Since June first, we’ve had the most rain ever recorded here in Wisconsin. Rivers and streets are overflowing, basements are flooded, and you may have read about the lake that washed away. Here in Milwaukee, the floods we’ve gotten aren’t as devastating as those in Iowa or even a little further west in our state. After suffering mostly wet basements and some mildew, local news coverage is filled with people in boots trying to salvage their soaked possessions.

But what was interesting to me was a throwaway comment one man made on the news. Standing in two feet of water in his basement, he said he was “getting rid of all the stuff he didn’t need anyway.” It made me think of something I’d read recently about a new grass-roots movement, The 100 Thing Challenge.

The premise is this: if you have too much stuff, it can weigh you down. Editing your personal living space down to 100 things will help you let go of the past and move forward. Added benefits are that you can easily find things and you will gain a sense of control over your life. And who wouldn’t want that? Whittling your stuff down to 100 items is a little hardcore, but I think we could all stand to “challenge” our things, one by one, and get rid of what we don’t need.

Of course, I’m not advocating throwing all your stuff away in the trash. Gently used possessions are always welcome at Goodwill, and for more beat up items, try offering them on Freecycle, an online collective of community-based giveaway programs. In fact, I just used Milwaukee Freecycle to give away 12 pairs of ripped jeans to a teacher who will use them for an art project.

I can imagine that many of those people cleaning their basements out may be wishing they’d purged their possessions before the flood. Clear your clutter and concentrate on more important things in your life!

A nice overview of some of the higher education work we’ve done here at Hanson Dodge Creative.

In the last 15 years or so, web content management systems (CMS) have essentially become the only way to build web sites. It makes perfect sense — from large corporate sites to one-page personal web sites, nobody wants to touch code every time they need to change an image or copy.

And the question I hear all the time is simply this: which one is the best one? I suppose it’s reasonable to assume that by now, one system has risen to the top. Sort of like Microsoft Word for word processing. But the truth is, there are literally hundreds of CMS packages out there, and they all do the same thing: update web content outside the site’s source code.

The real question you should be asking is “Which CMS is best for what I need?” Of course, that takes more planning work. Here are the top six things you should consider when selecting a CMS for your site:

1. How much do you want to spend? You can spend nothing, or you can spend millions on a CMS solution. of course, if you take the nothing route, as in open source, you will spend much more time on in-house development. You will also have more control over what features you have, instead of working around somebody else’s code. At the other extreme: spend lots of money, and you’ll get lots of built-in features, good post-launch support and reliable feature upgrades.

2. Who will be updating your site?If you’ve got lots of people in multiple locations needing to update content, you’ll need to consider workflow tools. Some CMS packages have good ones, some don’t. You’re going to need multiple user roles (contributor, editor, administrator, etc.) and specific approval steps content must go through before appearing on the site. On the other hand, if it’s just one person running the whole thing, you’re in luck. Don’t worry about workflow.

3. Do you need to publish in other languages?Some CMS packages have translation tools built in. If you need to publish your content in a number of different languages, make sure you select a CMS that will assist in that process. The tools will not be perfect, and you will still need to have a human translator check for accuracy, but at least you won’t have to translate every word manually.

4. What does your CMS need to work with?Do you sell product online? Are you using an e-commerce, payment gateway or a product information management system? Make sure you identify and consider outside systems before making any CMS decisions.

5. Consider your platform. This one’s deceptively simple. If you have 25 .NET developers on staff, don’t select a CMS that only uses Python. If your developers will be learning a new language, try to do it outside a new web site deployment. You’ll be busy enough without having to worry about training.6. Think about the future.Don’t just select a CMS to replace your current site; think about what you might want to do in the next five years. Will you be hiring more content contributors? Reducing your development staff? Assigning more web administrators? Adding an online store? You will need to think all of these things through, or you might be going through the same selection process in a year.

Of course there are plenty of other things to consider when selecting a CMS: can your company support ongoing administration? How much training will you need to do? What are other members of your industry using?

In fact, if you’re in higher education, you’re in luck: UC-Davis did a really interesting survey on which CMS tools colleges are using. The comments alone are an interesting read.

So, if you’re in the market for a new CMS, be thoughtful about it. It might take a little longer up front, but you’ll be glad you did.

Last Sunday, I read an article in the NYT about the rise of “cell phone novels” in Japan. You read that right: entire novels pecked out on cell phone keypads, written in the abbreviated language of text messaging, with little plot or character development, uploaded to web communities.

The big news is not that these cell phone novels have gained popularity among young people; it’s that they’re beginning to be republished in book form and making money. In fact, of 2007’s top 10 best-selling Japanese books, five are republished cell phone novels. It’s officially a cultural movement.

Predictably, the value of this new genre of writing is hotly debated, with opposing viewpoints falling squarely along generational lines. The younger generation would like the novels to be recognized as a genre, and older folks dismiss the works as “comic books.” It’s understandable how the novels’ language, replete with emoticons and Leet, might befuddle anybody over 25 who isn’t Merlin Mann.

What’s interesting to me is that these young, mostly female novelists aren’t experienced writers. Most of them have never written fiction at all. Was it the cell phone that stirred a desire to write? As a society, we tend to be wary of personal technology, branding it “isolationist” or worrying about its effect on our imaginations. We talk about TV turning our brains to mush, wasting time on the internet, and worry about texting replacing “real communication.”

But at least in this case, it looks to me like the technology made an easy avenue for creative expression, instead of hindering it. And it’s not the first time, either: all we need to do is look at Technorati’s growing blog registry to see that folks are expressing themselves left and right on the Internet.

Could it be that as humans, we all have an innate need to communicate and express ourselves, and the technology matters less than we think?

Last month, Facebook introduced a new ad program, Beacon, that tracks users’ activity on external web sites in order to serve up targeted advertising on Facebook. The program also broadcasts to the users’ friends what they’re buying.

Sounds great - especially for advertisers - except that Facebook made everybody opted in by default, requiring them to opt out if they didn’t want to participate. Hunh? Needless to say, it was a privacy hot mess. Naturally, users revolted, speaking up all over the blogosphere and even involving online lefty heavyweight MoveOn.org.

Facebook wisely reversed its op-out policy yesterday and apologized to users. Users must now opt in to the program, and no response is considered opting out. The reversal is a smart move by Facebook - after all, what is a social network without a satisfied community? Unlike ad-riddled MySpace, Facebook has now established itself as not only the fastest riser in the social networking game, but also the one that respects its community.

Read more over at the New York Times.