For the Love of Writing

From Intel to fashion

2011-07-04T11:05:00.000-07:00

Only recently did I get a chance to see the videos available on Intel as part of the VisualLife series they are developing (http://www.intel.com/visuallife). From there as it is my nature I jumped and discovered the Sartorialist (http://www.thesartorialist.blogspot.com/). Not just the video but even Scott's blog is extremely interesting. It shows how he just walks around and captures random images. It is an excellent example of how a new medium has allowed an individual to express their creativity in a way they desire, when then want to. He has been around awhile but I discovered his work only recently, still going through some old entries.

Writing, Lurking or... ?

2011-05-08T01:54:00.000-07:00

This blog is titled For the Love of Writing, because I genuinely love to write, but unfortunately I love to read more. And to compound my situation, there are millions (alright 100's) out there who write better than me. Yesterday I read this article that spoke about the 90-9-1 rule. Do read, it is an eye opener (and do come back to read the rest of the post) - http://lithosphere.lithium.com/t5/Building-Community-the-Platform/The-90-9-1-Rule-in-Reality/ba-p/5463 and I realised that I belong to the 90% lurker category, not something I am proud, but I am. I am a proponent of the use of social media in my team and want to seriously come up with plans to use it constructively within our group, however things are easier said than done.
I realised that half the time I do not know what topic to write on, other times I feel that what I have to say is not important. There are times when I do have topics that I want to write but assume that someone would have already written on that and wonder why I have to take the trouble to state the same fact. I barely get time to read these wonderful posts that I am so drained with processing all this information that I give up on any other writing ideas I may have.
I recently joined http://technicalwritingworld.com/ and was surprised with the activity and content available there. I am hoping that I will at least be able to contribute with the discussion forums.
All said and done, the purpose of writing this post was to determine, if I should write to be active in social media or being a lurker works just as well?
Have you faced this conundrum? Also what category do you belong to: 90, 9 or 1?

Usability 101 - A novice's look at documentation usability

2011-03-24T07:48:00.000-07:00

Recently in my team, we formed 3-4 member focus groups to encourage initiatives around operational excellence and personal development. I am part of the group working towards understanding the usability of our documents, conducting analysis and eventually (hopefully) suggesting and/or implementing ideas that will increase the usability and reach of our documentation. There are other teams looking at process improvement and automation.
Earlier to this activity, just out of interest, I prepared a presentation to understand the effect of usability on documentation. I have uploaded the presentation to slideshare here: http://slidesha.re/fWFrBE.
This is a very basic presentation and many an expert may snicker at the simplicity, but I am a novice at this. Any and all comments are welcome. I have to of course acknowledge and thank the many technical communicators from whose blogs and articles I picked content from. The primary contribution was from @tomjohnson website http://idratherbewriting.com/.
How do you include usability within your documentation projects?

DITA XML Training

2010-08-10T05:24:00.000-07:00

So in the last week of July, we finished the training for the migration of our documents to DITA XML. We learned about the infrastructure, tools and the new additions of process, etc. As of last week we attempted the entire document life cycle with one document of a project. We are facing some style sheet issues where some elements are not looking as we would like, but i think the new system has not been as disruptive as hoped. We may need to go through a few documents before we have standardized on reusable templates and topics. Here's hoping for a good ride.

Great Quote

2010-04-20T22:29:00.000-07:00

Found this great quote

The master in the art of living makes little distinction between his work and his play, his labor and his leisure, his mind and his body, his information and his recreation, his love and his religion. He hardly knows which is which. He simply pursues his vision of excellence at whatever he does, leaving others to decide whether he is working or playing. To him he’s always doing both.

-James Michener

Stem Sentences

2010-02-07T02:18:00.001-08:00

At work we are working towards XML/topic based writing and I stumbled upon this article on stem sentences. All my previous writing has had copious amount of stem sentences as that was part of the template and writing standards. This article presents a very credible argument against the use of stem sentences in topic based writing. Worth a read.

Visual CV

2009-11-20T00:41:00.000-08:00

Found this great site where you can create a visual CV (http://www.visualcv.com/www/quickstart). I am planning on creating one soon.

Short Acrobat How To Movies

2009-11-15T03:17:00.001-08:00

You can find short how to movies on Adobe Acrobat here.

Wordle

2009-11-13T01:04:00.000-08:00

I created a wordle for this site. It was fun making it. :)

Career Building - Pradeep Singh, Aditi

2009-11-04T23:47:00.000-08:00

I stumbled upon the website of Aditi and found this video on Career Building by Pradeep Singh, Founder and Chairman of the Board for Aditi and Talisma. (http://www.aditi.com/video/Aditi%20-%20Building%20a%20career.wmv). He articulated in precise words what I feel about work and life in general. I always felt this way, but never could put it in bullet points like he did, so I must thank him for his insight. It is great advice for youngsters starting out.

Windows 7 - Kylie Ad

2009-11-04T03:50:00.000-08:00

I am a PC and I am 4 1/2, says this cute little girl as part of the Windows 7 promotion campaign. Steve Balmer gave her a small pink laptop during the launch party of Windows 7.
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/watchtheads/video/kylie/?playBig=false

PDF Files Via the Web: Creating a Better Experience

2009-11-03T02:16:00.000-08:00

This is an interesting video from the Adobe Max conference held recently.

Microsoft Office 2010 is here

2009-10-28T04:47:00.001-07:00

Check out the videos at - http://www.microsoft.com/office/2010/ and http://www.office2010themovie.com/. Blogs by the team are available here.. http://blogs.technet.com/office2010/default.aspx

Google Wave

2009-10-27T02:36:00.001-07:00

Just watched a video on Google Wave and was totally blown away.. http://wave.google.com/help/wave/about.html#video

Social Media : Content Curators

2009-10-22T03:27:00.001-07:00

Interesting Read - http://socialmediatoday.com/SMC/131472

Google + Twitter; Twitter + Microsoft

2009-10-22T03:26:00.001-07:00

http://www.breakingtweets.com/2009/10/21/google-bing-search-deals-with-twitte/

DocBook vs DITA

2009-10-22T03:03:00.001-07:00

An interesting article - http://www.content4reprint.com/computers/single-source-documentation-docbook-versus-dita.htm

Importing comments in FM 9

2009-10-20T01:28:00.000-07:00

Framemaker 9 presents a new way of incorporating comments from a PDF. Rather than manually compare the PDF and source FM file we can import comments into FM and work on the new draft. Steps for importing comments are available here. Note: Do not make changes to the source file during the review cycle. If more than one user has provided the comments then it is advisable to consolidate the comments in PDF and then import into FM. Else you will have to import comments individually for each reviewer.

RJ's Next Seminar - Twitter 101 for Technical Communicators - Nov 3

2009-10-20T00:00:00.000-07:00

RJ is hosting a Seminar on Twitter for technical communicators, click here to register.

Short Video Trainings on Acrobat 9

2009-10-19T04:07:00.000-07:00

Here you will find great short video tutorials on Acrobat 9 all for free. Great way to learn of new features in Acrobat 9.

Hilarious Video from Creative Pro Series

2009-10-19T04:00:00.001-07:00

This video shows the life of an audio engineer, the antics by the voice recording artist are hilarious.

Why Acrobat 9

2009-10-19T03:57:00.000-07:00

Interesting PPT by Ali Hanyaloglu
https://admin.adobe.acrobat.com/_a295153/needacrobat9

Online Word Processing

2009-10-15T03:02:00.000-07:00

Online word processing has started to mature with many large players taking active interest in targeting this market of people who are on the move, or do not need a full time desktop software, or just enjoying using things for free. Here are a few vendors leading the bandwagon - Adobe, Microsoft, Google, Zoho.

Twitter Apps

2009-10-11T03:28:00.000-07:00

For all you twitter fans out there - this is a great site - http://oneforty.com/item/powerpoint-twitter-tool

Excellent White Paper on FM9

2009-09-05T02:58:00.000-07:00

Enjoy - http://www.adobe.com/devnet/framemaker/articles/fm8_xml/fm8_xml.pdf

Interesting site

2009-09-01T02:56:00.000-07:00

On my usual web browsing discovered this great site - http://photoshopdisasters.blogspot.com/

Reading technical writing articles

2009-08-31T02:55:00.000-07:00

For the last week I did not have any documents to keep me busy at work, so spent the time researching technical writing and found these great resources.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/testthenation/english/
http://www.economist.com/diversions/quiz.cfm?quizname=stylequiz

Neutral to first gear

2009-08-25T07:12:00.000-07:00

After working on a personal blog I was inspired to start writing a little about the things I do or learn at work so here's to another chapter in my blogging life.