Tag Archives: Google Docs

Information Architecture (IA), Technology, Work

Information Architecture: An Afterthought for Content Creation Solutions

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Maximizing Digital Asset Reuse

Many applications that enable users to create their own content from word processing to graphics/image creation have typically relied upon 3rd party Content Management Solutions (CMS) / Digital Asset Management (DAM) platforms to collect metadata describing the assets upon ingestion into their platforms.  Many of these platforms have been “stood up” to support projects/teams either for collaboration on an existing project, or reuse of assets for “other” projects.  As a person constantly creating content, where do you “park” your digital resources for archiving and reuse?  Your local drive, cloud storage, or not archived?

Average “Jane” / “Joe” Digital Authors

If I were asked for all the content I’ve created around a particular topic or group of topics from all my collected/ingested digital assets, it may be a herculean search effort spanning multiple platforms.  As an independent creator of content, I may have digital assets ranging from Microsoft Word documents, Google Sheets spreadsheets, Twitter tweets,  Paint.Net (.pdn) Graphics, Blog Posts, etc.

Capturing Content from Microsoft Office Suite Products

Many of the MS Office content creation products such as Microsoft Word have minimal capacity to capture metadata, and if the ability exists, it’s subdued in the application.  MS Word, for example, if a user selects “Save As”, they will be able to add/insert “Authors”, and Tags.  In Microsoft Excel, latest version,  the author of the Workbook has the ability to add Properties, such as Tags, and Categories.  It’s not clear how this data is utilized outside the application, such as the tag data being searchable after uploaded/ingested by OneDrive?

Blog Posts: High Visibility into Categorization and Tagging

A “blogging platform”, such as WordPress, places the Category and Tagging selection fields right justified to the content being posted.  In this UI/UX, it forces a specific mentality to the creation, categorization, and tagging of content.  This blogging structure constantly reminds the author to identify the content so others may identify and consume the content.  Blog post content is created to be consumed by a wide audience of interested viewers based on those tags and categories selected.

Proactive Categorization and Tagging

Perpetuate content classification through drill-down navigation of a derived Information Architecture Taxonomy.  As a “light weight” example, in WordPress, the Tags field when editing a Post, a user starts typing in a few characters, an auto-complete dropdown list appears to the user to select one or more of these previously used tags.  Excellent starting point for other Content Creation Apps.

Users creating Blog Posts can define a Parent/Child hierarchy of categories, and the author may select one or more of relevant categories to be associated with the Post.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) Derived Tags

It wouldn’t be a post without mentioning AI.  Integrated into applications that enable user content creation could be a tool, at a minimum, automatically derives an “Index” of words, or tags.  The way in which this “intelligent index” is derived may be based upon:

  • # of times word occurrence
  • mention of words in a particular context
  • reference of the same word(s) or phrases in other content
    • defined by the same author, and/or across the platform.

This intelligently derived index of data should be made available to any platforms that ingest content from OneDrive, SharePoint, Google Docs, etc.  These DAMs ( or Intelligent Cloud Storage) can leverage this information for any searches across the platforms.

Easy to Retrieve the Desired Content, and Repurpose It

Many Content Creation applications heavily rely on “Recent Accessed Files” within the app.  If the Information Architecture/Taxonomy hierarchy were presented in the “File Open” section, and a user can drill down on select Categories/Subcategories (and/or tags), it might be easier to find the most desired content.

All Eyes on Content Curation: Creation to Archive
  • Content creation products should all focus on the collection of metadata at the time of their creation.
  • Using the Blog Posting methodology, the creation of content should be alongside the metadata tagging
  • Taxonomy (categories, and tags with hierarchy) searches from within the Content Creation applications, and from the Operating System level, the “Original” Digital Asset Management solution (DAM), e.g. MS Windows, Mac

 

Entertainment, Fun, Media, Technology

Google Introduces their Cloud, Digital Asset Management (DAM) solution

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Although this is a saturated space, with many products, some highly recommended, I thought this idea might interest those involved in the Digital Asset Management space.  Based on the maturity of existing products, and cost, it’s up to you, build or buy.  The following may provide an opportunity for augmenting existing Google products, and overlaying a custom solution.

Google products can be integrated across their suite of solutions and may produce a cloud based, secure, Digital Asset Management, DAM solution.   In this use case, the digital assets are Media (e.g. videos, still images)

A Google DAM may be created by leveraging existing features of Google Plus, Google Drive, YouTube, and other Google products, as well as building / extending additional functionality, e.g. Google Plus API, to create a DAM solution.   An over arching custom framework weaves these products together to act as the DAM.

Google Digital Asset Management (New)

  1. A dashboard for Digital Asset Management should be created, which articulates, at a glance, where project media assets are in their life cycle, e.g. ingestion, transcoding, editing media, adding meta data, inclusion / editing of closed captions, workflow approvals, etc.
  2. Creation and maintenance of project asset folder structure within storage such as Google Drive for active projects as well as Google Cloud Storage for archived content.  Ingested content to arrive in the project folders.
  3. Ability to use [Google YouTube] default encoding / transcoding functionality, or optionally leverage alternate cloud accessible transcoding solutions.
  4. A basic DAM UI may provide user interaction with the project and asset meta data.
  5. Components of the DAM should allow plug in integration with other components on the  market today, such as an ingestion solution.

Google Drive and Google Cloud Storage.  Cloud storage offers large quantities of storage e.g. for Media (video, audio), economically.

  1. Google Drive ingestion of assets may occur through an automated process, such as a drop folder within an FTP site.  The folder may be polled every N seconds by the Google DAM orchestration, or other 3rd party orchestration product, and ingested into Google Drive.  The ingested files are placed into a project folder designated by the accompanying XML meta file.
  2. The version control of assets, implemented by Google Drive and the DAM to facilitate collaboration and approval.
  3. Distribution and publishing media to designated people and locations, such as to social media channels, may be automatically triggered by DAM orchestration polling Google Drive custom meta data changes.   On demand publishing is also achievable through the DAM.
  4. Archiving project assets to custom locations, such as Google Cloud solution, may be triggered by a project meta data status modification, or on demand through the DAM.
  5. Assets may be spawned into other assets, such as clips.  Derived child assets are correlated with the master, or parent asset within the DAM asset meta data to trace back to origin.  Eliminates redundancy of asset, enabling users to easily find related files and reuse all or a portion of the asset.

Google Docs

  1. Documents required to accompany each media project, such as production guidelines, may go through several iterations before they are complete.  Many of the components of a document may be static.  Google Docs may incorporate ‘Document Assembly’ technology for automation of document construction.

Google’s YouTube

  1. Editing media either using default YouTube functionality, or using third party software, e.g. Adobe suite
  2. Enable caption creation and editing  may use YouTube or third party software.
  3. The addition & modification of meta data according to the corporate taxonomy may be added or modified through [custom] YouTube fields, or directly through the Google DAM Db where the project data resides.

Google’s Google Plus +

  1. G+ project page may be used for project and asset collaboration
  2. Project team members may subscribe to the project page to receive notifications on changes, such as new sub clips
  3. Asset workflow notifications,  human and automated:
    1. Asset modification approvals (i.e. G+ API <- -> DAM Db) through custom fields in G + page
    2. Changes to assets (i.e. collaboration) notifications,
    3. [Automated] e.g. ingestion in progress, or completed updates.
    4. [Automated] Process notifications: e.g. ‘distribution to XYZ’ and ‘transcoding N workflow’.  G + may include links to assets.
  4. Google Plus for in-house, and outside org. team(s) collaboration
  5. G + UI may trigger actions, such as ingestion e.g.  by specifying a specific Google Drive link, and a configured workflow.

Google Custom Search

  1. Allows for the search of assets within a project, within all projects within a silo of business, and across entire organization of assets.
  2. Ability to find and share DAM motion pictures, still images, and text assets with individuals, groups, project teams in or outside the organization.  Google Plus to facilitate sharing.
  3. Asset meta data will e.g. describe how the assets may be used for distribution, digital distribution rights.   Users and groups are implemented within G+, control of asset distribution may be implemented in Google Plus, and/or custom Google Search.

Here are a list of DAM vendors.

Business, Technology

WordPress Shortcode API to Cloud Storage to Sell Any Digital Intellectual Property.

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So, I was a browsing, going through bills, and thinking, hey relating to my other article on Google Docs and their new API where you could use them as a data warehouse, it occurred to me.   Why can’t we have a public API for all the Cloud Storage systems like Amazon Web Services (AWS) S3 (or Box.com), create a plugin to WordPress, add E-Commerce, and you now have your own place to sell digital music, or any Digital intellectual, property store, or host your own database OLTP or OLAP.

And my bro, Fat Panda, might have been thinking the same thing.  He’s one step behind, but he will catch on.  I will try to update for ‘the cheap seats’ in a bit.

For the cheap seats, even those static files stored up in the cloud, you can use a similar model to Google Docs <-> Google Fusion where you add tabular data to storage, read,over-write, or update using home made table locking mechanism, and essentially use the cloud as a data warehouse, or even a database.  Microsoft seems to have a lead on transitional and analytical storage with Microsoft Azure, relational in nature in the cloud, but it is so much simpler than that with cloud storage, although if not implemented with ‘row’ locking,there is an issue with OLTP (On Line Transaction Processing) row level, high volume, but with OLAP, On Line Analytic Processing, not so much, analyzing the way your business does business, and profit more from your consumer data.  There are easy ways to implement row level locking for row level locking of tabular data stored in cloud storage like AWS or Box.Net,  The methods to implement row level locking for OLTP systems using storage in the cloud are easy to implement, and will remind you of old school type alternatives to supplement the AutoNumber columns in MS Access or Identity columns in SQL Server. At the end of the day to either sell digital intellectual property from a WordPress implementation, or run your entire business with a robust cloud database solution for OLTP or OLAP systems using flat file storage!  Why go through all this when the Amazons AWS and Microsoft Azure have or will yearn to start building these solutions in parallel?  Cost effective solutions, and the entire database arena monopolized by Oracle, IBM, Microsoft, and MySQL, just got extended to a whole lot of database vendors.  It may take a while, but we already know the big Gorilla in the room Google is the first to strike in this game, as a non-traditional database vendor, cloud storage provider with their updated Google Docs API, and optionally usage of their Fusion application.

Business, Technology

Tablet Developers Make Business Intelligence Tools using Google as a Data Warehouse: Completing with Oracle, IBM, and Microsoft SQL Server

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And, he shoots, and scores.  I called it, sort of.  Google came out of the closet today as a data warehouse vendor, at least they need a community of developers to connect the dots to help build an amazing Business Intelligence suite.

Google came out with a Google Docs API today, which using languages from Objective-C (iOS), C#, to Java so you can use Google as your Data Warehouse for any size business. All you need to do is write an ETL program which uploads and downloads tables from your local database to Google Docs, and you create your own Business Intelligence User Interface for the creation and viewing of Charts & Graphs.  It looks like they’ve changed strategies, or this was the plan all along.

Initially I thought that Google Fusion was going to be the table editing tool to manipulate your data that was transferred from your transactional database using the Google Docs API.  Today they released a Google Docs API and developers can create their own ETL drivers and a Business Intelligence User Interface that can run on any platform from an Android Tablet, iPad, or Windows Tablet.

A few days ago, I wrote the article, which looked like they were going to use a tool called Google Fusion, which was in Beta at the time to manipulate tabular data, and eventually extend it to create common BI components, such as graphs, charts, edit tables, etc.

A few gotchas: Google Docs on Apple iPad is version 1.1.1 released 9/28/12, so we are talking very early days, and the Google Docs API was released today.   I would imagine since you can also use C#, someone can make a Windows application on the desktop to manipulate the data tables, create and view graphs, so a Windows Tablet can be used.  The API also has Java compatibility, so from any Unix box, or any platform, Java is write once, run anywhere, wherever your transitional database lives, a developer is able to write a driver to transfer the data to Google Docs dynamically, and then use Google Docs API for Business Intelligence.  You can even write an ETL driver which all it does is rapidly transfer data, like an ODBC, or JDBC driver and use any business intelligence tools you have on your desktop, or a nightly ETL.  However, I can see developers creating business intelligence tools on Android, iPad, or Windows tables to modify tables, create and view charts, etc., using custom BI tool sets and their data warehouse now becomes Google Docs.

Please reference an article I wrote a few days back, “Google is Going to be the Next Public and Private Data Warehouse“.

At that time, Google Fusion was marked as Beta on 10/13/2012.  Google has since stripped off the word Beta, but doesn’t matter.  Its even better with the Google API to Google Docs.  Google Fusion could be your starter User Interface, however, if your Android, iOS (Apple iPad), and Windows developers really embrace this API, all of the big database companies like IBM, Oracle, and Microsoft may have their market share eroded to some extent, if not a great extent.

Update 10/19:

Hey Gs (Guys and Gals), I forgot to mention, you can also make your own video or music streaming applications perhaps, using the basic calls of get and receive file other companies are already doing such as AWS, Box, etc. It’s a simple get / send API, so not sure if it’s applicable to ‘streaming’ at this stage, just another storage location in the ‘cloud’, which would be quite boring.  Although thinking of it now, aren’t all the put / send cloud solutions potential data warehouses using ETL and the APIs discussed and published above?  Also, it’s ironic that Google would also be competing with itself, if it was a file share, ‘stream’ videos, and YouTube?