wiki-based system for posting pre-event discussions and comments.

During the Event

The venue at our local university had limited wired connectivity, but it was sufficient for a video stream, an audio stream, and the web updates that I was doing. The video stream worked fine; the audio stream was less successful because the university had blocked the ports we needed. For the same reason, we had to use a MiFi connection to use FTP. Thankfully, this did not affect access to our CMS.

Participants were able to connect using Wi-Fi, which worked well, aside from some issues with entering passwords. I’m guessing that perhaps fifty people were connected at any one time.

The event web site included the following, all of which was updated frequently:

• An attendee list, with links to participants’ web sites and Twitter feeds.
• The event agenda. Since the event was an “un-conference” using the “open space” approach, much of the agenda was developed on the spot by attendees.
• A Twitter statuses JavaScript badge showing posts from the event. These tweets were mostly done by me on behalf of event organizers, but other committee members also tweeted through the conference account.
• A Twitter search widget showing a real-time feed of all posts using the conference hashtag. A full-screen version of this widget was projected in the room where most discussions took place, and it proved very popular.
• A link to a Twapperkeeper archive of the Twitter hashtag feed.
• A Facebook fan box linking to the event’s Facebook page.
• A Flickr badge and links to tagged photos and videos. Flipcharts and graphs were scanned or photographed, then posted to Flickr and to the web site as JPGs and PDFs. We also put up a Picasa link at the request of attendees, but it didn’t get used.
• A Ustream video feed. Video of many sessions was fed live into the site, then archived.
• A link to YouTube search results tagged with the event’s tag.
• An audio feed. Podcasts of many sessions were made available later.
• Links to blogs of those attendees who were writing about the event.
• A wiki for allowing attendees to post notes from event sessions. We chose to use a wiki rather than giving all users access to the CMS, although I think that in future we might go the other way, as some found editing the wiki difficult.
• An RSS feed for tracking changes to all of the above.

After the Event

We had not created a LinkedIn group before the event. However, participants indicated that they wanted to have an electronic venue for continuing the discussion after the conference. We surveyed the room, and discovered that almost everyone was already a LinkedIn user. Since LinkedIn groups and subgroups can be created immediately, we chose to use that service. We could have selected another group conversation service, though, and participants may move to more sophisticated collaborative tools as their discussions continue.

Planning and Setup

If you are ever called upon to provide this sort of support to an event, it can be fun and educational. Here are some tips to make things go smoothly.

• Get involved with the planning committee as soon as possible, and get an event-specific web site posted early.
• Agree on the hashtag for the event, and publicize it.
• Coordinate with the meeting venue to make sure that it has adequate power and bandwidth (both wired and Wi-Fi), and that it does not block ports.
• Plan to bring your own equipment if possible, or make sure that you have everything you’ll need.
• Set up a “tech table” in a convenient location.
• Have a group of volunteers who can cover the full event.
• Give yourself lots of time for setup and breakdown.
• Have a dedicated laptop and projector for displaying the Twitter hashtag feed — participants will love it.
• Consider what you’ll need in the way of cameras, scanners and printers. We had them all, and they were handy to have, but we could probably have done without them.

I found that attendees’ blogging, tweeting, recording and instant posting about the event reinforced what they were thinking and learning. Thus, the effectiveness of the event was increased, along with the potential for new learning and insights to cause change in the wider world.

How do you use social media and the web for events?

Images by Flickr users Choconancy1 and hajush

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• How to Market Your iPhone App: A Developer’s Guide
• Report: The Live-Stream Video Market

Fluxiom is a web-based digital asset management system for creative teams that offers a nice, visually rich interface and the ability to scale depending on your needs. It has a number of useful features, and there’s a free version available, so I wanted to see if it could function as a tool for helping people collaborate on a wide variety of media including text, photo, audio and video.

Assets

Right away, you notice that Fluxiom is clearly content-oriented. By default, you launch into your assets page, and you can upload files there either using the web interface, or using fluxUp!, an app that makes uploading multiple files easier. If you’d rather not install any software, you can always zip a number of files together and upload the whole archive via the web interface. You can also upload entire folders via the fluxUp! app, which I think gives it a huge advantage over other similar web apps for file sharing.

Once you’ve uploaded some media, it quickly becomes apparent how well-designed Fluxiom is. Interacting with your uploads feels a lot like using a native OS X desktop app like iPhoto, and because of this, there is almost no learning curve to the software. There’s a search field prominently displayed in the top left-hand corner; you can choose either thumbnail or list view; and you can filter your assets using a number of pre-set fields using convenient buttons running along the top of the asset pane.

As in iPhoto, you can also preview each asset you upload. I was pleasantly surprised to see that Fluxiom even supports PSD previewing, which is a huge benefit for graphic and web design teams hoping to use the app. To test the limits of file type support, I uploaded a RAR archive and a Flash file (.fla). Both uploaded fine, but neither could be previewed, though Fluxiom did know what the Flash file was, at least.

Tags & Stages

You can add tags to any uploaded media for easy searching and organization. That will really come in handy when you start dealing with large volumes of media. While Fluxiom does not have folders for organizing media, the “Stages” feature presents another good way to drill down and focus only on the media relevant to your specific purposes. Stages is designed to help you share a limited set of material with a particular client. So if you’re designing an ad for someone, you can create a tag for that project, assign it to all relevant media, and then create a stage using the tag. You can then email a link to that stage which, once the correct password is entered, will allow them to view and download the media you’ve designated.

Stages is also a great way to parse out media for individual assignments to different team members. This is especially useful if you’re working with a consultant or external contractor, since you can then ensure any IP not pertinent to the task at hand remains safely out of reach.

Dropbox

Fluxiom is not only a great way for you and your team to share files amongst each other and with clients, it’s also a great way for others to share files with you. Using the “Dropbox” feature, anyone can upload a file or files to your account, so long as they have the proper address and can confirm that they have a valid email address. Media uploaded via this method is then stored in a queue where you can choose to accept it, thus moving it into your main asset library, or reject it, whereupon it is deleted.

I can think of a thousand different uses for that feature, with the most appealing to me being a submission form for photographic or illustration work for contribution to a publication or web site. Fluxiom even makes it easy for you to post your Dropbox link on your web site so that, if you want to, you can open up content submissions to the general public.

Pricing & Conclusions

Because of how easy it is to share and receive files via Fluxiom, and because of custom branding and API access, this is one of the most impressive and scalable asset management systems I’ve seen in a web app, and especially one that offers a free account. Paid accounts range from €9 (about $12.50) all the way up to €169 ($235) per month, and offer a variety of storage/user limitations. Definitely give the free account a shot first, since it may be enough if you just want to use it for yourself, but I think creative teams will quickly see the value of an upgrade.

Share your opinions on Fluxiom in the comments.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Why iPad 2 Will Lead Consumers Into the Post-PC Era
• The Future of Work Platforms: An Overview

Installation is straightforward, although you do need to be a little tech-savvy to get it up and running. You’ll need a server running PHP5 or later. (Check if you’re using a shared host — I found mine was still running PHP4, but could flip to PHP5 easily.) Download the zip from the Perch web site, unzip, and FTP the Perch folder to your host. Run the setup script, insert your license key, and fill out your database login details. Most of the installation legwork is done for you, although you’ll need to FTP a generated configuration file back to the server.

To start using Perch to manage the content on your site, you first need to add some editable content regions into your pages using Perch tags. Once you’ve set up the regions, log in to your Perch control panel.

Perch’s interface is very clean and simple. There are just two tabs at the top of the page, “Content” and “Users”. Under “Content” you’ll find the regions that you added to your pages. Click on a region to initialize it by selecting a content template to use. Perch has templates for many types of content included out of the box (file, image, contact, text block, article and text), but you can create your own templates using simple markup.

If you’re building a site for a client, it’s now just a case of setting up user accounts for your client under the “Users” tab. (There are only two levels of access: “Admin” and “Editor”.)  They’ll then be able to log into the control panel and edit the content as required.

Because Perch has a simple, clean and easy-to-use interface, it shouldn’t be too hard to train clients to use it, which makes it a good choice for web sites that have some changeable content but don’t require a full-blown CMS. Perch should also be a great choice if you want to retrofit some editable regions into an existing static web site. However, it is very stripped-down, so if you require, say, an inbuilt WYSIWYG editor, you’re going to need a more heavyweight solution like ExpressionEngine.

Perch costs £35 ($57) per domain (you can switch between domains as required), with no ongoing fees. Unfortunately, there’s no free trial available, but you can download a Compatibility Test Suite to check that it will work on your setup before purchasing.

Have you tried Perch? Let us know what you think in the comments.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Why iPad 2 Will Lead Consumers Into the Post-PC Era
• The Near-Term Evolution of Social Commerce

It’s designed to require little setup, and aimed at companies with little or no in-house development capability. Out of the box, Liferay offers a number of different pre-set portlet configuration options, including CMS and collaboration. The idea is that you get an easy-to-set up intranet system up and running in no time, with features that can be easily changed, added, and removed without much effort.

Liferay has a couple nice features that aren’t necessarily offered elsewhere. One is drag-and-drop editing, so that you can shift the arrangement of portal elements without digging around in any code, making otherwise time-consuming changes a snap. In practice, this worked well on the demo site provided by Liferay. Editing my public page, for instance, I could easily change the name of any individual subsection, and drag and drop them as though they were browser windows.

You can also change the look and feel by clicking on icons in the upper right-hand corner of any item displayed on your pages. Anything from choosing your fonts to advanced CSS customization is available, depending on your skill and comfort level with coding.

Making my own pages was simple. I figured out how to add applications without trouble, and again it’s a drag and drop process, with item arrangement left up to you. Applications can be added from a list of supported plugins, or, conceivably, you could write your own.

I tested Liferay’s own locally hosted demo, available here. While it may not be an indication of how easy or difficult it is to set up on your own server, the demo was very easy to use as an end-user, especially considering that I read no how-to or support documentation beforehand.  I’m considering using it to organize a collaborative writing blog I administrate, since the writers involved are not generally advanced users, and would benefit from the system’s intuitive, pick-up-and-go usability.

Collaboration features include pretty much everything you can think of, including wikis, calendars, message boards, blogs, polls, and integrated IM. Liferay Social Office, which is what they call their collaboration suite, also integrates with Microsoft Office, so that you have the option of working there on your desktop if you don’t feel like signing on to the portal. Sometimes being isolated has its benefits, after all.

Liferay has a small but impressive client list, including World Vision, Lufthansa, Cisco, and the GOP House Republican Conference. Liferay Standard Edition is a free download offered under the MIT Open Source License, and an Enterprise Edition is available for pre-order, which offers more stability and long-term support, plus additional features. The SE is probably sufficient for most uses, unless you’re working on a very large scale with a multi-national corporation.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• The Future of Work Platforms: An Overview
• Why iPad 2 Will Lead Consumers Into the Post-PC Era

Sitemasher

I wasn’t sure what to make of Sitemasher when I first heard of it. With Sitemasher, you can build a web site, manage the content, get analytics, implement basic SEO, and you get managed hosting to boot.

But at $99/month, I felt the kerpow of sticker shock. I knew that I had to think about Sitemasher differently to fully appreciate its value.

So after a demo with the company, here is what I’ve learned.

Web Developers Rule at Sitemasher

Sitemasher is really meant to be a tool for Web developers to help them provide integrated Web services to clients and either hand over the finished site to the client or continue to easily manage the site for the client. There are two views to Sitemasher:

Dashboard View: This is more for the marketer or business owner who wants to have some admin controls such as viewing site analytics, adding some basic SEO code into the site like easy-to-construct meta tags, and set user levels. Depending on a person’s role on the Web site development and maintenance process, their user access can be set up with limitations. The user roles tool allows admin to specify exactly what each person is allowed to do on the site – from edit to approve to publish. Tasks can be created and assigned.

Basically, Sitemasher lets the site admin turn features on and off based on the client’s needs and the workflow everyone wants.

Studio View: This is the heart of the Web developer’s domain. In Studio view, the developer can build the site from the ground up and tweak their development environment to their preferences. There is also a Style Sheet manager and a Database creator. So when a developer creates a form, for example, Sitemasher’s system automatically ties it to a contact database to manage the contact information.

Not being a Web designer myself, I didn’t grasp all the designer speak, however, I got the impression that even someone with my 1990s HTML and Web design skills would be right at home with the easy-to-use site building tools.

Back to the Price

After seeing how robust and feature rich Sitemasher was, I began to think again about the price. Would I, as a site developer, have to pay $99/month to build a site for my client?

The answer is NO. Web developers can use Sitemasher for free as their development tool for multiple clients. Each client gets private access into their site during all stages of development. Then, when the site is ready for debut, the developer triggers the site to publish it live.

Sitemasher analytics

At that point, the $99/month kicks in and this is a cost that the developer can pass on to the client. They could then choose to be done with the project as the CMS, analytics and SEO tools are easy enough for a non-programmer to use so a client could handle the site from then on. Or they can remain on hand – if the client has a capacity issue – and use Sitemasher to manage the site for the client. The client still pays $99/month for their site and all the features while the developer can charge for their time as webmaster.

Breaking down $99/month, I needed to remember that we’re talking about:

• a really powerful site builder (ex: Dreamweaver $399US);
• a detailed analytics tool (ex: Google Analytics which is FREE but something like WebTrends isn’t free);
• basic SEO (this could entail hiring an SEO expert for hundreds of dollars);
• simple CMS (this could be pricey – $1200/year); and
• managed hosting (this could range from $25/month to hundreds of dollars per month).

Frankly, just the CMS alone could make Sitemasher worthwhile to the business owner who doesn’t want to mess with code and also wants a good degree of autonomy from their Web developer.

$99/month is the Basic level where only 2 people can be users (Web developer and customer and then later could be switched to two customer staff members). The next levels, $249/month allows 5 users (with the ability to add), approvals, different user roles, and versioning while the $699/month gives you unlimited users on top of all the features.

NOTE: On October 8, Sitemasher announced the Sitemasher Website Design Contest which runs through March 1, 2009. Find out more about how you can enter. First Prize: $1,000; Second Prize: $500; Third Prize: $250 as well as a one-year subscription to Sitemasher Basic and a few other bennies.

Have you tried Sitemasher yet? What do you think of it? What other multi-featured Web development tool are you using and do you pay for it?

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Why iPad 2 Will Lead Consumers Into the Post-PC Era
• The Near-Term Evolution of Social Commerce