[Sigia-l] Classification & Taxonomy Management Software

[Jay Moonah]

Hi folks.  It's my first time posting so please be gentle. ;)
 
I've recently taken on the role of Information Architect for the Canadian
Broadcasting Corporation's main English site, http://CBC.ca.  The short
version of what we're doing is looking at the state of our current site on
the production/writing side as well as the public-face, and looking at
authoring/content management solutions to support an updated site.  We're
hoping to launch our new solutions within the next year-ish, but at this
point we're still in the discovery phase.  We're looking a big range from
more-or-less turn-key commercial solutions to in-house authored solutions,
and everything in between.
 
The site is a combination of current news updated constantly (like many
newspaper sites) and TV & radio program support pages.  CNN & BBC would be
roughly comparable sites.  We're mainly concerned at this stage at looking
at tools to support the news side of things, although our ultimate
solution has to be able to integrate with program pages and do certain
things on that front as well.
 
One of the things that we've run into a couple of times is this idea of
automatic classification and taxonomy management tools such as those from
Teragram (http://www.teragram.com/).  We saw a slick integration with one
CMS solution where the Teragram stuff basically read a news story coming
in off a wire service (like Associated Press), pulled out the key players,
subjects, and publicity traded companies in the story, and classified the
story into the appropriate taxonomy slots.  It could also trigger
subscriber email alerts, update the current stories listed on your
homepage automatically based on certain rules, etc. etc. etc.  I think it
could clean your refrigerator as well, but we didn't get that far in the
demo.  I've done a little research on this, I've found at least one system
that looks like it could do similar things on the news front from
Gammasite (http://www.gammasite.com/product_news.html) but I'm sure there
are others.
 
I was wondering if anyone on the list had any experience with such
systems, particularly on the news side of things?  (Although any insights
are much appreciated!)  
 
Also if anyone could suggest other comparable solutions out there, I'd
appreciate any references.
 
Thanks!
- J.
 
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Jay Moonah
Information Architect/Business Analysis
CBC.ca Interface & Design
416-205-3066
http://jaymoonah.com/
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