Telligent Graffiti CMS 1.0 Now Available

Taking a moment away from GDC 2008, I wanted to announce that our latest product Telligent Graffiti CMS 1.0 is now available! You can download it here: http://get.graffiticms.com/

Graffiti is a lightweight, simple content publishing system you can use to quickly and easily publish a blog or an entire web site. It blends together traditional CMS tools like revision history and workflow with more modern blog-style publishing. Graffiti is available as both a free Express Edition as well as several commercial editions.

We’re also happy to announce the new Graffiti Marketplace where you can download new themes and functionality for your Graffiti site. We’ve already published several themes that were created for Graffiti 1.0. You can also browse and install new features from the Graffiti Marketplace all within Graffiti itself!

Thanks to everyone at Telligent as well as all of our beta testers and customers that have taken the time to try out this new product.

Building software is easy. Building easy to use software is hard. We think Graffiti is in the latter category. The team has spent countless hours working to make Graffiti really simple and intuitive.  We really hope you enjoy Graffiti!

Frequent Questions:

What is required to run Graffiti?

Graffiti requires Microsoft .NET 2.0 or later running on Windows or Mono* running on Windows, Linux, Apple, etc. Graffiti uses VistaDB as the default database but also support Microsoft SQL Server, Microsoft Access, and MySQL. More details here.

* additional announcements around Mono support are forthcoming. Full support of Mono should be available in the next release of Mono (1.9?) although Graffiti 1.0 has been tested with Mono v1.2.6.

How do Graffiti and Community Server work together?

They don’t. Graffiti is optimized for individuals and small groups whereas Community Server is optimized for large Enterprise social networking sites. For example, if you are running a single blog Graffiti is better. If you are managing more than 1 blog Community Server is better.

Is Graffiti free?

Graffiti is available as both a commercially supported product ($399 for 10 user license) as well as a free Express Edition designed for individuals.

How does user licensing work?

A license is required for each user that wants to publish content within Graffiti. There are no limits to the number of readers!

What is coming in the next release of Graffiti?

Stay tuned to graffiticms.com for details :)

30,000 and the Future

aunlockedOne of the best features that the Xbox team introduced was tying in-game achievements to a publically viewable profile. What this allowed was for you as a gamer to start building gaming “equity” over time that could then be shared and compared with your friends and others in the gaming community. This small detail has caused me to forgo the PS3 and only play the Wii with my son as I have been focused on increasing my gamerscore and pushing myself as a game enthusiast.

With that said, yesterday marked the passing of the 30,0000 gamerscore plateau. It took 135 days to go from 20,000K to 30,000K with an average gain of 74 points per day. So I thought I would take a moment and archive some fun facts since I started gaming on the 360 oh so many moons ago.

1) Consecutive Days Played Streak – 72
2) Retail Titles Completed – 11
3) World Gamerscore Ranking – 3734
4) World Achievement Ranking – 3398
5) Largest single day achievement gain – 39
6) Most points in a day – 1200
7) Completion Percentage (0 score games removed) – 53%
8) Total Games Retail(61)/Arcade (27) Owned – 88

Here is a breakdown of the top five games played by days played:

1) NHL2k7 – 55
2) DW Gundam – 53
3) Halo3 – 48
4) Lego Star Wars II – 45
5) Gears of War – 22

Moving forward I am going to put an end to my gamerscore addiction and start playing the titles that I enjoy as I have a stack of games that are waiting to be played and enjoyed. Mass Effect, The Orange Box, Rainbow 6 Vegas, FEAR, and COD4 Multiplayer.

I have and will always be a gamer to some degree. My focus is just shifting a bit :)

$44 Billion Really?

I just flew in from Denver and boy are my arms tired… Seriously though, I enjoyed attending the 2007 Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference last week. I was even quoted in the Denver Post about being a Microsoft partner. It is always interesting to get an inside look at Microsoft as I have been consulting with this organization for the past 8 years. It has been intriging to watch the transformation from a decentralized, maverick organization to one that is applying more traditional business controls such as a focus around procurement, to their ability to quickly adapt in an ever-changing marketplace.

What really impressed me is the partner ecosystem that Microsoft has been able to develop. With 10,000+ attendees at this conference representing 120 countries it is no wonder that 96% of it’s $44 billion in revenue 2006 came from Partners. With their ability to not only provide outstanding software products, Microsoft really focuses on establishing platforms that can be extended, defining industry standards and ensuring interoperability with their offerings. This makes it very easy for organizations to partner with them.

It was very evident that many start-up organizations can benefit from niche offerings around Microsoft products as they are very open to partnering with early adopters. The focus on partners is a key element to their continued success. As I stated before in Software + Services there will always be the customer segment that lives in the now and is focused on the best solution that meets their needs today vs. the trendy offering of tomorrow.

Here at Telligent we have deep roots with Microsoft from Rob Howards time with the ASP.NET team, to 2 Regional Directors, multiple MVP’s and a focus on Microsoft technologies in our products such as Community Server. We look forward to continuing to build out our own partner ecosystem. We focus on providing software platforms that can be extended vs. single applications as well. So why wouldn’t we follow in the footsteps of Microsoft. $44 billion can’t be wrong.