I listened to a great podcast today called Why Software Sucks, by David Platt. I highly recommend it. Platt says no one goes to Home Depot to buy a drill. No, people go to Home Depot because they want to make holes. This is what many software developers miss -- they design features, not solutions. Users don't use software because they like the tool. They use software to get something done. When we write documentation, we should almost al...
Daily Lit is designed for those people who spend so much time reading e-mail, blogs, and other things online that they never have enough time to read. It's really simple: You just choose a title, the frequency with which you want to read it, and your e-mail. I can see how this might become a really popular service. By the way, I heard about Daily Lit on the Diggnation podcast. Digg is one of the best tech news sites out there — I have it...
A common question I'm often asked is how to record chapter presentations. Here's what we're doing in our chapter: 1. Using an Olympus digital recorder (from Radio Shack), we plug a lavalier microphone into it and attach it to the presenter's shirt collar. This works decently enough to record audio. I am looking into other devices that may do a better job, but for now we're just using the Olympus because it has a convenient microphone port...
Dynamic help is help that automatically shows help for the page the user is on. The user does not need to click anything (if the help pane is showing) for the help associated with that page to appear. If you have Flare and turn on its dynamic help, you can see an example. The following image automatically shows the help pane that corresponds to the Style editor. When you move to the Topic tab, where the XML editor is available, the dynam...
My article on podcasting appeared in the Intercom today. I encourage you to check it out. Follow this link to the article. Unfortunately, the site is password-protected. However, the Podcasting 101 podcast on Tech Writer Voices is essentially the same thing, but in podcast form. A year ago, no one at my work had an iPod. Today, of the 11 department members, about 7 have iPods. The term "iPod" in place of mp3 player is perva...
I've been looking for some screencast software that is either open source or inexpensive. I've arrived at the following two applications: Wink and BB Flashback Express. Wink is open source and in version 2 they finally support audio (previous versions did not); however, the audio recording is full of static and cuts out. Additionally, the file size seemed to be a little bulky. BB Flashback Express has clear voice and seems to compress mor...
Talkr is a service that converts your blog automatically into a podcast (a computer reads it). I haven't tried it yet, but it looks interesting. Unfortunately Yahoo had a podcast with something like this, but listening to a robot proved unbearable after a while. Perhaps as the computer's ability to read with a human-like voice improves, podcasts will become more ubiquitous. Still, it would enable me to read all the technical writing blogs...
Someone told me that Google Talk is clearer than Skype, but how do you record Google Talk conversations? Is there a device that records conversations? Another matter: See how Google Talk is incorporating screenshot tutorials. I think that's cool, but the screen quality looks like they've got a video camera looking at the screen. Surely that's not the case, but the resolution is so poor, it's hard to view it with pleasure. But it is deliv...
Listen here: Mike Hamilton from Madcap Software visited the Suncoast chapter in Tampa, Florida, and presented on Flare. In this presentation, he talks about the real story behind RoboHelp and Macromedia/Adobe (this blew my mind). He also provides a lot of inside detail on Flare. Specific topics in the podcast include: Importing and exporting Flare projects (more impressive than you might think) One major limitation of R...
I was talking to a friend tonight about blogging. He doesn't have a blog, and I encouraged him to begin one. He hesitated and said he hadn't entered the blogosphere because he wasn't sure what was in it for him (the "What's In It For Me" principle). What exactly is the reason for blogging? What do I get out of it, and why might others start blogging? It's a good question. Here is a start at a few answers: Blogging allows me to put my tho...
Trackbacks are one of the most interesting features of blogs. Basically if I write a post that links to another person's post, my comment actually appears in the comments section of that other person's post -- even though I didn't actually make the comment on their site! Here's an example. I posted a note on my blog saying to check out my latest podcast, which is on idratherbewriting.com. My post actually then appears as an excerpted comm...
In one of the more interesting articles that Scott Abel has written this year, he gives his year in review. Here's an excerpt: Throughout 2006, nothing was more evident than the increasing acknowledgement of the user as the focal point of all we do. Even Time Magazine made the user - more specifically, YOU - its Person of the Year for 2006. Sure, we've always touted the user as key -- know thy audience is the first rule of any technical c...
Listen here: In this podcast, I talk about the convergence of web 2.0 with help documentation. I mention examples of Web 2.0 sites, such as Flickr, Payscale, and Digg, and what help files need to incorporate these same Web 2.0 features. You can read a transcript of the podcast on my blog. Music is from Podshow. You can leave a comment on this post or send me an e-mail at [email protected].
Note: This post is also a podcast that you can listen to on Tech Writer Voices. Help 2.0 is what might be called Web 2.0 applied to help documentation. We are becoming used to seeing websites equipped with Web 2.0 features, and it's only a matter of time before the technical writing community catches up and begins integrating the same features. Defining Web 2.0 Web 2.0 may not have an exact definition everyone agrees with, but few will d...
I installed some post rating plugins to the site. Now you can rate posts on a scale of one to five stars. The highest rated posts are aggregated in a section on the sidebar. Also, the most rated posts are also aggregated in a section on the sidebar. I've been wanting to implement this feature for a while, because it makes the site more interactive and interesting. Look at the bottom of each post to see the stars. Simply select the num...
