In May I'll be participating on a Documentation and Training West panel in a session called Meet the Bloggers. As a presenter, Scott Abel has given me a free guest ticket to the conference to give to one of my friends. I've decided to give the ticket away to one of my readers by way of a little contest. (In case you're wondering, Scott gave me permission to do this.) To enter the contest, just leave a reply to the contest question below e...
Thanks to everyone who participated in my recent survey. Seventy four people participated -- this is roughly 9% of my readers. You can view the survey results here, including all kinds of colorful graphs, such as the one below. Results Summary Here's a summary of the survey results: 79% of you work in the field of technical communication, with another 4% who want to break in, and about 3% who want to transition out. About 50% of you rea...
In this Jing video tutorial, I explain how to get up and running with Jing. What's Jing? Check out my previous post that includes several sample Jing videos showing how technical writers can benefit from Jing. You can also see the [Flash no longer supported] Note: If you're seeing some bracketed text and a link rather than a video player, it's because the flash-embed plugin I'm using to embed the Camtasia video into the site is no longe...
I've been accustomed to writing topic titles as gerunds (for example, "Configuring the Monitor Display" or "Reformatting Your Hard Drive"), followed by specific steps that would begin, "To configure the monitor display...," or "To reformat your hard drive...." However, when I watched how an actual person used my online help file, I noticed he didn't use gerunds in his searches. He typed his search like this: configure monitor display, or ...
Jing, a new project by TechSmith, is a tool that allows you to quickly capture video or an image from your computer and share it with others, such as project team members or customers. After you capture images or video with Jing, you click a Share button to quickly upload the capture to a web host, file directory (e.g., SharePoint), or Flickr. Within seconds Jing gives you a URL to share with others. Jing is a cool, easy-to-use tool, and ...
I made a short survey to get a better understanding about you, the readers/listeners of my blog and podcast. If you can spare a second, will you take my survey? Thanks. Take the Survey (If the button doesn't work for you, click click here).
Kevin on the TECHWR-L listserv asked a lot of questions on the "practicalities of blogging." I thought I would respond here in a post rather than on the listserv, because so many people outside of techwr-l have the same questions. Kevin asks, Let's say that I wanted to finally start a blog (it seems de rigeur for techwriters (and many others) to have a website and at least one blog indicated on their business cards, resumes, etc.) ... I ...
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 repository, I thought I could also take advantage of another feature — Sh...
TechSmith (the creators of Camtasia Studio, SnagIt, and other tools) has the best free tech support I've ever seen. I submitted a question yesterday about reducing file size in Camtasia Studio, and today I received a screencast reply from one of the TechSmith staff. He wrote, Thanks! Here's a few answers to your questions: http://screencast.com/t/QNIh41u4 I was blown away by the screencast reply. I bet the time it takes to create a short...
Someone sent this link to me today: a blog of unnecessary quotation marks. Keep your eye out for any more sightings and send pictures to the author. Of all grammar errors, unnecessary quotation marks are one of the funnest and most playful, as they can change or obscure meanings in hilarious ways.
Listen here: In this podcast, STC President Linda Oestreich talks about the direction that the Society for Technical Communication is heading. She explains the strategic objectives of the STC and the ways the Board is trying to meet those objectives in a financially conscious way. She provides updates on other initiatives they've pursued, such as certification programs, increased recognition, and membership trends. Linda...
I attended my first WordPress meetup yesterday. Here's a 20-second video that Brad Baldwin of Rocky Mountain Voices took at the event. My wife and I appear at the very end, engaged in conversation with a couple of seasoned bloggers who make their living from a quotations page that gets 200,000 hits a day. (By the way, I found this video on Janet Meiners' site (aka Newspaper Girl), who wrote an excellent post about the event.) ...
The two leading screencast tools, Camtasia and Captivate, both have strengths and weaknesses that make selecting a clear winner difficult if not impossible. But lately I've been using both of these tools and have been particularly impressed by Camtasia's zoom-and-pan feature. The new zoom-and-pan feature in Camtasia is, without argument, the most exciting feature in Camtasia. The zoom-and-pan feature allows you to easily zoom in or pan to...
Tip: For an updated perspective on this post, see Guest post: 10 New Things to Love and Hate About Flare. Madcap Flare is one of the most advanced, functionally robust online help tools for technical writers who want to single source their content. When you use Flare to create an actual project (rather than just experimenting with a trial version), you come to know the ins and outs, the major benefits and the quirks, its...
I read on Holly Harkness's blog that the 2008 WritersUA Salary Survey has just been published. Holly writes, The good news is that salaries in the United States now average $76,044, up over $2000 from last year. The bad news is the gender gap in compensation is alive and well. Men average $4000 more per year than women. WritersUA reports that the gap is growing, not shrinking. For survey details, see the WritersUA salary survey home page....
