Inkscape: the free alternative to Adobe Illustrator. Alistair Christie references two open source alternatives to Illustrator: Inkscape and Raven. Students are always asking me how they can master power tools without having a budget to buy them. If you use these open source apps to create engaging diagrams and illustrations, employers probably won't care what tool you used. You demonstrate your skills using any tool to get the job done. ...
The Blockhead Blog: Does the STC deserve to survive?. David Farbey has written an engaging article on the STC question. He asks a poignant question, "Do Board members not realise that the financial crisis is just an acute symptom of an underlying chronic condition, which is the decline of the Society?" The posts I've seen and the subsequent responses seem to call for a radical overhaul of the Society, but few believe it will happen. ...
In Which I Comment on the STC Issue — MK Anderson. Keith Anderson offers his perspective on the STC financial crisis, arguing that the problems started years ago. He also suggests that the focus should be on user experience. I think his point about the problems developing years ago is especially on target.
Last week I wrote a post about avoiding extinction as a technical communicator. The basic idea was that you have to keep up with the learning styles, preferences, and behaviors of your users to survive. That often means avoiding the long manual and incorporating more interactive, collaborative, or audiovisual means of instruction. Almost the exact same argument could be made about the STC and its financial trouble. In case you haven't hea...
Listen here: Forms that Work In this podcast, Caroline Jarret talks about her new book, Forms that Work: Designing Web Forms for Usability, which she co-authored with Gerry Gaffney. Forms she discusses go beyond merely the type of IRS forms you fill out at tax time. Every website usually has some online form to collect information from users, from registration information to subscription information to purchasing informa...
Palimpsest: Whither STC? Sarah O'Keefe provides an excellent analysis of the financial meltdown that is troubling the STC right now. Her point about the lack of community struck me as the most critical factor. The STC is operating with a 30-year-old model. They need to come up to speed--and quick. The organization has been more reactive than proactive with regards to web 2.0 technology. It needs a champion that could bridge, create, and f...
Speakers and fees: an insiders view | Speaker Confessions. In a world of online video and online interaction (whether from videocasts, podcasts, or webinars), why do people still go to conferences to watch speakers in person? This writer says there's more energy in the room, which you can't duplicate through virtual mediums. I'm not sure the energy in the room is a sufficient benefit, though. Conferences are often social events more than...
10 Sites That Produce Quality WordPress Content — Nathan Rice. Here Rice provides a great list of WordPress sites that publish useful, important information. If you're into WordPress, you might want to add these sites to your RSS feed. Because the WordPress community is so distributed, so is the information. Also, Rice's site has some excellent information as well, but he was too modest to include his own site on the list.
WordPress Single Post Templates — Nathan Rice. If you're customizing a WordPress theme with different templates, you probably know you can create templates specific to different categories. But when the user clicks the post, the single.php file template loads. By default, you can't use different single.php files in the same way that you can with category templates. The script on this site allows you to add a little snippet of code to func...
Palimpsest: Flare 5 DITA feature review Part 1: Overview and map files. I really enjoyed this thorough testing and analysis of Flare 5's integration of DITA. It's a huge new feature with forward-looking possibilities (namely webhelp output from DITA). Sarah O'Keefe does a nice job looking at all details, quirks, and other issues.
Have you ever tried to find cool graphics for conceptual diagrams but find yourself coming up empty handed? Sure, sites like istockphoto.com make icons available inexpensively. But no matter what the cost, if you work for a company you still have to submit an expense request, get it approved by management, and then subtract the cost from a dwindling budget. It's a pain in the neck, and you're usually in a time crunch, right? Never fear, V...
The winner of this caption contest, the final day of the contest, receives a free copy of Author-it. Good luck. I hope you've enjoyed reading or participating in these captions throughout the last couple of weeks. I'll be compiling all the cartoons with the winning captions below them in an upcoming post. Cartoon 12 Cartoon by Ben Minson. For full details about the giveaway, see this post.
In a career development workshop at the TransAlpine Conference in Vienna, Ellis Pratt, one of the founders of Cherryleaf, argued that technical communicators may eventually become extinct if they keep using the same methods and formats to deliver information. Although there will always be a need for people to explain technical material non-technical people, Ellis said, others may be doing it instead, through the formats users prefer. To s...
I've enjoyed reading through the captions you submit. This is the second to last day. The winner of today's contest will receive a free copy of Snagit. Cartoon 11 Cartoon by Ben Minson. For full details about the giveaway, see this post.
Listen here: This is part II of the Blogging, Podcasting, and Screencasting presentation that I gave to the TransAlpine conference in Vienna in June 2009. For more details about the podcast, see the first write-up. If you haven't listened to Part 1 yet, listen to that first (unless you prefer to arrive en media res). Here's the accompanying PowerPoint. If you're wondering why I didn't just combine the two audio files in ...
