I helped another person whose WordPress site was hacked this weekend. I've noticed a trend about sites that get hacked. Most of the people installed their WordPress blog either long ago, before the right security phrases were included in the wp-config.php file, or they installed WordPress through an auto-installer that didn't insert the right security phrases. The wp-config.php file is the key file that contains your database name and pas...
Listen here: In this podcast, I talk with Anna Parker Richards, incoming president of the STC Toronto chapter, about their event-driven chapter model, in which they replace regular meetings with periodic all-day events, charging between $50 to $150 per person. They haven't entirely discarded meetings in favor of events, but have instead supplemented the events with social gatherings. Their new model, the Five and Five Mo...
Listen here: 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 audience. Focusing on practical topics that technical communicators can...
Listen here: At the STC Summit, I ran into someone from Australia who follows my wife's blog fairly regularly and had even brought gifts for her and the kids. It made me reflect on blog subscribers, and how you convert readers from being occasional readers to devoted fans. In this podcast, Kirsty Taylor talks about what she finds appealing about Seagull Fountain (my wife's blog) and other blogs she follows. Kirsty explai...
A couple of months ago, I wanted to start a podcast at my work, and so I interviewed someone who has been in our IT department for 28 years about the evolution of the department over the years. The podcast took about a month to get approved, and the week before it was posted, as I was tracking down the person who controlled our iTunes feed and Feedburner, I found that another department, Digital Media, was in the process of launching a fu...
Listen here: In this podcast, Mike Hamilton of Madcap Software talks about their phased approach to handling DITA with Flare. In Phase I, you'll have the ability to import DITA topics and export to webhelp and other targets. In this sense, Flare functions as a transform engine. In Phase 2, you can use Flare for native DITA authoring. Phase 1 is on the cusp of release, but Phase II won't be available until quarter one of ...
Listen here: In this podcast, Sarah O'Keefe of Scriptorium Publishing explains the results of their recent survey about the state of structured authoring in technical communication. In the survey, they found that 84% of respondents are either thinking of moving to structured authoring, are in the process of moving to structured authoring, have already adopted structured authoring, or are undecided. Only 16% of respondent...
Lately I've been reading Dan Roam's The Back of the Napkin: Selling Ideas and Solving Problems Through Pictures. In the book, Roam asserts that drawing pictures can help you solve problems. It's a simple but profound assertion. You're no doubt familiar with the same assertion with writing. Writing is a tool for thinking, a method for unlocking ideas. Writing about something helps you think about it, helps you see the problem more clearly,...
This past week I started exercising at lunch—it was the best thing I did all week. Given how sedentary the job of technical writing is, you'd think this would be a no brainer. But in fact, it's not. My company's gym is rarely used. I see just two or three people (out of hundreds) in there during lunch. While working out, I also listen to podcasts. Lately I'd gotten a bit out of the podcast-listening habit, since I was carpooling with some...
Listen here: The Complete Idiot's Guide to Disaster Preparedness is John Hedtke's latest book—the 26th book he's written. In it, Hedtke explains that although most people think disasters are only major catastrophes, such as earthquakes, tornadoes, or floods, actually a disaster occurs whenever your needs exceed your resources and your ability to respond, and the normal processes of your life are disrupted. In this interv...
Quick reference guides 1.0 Quick Reference Guides: The Poetry of Technical Writing 1.1 Quick Reference Guide Formats -- Tips for Finding Attractive Layouts 1.2 STC Presentation this Thursday: "Quick Reference Guides: Short and Sweet Technical Documentation" ...
Listen here: GUI Mags GuiMags was a vendor booth at the STC Summit that caught my attention. I'm often running into people who want me to create WordPress templates to match their websites. Creating these templates is somewhat tedious for me, and it can take 1-2 days of work and haggling with CSS to get it to look right. These GuiMags guys gave me a glimpse at a simpler model. GuiMags (graphical user interface magnets) ...
Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers: The Story of Success challenges assumptions about innate genius and natural-born talent. Through a series of detailed examples, Gladwell explains away these gifts by attributing them to practice, timing, circumstance, upbringing, culture, and opportunity. In other words, those really smart, successful people we admire—Mozart, Bill Gates, the Beatles—weren't born with natural talent. Instead, they had the right...
Listen here: James Bond: The History of the Illustrated 007 James Bond: The History of the Illustrated 007 is Alan Porter's latest book. Alan Porter is vice president of Operations at Webworks, and I've interviewed him before about their extensive use of wikis. Obviously James Bond isn't a person that comes to mind when we think of technical communicators, but Alan explains the appeal of the Bond character from a techn...
While eating dinner at my mother-in-law's house today, I stumbled across the following curiosity in the bathroom: Manual in bathroom as reading material Kind of an ingenious strategy. A tribute to the cunning intelligence of mothers everywhere!
