Listen here: In this podcast, Ann Rockley, president of the Rockley Group, talks about Web 2.0 trends, content management systems, and DITA. Specific topics include: Web 2.0 trends for content management Customer-centric content management Card sorting and user-driven architecture Content-rating features and dynamic delivery Helping users find information in a CMS What DITA is and why it important Who DITA is right for ...
I just posted a new podcast. It's all about web 2.0, DITA, CMS, as explained by Ann Rockley. Check it out at www.idratherbewriting.com. Also, if you're still manually downloading podcasts, check out this list of podcatching applications.
Thanks to Beth for sending me this article on podcasting. It covers some of the big issues -- monetary ROI, audience size, purpose. It's a good read. Link to the article. I know podcasting has a poor monetary model right now; that's probably why it hasn't taken off as much. Plus so few people listen to them. I've listened to Diggnation and Dawn and Drey. I really like Diggnation -- the other week I was running on a treadmill and I just k...
It looks like Wordpress will finally be offering an enterprise edition comparable to Movable Type's enterprise edition. Cool. Here's the link to the article.
Listen here: Emma Hamer, a performance improvement consultant in Vancouver, Canada, explains how to move your performance up to another level by setting up the ideal collaborative workspace, overcoming team members' fears of change, and addressing other common problems in the workplace. In this podcast, she covers the following: Helping writers cope with major changes (such as implementing a CMS) Understanding the diffe...
Intel is coming out with a total web 2.0 package -- a suite that includes tools for blogging, wikis, feeds, and other collaboration tools built in. The suite combines Newsgator, Simplefeed, Socialtext, and Movable Type. Here's the article. More on Socialtext -- A new product called SocialPoint from SocialText apparently can sit on top of SharePoint. SocialText offers some powerful wiki tools. I am still discovering the power of wikis, bu...
I've been hearing so much about youtube that I finally decided to check it out. Seems like the perfect medium for film students and other video-savvy people to exploit. Here are a few of youtubes that I found interesting: Of course Google just bought youtube for something like 100 trillion dollars. It has a great advertising and learning potential, but it's mostly random entertainment right now.
I've been somewhat of a latecomer to Firefox. Earlier versions of the browser seemed to load content more slowly than IE. But Firefox 2.0, esp. with the Fasterfox extension, loads content much faster than IE7. Plus, one of the best benefits of the Firefox browser is the Deepest Sender extension. This extension makes posting to your blog much, much easier. All you do is click a button on your browser, and a dialog box pops up that interfac...
For some time now, I've maintained a list of technical writing blogs on stc-suncoast.org. And I've had them all aggregated in my own Feeddemon newsreader. By aggregate I mean my newsreader pulls together all the content into one long flow of information, arranged chronologically. Now you can get the same effect without a newsreader -- I've aggregated them with Blogdigger. Here is the link of aggregated technical writing blogs: http://gro...
I used Survey Gizmo (surveygizmo.com) to survey the chapter about whether job postings should be restricted. Survey results: 55% think job postings should be restricted to members only. 38% think job postings should be open to everyone. 6% are unsure. There are 240 people on the listserv, and only about 140 who are members. 47 people responded to the Strangely, after posing this survey, 4 new job postings appear...
This is a worthwhile podcast to listen to: http://www.itconversations.com/shows/detail1564.html The guy covers about 20 different online collaboration tools. Plus he talks at an intense rate.
http://share.opml.org is a site that shows you the top 100 blogs and top 100 podcasts based on OPML files that users submit. (OPML files are lists of all the feeds you're subscribed to with your news aggregator.) I wish I could create something like this for technical writers.
I've come across a couple of free tools that may prove useful for surveys and webinars. Surveys: www.Surveygizmo.com Allows you to create surveys with up to 250 responses for free Webinars: www.vyew.com Free webinar tool (but I need to explore it more) Has anyone had any experience with these two tools?
Here's an interesting site: www.oneword.com. It gives you a word to start writing about -- something to get your creative juices flowing. More interesting is to read other people's one-word writes.
As of Nov 1, here are the number of unique downloads for the podcasts on Tech Writer Voices (https://idratherbewriting.com). Technical Writing in India (Sandeep): 42 Another Perspective on Single Sourcing (O'Keefe): 132 How to Create a Usable Index (McGhie): 88 Podcasting 101 (Johnson): 101 How to Implement Single Sourcing (Perlin): 175 Joomla, a Free Open-Source Content Mgmt Sys (Wheller): 130 Flare 2.0 (Hamilton): 237 CM Pros (Abel): 5...
