To both make the publication process easier and to enable the use of an article in more than one newsletter, Gallatin Technologies links the publication to a folder. Folders are created in kNEWS Publication from the Publishing-Folders view. In the Publishing-Folders view the folders are listed in the left frame and the articles are listed by category in the right frame. To add an article to a folder, and thus a newsletter, simply drag the article to the folder. At any time you can select a folder from the left and its contents will be displayed on the right.

Once the articles have been added to the appropriate folder and the style created, you're ready to create the newsletter. Gallatin has made this process easy. Clicking the Create Publication button in the Publishing-Create view will bring up two dialog boxes. In the first dialog box the style is selected; in the second dialog box parameters such as the location of the articles, date range, date position, and statistical reporting options are set. After the publication is created it can be published, returned to draft, or rejected. Once published, the newsletter can be edited and saved or mailed. There are three possibilities for mailing: mail URL, mail plain text, and mail HTML.

Creating statistical reports
kNEWS Reporting offers two reports, the subscription report and the campaign report. In my initial assessment of kNEWS, I felt that this module could be very powerful. One of the problems encountered in marketing campaigns is that of being able to assess the success or failure of the specific campaign. Among other things, the statistics collected report the number of new subscribers, the number of subscribers replying to the activation email, and the number of subscribers reading specific articles. I found the use of the term "campaign" ambiguous and confusing in both kNEWS Reporting and the documentation. I spoke with one of the developers at Gallatin Technology who recognized the ambiguity and was willing to look at ways of rectifying the confusion.

So, are the reservations ready?
Gallatin's application, kNEWS, is an application that should be seriously considered by businesses interested in producing subscription newsletters. As a small business owner, I find kNEWS opens up marketing and advertising possibilities that would otherwise be prohibitively costly to me, and it provides me an easy, low-cost vehicle by which I can keep in contact with my current customers.

Despite the fact that parts of the application were difficult to use because of either design flaws (ambiguity in both the content of views and definitions) or insufficient documentation, I think kNEWS is a product worthy of investigation by companies interested in subscription publications, and it has the potential to be of great value to businesses. It's my hope that the developers at Gallatin Technologies will review the application for design continuity and that future releases will have better documentation, more precise definitions, and be easier to navigate.

David Gewirtz is the author of How To Save Jobs and Where Have All The Emails Gone? For more than 20 years, he has analyzed current, historical, and emerging issues relating to technology, competitiveness, and policy. David is the Editor-in-Chief of the ZATZ magazines, is the Cyberterrorism Advisor for the International Association for Counterterrorism and Security Professionals, and is a member of the instructional faculty at the University of California, Berkeley extension. He can be reached at david@zatz.com and you can follow him at http://www.twitter.com/DavidGewirtz.