Second Life provides a virtual world you can explore as a video game character walking around and interacting with other game characters. You use your keyboard's arrow keys to move, and you can even fly. You feel as if you're in a video game, because you select an avatar (3-d character), and everyone else is represented by avatars as well, mostly provocatively dressed. Thousands of others are also participating, and it's an experience lik...
Wikinomics explores the economic side of wikis. In this Harvard Business Review (HBR) ideacast, Don Tapscott, author of Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything, tells a story about a CEO of a gold mining company who embraced wiki principles to boost his company's revenue from 90 million to 10 billion. Frustrated by his geologists' inability to locate the gold in his land, the CEO nearly closed the company, but in a final eff...
Librivox is an open source audio archive. Not only can you download audio books (of texts in the public domain), you can also contribute your own readings of texts. That's right, let's say you have a penchant for Canterbury Tales. Well, record yourself reading it and add it to the site. The cool thing about Librivox is that you don't have to read the entire book. Let's say you're just fond of the Miller's Tale in the Canterbury Tales. Fin...
Listen here: In this podcast, Heidi and I talk about online communities, member maps, virtual chats, Sparkpeople, Intercom, and more. Here are links to the topics discussed in this podcast: Suncoast Member map Virtual Chat Ze Frank Show Google Maps API Making a map Batchgeocoder Searchmash Ask a Ninja Sparkpeople DMN C0mmunications Software Saturdays Web 2.0 Fitting podcasts into your day STC Conference Sunc...
In a podcast on plagiarism by Public Radio International, Jonathan Lethem interviews Jim Fleming, a writer, and Paul Miller, a musician, about their thoughts on the controversial practice of reusing others' content without the owners' consent. They refer to plagiarism as recycling what's been done before, "cannibalizing" it and creating something new that is composed of the old. Fleming quotes Mary Shelley: Invention, it must be humbly ad...
Kathy Sierra from Creating Passionate Users made an A+ post titled The Best User Manuals EVER today. The most interesting tip was to structure your user manuals by layers of difficulty, and motivate users to progress to the next layer. The manuals Kathy mentioned give instructions about horse riding rather than software, but similar principles apply. The article covered many points, but layers is what caught my attention. Sierra explains ...
Someone wrote me with the following question: Do you have any links you can send me regarding best practices, research, etc for starting/running a non-profit blog? A writer who works for me has a non-profit foundation and would like to start a blog. We could just start one, but I think we should define our goals and find out what differences (if any) exist between blog-types. Any direction you can provide is appreciated. I divided my resp...
Free podcasts over at http://www.oculture.com/weblog/. (Actually, 99% of podcasts are free, but it's an adjective that never hurts.) The sheer volume of worthwhile, information podcasts listed on this Open Culture is amazing. I'm going to be spending a few hours just grabbing all the podcast feeds into my FeedDemon newsreader. Wish they had a big OPML file sitting over there. There are also good podcast recommendations in the comments sec...
Paul Colligan, a well-known podcaster behind the site Podcasttools.com, explores where we've been and where we're going with podcasting. He also made me think about where I've been with podcasting and just where I'm going. Paul says podcasting exploded with the desire for people to be their own publishers. In the beginning, the process of creating, publishing, and distributing podcasts stretched your technical abilities. It was a hassle, ...
From our virtual chat, we decided that the most significant issue technical communicators face today is keeping pace with rapidly evolving technology. Here are a few quotes from the chat: "For me it's keeping up with the right technology and fighting to increase productivity without making our jobs horrid." "I have trouble keeping up with the rapid pace of innovation in the IT world and the many ways to deliver content." "Part of the pro...
We had our first chapter chat tonight. It went well. The conversation moved at a good pace, no flame wars broke out, and the discussion seemed productive. The one downside was lack of participation on part of the chapter: only four members participated (including myself). However, sometimes if you're talking with a group of friends, four people is a perfect number. Imagine trying to carry on a conversation with 50 or 60 people at once. Th...
I thought I'd share some of my OPML files for different feeds. Podcast OPML Technical Writing OPML WordPress OPML Technology OPML If you'd like to share your OPML file with me, I'd love to see it. For the uninitiated, OPML files are collections of feeds. You can plug them into Bloglines, Google Reader, Newsgator, or sites like Netvibes or Pageflakes. It beats entering one feed at a time. (To download my OPML files above, right-click the...
Designing good websites involves following the same principles of technical writing — be invisible in style. In this Edgework podcast, Joshua Porter explains that good web design is often invisible. Users shouldn't be concentrating on the design. Like Amazon, you focus on the content. You focus on the fact that it works. I strive for the same in my technical writing. I want the user to focus on the content, not my literary style. I rememb...
Someone wrote to me asking if I have examples of companies integrating podcasts into their mix of technical communication deliverables. If you know of any, please let me know in the comments to this post. Here's what come to mind: I know Novell does podcasts. BMC also provides podcasts. Boagworld uses instructional podcasts as a marketing vehicle for their company. I believe DMN Communications also uses podcasts to increase their visibi...
37 Signals' to-do lists, which offer printable to-do lists online to help you get organized, or to simply make lists, is one of the most useful tools I've used lately. Although I didn't write favorably about 37 Signal's Campfire chat product, I really recommend their to-do lists. Mainly, all their products are cool, but the to-do lists have a special place in my heart because they are totally free. I use these to-do lists when I'm online ...
