I’m rethinking the focus of my podcast, and I’d like to get your feedback. With each of the following poll questions, you can see the results immediately. If you have responses that don’t fit the yes or no answers, please use the comments field below the post. Thanks for the feedback.

I was recently interviewed by David Dick for the Usability SIG newsletter. The title of the interview is “I’d Rather Be Writing – The Man Behind the Words.” Check it out. They also reprinted my post on Customizing Sharepoint, which has gotten more hits than I ever imagined.

Several people have asked if I have a list of all the podcasts I’ve published (rather than having to page through the archives). I just added a comprehensive list below the Tech Writer Voices graphic on the right sidebar. Click the See all episodes link. (By the way, I created that page by inserting the loop on a page template, stripping out the content tag, … more »

If you’ve listened to podcasts on my site, you’ll notice that for the past 3 months, I haven’t posted any new podcasts. It’s also been about three months since Aaron or Scott from DMN Communications published a podcast. What happened? Is podcasting dead? No, podcasting is not dead. But I’ll explain my break.

My iTunes podcast page is updated (finally). I’m using Feedburner’s iTunes podcasting elements options to meet all the iTunes specifications. I hope this works better than Podpress did. Subscribe to my podcast in iTunes. (I ended up burning a new Feedburner feed and resubmitting it, so if you still see the old one in there, ignore it.) Note also that I have an iTunes subscribe … 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 »

[Audio clip: view full post to listen] Download MP3 Duration: 27 min. In this podcast, I talk with Bill Albing, founder of KeyContent.org, about the impact of social media on technical communication. Bill talks about different ways social media helps audiences interconnect and interact. Good social media technologies enable professionals to collaborate easily, without being encumbered by complicated technology or even burdened by managing and … more »

I merged my blog (idratherbewriting.com) and podcast (techwritervoices.com) into one site. If you go to techwritervoices.com, it redirects to idratherbewriting.com. All the posts that were on techwritervoices.com are now on idratherbewriting.com. See the right column for podcast information. All podcasts are in a category called Tech Writer Voices, which has its own podcast feed, the same feed as before (http://feeds.feedburner.com/techwritervoices). Why Merge the Two Sites? … more »

I’ve been using PodPress, a WordPress plugin that adds an audio player to your posts, for about a year now. But today I’m saying goodbye to this plugin. Although Podpress includes size and duration, adds iTunes tags, and shows download counts, it is filled with compatibility problems with WordPress. It seems every time WordPress updates to a new version, PodPress breaks. Lately PodPress has failed … more »

When I woke up this morning, I reread the latest STC email, which said although the deadline for proposals to the next STC Summit is today (Friday, Oct 19), they won’t actually download the proposals until Monday morning. This is an indirect way of giving people the weekend to finish their proposals, and also a hint that they want more proposals. (Perhaps after the low … more »

At the last STC Summit, I ran into the legendary Ann Rockley and interviewed her briefly about the goings-on at the Rockley Group. One of the new projects she mentioned was the upcoming launch of their stylishly-designed blog. I asked her if blogs were becoming an expected norm, and she said that yes, People expect to see a blog, they expect to see information provided … more »

I published an article in TechCraft last week called “Should You Sit Near SMEs?” TechCraft is the eNewsletter that accompanies the Technical Writers of India (TWI) mailing list. If you already have a Yahoo ID, here’s the link to the article — scroll down to the September 2007 PDF copy. It’s in the “Legally Bland” section. (I’m still not sure what this section title could … more »

LunarPages — one of the coolest web hosts around — has just sponsored the Tech Writer Voices podcast with free web hosting. We’ve used Lunar Pages with the Suncoast STC chapter site for 3 years and for the Tech Writer Voices podcast for the past year. They’ve been an excellent web host that I wholeheartedly recommend. LunarPages has a Star-Trek parody audio commercial that I … more »

After a five-month hiatus, Aaron and Scott at DMN Communications returned to the podcasting scene. In this Sep 9 podcast, they discuss whether technical writing is calling or just a job? By calling, they refer to treating tech writing as if you were destined to be a tech writer, as if it was a sacred duty you were compelled by almost a higher power to … more »