Monday, April 28, 2008
ICELE unveils integrated eDemocracy blog service using 21Publish
Monday, April 28, 2008 (Hamburg) – ICELE unveils integrated eDemocracy blog service using 21Publish
The International Centre of Excellence for Local eDemocracy (ICELE) recently unveiled their integrated eDemocracy blog service, running on technology by 21Publish. The new service, called Bloginabox, is targeted at civic leaders and offers a full range of services around blogging. Being the successor of the already hugely successful Readmyday platform, the new service shows various improvements such as easier registration workflows and basic marketing services around blogging. In addition, Bloginabox integrates a domain registration service to have politicians get their own domain and map it onto their blog.
Another major feature is the open directory for local authorities already running a blog. Such users can add their blog and appear in the already comprehensive directory of local authority blogs. ICELE here aims to provide an extensive directory of civic leaders and being the address to go to when looking for your local authority.
Fraser Henderson, ICELE Centre Manager commented “It is great to see so many civic leaders blogging and that popularity and interest in their online presence is on the rise. We have developed Bloginbox to build-on the success of Readmyday and feel that we can now offer a one- stop, bespoke solution that builds-in good blogging practice. We are also expanding our new blog directory on a daily basis and hope to have the most comprehensive list of local authority blogs in the UK”.
As technical partner, ICELE chose to stay with 21Publish, who are already running Readmyday. Leif Koch, Managing director at 21Publish, believes that “Providing an easy-to-use yet comprehensive blogging service is pivotal when targeting civil leaders. By adding domain registration and opening the platform to existing blogs, local authorities with packed schedules now have an even easier way of promoting their blogs and reaching out to their citizens. Being a powerhouse for Web 2.0 services, we are glad ICELE again has confidence in our expertise and experience for running eDemocracy services.”
The International Centre of Excellence for Local eDemocracy (ICELE) recently unveiled their integrated eDemocracy blog service, running on technology by 21Publish. The new service, called Bloginabox, is targeted at civic leaders and offers a full range of services around blogging. Being the successor of the already hugely successful Readmyday platform, the new service shows various improvements such as easier registration workflows and basic marketing services around blogging. In addition, Bloginabox integrates a domain registration service to have politicians get their own domain and map it onto their blog.
Another major feature is the open directory for local authorities already running a blog. Such users can add their blog and appear in the already comprehensive directory of local authority blogs. ICELE here aims to provide an extensive directory of civic leaders and being the address to go to when looking for your local authority.
Fraser Henderson, ICELE Centre Manager commented “It is great to see so many civic leaders blogging and that popularity and interest in their online presence is on the rise. We have developed Bloginbox to build-on the success of Readmyday and feel that we can now offer a one- stop, bespoke solution that builds-in good blogging practice. We are also expanding our new blog directory on a daily basis and hope to have the most comprehensive list of local authority blogs in the UK”.
As technical partner, ICELE chose to stay with 21Publish, who are already running Readmyday. Leif Koch, Managing director at 21Publish, believes that “Providing an easy-to-use yet comprehensive blogging service is pivotal when targeting civil leaders. By adding domain registration and opening the platform to existing blogs, local authorities with packed schedules now have an even easier way of promoting their blogs and reaching out to their citizens. Being a powerhouse for Web 2.0 services, we are glad ICELE again has confidence in our expertise and experience for running eDemocracy services.”
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- Posted by: marceldembach
Friday, April 18, 2008
Introducing the 4-day work week
Just recently I stumbled over an entry at 37Signals, saying their experiment of introducing a 4-day work week is a success. That's an interesting idea, though I feel it's generally more about having a not-too-strict work environment anyway. For quite some time people were stressing the fact they're working 80 or 90 hours a week, assuming they're getting stuff done. I agree with Jason in that out of such a high number of hours, less than half are really productive.
We at 21Publish are still working 5 days a week, though I think we're also quite efficient. Yet it's difficult to actually give it a shot, I admit I'd be thinking we're not getting all the work done in that timeframe. And we've had plenty of work in the past. Some projects included customization, though we have updated much of our backend to make it more stable and fast. Some new features are about to come as well, though we'll probably wait a few more weeks to get the updates rolled out smoothly.
Have a good weekend everyone.
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- Posted by: leifkoch
Wednesday, November 14, 2007
21Publish Inc. ends beta test phase of its classroom blogging service, 21Classes
November 14, 2007 - 21Classes Ends Beta Test Phase of its Educational Blogging Platform and Introduces New Features.
Launched in March 2007, 21Publish Inc. is announcing the end of the beta test phase of its classroom blogging service, 21Classes. The service has been received well by educators and continues to experience high, double digit growth rates each month. The service has been reliable since the beginning, but 21Publish decided to stay in the beta stage while introducing minor improvements and collecting customer feedback. Listening to 21Classes users has been a priority since the service was launched. The company’s CEO, Stefan Wiskemann, believes that "Keeping in touch with our customers is of utmost importance to us.” The company also collaborated with educational blogging experts such as Will Richardson and Konrad Glogowski. 21Classes believes in using technology to support rich pedagogical uses: "Our goal is to support pedagogical concepts with our platform. We do not just want to provide technology that teachers need to tweak in order to get some use out of it.”
In addition, 21Classes is now available as a dedicated solution that institutions can run on their own servers. Furthermore, in order to address the growing demand, the company now offers volume discounts for multiple teacher accounts. To celebrate the end of the beta period, the company has introduced more powerful fulltext search capabilities and improved management options for the 2.5 gigabyte web space provided with every teacher account.
About 21Publish Inc.
21Publish is a turnkey software solution for creating a private label blog service. 21Classes, a product of 21Publish Inc., is targeted directly at the educational sector.
21Classes allows educators to set up online classrooms with individual student blogs connected into a classroom portal, represented by a single home page. 21Classes is designed to ensure ease of use for teachers and students. Its customization, privacy, and security features provide teachers with maximum flexibility. The platform allows teachers to easily administer their online classrooms and select from a wide variety of moderation and user access options, including the ability to password-protect the entire site.
21Publish is located in the United States and Europe. Its customers include Amnesty International, McGraw-Hill, and Emap.
* * *
If you’d like more information or are interested in scheduling an interview, please contact Marcel Dembach, +1 (718) 395-2192, EST; marcel.dembach at 21publish dot com.
Launched in March 2007, 21Publish Inc. is announcing the end of the beta test phase of its classroom blogging service, 21Classes. The service has been received well by educators and continues to experience high, double digit growth rates each month. The service has been reliable since the beginning, but 21Publish decided to stay in the beta stage while introducing minor improvements and collecting customer feedback. Listening to 21Classes users has been a priority since the service was launched. The company’s CEO, Stefan Wiskemann, believes that "Keeping in touch with our customers is of utmost importance to us.” The company also collaborated with educational blogging experts such as Will Richardson and Konrad Glogowski. 21Classes believes in using technology to support rich pedagogical uses: "Our goal is to support pedagogical concepts with our platform. We do not just want to provide technology that teachers need to tweak in order to get some use out of it.”
In addition, 21Classes is now available as a dedicated solution that institutions can run on their own servers. Furthermore, in order to address the growing demand, the company now offers volume discounts for multiple teacher accounts. To celebrate the end of the beta period, the company has introduced more powerful fulltext search capabilities and improved management options for the 2.5 gigabyte web space provided with every teacher account.
About 21Publish Inc.
21Publish is a turnkey software solution for creating a private label blog service. 21Classes, a product of 21Publish Inc., is targeted directly at the educational sector.
21Classes allows educators to set up online classrooms with individual student blogs connected into a classroom portal, represented by a single home page. 21Classes is designed to ensure ease of use for teachers and students. Its customization, privacy, and security features provide teachers with maximum flexibility. The platform allows teachers to easily administer their online classrooms and select from a wide variety of moderation and user access options, including the ability to password-protect the entire site.
21Publish is located in the United States and Europe. Its customers include Amnesty International, McGraw-Hill, and Emap.
* * *
If you’d like more information or are interested in scheduling an interview, please contact Marcel Dembach, +1 (718) 395-2192, EST; marcel.dembach at 21publish dot com.
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- Posted by: marceldembach
Thursday, September 27, 2007
Blogging scholarship worth $10k
Something quite interesting for our student bloggers, especially at our 21Classes service: The Daniel Kovach Scholarship Foundation is giving away a $10,000 scholarship to a college student who blogs. That's a great idea of awarding the creativity of so many young bloggers, so if you are a blogging college student or happen to know someone - go for it! Good luck!
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- Posted by: leifkoch
Monday, September 24, 2007
Statistics updated
We have just deployed an updated list of robots for generating your access statistics. Robots are automated scripts that access your blogs in order to process their content. One example is Google, though there are hundreds of other bots. Thus, in case you notice a drop in your pageviews, it's not because fewer people are visiting pages on your BlogPortal, it's because we're filtering more robots. The number of visits won't be affected by this, just the page views and page hits.
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- Posted by: leifkoch