I use several open source applications (Filezilla, Audacity, Firefox, 7-zip), and while I love them all, I'm really passionate about WordPress. WordPress is the open source blogging software that runs this site. It's particularly interesting to compare WordPress to Movable Type, which is not open source. Whenever I search for comparisons between WordPress and Movable Type, 99% of the time I find people explaining their conversion from Mov...
Listen here: In this special STC elections podcast, I talk with Nicky Bleiel, candidate for STC Director, about some pressing issues in the STC and also about software saturdays, tools for technical writers, and why she's running for director. We talk about some of the following topics: About Nicky Bleiel Software Saturdays Presentation on Cool Tools for Tech Writer for Under $100 STC Elections Google Docs Other candi...
I read a post by D. Keith Robinson at least six weeks ago and didn't think much of it, but since then it has surfaced again and again in my mind. Robinson talks about "broken days" as a way of describing days where distractions, problems, and must-do-now crises completely disrupt productivity. Robinson says, I call those days “Broken” because that's what they usually are. Broken by distraction, broken by too many meetings, broken by a lac...
Yahoo Pipes is a new online tool that allows you to blend, manipulate, and combine feeds from various data sources to create a streamlined, single feed of information. Essentially Yahoo Pipes allows you to create feed mashups of different data sources without having a knowledge of programming. Yahoo Pipes has received a lot of praise. In its debut, Tim O'Reilly said: Yahoo!'s new Pipes service is a milestone in the history of the i...
I added three new features to my blog: an index (or site map), a display of inbound links, and public web stats. You can view the index by clicking the "Post Index" link at the top. The plugin that generates this index is called the Dagon Design Sitemap Generator, and you can set how the posts are arranged—by date or alphabetical, ascending or descending, and the categories to show. I like it because it provides an at-a-glance view of all...
In this Twin Cities article, the author explains that a group of "career explorers" brought in a technical writer to talk about his work. The result? In addition to explaining his duties and the path that had led to his somewhat accidental career choice, our speaker gave us food for thought when he declared "There's no joy in technical writing. No one goes home filled with joy over having written the perfect software instruction." To plac...
Today I became convinced of something I'd always known: shorter is better. While driving to our Florida Tech. Comm. Competition showcase event, I listened to a South by Southwest podcast on "How to Add Video to Your Blog." (I actually had my videocamera with me to take footage at the event.) The vloggers explained that 3 minutes is the max length you want. At that point, the reader gets the point. I was also looking at Copyblogger's posts...
I was digging in the Oberkirch podcast archives and found a thought-provoking podcast on corporate blogging (dated July 2006). In this podcast, Brian Oberkirch talks with Shel Israel about Dell's foray into the corporate blogging world. In Dell's initial blogging phase, their blog took a downturn when they failed to address user concerns. Dell simply wasn't building relationships with users. Israel says Jeff Jarvis was one of many frustra...
I received the following email from a reader: Super-sized kudos to you on your tech writer voices website and podcasts! Great job tackling topics that matter to tech writers. For me personally, it has really helped me stay current as I re-enter the field after taking some years off to raise young kids. So thanks, and tell me what vitamins you take to keep up with work/family balance. Do you ever sleep? (Good future topic, eh?) Also, I'm w...
WritersUA published their 2007 salary survey, finding that 73K the average. The survey breaks down the highest to lowest paying states. Click the links at the top of the WritersUA page to see how the survey is broken down. If you live in Northern California, Massachusetts, or South Carolina, you're in the top three states. Pennsylvania, Florida, and Missouri are at the bottom of the chart. Thanks to Gordon Meyer for alerting me to the pub...
Kathy Sierra is on the leading-edge for user help. In her posts and speeches for Creating Passionate Users, she often talks about the qualities of help that works, especially in this excellent South by Southwest presentation. In this presentation, she asks why so many participants actually attended South by Southwest, because the conference was in fact being recorded, blogged, and even twittered. Ironically, the same people developing in...
We're doing a special STC election podcast next Wednesday at 9 p.m. EST, talking with the different candidates running for STC offices. If you're running for election, and you want to talk about yourself and your vision/plans for the STC, contact me at [email protected]. All you need is a landline phone. I mentioned this elections topic at the close of my last podcast. Nicky Bleiel has already contacted me. I'm curious to see how many ca...
In this podcast by Dan Rather at this year's South by Southwest conference in Austin, Texas, Rather says today's journalism "needs a spine transplant. It has lost its guts" (see minute 42:30). I didn't realize how authentic Rather was as a journalist. He really is a dyed-in-the-wool, tried-and-true, 100%-committed journalist. He says information is central to making correct choices in a democracy. Journalists bring us information that all...
Listen here: In this week's podcast, Heidi and I consider a probing question: Is technical writing boring? We discuss a post that spawned a lot of comments and exchanges. We also talk about an article on information architecture in the Tech Comm journal. We talk about the following topics in this podcast: "Is technical writing boring?"post Information Architecture article in Tech Comm Journal Grammar Girl podcast Web 2...
TECHWR-L, one of the most popular listservs for technical writers, recently switched their site to Drupal. I was excited to see it. I haven't worked with Drupal before, but I've heard good things about it. Drupal offers more content management features than WordPress. I was also delighted to see that my blog feed had been aggregated to their Community "News Feeds from the Web" section. I explored the TECHWR-L Drupal site for a while. It'...
