O ranking da Webby,  considerada o Oscar da Internet, ficou assim:

- A expansão do site de classificados Craiglist para além de São Francisco, em 2000;

- O lançamento da plataforma para anunciantes AdWords, feito pelo Google em 2000;

- A enciclopédia virtual Wikipedia, que entrou no ar em 2001 e atualmente conta com 14 milhões de artigos, publicados em 271 idiomas;

- A abertura para serviços de trocas de arquivos geradas pelo fechamento do Napster, em 2001;

- A primeira oferta pública de ações do gigante das buscas Google, em 2004

- A revolução dos vídeos online a partir de 2006 e seu boom nas plataformas de compartilhamento;

- O crescimento e a difusão do Facebook e do Twitter, a partir de 2006

- O lançamento do iPhone, da Apple, em 2007, o que alterou a concepção da funcionalidade e dos usos do telefone celular;

- A campanha presidencial do presidente dos Estados Unidos, Barack Obama, que teve na internet a sua base de apoio;

- Os protestos após a eleição do Irã, em 2009, que, através do Twitter, eclodiram por todo o planeta.

Webby is a “web link” information script by speechless, whereby it display titles and other relevant information from links given in irc channels. It can also be used to test and contstruct regular expression in channel.

My only concern is the network spamfilter; Z:lines, and the ‘non-safe_search’ on the script.

Example:

< Solitary_Scar > @webby www.debian.org
< bot > Debian — The Universal Operating System (http://tinyurl.com/dqx8 )( 200; text/html; iso8859-1; 14791 bytes )
< bot > Debian GNU/Linux is a free distribution of the GNU/Linux operating system. It is maintained and updated through the work of many users who volunteer their time and effort.

Example2:

< Solitary_Scar > @webby www.coffeegeeksvslinuxgeeks.net
< bot > webby: Couldn’t open socket: host is unreachable (http://www.coffeegeeksvslinuxgeeks.net )

Webby will start working tomorrow Nov 21th, for private channels.

Hace muy poco se entregó la lista oficial de los ganadores de los Webby 2000’s Top 10 que es algo así como un Oscar para los acontecimientos y hechos mas significativos que se han presentado en Internet en la primera década del 2000.  Así quedaron las cosas:

.Craigslist expands outside San Francisco (2000): La expansión de este portal de todo tipo de clasificados que pasó de operar en la ciudad de San Francisco a tener presencia en más de 500 ciudades alrededor del mundo y en 50 países,  marcó la base del funcionamiento de las Web como negocio y su potencial, demostrando y marcando un hito histórico en la digitalización de los medios impresos, ya que a partir de esta estructura de negocio, fueron miles de diarios y revistas los que se vieron motivados a ver la Internet como una oportunidad para ampliar y diversificar las fronteras de las empresas.

.Google AdWords launches (2000): En mi concepto uno de los logros mas excepcionales en el mundo de los medios de comunicación. Google AdWords abrió la posibilidad de hacer promoción de cualquier tipo de empresa y negocio logrando digitalizár la pauta publicitaria y trayendo consigo un modelo que trae una cantidad de ingresos que tiene hoy en día a Google como a una de las organizaciones mas poderosas del mundo. Con este practico, sencillo y útil sistema es posible elaborar campañas pulicitarias con un gran nivel de segmentación además de hacerles un seguimiento estadistico impecable, para poder medir el retorno de la inversión. 

.Google Wikipedia (2001): Gracias a dios nació Wikipedia la enciclopedia  mas completa que jamas haya existido y lo mejor gratuita y alimentada por nosotros mismos. Se socializo el conocimiento y es un excelente método de compartir, corregir y enriquecer la información por personas en todo el mundo.

.Napster Shut Down (2001): Desafortunada o afortunadamente (la verdad es depende del criterio de cada persona) se cerró este monstruo digital en donde podíamos obtener y compartir música de todo tipo. Solo era necesario hacer un clic para bajar el programa y en menos de nada ya teníamos listas interminables de canciones en nuestro ordenador. El inicio y final de este marcó un cambio en la industria de la música, se quebraron disqueras, los artistas tuvieron que cambiar su estructura de negocio ampliando sus giras y reduciendo la promoción de sus discos que cada vez los compraban menos y dejaban de ser rentables además de su principal base de ingresos.

.Google IPO (2004): El inicio de Google Maps, Android y la mayoría de las aplicaciones que Google nos ofrece para facilitarnos la vida y de las cuales muchos no podíamos prescindir, diversificando la empresa y argumentando el porque se considera a esta empresa como uno de los pilares de la innovación a nivel mundial. 

.Online video revolution (2006): Adobe’s Flash 9 video player se quedó atrás y se formó la revolución del video digital dando la oportunidad a todos los usuarios de Internet  de agilizar la reproducción de vídeos en Internet sin necesidad de descargarlos y es de allí en donde nace el monstruo YOUTUBE que no necesita de ningún tipo de presentación porque ya todos lo conocemos.

Facebook opens to non-college students and Twitter takes off (2006): existen personas que no pueden prescindir de esta red social, se pluralizo el Media Networking y millones de personas en el mundo comenzaron a compartir fotografías y comentarios a lo largo del mundo entero. Después fue adquirida por los creadores de Twitter y su creador se hizo uno de los jóvenes mas ricos del mundo.

The iPhone debuts (2007): Acá difiero y le daría este puesto a BING, pues si bien el I-Phone y Apple en general hacen constantemente un uso impecable de la plataforma de la Internet para la promoción de los productos, se podría premiar como estrategia publicitaria pero no como un acontecimiento al nivel de los antes mencionados. Me declaro fan del I-Phone y si tuviera que escoger entre los 10 productos más representativos de la historia éste desfilaría en mi lista junto a la Coca-Cola, el Ordenador, la TV y algunos otros pero no olvidemos que no estamos hablando solo de productos sino de los acontecimientos mas importantes en Internet de la primera década del 2000. 

U.S. Presidential Campaign (2008): Mensajes de texto, redes sociales, AdWords, Blogs, una Web de landing impecable fueron de gran ayuda para poder llevar a la Casa Blanca al hoy en día “Hombre más poderoso del mundo” según la lista Forbes.  Obama acumuló una votación sin precedentes en la historia de estados Unidos. Esta en particular resulta la mas inspiradora para mi, pues es en el área en donde trabajo y sustenta sin darle cabida a ningún argumento en contra, el porque todas las empresas deben contemplar entre sus planes de Marketing a la Internet.

Iranian election protests (2009): Twitter fue la plataforma en donde millones de Iranies plasmaron su decepción e inconformismo con los muy sospechosas elecciones de 2009 cautivando la atención de los medios y causando un revuelo a nivel mundial pidiendo a gritos el respeto de la democracia y la justicia.  

Ya veremos que nos trae la próxima década, tengo algunas predicciones de acontecimientos que darán mucho de que hablar sobre los cuales haré hincapié en mi siguiente articulo. 

Rafael Calle Umaña Marketing Digital 

www.rafaelcalle.com

L’Accademia Internazionale di Scienze e Arti digitali di New York ha assegnato i Webby Awards 2009, premi per i dieci eventi che più hanno cambiato la vita digitale nell’ultimo decennio. La lista completa è visualizzabile sul sito ufficiale, tuttavia tra i vincitori ovvi ci sono Facebook (nato come sito di connessione tra studenti di college e poi ampliato a livello mondiale), la chiusura di Napster (che di fatto ha sancito una rivoluzione in fatto di file sharing e musica digitale), Wikipedia (notissima enciclopedia libera e aggiornabile da tutti) e Google AdWords (che permette agli inserzionisti di individuare clienti mirati verso i prodotti da pubblicizzare). Come è logico, comunque, in una lista di soli dieci posti per forza di cose bisogna omettere qualcuno. Io ci avrei buttato dentro l’iPod, ad esempio, anche se poi leggo che all’ottavo posto è presente l’iPhone (che in effetti, include anche la funzione iPod), e l’uso a livello mondiale del blog come forma di comunicazione fruibile da tutti (anche se si imputa la nascita dei diari on line all’anno 1997, il “verbo” to blog -bloggare- è nato nel 1999). Sono, probabilmente, liste che lasciano il tempo che trovano. In ogni caso questo tipo di premi servirà (spero) per migliorare quello che c’è stato e tirar fuori dal cilindro quello che ancora non c’è, magari segnando altri cambiamenti epocali. Spero di aver ragione ad aspettarmi nuove meraviglie. Ma magari ne riparliamo nel 2019…

URL : http://www.flashgame-girl.com/Puzzle-board/Webby.html

Game description :

Find all the hiding little creatures in this short game.

Game controls :

Use Mouse to interact.

‘youtube ‘ hala yasaklı diye hayıflanan nadide çiçeklerden biriymişim meğer. Herkeşler JACKER diye bir programı indirmek suretiyle çözmüş konuyu. Fırt diye iniyor, hemen kuruluyor ve başka bişicikler yapmadan site normal normal açılıyor.

Tomorrow (10 November) is the last day to register online votes for the Construction Computing Awards 2009, promoted by BTC, the UK-based publisher of Construction Computing, CADuser and other magazines.

Back in August, when nominations opened I blogged on ExtranetEvolution.com about there being no category for Web 2.0 type applications. Since then, I have been thinking further about this, and I have come up with five reasons why we don’t yet have any awards in this field….

1. First, the fact that the Construction Computing website (and those of its sister publications) doesn’t have a blog, a Twitter account, an RSS feed, discussion forum or bookmarking tools might be a clue that social media isn’t really on BTC’s radar (see post). Other publishers targeting the business-to-business market – and the architecture, engineering, construction (AEC) and property sectors in particular (eg: Emap, Reed, UBM) – have all been revamping their websites and offering new online services to build stronger connections with their readerships, but we currently have no construction IT publication or organisation that ‘walks the Web 2.0 talk’.
2. Second, for Construction Computing readers to vote on Web 2.0 applications they really should be using them, and despite the enthusiasm of the leading media channels, individuals and companies in the AEC sector have not been the most enthusiastic adopters of the tools and technologies. Instead, some organisations have gone out of their way to restrict or even completely block access to some platforms. So, individual ignorance or scepticism, combined with corporate control freakery, might also limit meaningful voting.
3. Third, the success of awards often depends on capturing the interest and attention of the relevant industry organisations, companies, software vendors and other potential sponsors. At this early stage in AEC adoption of Web 2.0, few software vendors have emerged with marketing/PR budgets big enough to justify involvement, the effects of the recession are still being felt, and ongoing unease about Web 2.0 (see 2. above) may limit some corporate enthusiasm.
4. Fourth, forget anonymous judges, behind-closed-doors decision-making and closed voting processes. Web 2.0 awards should naturally be decided based upon the transparent “wisdom of crowds”. Open nomination of candidates would be a start, perhaps using online polls to decide upon a final shortlist. Publishing the names of those voting might deter some people from participating, but equally it could encourage others pleased to be associated with the company/application/product they’ve endorsed. And I think revealing the final voting figures during or immediately after any awards (so that we all know how much the winners won by, or how narrowly runners-up missed out) would be good. (The Webbys, for example, have a People’s Voice Award, which I think is a good model)
5. Traditional awards programmes often involve a lavish awards dinner: lots of tables of ten getting dressed up before sitting down to a three-course meal and getting drunk networking while watching a steady succession of awards being spread around many of the table sponsors (for the Construction Computing awards “Tables of 10 are available from £1695″ – ouch!). Perhaps new technologies deserve a new approach? Just as web 2.0 has adopted the informal ‘unconference’ type approach, perhaps we should be thinking about more informal awards ‘unceremonies’, maybe with an element of ‘tweet-up’, complete with live-blogging and other audience involvement?

In fact, I am beginning to think about organising some Be2camp awards….

One of the hardest things about developing a wave robot is coming up with an original idea. My smiley bot [smiley_wave@appspot.com] was just for me to play with wave & get used to uploading apps to App Engine / get back into java coding and using eclipse. Now that that’s done, it’s time to think of something useful; an application that people will actually want to use. The point of this post is partly a brainstorming session for myself, and partly to put these ideas out there to anyone stuck for ideas, who think they can code one of these, and finally, to encourage others to submit ideas.

Webby – The Web Service Robot
A robot which when added, detects any URLs pointing to web services, generates a form based on the parameters, then submits this data via SOAP, and puts the return value into a new blip.

Squely – A Database Query Bot
A robot which can run SQL statements against given connection strings. At present, this will only be possible if the database is publicly accessible, or if you have a wave server installed on the same network as your database.

QIFry – Interesting
This robot would monitor waves for key words, then on detection, pop in an interesting fact about that word (e.g. if it spots the word Banana, it says “did you know that bananas are herbs, and these shrubs can walk?”). It also monitors for boring words, and replaces them with more eloquent ones.

Pretty – Pretty Print
Detects common languages / markup & changes the layout to make it more readable.

Recipe
Finds recipes based on ingredients or dish names in the wave.

FindMe
Uses the GEO features of HTML 5 to locate where each wave user is and lets wavers know where their nearest wavers are. This could also take info about their interests to help match people up to folks whose hobbies they share.

The Webby Awards keeps sending me emails asking me to submit our website again this year. “Hurry, the 2009 deadline is October 30th”! Yes, last year we submitted SpellSpace.com. We created a login for the Webby judge to evaluate our website. After months of waiting, we finally got notice that we didn’t win anything.   

Nothing, there goes $735 for submission under 2 categories.  Not even a mention about SpellSpace on their website.   Do a search on their website and you get nothing. But, what I find even more unbelievable  is that the Webby Awards judges NEVER accessed our website. The last IP to access and log on to our website under the webby log in was our IP address, back in October 2008.   

There you have it. Want to waste your money, then submit your new up-and-coming website to the Webby awards. The only way you will get any recognition from the Webby awards is if you are already popular and known. That way it ensures they get the press they need to scam more Web entrepreneurs.

The Webby Awards Scams New Websites

Ödüllü blog’ta her gün insana mutluluk veren 1000 harika şeyden biri yayınlanıyor. Açken buzdolabında restoran yemeği bulmak, laptop’ın pili tam bitecekken onu prize yetiştirmek, trafikte sıkışmış arabaların yanından yürüyerek geçmek …

http://1000awesomethings.com/

Kyte Launches Pro Service; allows publishers to broadcast HD streams from multiple sources; TV Guide using the service for red carpet coverage at the Emmys. (Kyte Blog)

MTV Video Awards Generated More than 5 Million Streams; Kanye West’s controversial comments help drive plays within 24 hours of the show airing. (TV by the Numbers)

Lessons Learned from FOX’s “Tweet-peats;” exec says first repeat of the show is not really the best time for Twitter. (Ad Age)

Netflix Streaming Content Count Now Up to 17,000; number of titles available to “Watch Instantly” up from the 12,000 title figure it used to tout. (Video Business)

HBO to Put Bored to Death Pilot Online; new comedy will be shown on iTunes, Fancast, and Amazon VOD. (Broadcasting & Cable)

14th Annual Webby Awards Open for Submissions; entry deadline is October 30, 2009. (Webby Awards)

From the Greenpeace Australia Pacific Blog

Hello! My name is Mary Ann and I am from the Philippines. As I write this, we are sailing over the big blue expanse of the Pacific Ocean.

It has been more than 12 years since I first got involved with Greenpeace. Way back in 1990, I first read about Greenpeace on a register at the National Library. There was a picture of a GP inflatable confronting a whaling ship. That struck me very deeply, I thought wow these guys were really out there at the forefront! I promised myself that I will volunteer for the organization by hook or by crook. This was the time when there was no Southeast Asian office yet and I didn’t know how I could even start, much less volunteer for an organization that wasn´t in my country yet.

Seven years later by a wonderful fluke, my professor in college was very good friends with one of the campaigners. I made a dash to fill in one of two positions available for the on-the-job training with Greenpeace.
That was 1997. I have never looked back since.

Volunteering for the Greenpeace Southeast Asian office got me involved with different campaigns doing research and logistics, as well as sailing on the ships over the years. Doing environmental work with GP not only made me aware, but also gave me a chance to make a difference and exact change with the urgent issues of the day.

So here I am now. From volunteer, to deckhand and now, as the new webbie for the Defending Our Pacific Ship Tour.

It doesn´t matter that I spent the night moving like a contortionist on my plane seat to relieve cramps from sitting for so long. I was more excited being the webbie for the Pacific leg of the Esperanza tour.

Through my eyes, you will see life on-board a Greenpeace ship, a front-row seat on what goes on, the work we do on a daily basis, but most of all it will be my privilege to present to you dear followers, a most alarming and appalling issue that is worrying and threatening the Pacific island nations: the non-stop plundering of the Pacific fishing grounds by distant fishing nations.

Stay, read and watch my fellow landlubbers. Find out what goes on beyond your fair shores. What you discover may surprise you, disgust you…but one thing I can assure you, what you will see in the following weeks will move you. Just as it moved me to share with you in the coming days, Greenpeace´s efforts to protect the worlds last relatively healthy stocks of tuna.

Mary Ann Mayo

This is a rather disturbing redo of the Duck Tales intro. That show was definitely one of my favorites as a kid. The best ones were when they went on adventures that took a few episodes, like when they went find a lost city of gold. I haven’t seen the show in years, and am afraid that if I do, it will taint my childhood memories.

Hace unas semanas una weya me mandó un link cagadísimo, se trata de http://sragranados.blogspot.com , la señora Granados es mamá de Webby (que quién es Webby? yo tampoco sé) el chiste es que él escribió en algún lado esto: “Mi mamá entro a mi cuarto y me dijo que la gente en internet es mala para mi salud y que todos ustedes no existen y son unos mentirosos.”

Así que el blog se abrió para que todos le demostremos a la Sra Granados que sí somos reales y así, los más originales ganarán 35 internets y una sala de Muebles Troncoso.

Aquí les dejo unas imagenes que me han parecido de las mejores hasta hoy:

también podemos ver en el blog la participación de cierta alcohólica que ya conocemos….

El omar borracho también contribuyó:

Y el Aleks no podía faltar:

Y lo más cagado de todo, la canción de la Sra Granados:

Orale, a mandar sus colaboraciones! En chinga!

Te dije, wey, que sí soy real y te valió madre!

well, been long using google search, now with yahoo and microsoft coming together , will it be truly good ? Not sure for now, as google has been pretty long dominating the web search. Let’s hope Bing will do some good in near future.

Bing seems to be looking good, with early success of it’s launch. But google is also keep on its toe. Gonna be a long fight I guess.

Webby Logo

This is Really a Good News for all the Webers, who surfing the internet-world everyday throught their browsers and other gadgets.

Yes, This is the Award for  “Honoring the Internet’s best”.

The leading international Awards people,  TheWebby Awards are announced recently.

Really enocurging the People in the web world.

About Webby

The awards are given by the leading people in the Internet World.

Check out the winners list,

Awards are given in many categories,

Among the winners, let me start to introduce with the famous person,

Most important person for the Internet world.

One Man- One World- Without him, No Internet world…

Hope you identified the person..

Yes he is Mr. SIR Tim Berners Lee, who invented the HTTP to create the meaning of WWW.

He got the LifeTime Achievement Award.

Watch out the other winners.

Visit the live site for more details on The Webby International Awards .

Last fall, Lexus launched an online entertainment channel called the ‘L Studio’ that featured an eclectic mix of high-toned programming covering everything from art to science. One of the lighter comedic shows they featured was Web Therapy. Lexus recruited “Friends” Alum Lisa Kudrow to headline Web Therapy and play a wacky shrink that counsels her patients via web cam. The ‘L Studio’ is Lexus’ attempt to connect with consumers and turn their brand into a lifestyle.

So far, so good.

Kudrow just received her first Webby for this hit series, and to keep the ball rolling Lexus recently recruited fellow former Friend Courtney Cox Arquette to appear virtually alongside Kudrow as a psychic who has lost her visions and is desperate to get them back. Cox even pokes fun at her husband’s large family and sister-in-law who plays a psychic on Medium.

It’s been five years since the two have appeared alongside one another, so tune in July 6 to see if the reunion will be as buzz worthy as Lexus hopes.

Chris Webby is a young, new (and somehow unsigned!) artist from Norwalk, Connecticut.  At a first glance many people will try and label Webby as “just another Asher Roth wannabee” however, that is not the case at all.  Webby’s songs are much more edgier, raw, and the overal vibe you get after listening has a real rebel/bad boy feel to it.  Chris isn’t just another one of those rapper’s trying to capitalize on Asher’s recent success;  Webby put out an album over a year ago entitled “D.A.R.E. (a Dope Ass Rapper’s Expose).“ Some tracks you really need to check out from this album incude:

Raise Ya Cups Up

“flippin fat bags all day.. you could call me santa”

Ganja

“we stay blaze, haze and ak… i’ve been high everyday since the fuckin 8th grade”

This is just the beginning of Webby’s success, for the past 2 years Chris has been tearing up the music scene over at Hofstra University where he even had an opportunity to open up for the Lupe Fiasco concert.  Webby recently released another album in the spring of 2009 entitled “The White Noise LP.” He has finally started generating some well deserved respect with the release of this album; some of my favorites include:

If you only listen/download one song then please check out this shit right here, extremely hot smoking anthem for the potheads.. (La La La)

La La La

“smokin La La La give that bowl a light.. grab the bong even tighter than I hold the mic”

Wake Up

“..and if I’m not here tomorrow light an L in my memory, pour out some hennessy, fuck it.. just remember me”

Get Down

“who ever knew the stoner could write and spit venom.. get ready for the cobra to strike”

You can listen to and download Webby’s entire “The White Noise LP” for FREE at the following link

Chris Webby – The White Noise LP

But it doesn’t stop there… Chris has been hard at work putting together a new mixtape entitled “Teenage Mutant Ninja Rapper.” You can check out two of the tracks Webby has leaked so far right here

I’m So Broke

Where The Party At

You can learn more about the talented young rapper who’s looking to put CT, Hofstra and the suburbs all on the map at the following links

Facebook Fan Page

Webby’s Twitter

Myspace

Oh and for you hardcore fans here three more older tracks you probably havent heard

BuddaFlie

(Webby spits over Crazytown’s Butterfly.. straight fire right there!)

and

Get From Round Me

(spits over a Lil’ Wayne beat… hot stuff)

and

Asher Lost

(Asher Roth diss… pretty funny lol)

The Webby Awards is the leading international award honoring excellence on the Internet. Established in 1996 during the Web’s infancy, the Webbys are presented by The International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences, a 550-member body of leading Web experts, business figures, luminaries, visionaries and creative celebrities.

Reflecting the tremendous growth of the Internet as a tool for business and everyday lives, the 13th Annual Webby Awards expands the mission of the Webby by honoring excellence in over 100+ Website, Interactive Advertising, Online Film & Video, and Mobile Web categories.

Watch them!

Nominees

I’m seriously excited about YouTube.com’s Webby Web site. Like, totally.

It’s got a huge gallery of acceptance speeches, and the best part is that most of these speeches are five words long. It’s also got all of the award-winning videos in one place.

So I’m going to put a plug in for one of my former employers, the Detroit Free Press. Check out its five-word speech. All of you newspaper junkies out there will cheer and begin constructing countless old-school pressroom hats. And all of you ne’er-do-wells who aren’t reading newspapers? Well, just watch.

Then, check out the “Courtney Hawkins comes home” video package that won the Freep its award. It’s proof that you can tell a good story with stills and video in under three minutes.

Watch Webby Footage; check out the five-word acceptance speeches from winners and celebs as well as the gala and red carpet. (YouTube) CNET asks: Do We Still Need the Webbys?

A Closer Look at QuickTime X in Snow Leopard; new on-screen player controls, video capture and editing among the new features in the software. (The Apple Blog)

Demand for PC-TV Tuners Drops from 2008 Levels; In-Stat says the recession, slow consumer demand and competition from online television will cause unit shipments to fall 11 percent this year. (In-Stat)

Publish iPhone-Friendly Video with Sorenson 360; viewing can be done through iPhone’s Web browser and does not require a separate app. (release)

DTV Switch Could Boost Mobile TV; companies will use freed up spectrum to broadcast television signals to handsets. (The LA Times)

Canadian Government Creates Fund for “Digital Shovels;” $200 million Canadian dollars ($178 million USD) will help build out the country’s new media infrastructure. (The Hollywood Reporter)

You know you have a good idea when there are half a dozen implementations of it. All essentially the same but filled with subtle nuance. The latest idea I have stumbled across is the “semi-static” website generator. The idea is so painfully obvious I cannot believe that it has taken us until 2009 to do it properly.

What is a semi-static website? Well it’s actually something like this blog. I spend ages writing and editing the articles but once I publish something I don’t generally change it unless it has factual errors. I need something that allows me to make changes but my content easily but my content doesn’t really benefit in anyway from being stored in a database or being generated dynamically on the fly because it is going to spend most of its life not being changed.

If you look at a lot of CMS systems the same is true. People want to be able to edit and reorganise material easily but they are rarely changing it more than once a week. The majority of the time the pages are static.

If you look at a number of CMS or Wiki systems they are actually quite complicated. Before you can get going and generate your content (which remember is the core of what you want to do) you might have to setup a database and get the application deployed to a webserver.

What the semi-static website generator does is provide a set of scripts that allow you to edit and create content and then “compile” your site. The result is set of static HTML, Javascript and CSS files that can be deployed to your static webserver (which is generally pretty easy to setup, most servers will come with Apache all ready to go).

When you combine it with a bit of DVCS magic deployment is even easier. You just checkin your new pages and then update the webserver copy of the content.

So if you want to get into this kind of content management what options do you have? Well you have a lot of choice indeed. Almost all of them are Ruby projects and they have a certain similarity to the Rails concept of code generation. You will be issuing commands like “create page”, “build site” and so on. You operate at one remove from it.

There are many, many, many choices but for myself I chose three to look at Nanoc, Webby and Jekyll. Nanoc I came across via Proggit and was struck by the simplicity and clarity of the documentation.

Installation of all three is via gems but there are some differences here. Nanoc is a very simple Gem and works with HTML and Erb by default, if you want to use a markup language or different templating language you will have to install the gem yourself. This means it also installs easily under JRuby too.

Webby by comparison is a very noisy install, I think it may have its dependencies slightly wrong as it installs a version of rake, flexmock and rspec which are surely development dependencies rather than anything I as a user would need to use for the framework. It also uses hpricot which means you can’t install it under JRuby.

Jekyll has a similarly demanding set of requirements but will install under JRuby. Jekyll did feel a lot like a personal solution as I was installing it. Textile is great but if I am going to be using Markdown why do I need to install RedCloth?

Overall I liked the nanoc install experience most.

Moving on to using them. Nanoc and Webby are very similar in that they use generators to create new elements in the site. Jekyll seems to use convention instead. At this point it is worth mentioning that there are some big differences between the three products in their intentions. Nanoc is a general website creator but it does have a certain amount of opinion as to how to do that. For example it generates very nice clean website urls by putting each page in a directory by itself and then creating the page as an index.html page within that directory. Make sure you have your webserver configured appropriately.

Webby is pretty flexible but comes with some built-in templates that will be build you a basic page, a tumblog style site, a normal blog and a presentation. That was a pretty neat feature and one the other frameworks didn’t have.

However the negative side to this is that the templating is based on Blueprint; which is both excellent as Blueprint is a great way of designing pages and a pain as Blueprint is actually pretty involved in terms of understanding the grid concept and what the various span-x css classes translate to. I felt that Webby did a great job of offering cross-browser styling that looked good but that in doing so it didn’t make the simple stuff simple. With my trial site my sidebar came out on the bottom of the page and I didn’t really know how to get on the right-hand side of the page. In nanoc I could just float: right it, in Webby I felt I had to understand the grid that had been created for me. I’m not sure it really allowed you to use any CSS knowledge someone might already have but the benefit is you know your site is going to look good across browsers and in print and so on. For more professional site development this might actually sway you to select Webby.

Jekyll is primarily a tool for publishing a blog style site so it has a lot of built-in support for special information relating to posts but in terms of layouts it uses general HTML templating like Nanoc does. It allows  for the creation of little chunks of reusable content across pages via includes but lacks some of the flexibility of Nanoc’s tag helpers. While focussing on blog publishing Jekyll actually encompasses a powerful set of processing tools for content that effectively allows you to use it as CMS. Jekyll is used to process GitPages on GitHub, a real demonstration of its power beyond just blogging.

For what I wanted to do I initially felt that Nanoc was the best choice, it’s flexible, powerful and generates nice sites. Webby is powerful but didn’t expose that power to me in a way that made me feel in-control. However when I started to get to grips with Jekyll I was really amazed at how powerful the use of a few conventions were. Jekyll processes your site’s pages effectively in-place. It can choose to process your files if they match a naming convention (such as having a content extension like textile or markdown) and it uses an embedded YAML section in the file to do things like provide the title of the page or select the layout that the content should be displayed within. While Nanoc produces fancy URLs Jekyll made it easy to build more conventional websites consisting of clusters of pages.

Jekyll uses a small number of special directories (indicated by a leading underscore) to hold things like layouts, cross-page snippets and posts (if you are using the dated posting functionality). However for a simple site the number of directories and configuration files was significantly less than Nanoc. In fact you could get by with just a master page layout, which would require just one special directory and page within it. Everything that should have been simple was with Jekyll and the result was very close to a conventional website you might have coded by hand but extremely fast to create. It also uses just one command to press the pages and fire up a local server to view the pages. Both Webby and Nanoc seemed to make pressing and previewing slightly harder than it needed to be and at least once I forget to execute the Nanoc commands in the right order.

So, conclusions… Going forward I will be using both Nanoc and Jekyll. Webby I would be willing to consider but I don’t really have a task for it that would reward the additional effort I have to invest in its capabilities. If I just want to bang out pages for a website but minimise my effort and make it easy to abstract common content then I will definitely be using Jekyll. It is a joy to use. For sites that are maybe more based around articles or grouped content then I think I will be using Nanoc. The default URL construction is nice for hierarchical data (as long as you can stand the many directories) and there’s a sense that the configuration files make it easy to make changes that affect the site as a whole. However it does use a lot of scaffolding to achieve the effect and there are a lot of exposed options that could have been reduced by adopting some conventions Jekyll style.