EMI Music is the biggest independent record label in the world. EMI Music represents 1,000 artists from all musical genres in 50 countries. One of its focuses is to develop and promote digital services via the Web, mobile channels, and TV throughout the world, providing fans with a rich, complete musical experience.

We have interviewed them and asked about their approach to eZ Publish, new media and content management.

How has the internet transformed EMI's approach?

In order to address evolving consumer needs, EMI Music France has intensified its marketing strategy and promotional activities on the internet. It is a fast and highly competitive industry where responsiveness is crucial for developing and sustaining market share. It is essential that we have dynamic content and an engaging Web presence.

What sort of content management solutions have you implemented? What have been the challenges and difficulties?

EMI Music France has implemented a content management platform that has allowed us to standardize our site development and maintenance process – including artist, record label and event websites. A major technical challenge was to integrate dynamic, interactive Flash elements with other content. We also needed a Web 2.0 capable content management platform that could handle RSS importing and exporting across multiple sites, manage widgets, handle multiple video formats, and so on. The overall goal of the platform is to be able to quickly deploy and easily manage quality sites that can evolve over time.

In which projects have you used eZ Publish?

We use eZ Publish as part of the platform on all of our promotional, artist, and label sites. Developed by SMILE according to our technical requirements, our platform has served as the starting point for approximately fifty live websites, including http://www.etiennedaho.com and http://www.ilovem83.com.

Webmonkey: "Webmonkey sat down with Dries and Jay to talk about the history of Drupal, where development is headed and the role their new company will play in the project’s future."

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I have to admit that when someone submits a story and I trust them...I sometimes don't read the whole article before I publish it.  So until I read Dean Barker's Gadgetopia, I didn't realize his company, Blend Interactive, was featured in eZ's SHARE! magazine.  The irony is that if I had read an article posted at my own site by one of eZ System's own people...Dean's post wouldn't have been new news to me.  Sigh, I have been just too busy...

You may not have heard of Blend Interactive, but they do sport a decent portfolio of sites they have developed and designed.  Probably the most likely well known work from the company is the home site for the instant messaging client, Pidgin.  The SHARE! magazine features Blend Interactive, in part, because it is one of the most enthusiastic users of the eZ Publish CMS in the United States.  eZ Publish's roots is in Norway and the software is more popular in Europe.  But, as the eZ article implies, there is a push to generate more users in the United States.

I'm hoping that later today the American version of ComputerWorld will carry the Dries Buytaert article I came across on their Australian site.  The article is an interview with Dries and titled, "Drupal: from a drop in the ocean to a big fish in the CMS World".  Yes, it's a catchy title for the interview, but I like sub-heading even more.

Drupal’s founder, Dries Buytaert tells all about the Drupal project: its history, where it is today and where it is going.

Perhaps if this is a "tell all" interview...Dries is finally hitting celebrity status and we'll soon be finding articles about him at TMZ.com instead of ComputerWorld?  :-)

Actually, the interview is quite good and I like the fact that beyond Drupal 6, Dries is pretty conservative about predicting Drupal's future.  It's best to keep us all guessing.

"Great two part interview with Matt Mullenweg from WordPress By Rafe Needleman where Matt discusses all kinds of interesting issues.

• Video 1 covers: WordPress.org and WordPress.com; blogging; video; international impact of blogging on freedom of expression; government censorship; blogging in US politics and a lack of authenticity; monetizing content with Google Adsense; whether there is still growth potential in the Blogisphere; Microsoft and Sun.
• Video 2 is about: simplistic and important blogger stats; predictable release cycles..."

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"Mambo, the original open source content management system that powered iTWire: before we moved to its derivative fork Joomla, is now celebrating six years as an open source project under GNU General Public License. The celebrations coincide with the announcement of a new project leader and a reaffirmation of the project's commitment to put a sometimes turbulent past behind it and move forward."

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"But with popular web-based e-mail services from Google, Microsoft and Yahoo, which just announced that it will offer unlimited storage, the need for a desktop e-mail client seems to be fading.

So we asked Scott MacGregor, Thunderbird's lead engineer, why anyone needs Thunderbird these days, and he had a pretty good answer. He also talked about Mozilla's open-source development model and told us what new features to expect when Thunderbird 2 becomes available."

 

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"iJoomla Magazine is an excellent extension that has vastly improved the CMS experience for publishers using Joomla. The component has undergone a great deal of development since its first releases, and has been given a big thumbs-up by critics as well us developers and publishers. PHP Magazine Network contacted Merav Knafo, iJoomla's founder, for an  interview about the iJoomla experience."

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