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CyberText Newsletter
Another great cartoon from Matthew Inman, over at The Oatmeal comics site, this time on the three phases of owning a computer — the honeymoon stage, the comfortable stage, then the dinosaur stage. Here’s a taste: (Click the image to go to the full cartoon, or click this link: http://theoatmeal.com/comics/computer_phases.) [Links last checked...
How long will the editing take?
A colleague asked how long it would take for me to review a Word document (edit, fix formatting and styles, troubleshoot weird Table of Contents etc.). Well, how long is that proverbial piece of string? Here was my response: How long is dependent on several things, particularly: length of the document (typically, it...
How long will it take? And what will it cost?
One of the hardest things for prospective clients to understand is the amount of time it takes to do documentation work. I’m not talking about the writing, but the other stuff — the editing, the reformatting, the pulling together of the document. For example, some months ago someone on the STC’s...
Outlook: Save multiple attachments at once
This information applies to Outlook 2003 and 2007. You get an email from someone and there are several attachments with it. You want to save the attachments to the same folder, but you really don’t want to right-click on each and do a ‘Save As’. Well, you don’t have to! Make sure...
I spend some of my non working hours doing crafty things with fabric. As such, I love the internet for helping me find new techniques, quick tips, helpful hints etc. Then sometimes my two worlds collide, as in this terrific 7 minute video from Diane Gilleland on using Google Reader to...
Word: Jumping to next table, graphic, or field
You can use the F5 function key in Word 2003 or 2007 to open the Go To tab on the Find and Replace window, then go to the next table, figure etc. But there’s a quicker way to jump from one object to the next. Down in the far right corner...
EServer TC Library: Recent Additions
It's more difficult to conduct usability studies with experienced users than with novices, and the improvements are usually smaller. Still, improving expert performance is often worth the effort. Nielsen, Jakob...
What is Unclear About Captioning?
Does your business know about the need for captioning?This recent article might be a wake-up call for people in the United States: Who is Required to Close-Caption? With only a few exceptions, all programming for broadcast in the United States must be closed captioned. Fortunately, the article includes the FCC...
Accuracy in Website Terms and Conditions
For legal documents, accurate information is important. When you use a template, make sure that you customise the content carefully. ...
As has been mentioned elsewhere, I’m currently planning to build a community website for the ISTC and thought it time to get you all a heads up and ask for some help. McLean, Gordon...
Marking Up The Fab Four: Just Imagine What XML Could Do For Your Books
This post is the first in a planned series of articles that examine how the traditional book industry could benefit from adopting XML. Porter, Alan J....
Reimagining the Book Publishing World With XML
In order to profit--literally--from the new digital markets, publishers must rethink the way they create, manage, publish, and deliver content. They must re-engineer their processes to create more flexibility and guarantee a sustainable and certain future. They must re-imagine a production process that frees their content to be transformed--on-demand--into whatever...
HelpScribe
Standard operating procedures formats and template
The format of your standard operating procedures is very important. Because such documents coordinate tasks for critical operations, often across multiple units, they must be presented in a format that provides clarity and consistency. Uniformity of presentation allows for greater usability in crisis situations. The following guidelines will help you structure...
Screencasts are quickly becoming one of the primary instructional tools used to train people on developing software skills. Because they show actual screenshots of the software and how it is used, they make a great compliment to written documentation and cater to viewers with a preference for visual learning. A visual...
Screencasts 2.0 | How to create engagement and add integration
Slowly, but surely, statistics are emerging that show screencasts are a cost-effective and engaging way to provide instructional content. Now technical writers can focus on how to most effectively integrate screencasts into their documentation in an engaging manner. Video content seems to be very effective for grabbing and holding the attention...
When you write your next training manual, you may find it handy to have some examples to refer to. This post will serve as a repository for examples of training manuals. I will add to it as I find additional resources. Manuals and tutorials - High Tech Center Training Unit: A...
Most businesses generate a stunning amount of documentation. Keeping track of internal communications alone can be cumbersome; when you add in documents for your customers, it becomes downright tedious. Communication templates and documentation plans can help you track the purpose of each document, delivery deadlines, staff involved, and more. By using...
How to create an effective screencast | 18 tips
Screencasts are quickly becoming an essential component of software documentation. They combine visual and auditory learning with text to provide a balanced learning experience. Here are some tips on how to create a screencast that engages viewers and provides maximum results for your efforts. Start by listing the conventions you will...
David Barnes @ Packt
Casual Game Developer Advice from the Unity3D Website
InfiniteUnity3d links to a collection of articles for casual game developers, and indie's thinking of taking the plunge. The highlight is an article discussing Casual Games as a business, over at the main Unity3d site. Y'know, some of the advice...
Make your reader Curious to keep them Interested, Engaged and Entertained
Curiosity drives a whole lotta learning. Most of what we learn and remember comes from us feeling curious about something, wanting to understand it, and eventually finding the answer. A good teacher will create a sense of curiosity in their students, and then satisfy that curiosity with...
Oxford Word of the Year 2009: Unfriend
From the Oxford University Press blog: Without further ado, the 2009 Word of the Year is:unfriend. unfriend– verb – To remove someone as a ‘friend’ on a social networking site such as Facebook. As in, “I decided to unfriend my roommate on Facebook after we...
Why the free availability of Unity3D and Unreal Development Kit has me nostalgic for my childhood
Like many skinny boys my age, the first computer book I ever read looked something like this: Looking back, it's easy to be cynical about these titles. Each book contained a whole selection of games. You'd get a few pages of code (a lot to type on...
Amazon Turns Twitter into a Marketplace - Are You Concerned? (I'm not)
If you're an Amazon Affiliate that is. You can now "tweet" Amazon books and get an affiliate link posted to Twitter nice and easily. I guess you could already do this by shortening the affiliate URL yourself -- but Amazon's now made it that little bit easier. ...
Help $TYPE_OF_PERSON be awesome at $THING (via @kathysierra)
Kathy taught me that if you can’t explain your mission in the form, “We help $TYPE_OF_PERSON be awesome at $THING,” you are not going to have passionate users. What’s your tagline? Can you fit it into that template? via joelonsoftware.com This is...
Tech Writer News (Elephant)
Resilience Tip - Emotions as Communication
A critical characteristic of resilience is flexible thinking. For effective problem-solving we want to be able to see the issue from different perspectives andRead more......
FM UG (Tirat HaKarmel): FrameMaker & Localization
FM UG (Tirat HaKarmel): FrameMaker & LocalizationFebruary 17, 2010Next meeting of the Israeli FrameMaker user group will be held Wednesday, February 17, in Tirat HaKarmel (starting 6:30pm) (thanks to GE Healthcare for hosting this meeting and to Debbie Zelnik for arranging it!) Topics: * Localization of FrameMaker Source Files -- Marva Roth...
Free study day for Hebrew editors at Lifshitz College in Jerusalem
Free study day for Hebrew editors at Lifshitz College in JerusalemJanuary 26, 2010The free study day is organized by the Academy of the Hebrew Language and the Department of Textual Studies of Lifshitz College. You need to register in advance with Rachel Levi at 02-5320906. For more information view the...
CO&PI Meeting in Raanana on on editing footnotes and bibliographies
CO&PI Meeting in Raanana on on editing footnotes and bibliographiesJanuary 25, 2010Susan de la Fuente (sdlfsusan@yahoo.com 09-7743713) asks participants to confirm attendance in advance and leave contact details. The meeting will be at her home: Hagedud HaIvri17/6, Raanana. Shirley Zauer will address the meeting on editing footnotes and bibliographies. ...
Translatable but Debatable: מול
I think that vis-à-vis often expresses מול better than any alternative would. Unfortunately, vis-à-vis is not an expression that endures repetition well. You can write מול five or six times on a page, but vis-à-vis that many times would look peculiar. Read more......
Webinar: 10 FrameMaker Tips #2
Webinar: 10 FrameMaker Tips #2January 13, 2010Ten FrameMaker Tips #2 (from the "Improve Your FrameMaker Skills" series) Wednesday, January 13, starting 8pm This free one-hour webinar provides a glance of the "Improve Your FrameMaker Skills" series -- ten useful FrameMaker tips, one from each of sessions #11-20 in the series. Register at: https://student.gototraining.com/4b34y/register/8644388215610343573...
ffeathers -- a technical writer's blog
Did you ever buy anything just because of the writing on the package?
Have you ever bought something purely because of what’s written on the package? Today I saw this small, medical-looking box in a store’s confectionery section: It’s a bar of chocolate! It was expensive and I already had a couple of bars in my basket. Even so, I bought it. Why? Because I...
Last week I wrote about getting started as a blogger. Now I’d like to tell you how I go about writing a blog post, in the hope that this will give you some tips on getting those blog posts written. While I was writing these two posts, the DMN guys published...
It’s a question often asked of us: “What does a technical writer do?” We tell people how to do technically complex things, mostly by writing instructions but also by drawing pictures and making movies. Want to know more? I’m impressed by the write-up in the Occupational Outlook Handbook, 2010-11 Edition, from...
A while ago I gave a lunch-time talk to some colleagues on blogging. I’ve brushed up and expanded on some of the ideas I put together for the talk, in case they’re useful to other people too: How do you start out as a blogger and how do you go...
Collective noun for a group of technical writers
This week a colleague, Tom, came up to me with a big grin and asked, “What’s the collective noun for a group of technical writers?” He had another developer in tow, a new starter at that, and the grin made me wonder what mischief lay behind the question. But...
Another Atlassian FedEx Day and a Confluence gadget on the way
A few months ago I wrote about my first Atlassian FedEx day ever. Now I’ve survived another. Plenty of dust, sweat and tears, and plenty of laughs, later, I have a brand new Confluence gadget to boast about. Well, actually I have 3 halves of a Confluence gadget and lots...
2moroDocs
5 Reasons to Write Procedures in Twitter
Recently, I’ve been exploring the need for writing procedures in real-time, focusing on Twitter in particular. This is the fourth post in the series. In my last post, I was asked by Larry Kunz in a comment for thoughts on situations in which one might write procedures in Twitter. Five...
Lessons Learned: Procedure Written in Twitter
Last week, I thought I’d experiment and write a quick procedure in Twitter. This goes right along with my thoughts that new methods should be used for creating docs. Given that microblogging is here to stay, as is real-time, I decided to give it a try. There were two main...
My First Procedure Written in Twitter
All I’ve been thinking about the past week, it seems, is real-time and how it affects docs. Yesterday I wrote a post about it. Today, I tested it out. I wrote a procedure in Twitter. Tech writers – take a look at it and let me know what you think. Tweets...
Real-time: it’s sooooo last second
Who has time to think? These days, actions do speak louder than words. The world has changed to an immediate, need-it-now mentality. Real-time is turning into all-the-time, and tech writers need to address it. Can’t ignore this one! The luxury of time is slipping away from us. Time to research. Time...
E-Learning Rapid Development = Sticky Learning
Sticky learning* is the primary goal of any learning initiative, regardless of the method used to create it. Good content and well-defined learning objectives and measurements will result in effective e-learning courses that improve business performance and the bottom line. “Rapid-development” is a hot topic, generating a great amount of discussion...
Introducing: New e-Learning Category and Contributor Jill Freeman
Tech writers often work closely with e-learning developers. Yes, it’s true that tech writers can (and should) be able to make their own short online tutorials, or make a quick video to show how an app works. However, there are definitely times when a polished, planned tutorial or similar item...
A Tech Writer's World
"Oh, what a feeling to drive Toyota!"This catchy jingle from a few years ago rings ironically in my ears. With all the current recalls from Toyota, this jingle needs a rewrite:"Oh, what a feeling - to drive Toyota - into a brick wall..."Last year, I came dangerously close to owning...
I love the simplicity of the Homeland Security colour-coded advisory system.This system, which purports to indicate the threat of a terrorist attack, and thereby tells the general public how much they need to worry, is as follows:Green - LowBlue - GuardedYellow - ElevatedOrange - HighRed - Severe(I didn't list Yellow...
Check out this great example of online collaborative editing using Google docs.It's a video of a group of friends editing a document.Watch it, then watch it again, pausing to see the changes.Compare the original, long-winded, version with the much simpler, and much better final version.Ain't technology grand?...
One of Sting's finest songs is Children's Crusade - his haunting lament on the follies of war, specifically, the First World War.Here are the relevant lyrics:Young men, and soldiers, Nineteen FourteenMarching through countries they'd never seenVirgins with rifles, a game of charadesAll for a Children's CrusadePawns in the game are...
My new year's resolutions all involve documentation, of course.The Paper ChaseMy first resolution is to organize all the various printed guides, warranties, and other paper documents that have accumulated over the years and randomly spread themselves into various piles throughout my home.I will review each and every paper item and...
Let me see if got this straight: hundreds of leaders, civil servants, and NGOs gathered from all over the world in Copenhagen to address the problem of global warming.They flew in using private jets, were driven around in gasoline-guzzling limousines, and ate gourmet food flown in from hundreds of kilometers...
Cherryleaf Technical Authors Blog
Augmented Reality for maintenance and repair-BMW
BMW research projects - virtual world meets reality. In future, the real world is set to combine with the virtual at BMW Service. BMW Augmented Reality creates this bridge and extends the real world... [[ For the full article, see http://www.cherryleaf.com/blog.htm]]...
Will “Context is King” apply to user assistance?
Ashkan Karbasfrooshan has written an article called “Context is King: How Videos Are Found And Consumed Online“, in which he argues: Times have changed. In fact, less and less often do... [[ For the full article, see http://www.cherryleaf.com/blog.htm]]...
This is an edited version of a transatlantic interview we carried out with Sarah O’Keefe, CEO of our US partner Scriptorium Inc., on DITA. We discussed a range of topics relating to DITA, but... [[ For the full article, see http://www.cherryleaf.com/blog.htm]]...
How checklists can save your life
Dr Atul Gawande is currently in London, touring the radio stations to promote his book “The Checklist Manifesto“. Dr Gawande is a surgeon in Boston Mass., who has been looking at how to... [[ For the full article, see http://www.cherryleaf.com/blog.htm]]...
Wikis for technical documents - interview with Alan Porter
Here is the edited version of Cherryleaf’s transatlantic Web interview with Alan Porter on wikis and their use for technical documentation: [[ For the full article, see http://www.cherryleaf.com/blog.htm]]...
The “Beyond Documentation” Webinar videos
Scriptorium Inc has uploaded the “Beyond Documentation” Webinar Ellis delivered back in August 2009. In this session he looked at the future of technical writing and likely changes to the... [[ For the full article, see http://www.cherryleaf.com/blog.htm]]...
Gryphon Mountain Journals
Communication Problem or Programming Problem? (Part 1)
Henry opened up a PDF on his laptop and went to page 27. The meeting continued around him as he scanned the text of the procedure he’d written 18 months before so he could verify some of the information that had been distributed. “One way to look at this is...
Release Scrums: An Important Resource for the Agile Technical Writer
Scrums are part of the particular flavor of Agile methodology project teams use in the portfolio I work in. The managers recently borrowed the scrum concept for release preparation because the projects in this portfolio are interrelated and often have to be released together. This means that a lot of...
Anticipatory Search in Context-Sensitive Help
I don’t think online help is the wave of the future—it’s more the wave of the past—but I’m still always trying to keep my brain open to ideas for improving it. I attended a meeting today with the folks I work with in a project portfolio. Our portfolio manager reviewed...
Twitter as a Professional Development Tool
Twitter has different uses for different people. For me, it’s primarily a professional development tool. I follow a number of technical writers. I also follow the #techcomm hashtag. I keep Twitter open while I work (to this point, we’re allowed to do so). When someone I follow posts a link...
First Principles of Technical Writing
After a review of some documents last week, a subject-matter expert told me essentially that one of the first principles of technical writing is to assume that the reader knows nothing about the subject matter. I saw a couple of things wrong with this, and so I would revise the SME’s...
Here are a few cartoons to help you wind down after a week working in the tech comm trenches. (I drew these for the newsletter of the NY Metro Chapter of STC some months ago.) No related posts. No related posts....
I Came, I Saw, I Learned...
Reader Feedback: PureText is Pure Heaven
Last week I ran an article about removing text formatting from Captivate text captions. That prompted this email from Bill Creitz: I, too, used to run copied text through Notepad to remove the formatting. I eventually stumbled across a free......
mLearning: A Lesson in Real Estate
A principle real estate theory: buy property in a less valuable, but up and coming neighborhood at a cheap price and reap the benefits down the road when everyone else catches on to the area's value. Relatively common knowledge that......
Adobe Captivate: Captivate vs. Presenter
This question arrived in my inbox last week: Question: In your Advanced Captivate class you talked about importing PowerPoint files into Captivate. I am curious as to what the advantage of doing this is over using Adobe Presenter. Answer: Generally......
Adobe Captivate: Need an Unlisted Symbol?
Need to insert symbols into your text captions and don't see them listed among the available symbols? Check this out... you can insert the symbol in Microsoft Word, copy the symbol to the clipboard and then paste it back into......
Green Screen on a Shoestring: Part IV, Captivate Implementation
by John Gillmore and Bucky Dodd In the previous three parts of this series, we explained the general green screen production process, provided a purchasing checklist for obtaining the equipment and software needed to produce green screen videos, and discussed......
Acrobat 9: Changing Properties of Multiple Objects
by David R. Mankin I recently had a student in an Acrobat class pose an excellent question. She was a teacher. She had a PDF file of a student's work. Other students had posted comments on the file as critiques.......
Shanghai Tech Writer
Serving Breakfast at Work Today
Serving Breakfast at Work Today is a post from: Shanghai Tech Writer Serving Breakfast at Work Today is a post from: Shanghai Tech Writer When I got to work this morning, I saw caterers busy in the kitchen preparing various trays of food! I was surprised because they usually come around 10ish...
Mobsters iPhone Playdom IDs to Grow Your Mob
Mobsters iPhone Playdom IDs to Grow Your Mob is a post from: Shanghai Tech Writer Mobsters iPhone Playdom IDs to Grow Your Mob is a post from: Shanghai Tech Writer Recently, I’ve been playing the Mobsters: Big Apple app on the iPhone. It’s an online multiplayer mafia game where you complete missions,...
iPhone OS 3 Built-in Chinese Pinyin IME Works Poorly
iPhone OS 3 Built-in Chinese Pinyin IME Works Poorly is a post from: Shanghai Tech Writer iPhone OS 3 Built-in Chinese Pinyin IME Works Poorly is a post from: Shanghai Tech Writer The other day, I wrote about how easy it was to use Google Pinyin to input Chinese characters on the...
Fixing Wordpress Allowed Memory Size
Fixing Wordpress Allowed Memory Size is a post from: Shanghai Tech Writer Fixing Wordpress Allowed Memory Size is a post from: Shanghai Tech Writer I tried upgrading to WordPress 2.9 and got this error message: Fatal error: Allowed memory size of 33554432 bytes exhausted To fix this memory size error, follow the instructions below: Open...
Joining the Society of Technical Communication (STC)
Joining the Society of Technical Communication (STC) is a post from: Shanghai Tech Writer Joining the Society of Technical Communication (STC) is a post from: Shanghai Tech Writer I joined the Society of Technical Communication (STC) back in September when I first joined Google. This is my first time joining STC and...
Vote for Barbie the Computer Engineer
Vote for Barbie the Computer Engineer is a post from: Shanghai Tech Writer Vote for Barbie the Computer Engineer is a post from: Shanghai Tech Writer This is totally random, but I came across a link to the Barbie website where you can vote for Barbie’s next career. Among the five choices...
Communications from DMN
Five simple but essential Web usability tips A pair of videos about how to write for real people Bar codes to deliver help text? A quick and rude guide to DITA The five keys to a successful remote writing project 10 reasons why your last collaboration didn’t work When it comes to usability, sometimes less is...
Posting will be a bit thin this week
It’s not that we don’t have anything to write about … Believe us, there’s a solid backlog of topics on file. But last week was pretty hectic and this week will be even more so. Both on a professional and a personal level. Nothing bad; quite the contrary, there are...
Anybody can do usability Some advice on how to use advertising in user guides An interesting post on moving towards goal-oriented documentation Are you a freelancer or consultant? Then make it easy for clients and others to find you Examples can be powerful Why do publishers need XML? You probably know the answer to that...
Virtualization and the technical communicator
One of the technologies that intrigues and excites me, both as a computer user and as a technical communicator, is virtualization. I’ve been following the progression of virtualization for a while and it’s something that not only has a number of uses it also appeals to my inner geek. But what...
While we’re not the most prolific bloggers out there, Aaron and I do put a fair bit of content into this space each week. For a while there, we were putting up five posts a week plus a collection of links each Saturday. But work commitments, side projects, family (remember,...
Alan J. Porter discusses how comics can make you a better communicator If you’re a freelancer, here is some information on the kinds of clients to avoid Think can ignore video? Guess again Have some Linux infrastructure? Then think about managing your business documents with Kraft Remember to always use styles when writing with...
I'd Rather Be Writing - Tom Johnson
What Would a WordPress Template for Chapter Sites Look Like?
Last week Will Sansbury mentioned to me that one of his ideas with the Atlanta chapter site was to provide an example or template of how WordPress could be used for chapter sites. I got to thinking, why isn’t there a standard WordPress template for chapters and SIGs to use? Further,...
Fragmented Communities and the Chapter/SIG Web Site Problem
Recently Will Sansbury and I gave a webinar to STC community leaders on chapter and SIG websites. Rather than giving a static, one-way presentation about theoretical concepts with web design, or boring people with technical details they probably didn’t care about, we held the webinar more like a design review...
Madcap Flare’s Extensibility: Adding jQuery to Flare
Alistair Christie recently published a podcast about Unscripted Screencasts and Flare Extensibility. In the podcast, he considers whether scripts are necessary for corporate screencasts – a good topic for exploration and testing. But he also gets into something a little more interesting: extending Flare with jQuery. jQuery is the new Javascript....
Web Site Critique and WordPress Q&A Webinar This Thursday
Date: Jan 28, 2010 Time: 1 pm EST Platform: Genysys (on the web) Cost: Free for STC members Registration required Will Sansbury and I are giving a webinar on web design and WordPress this Thursday as part of the STC Community Leaders series. In the webinar, we plan to look at about five chapter/SIG sites...
Podcast: Riding the Tide of Technical Communications Consulting
Download MP3 Length: 90 min. Lyn Worthen presented to the STC Intermountain chapter tonight on running your own business as a technical communications consultant. She covers almost everything you need to know as a consultant, including rates, billing, contracts, marketing, taxes, business structures, hours, salary, tools, locations, niche services, portfolios, client communications,...
Intermountain STC Chapter Meeting This Wednesday at 7 pm
This Wednesday, Jan 20, there’s an Intermountain STC Chapter meeting at 7 pm. in the Sandy library. Lyn Worthen will be speaking on running your own technical communications consulting business. Here’s an excerpt from her description: Unlike the consistent schedule, workload, and wages of a 9-5 technical writing job, going it...
Anything Tech
Now, the technological age has begun. In the past few years technology has taken a major leap. Nowerdays a lots of home improvement gadgets have made life simpler and easier. Such as the Automatic washing machine, dishwasher, vacuum cleaner, LCD TV, Plasma, High defination HD TV, laptops, netbooks, digital camera, microwave...
The revolution of the Compact Disk
The compact disk, commonly known as CD, is an optical disk used to store digital data. It was originally invented to only hold audio but later on it can store video, software, text, and graphics. The compact disk contains transparent coating, which allows information to be received from a laser...
Microsoft and Apple have been in competition since Bill Gates and Steve Jobs shared a dorm room together. The advance in technology is directly due to their battle for market share. Out of their rivalry the computer was born and the lap top later on. The newest gadgets are cell...
Virtual Reality: The Techno Trend
(Enter the dream world of virtual reality—find yourself in a different world—very much like what you see in a video game. But this is different. You are inside the game yourself.) Imagine this. You put on goggles on your eyes. Then you wear a glove on your right hand. The goggles...
External Terabyte Hard Drives - The Perfect Solution to Storage Aches and Pains
Most people like to keep things. Whether we are organized about it or not, many of us find it hard to part with souvenirs, mementos, photographs, magazines… items that may have a sentimental meaning but that also take up space that may be at a premium. We don’t all have...
The Apple Laptop Family Affair
Apple’s laptop family constitute the mac pro, mac mini, macbook, macbook pro, macbook air and the imac. In normal circumstances, the computer is manufactured by one company and all the software that run on it including the operating system is built by another. Mac laptop’s come with one of the...