As I was upgrading to WordPress 2.5 today, I discovered a really creepy widget that I just had to add to my blog. The Live Traffic Feed Widget from Feedjit allows you to see details about who's visiting your blog in real-time. If you look in the right sidebar of my blog (lower-right), you'll see everyone who is reading my blog at the current moment -- both what they're reading and where they're from. This kind of information creeps me out...
Although the podcasts I listen to are usually tech podcasts, such as the highly entertaining TWIT (by Leo Laporte), I also enjoy a good alien podcast now and then. Mysterious Universe, produced by Benjamin Grundy, is one of the most fun-to-listen-to podcasts I've come across. I'm not someone who believes in aliens, but dude, you should hear some of the content Grundy plays on the show. For the sake of pure imaginative entertainment (simil...
Just a few days after someone begins blogging seriously, he or she starts hungering after subscribers and comments. We want readership, we want lots of people visiting our site, reading our posts, subscribing to our feed, and regularly leaving comments. This, my friend Clyde says, is the "payoff" of blogging. Although I try to write for a higher purpose outside of trying to get more readers and comments, I must admit that the interactivi...
Next week I'm participating on a career advice panel for technical writing students at a local college. In my attempt to gather some useful advice, I'd like to know the best move you've made to grow your career. For me, one of the best things has been starting my blog and podcast. It's kept me active and engaged in the latest trends of the field. Of course, it has also taken a lot of my time, which I might devote to other things. Still, e...
April 20, 2008 Update: If you're interested in the WordPress training, see the course announcement about the 2-hour session I'm giving on April 26. I'm planning to offer some WordPress training, and I'd like to know if you're interested. By WordPress I mean the self-hosted WordPress blogs that you create with WordPress software from Wordpress.org, not the freely hosted blogs at WordPress.com. WordPress is software that can be so easy a f...
Heidi Miller has some excellent tips on interviewing. In a presentation she gave at the Portable Media Media Expo, she explained several techniques that have encouraged me to change my interviewing style. Here are four key points from her presentation: Don't send the interviewee the questions before the interview. I guess I'm a latecomer to this style, but I'm now totally convinced that it's best not to send questions beforehand. Sure you...
Listen here: Download MP3 In this podcast, I talk with Theresa Putkey, a writer/usability consultant in Vancouver, about the largest project of her career. She explains how she approached a project that had upwards of 2,500 help topics, many of which consisted of duplicate content. She explains how she transitioned from RoboHelp to Flare, the advantages she found as well as her regrets, and how she configured the search...
In a moment of mental relapse, I volunteered to be my chapter's virtual meeting coordinator. I already do podcasts, which are virtual one-on-one meetings/discussions, and I've been wanting to make my podcasts more Web 2.0-ish. So, I thought hey, why not make the last 20 minutes of a podcast open to whoever wants to listen, allowing them to ask questions themselves? How cool, yes, this will spin my podcasts into a more interactive, web 2.0...
When I first heard about Twitter, I thought it was the dumbest thing in the world, a fad that would quickly disappear. But it didn't, and now that I've learned more about how Twitter can be used, I'm convinced it's an essential tool everyone should have and, ideally, everyone should be following me on. Twitter is a cross between blog posting and instant messaging. The "tweets" (micro-posts) have to be 140 characters or less, and you can d...
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 in our field. On N...
I watched a couple of interviews this week that spiraled downhill. The first is a Luke Burbank interview with the Icelandic band Sigur Ros. The second is a Sarah Lacy SXSW interview with Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. Sigur Ros Interview With the Sigur Ros, the interviewees have little to say. Despite Luke's continual questions, their responses are terse, uninsightful, and often consist of 1-3 word answers. Luke recognizes that the in...
In this SXSW podcast -- Body Optimization: Why Stop at Health and Fitness? --panelists describe techniques for health and fitness in the language of tech geeks and designers. They share "hacks" you can do to "optimize" your body profile. (Listen directly to the MP3 here, or right click and select Save Target As.) Although the advice they give isn't revolutionary, it is inspiring. One panelist explains what it feels like to have more ener...
I received an email the other day from a hiring manager who asked me what tests they should give to their technical writing candidates. She writes, We are hiring two new technical writers and are trying to come up with a practical for the candidates to complete. We had been asking the applicants to write a quick how to (e.g make a pb&j, withdraw cash from an ATM, etc.) followed by a longer writing sample, but our HR rep isn't sure if ...
If you asked me 6 months ago how much I used my Zoom H4 digital recorder, it wasn't much. I initially got it to record live interviews at conferences, and donations from my podcast listeners paid for the device. (Thanks, once again, guys.) But this past month, I've carried the Zoom with me everywhere I go. I use it almost every day at work. I can't imagine getting by without it. If you're a serious technical communicator, you probably nee...
The 2008 South by Southwest Interactive (SXSW) festival, currently underway in Austin, Texas, until March 16, is one of the most popular, high-energy tech conferences of the year. This Interactive conference “celebrates the creativity and passion behind the coolest new media technologies.” Basically, everyone who is doing anything cool on the Internet ends up speaking there. 37 Signals, Facebook, Wired — they're all there. Many of the pre...
