Small Initiatives

In some projects for friends-and-family clients, I'm investigating open-source, Web-based software solutions in these categories, and hoping my site-visiting friends can point me to more options.

• Accounting: I'm checking out WebERP, and it seems powerful, but focused on wholesale or retail businesses that keep inventory instead of service businesses. Know of good options for those?

Just a quick shout-out: My pal Steve Yelvington has posted several items in recent days describing Morris Communications' development and deployment of a new site management system grounded in Drupal.

I'm a Drupal fan, natch, but even if you are not, these posts will be worth your time. Steve describes in detail the decisionmaking processes that led to building and organizing the administrative tools -- be they custom work or stock Drupal modules.

Techdirt applauds new efforts to repeal or rework Sarbanes-Oxley, the overwrought post-Enron accountability laws and the mass of new compliance rules and regulations that resulted from them.

As someone who lives with the overhead of these regulations every day, I agree, it's time to take another look.

Steve Outing cautions that style-over-substance print newspaper redesigns miss the best chance to retain loyal readers from older audiences:

"The key ... is to retain older readers by making the thinner print edition emphasize serious, quality journalism, retaining or expanding your paper's watchdog role in the community. Forget the stuff that's solely geared toward attracting young readers; they're for the most part gone from print.

"Then use the print edition to guide your paper readers to the extra stuff and the goodies that are on the digital side of the business."

Links all wishing I had gotten to them sooner:

• No news is no news: Jeff Jarvis' thoughts following a conference on new business models for news.
• Gannett pushes for more tech hires, data centers, niche sites: Mark Glaser interviews Jennifer Carroll, Gannett's vice president for digital content, about the company's Information Center strategy.

In 1984, I earned my bachelor's degree in journalism and political science. That second major instilled in me only two things: a deep-seated suspicion of all politicians, and an equally deep-seated desire to avoid friends-and-family conversations about politics in favor of doing my own homework and making up my own mind.

The Internet, circa 2008, makes that desire almost impossible to fulfill, worse even than four years ago, the last time I brought this up.