I walked into Home Depot the other day and, seeing a clerk near the entry way, asked where the storage boxes were. Immediately the clerk told me. After I found my boxes, I asked another clerk where the gloves and Sharpee markers were. Again, she gave the answer immediately. In my experience, apart from wandering aimlessly around the store for extended periods of time, this … more »

In The Big Shift from Search to Social, Anne Gentle notes the growing problem with Google’s search and trends towards alternative search sources, such as social networks like Facebook. She links to an stirring NY Times article called The Dirty Little Secrets of Search, which I recommend reading. The NYTimes article exposes how search engines are gamed, and how search engines can also game consumers. … more »

How does the South by Southwest Interactive conference (SXSW) compare with the STC Summit? Are technical communicators behind the times when it comes to web trends and interactive media? I asked Anne Gentle and Janet Swisher, two Austin locals who have attended SXSW, to compare SXSW with the STC Summit. We recorded this video at the STC Summit in Dallas.

How do you go from 5 authors to 47, all collaborating on the same documentation? This is the issue Anne Gentle wrestles with in her post Collaborative Authoring — Tools and Costs. She explores everything from Author-it Live to Drupal, Mediawiki, Alfresco, and SharePoint, including cost breakdowns for each tool. Anne also cites research from Forrester about the rising trend of collaborative authoring: 37% of … more »

The other week, while I was at the WebWorks Roundup conference in Texas, where I was one of the featured industry speakers, I was sitting next to Anne Gentle during one of the panel sessions, and I asked her about branding. It seems like once you become branded through your blog, it’s hard to reinvent yourself.

Google recently released Sidewiki, a new feature in the Google toolbar that allows you to add comments in a pop-out sidebar that appears beside every page on the web. It’s not a typical wiki — you can’t edit what other people write. You can only add another comment about the page.

[amazon-product align="right"]0982219113[/amazon-product][Audio clip: view full post to listen] Download MP3 Length: 40 min. As a follow-up to my review of Anne Gentle’s book, [amazon-product type="text" text="Conversation and Community: The Social Web for Documentation"]0982219113[/amazon-product], I also interviewed her for a podcast. Now you can listen to Anne talk about some of the concepts in her book in a more personal way through the headphones of your … more »

One of the perks about being a blogger is that authors occasionally send me their books to review. Recently Anne Gentle sent me her new book, Conversation and Community: The Social Web for Documentation. Anne’s book is particularly important because it addresses the situation of the technical writer today, with the web in the state it is — user generated, filled with blogs, wikis, Twitter, … more »

[Audio clip: view full post to listen] Download MP3 Length: 9 min. In this podcast, I talk with Anne Gentle about her forthcoming book, Conversation and Community: The Social Web for Documentation. Anne explains how we’ve transitioned from the Age of Information to the Age of Interaction, using social web tools to find the information we need. She builds on her experiences with One Laptop … more »

[Audio clip: view full post to listen] Download MP3 Length: 9 min. In this podcast, I talk with Richard Hamilton about his new publishing imprint, XML Press. Richard started XML Press to serve the needs of technical communicators, publishing books on topics that may not get traction from large publishing houses due to the limited audience, but which perfectly fit a smaller, niche technical communication … more »

Flossmanuals.net is a new wiki help authoring/publishing tool hybrid that, as far as I know, is completely unique. The site is more than a wiki. It allows groups of authors to create specific chapters independently. You can then remix the chapters into any arrangement and selection you want through a drag-and-drop interface. Finally, you can export the selection as a PDF file. Alternatively, you can … more »

Doc Train has ended, and I’m sitting at the Vancouver airport waiting for my airplane. Lots of thoughts are coming to my head, in no particular order. I interviewed about 12 people this year. I seem to have a knack for this — tracking people down, asking if I can interview them, getting them talking, etc. Actually, it has taken me three conferences to get … more »

Ning (“peace” in Chinese) is a social network application that allows groups to communicate and connect with each other in seamless, convenient ways. Scott Abel just recently started a new social network community called The Content Wrangler Community. Within a couple of weeks, it already attracted 824 868 members. This community on Ning is quickly becoming the social network community for technical writers and others … more »

Many of us want to integrate innovative Web 2.0 practices into our online help. But if we create blogs, wikis, or other interactive features outside the help file, users may never use them. I’ve been using SharePoint 2007 as a file repository for my online help mainly because of the publishing control it gives me. And since I was already using SharePoint as my file … more »

Interviewing experts is one of the easiest and most practical ways to generate material for your podcast. Although many people think the difficult part of podcasting is the audio setup and production, actually pulling off a good interview requires more art and skill. I know I’m not the best interviewer, but I’ve learned at least 10 tips from the 60+ interviews I’ve conducted for my … more »