Today’s a slow news day, so I thought it would be a good day to bring up an idea I’ve been incubating. I’ve been contemplating launching an OSAlert-like site on the topic of Enterprise Computing. Obviously, OSAlert covers the OS-related aspects of heavy-duty business, scientific, and academic computing already, and sometimes news on databases, app servers, cloud computing and other related topics too, but a lot of the kind of news that is useful to enterprise IT people falls outside of OSAlert’ purview, and it’s appropriate to keep it that way. But I think that the enterprise IT world could use an OSAlert-like site to aggregate and examine the latest news in that sphere. So my question to you, dear OSAlert readers, is this: Do you agree? Would you be interested in reading and participating in a site on that topic? Would you be interested in being involved? If so, I’d like to recruit a few editors to help me launch it. Read on for more details. Update: Are there any native Korean speakers who read OSAlert? If you are one, and you’d be willing to help me out with a short project, please contact me.The OSAlert team is pretty busy with OSAlert stuff, and probably always will be. None of us do OSAlert as a full-time job, so we don’t actually have free time between OSAlert and our “real” jobs to launch a new site. Well, since I’m recently unemployed (like so many), I actually do have a little more free time, hence the ambition to start a new site, but eventually (I hope) I’ll get a new job, so if this is going to happen, we need some new blood.
What I’m looking for is a few experienced IT people who work in the business, scientific, or academic computing worlds and follow the news and trends in enterprise computing. If you have a boring, unfulfilling job, and would like something to entertain you and possibly give you some supplemental income in your free time, then you would be an idea candidate. Even if you’re not an Uber-sysadmin, if you follow the industry avidly, and you’re a good writer, the good writer part of the job description is the non-negotiable one anyway.
If you already do some blogging on the topic, or you’ve contributed blogging or articles to another publication on the topic, then all the better.
As for compensation, this is likely to be an unprofitable enterprise for some time. Nevertheless, OSAlert has some great advertisers, and this is a topic that can attract decent sponsors, so it won’t be the kind of uphill struggle it would be to start this kind of publication from scratch. I am willing to offer a meager, part-time wage at the beginning as part of my investment in the operation. As traffic grows and the site starts to be able to support itself, I would expect that the site’s editors would be able to enjoy a modest supplemental income from their work on the site, based on a portion of the advertising and sponsorship revenue. In other words, I’m looking for people who are entrepreneurial in spirit, willing to take risks, but who could use a bit of extra money, and would enjoy making it while becoming a prominent voice on a topic they find interesting.
Editors would need to be self-starting hard workers, capable of digesting vast quantities of news and writing every day and have a solid foundation in enterprise computing. I would provide a solid technical and business foundation for them to get started and manage all the mundane aspects of the business aside from the daily content creation and aggregation. Editors would have vast authority to run the site the way they see fit and will be free to contribute to OSAlert too.
If this sounds like something you’d be interested in, please contact me at the email address on here. If you have any thoughts on this proposed enterprise, please let us know in the comments.
interseting idea, not sure it would catch on, but it’s worth a shot. I asume you want it to be more than something like this: http://blue.popurls.com/
I do a lot of work with emerging technologies, both achedemit and sientific, and I have a few places I go (and post to) that I find very usefull. This is a good one to check out daily if you want to see emerging technology that will wind up replacing (in all likelyhood) what we use now.
http://www.physorg.com/ (While it isn’t by any means specific to computers, you can find the latest and greatest on technology that might come down the pipe in the future.
I rely on eWeek and InfoWorld for enterprise IT news, and occassionally InformationWeek or ComputerWorld. I think you might be hard pressed to offer more value than those sites.
I go to OSAlert for new technology news, but am not sure I would find this style as condusive for business IT news.
That’s precisely the kind of feedback I’m interested in. Does the mainstream trade press cover that world in a way that excludes the need for the kind of aggregation, commentary and community involvement that the OSAlert format would bring? If there aren’t any people that inhabit the enterprise world who are enthusiastic about the idea, then it’s not a very good idea, and I won’t do it.
I don’t particularly think this is a bad idea to cover this sort of content, but having an entire site dedicated to it might be over kill.
Have you thought of augmenting osnews with this category of content? Maybe something like, enterprise.osnews.com and adding a tab next to the Page 2 one?
I’m sure you could customise the advertising to be enterprise specific for that domain.
Just a thought.
well remember, eweek/infoworld/baseline/etc usually don’t concentrate on the OS/Enterprise compute side of the IT world. They usually do new products, systems management and whatever they pretty much feel like. An EC specific site can concentrate on OS/Filesystem/grid stuff that most EC-IT folks are really doing these days.. i would like to see that more than the usual eweek-im-showing-you-the-reasons-why-windowsvista-sucks-and-dont-upgra de article.. that crap is posted everywhere..
Slow news days will be even slower if more ^aEUR~news^aEURTM is siphoned off. Rather, get rid of the ^aEUR~Page 2^aEURTM section and add multiple category-specific article listings. The ^aEUR~front page^aEURTM can then act as a ^aEUR~breaking news^aEURTM list, which are flagged as such by the administrators.
Meow.
As and IT professional and longtime Osnews addict I think that and enterprise focused section or spinoff would be great.
I current read computer world and network world for some of the high level news, but I think there is a definite niche that can be filled. Especially since most of the articles in those publications focus on the high level.
This proposed site could have some how-to’s or focus on the technology applications rather than just the theory on trends in the industry.
Also, I imagine that the site would give some justice to open source in the infrastructure and not just the packaged solutions. The IT publications always seem to focus on only the large commercial vendors and total ignore linux as a serious contender IMHO.
Edited 2009-07-02 02:48 UTC
David, I think the idea for the site is a good idea!
The thing I like about OSAlert is that it brings up slightly more obscure topics/interests than other sites that do similar things … this is what keeps me coming back [daily]! I also enjoy reading the opinions of many of the authors! Especially Eugenia (and her commentary on many threads).
Focusing on the Enterprise is an interesting angle, and though there are a few sites that aggregate enterprise news, I feel a lot of the articles + commentary stories don’t get flushed out well enough with people actually working IN that industry and know what it’s all about. The trick is to find that right balance between reiterating what other’s have already said, and injecting that industry insider info.
Hi, I have already pm you though, I wonder if the email would be easier for you.
Linux.com has a section for enterprise news. The same could be done in OSAlert, rather than creating new site.
Edited 2009-07-02 06:24 UTC
I would be interested in such a site if it would post real enterprise content without linux zealotry. I mean, it should cover .NET, Java, Oracle, MS SQL Server etc etc.
It would’ve been so easy to say without zealotry to be ok, but no. Maybe some’ll make a site without anti-linux zealotry too.
I (used to) go to OSAlert on a regular basis for exciting news about OS technology, and especially alternative OS’s, and *especially* interviews.
Something got lost and I think the quality has detoriated significantly the past few years.
Please stay focused.
We are focused more than we ever were before; however the team only has a select skill set from which to speak from. Want more alternative news? Please submit it, or put yourselves forward as an editor. OSAlert needs people with additional skill sets to write content for the site and contribute to the diversity.
Expecting better content, when I^aEURTMm a web-devloper and couldn^aEURTMt tell you anything insightful about the latest release of ReactOS, is expecting content to just magic itself out of the sky. If you want detailed web developer news, I can do that; but that isn^aEURTMt OSAlert^aEURTM demographic.
I’ve tried in the past to get in contact but I’ve found any request as to fall on deaf ears – so yes, there are people out there who would like to contribute and make osnews.com a better place but it is difficult when the site manager ignores emails.
All of us receive all e-mails sent to the crew address. I am at a loss to remember since my becoming an editor, a single e-mail you have sent to us at [email protected]^aEUR”my gmail search turns up nothing. You^aEURTMve submitted four links, of which I believe all were published.
If they^aEURTMre deaf ears, it^aEURTMs because you^aEURTMre not saying anything^aEUR”and the ^aEUR~conversations^aEURTM section doesn^aEURTMt count, we have provided a response to your^aEUR”to put it blunty^aEUR”trolls there previously.
If you have something you wish to contribute Kawaii, please address it in the proper manner to the team, instead of taking pot shots from your armchair.
I actually wrote some articles and forwarded it to you guys thinking that you would sooner want to host it on your own site instead of linking it to my blog. Since I never received a reply as to why it was not accepted, I assumed it was ignored. If article quality was poor, the quality of English was substandard then why not state it in an email reply? if it is outside the scope of this website, why not state it in a reply email?
Edited 2009-07-03 02:08 UTC
If you submit a link to us via the submission form (or even as an email), then no, I’m not going to handle each and every of those submissions personally with an email. We get dozens of those each day, it would be retarded and pointless to do so.
If you send me an original article submission, you’ll get a reply. But from what I recall, you only submitted links to your blog, and now you’re crying because I didn’t link to all of them on OSAlert.
Generally, when someone submits an article, we’re eager to publish it. But if that article is already published on a personal blog, we’re reluctant to re-publish it. Because it’s not our policy to re-publish already-published articles, we’d need to ask the author to remove it from the blog, and we prefer not to do that. So we ask that submitters not put the articles on their blogs unless we decline them.
Now, I don’t know whether this is what happened in your case, and I also understand that we don’t reply back with a decision on sumbissions in a timely manner sometimes, and for that I apologize.
We welcome your future submissions.
Yes, more focused on mainstream stories.
Those news I get elsewhere anyway.
I for one would welcome such an addition to OSAlert, in fact I’d be tempted to contribute to it. I own a small company and I program “enterprise” code for a living (I hate the term “enterprise” it’s just a buzzword to justify huge costs and it makes the managers happy, in the end it’s just programming with all the problems it entails).
I’ve used some enterprise support forums from time to time (developerWorks, theserverside, etc), but these are mostly that, support forums. Every platform has its own, richfaces, icefaces, jboss, etc. And there is very good reason for that, as enterprise software is often complex, cumbersome and any developer who deals with it at first is overwhelmed by the sheer size and complexity -examples of over-engineering, imho.
But what I would like is a site that covers news/discussions about the platforms in a slightly less technical than a forum but slightly more than just informative -like eWeek and InfoWorld as mentioned here.
For example, for a while now I’ve been meaning to blog/write an article about how sucky JSF is (no arguing please, I’ve been using it for years and it just sucks) and how another platform like Google Web Toolkit or Ext-GWT in particular is much more suited for enterprise-grade applications. This Enterprise section would allow me to do that and share my views with others, and/or I could be shown any misconceptions I may have on the subject, compare to other platforms, etc. In platform specific forums, this is not really possible, most discussion is focused on the platform itself with few distractions.
OSAlert could host such a discussion in a holistic view, in much the same the way it does for Operating Systems.
Anyway, my 2c, in short: go for it.
PS. I would like to help, but my time is very short and I would only be able to help sporadically.
I would also welcome this concept.
I am a developer with some decision-making responsibility in a small software company that focuses on the “enterprise” market. Like Codex, I would like to help, but am too busy to take an active regular role, but might be able to make an occasional contribution.
In any case, I would certainly add the site to my regular reading list.
It seems that the editors are not contactable if one is vision-impaired or blind, as the email addresses are expressed as images, as far as I can tell. I don’t see any alternative formats for them, though maybe I am missing something.
Given that I am vision-impaired and I directly know around 10 extremely technological blind people (some with popular news sites of their own), of which at least one reads this site regularly, I think it’s reasonable to assume that there must be more of us in the world. Regardless of the number of people; at least two of your readers definitely are being excluded from being able to contact the editors. Naturally, as I am one of them, I feel that this is a shame :-).
It would be much-appreciated if you could make it possible for us to contact the editors.
Thanks for your time.
[email protected] forwards to the whole team, and you can contact me personally at [email protected]
Apologies if you^aEURTMve had any difficulty contacting us.
Every episode of the podcast since episode 3 has read aloud the email address of the enter crew and there is a contact form that submits to the crew accessible in the header of every single page. In addition, Kroc has published the addresses below.
What other manner would be better?
Thanks to all who’ve replied. I am very pleased to see that the editorial team takes this issue seriously — thanks to all of you for getting back to me :-).
Regarding the podcast — that’s great (unfortunately I haven’t got ’round to listening yet, but I am a subscriber). I’m sure you’ll agree that it shouldn’t be required to listen to the podcast to get email addresses, which leads us on to the second point you made, and where something odd has stopped me from noticing the links you mention that are on every page…
I see now that you are absolutely right regarding the contact link. The funny thing is it took me searching the site source code to find it… Due to the increased text size I have imposed on Safari, the links wrap around and the “FAQs” and “Contact” links actually come /below/ the dark-background link bar on my screen. Because the text of the links is almost the same colour as the main page background, I have never seen them :-). Ironically, it is my blind friends that would never have noticed this and would have been able to access that page with less trouble :-D.
Anyway, that clears a lot of things up. Thanks again, to all of you for the input.
You should also be able to use the private message feature, which isn’t any less friendly to the vision-impaired than any other web form.
I think you Thom should do away with the Page 1 and Page 2, which are rather vague, and replace them with Tech News and OS News. You could then expand on this and add another tab for Enterprise Computing.
I think this would make things clearer and stop people from whining about non-OS related news items on a website called OSAlert.
I’ll agree with badtz about the value in OSAlert covering the more ‘obscure’ topics, that’s why I read it. News about OSX/Windows proliferates in all the mainstream outlets, so sticking to a niche certainly helps in keeping OSAlert unique and valuable.
That said, you ought to consider how you can leverage that kind of niche in the enterprise IT world. I wouldn’t attempt to guess how to accomplish such a task because combining ‘obscure’ and ‘enterprise’ is a bit of a paradox.
I don’t think it’s necessarily a paradox all the time though. Many “enterprises” (I hate that term too, hehe) don’t always want to go the MS/RH/Novell route; how some of these more obscure technologies and OSes fit into a real working environment where money is made everyday is a very interesting subject.
My business embraces different technologies no matter how big or small the developer/maker is, provided that it does just a couple different things: provides good value, and facilitates the user’s productivity.
If those two things are satisfied, it’s open game as to what we want to use. It’s a very rewarding environment to work in, and I think a site (or division of a site) devoted to that would be cool.
On the contrasting side, I think it would be good for many people in the academic or scientific communities that champion their tech to see it’s not always a great fit for the enterprise, and therefore everyone can understand each other a little bit more.
I think it is indeed a promising concept, somewhat of a hybrid between the mainstream IT online rags, and OSAlert.
How about a website that talks about how to install and integrate non Microsoft systems together. As in, I have zero Microsoft systems and it is going to stay that way and I’m looking for the best of breed products to do x. How do I integrate x and y so they work best.
Note: That means no mono or anything else like that which came from Microsoft or is an open source product to replace it. You know what I mean.
I’ve been looking for a site with enterprise computing news which would keep it’s focus on technology and not just publish companies’ press releases and paid PR articles, but I found nothing that I would be satisfied with. I am sure such site would find it’s readers and I, for one, have my RSS reader ready.