If you use WordPress and want to streamline the process for responding to comments, check out the Better Comments Manager plugin. You can respond to all your comments directly from your admin console interface, rather than responding in the comments section below each post. This is one of the more useful plugins out there. Here's a screenshot of the Better Comments Manager interface:
Listen here: In this podcast, Anne Gentle, author of The Quick Web for Technical Documentation, tackles some of the toughest questions about wikis, such as, How do you reuse and possibly single source your wiki content? If only 1 percent of your users contribute, is the wiki even worth it? How do you deal with the lack of a robust style editor in a wiki? What should you do when you do not like a user contribution? Addi...
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 in this way. Ann and others at the Rockley Group are interested in co...
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 possibly mean, but it's where my article is.) In case you can't acc...
I've been waiting for tags to come out for a while. Now that WordPress 2.3 (Dexter) is here, I'm trying to integrate them into my site to the fullest extent. The following image shows the new Tag field that appears below posts. Tags vs. Categories First, to get the concept of tags right, think of tags as index words, and categories more like chapter headings. Lorelle explains, Tags are like your blog's index. They are keywords that repre...
Tibu Puiu from the Lost Art of Blogging asked me to check out his post on the "7 Blogging Beginning Mistakes and How to Avoid Them." Although I agree with much of what he says, I've decided to play devil's advocate here and see what counterarguments I can find against his points. I've listed Puiu's headings below followed by my counterarguments. 1. Not blogging on self-hosted blogs. Puiu's argument is that freely hosted blogs such as with...
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 just integrated into the latest Tech Writer Voices podcast. E...
Listen here: In this podcast, Microsoft Usability Researcher Hugh McLoone talks about Microsoft's Natural Ergonomic Keyboard 4000. Hugh originally gave this presentation to the Puget Sound (Seattle) SIGCHI group on January 25, 2007. SIGCHI stands for Special Interest Group for Computer-Human Interaction. Heidi, who attended the presentation, says, "As you'll hear, Hugh was a driving force behind the ergonomic keyboard....
The OneClick installer plugin from Anirudh Sanjeev won the recent WordPress plugin competition. It may seem hard to believe, but after you install the plugin and its associated Firefox extension, installing a plugin only requires you to right-click the plugin's download link and select OneClick Install > Plugin. Then voila, OneClick automatically installs the plugin and only needs activation from your plugin page. It works similarly fo...
You've probably heard the latest tech news: Google launched its presentations tool WordPress 2.3 was released, offering tagging Yahoo bought Zimbra for $350 million Adobe announced a tech comm suite of RH, FM, Capt., Flash, and Acrob. AuthorIt released a new version (not sure what it offers) The One Child Per Laptop (OCPL) program is underway The Tech Crunch conference announced tons of new products Sketchcast was released, and Ideablob,...
A listener to the Tech Writer Voices podcast suggested I do a podcast on the following: Give ideas to people who are just starting out in technical writing. What is the base of knowledge that every technical writer should have? And so in preparation for the podcast, I offer these five skills or characteristics as absolute musts for the technical writer: 1. Facility with technology You have to be somewhat technical, although there are man...
My article, "Top 5 Podcasts for Technical Communicators," appeared in STC's Intercom today. It's in the Cut & Paste section here (stc login required). I didn't have a lot of space to expand, so I thought I'd take the liberty here. First, settling on just 5 podcasts was agonizing and I thought about it for weeks, constantly drawing up lists and ranking them. I actually submitted 10 podcast recommendations, hoping they would say okay we...
Sports doesn't always parallel life, but here's one that's relevant for the season. Although penalties in football are usually looked upon as costly mistakes, they can actually be a good thing -- they demonstrate aggressiveness. Holding back your players into a passive, milquetoast attitude can be worse than racking up a half a dozen penalties. Aggressiveness also happens to be an important quality for technical writers, even if it also r...
Listen here: In this carcast, I deliver a 20 minute monologue about the best way to get information from SMEs: sit by them, permanently if possible. Many IT organizations station the writer remotely from the developers, programmers, and other SMEs, but nothing could be more damaging to getting the information you need. Increasing your proximity also increases the communication you receive. Music is from 37Hz. More about...
One of the blogs I enjoy reading is Beth Long's Spork in the Road. Beth, who I knew from the Suncoast chapter, is interested in the intersection of the creative and the technical. As I remember, she was writing a novel when I left, and was very focused on it. She also had a very enviable job creating fictional text for an online game. Here's an excerpt from her latest post: Optimism afflicts me in both my worlds, web development and ficti...
