I’d Rather Be Writing – Tom Johnson

Podcasts on WordPress are an excellent way to stay updated with the latest WordPress news, trends, plugins, themes, and other development. I recently discovered a WordPress podcast that I enjoy quite a bit: WordPress Weekly from the WordPress Tavern. The hosts include Jeff Chandler and David Peralty — both knowledgeable, passionate people about WordPress and blog design and development.

The two WordPress podcasts I listened to this evening include an episode on WordPress theme frameworks (specifically, the WordPress Sandbox theme) and another on content generation and SEO. I find that podcasts are perfect for learning while driving, and today I spent about two hours in the car. (Podcasts are also great for long walks.)

WordPress Weekly goes in depth and has relevant content that directly applies to me. If you’re not into WordPress, you’re probably yawning at another one of my WordPress posts. But whatever your interests, I encourage you to check out some podcasts on the corresponding subjects. Although podcasts aren’t suitable for detailed step-by-step procedures, they’re perfect for communicating conceptual information. What other medium can hold a person’s attention for upwards of 45 minutes at a time?

WordPress Weekly is hosted on Talkshoe, a popular service for podcasting. You can call in with questions if you join the show on Friday nights.

WordPress Weekly podcast -- a podcast on WordPress that I highly recommend

Can SharePoint 2007 be used as a help authoring tool? Maybe.

Giovanni from Italy asks the following about SharePoint:

I am assisting a colleague with a complete overhaul of an existing Help system. It is in RoboHelp, but has legacy topics that have to be maintained in Word. The Help is for call center and business office employees regarding the proprietary, in-house computer program. We recently got SharePoint, and I would like to know your thoughts on the pros and cons of Help in SharePoint. For example, can it be context-sensitive?

To provide some more detail, we don’t have any translations planned, although I suspect we will need to consider translating to Spanish at some point. There is a need to post PowerPoints and PDFs that are accessed through the current Help menu. We might have multiple authors (not sure).

We don’t need any conditional text , although I think it would be useful because we have several different categories of customers. I’m also advocating strongly for context-sensitive topics. We don’t need multiple outputs, not as it stands now, although I am in the process of researching content management systems and reusability, which would be a great boon to this group.

We also use Captivate and Articulate, which I would like to integrate into short show-me tutorials where appropriate.

Giovanni,

SharePoint is a good solution is if you have simple help content that doesn’t need to be printed, translated, or conditionalized. In the following two sections, I’ve outlined SharePoint’s strengths and weaknesses as they relate to help authoring. Read the rest of this entry »

Act 1 of this American Life’s latest episode, The Enforcers, mesmerized me. I highly recommend listening to it. Here’s the description:

Three guys who go by the names Professor So and So, Jojobean and YeaWhatever spend part of each day running elaborate cons on Internet scammers. They consider themselves enforcers of justice, even after they send a man 1400 miles from home, to the least safe place they can bait him: the border of Darfur. The three self-made enforcers tell Ira their story. For more on what they did, along with photos, maps and phone recordings, go here. (29 and 1/2 minutes)

In short, Ira Glass tells the story of how some “baiters” returned a con on one of the Nigerian email con men. It’s hilarious at first, and then becomes somewhat dark and unethical.

While you’re downloading podcasts, be sure to include Alistair Christie’s podcast on Virtual Machines — very useful if you’re writing installation documents.

In Publishing 2.0, Tim O’Reilly says Web 2.0 is “any network effect that makes a system better the more people use it.” Web 2.0 isn’t just user-generated content; it’s harnessing the collective intelligence of your users to make your system better.

O’Reilly’s definition is intriguing because it’s the opposite of the natural law of use. Your car doesn’t get better the more you use it. A music track doesn’t get better if more people listen to it. Your bank account doesn’t improve as more people use it. Your feet don’t get better the more you use them. Very few things actually get better the more you use them. Not Web 2.0. It’s almost paradoxical. The more people who use it, the better it gets.

Read the rest of this entry »

“Mark in Canada” has a podcast called Musings of a Tech Writer. In one of his recent episodes (episode 19), he reflects on the STC and makes some interesting comments.

He wonders whether the Content Wrangler community and Doc Train conferences can replace the STC. He says the STC spends too much time trying to help tech writers justify themselves to their companies, too much time focusing on the latest tools, too much effort trying to get respect from others.

He feels he isn’t getting his money’s worth each year he renews, and that more sessions at the STC Summit turn out to be duds than those at Doc Train.

On another note, Mark’s podcast follows whatever is on his mind. He has a late night personal voice, and as the title indicates, it consists of his musings. He seems like a nice guy, and said one of my podcasts I did last year (coming home from Doc Train, incidentally) contributed to his desire to start his own podcast.

Download MP3
Duration: 15 min.

In this podcast, Dr. Robert Glushko, a professor at UC Berkeley’s School of Information, explains the concept of Document Engineering — the process of developing document models to make information sharing, reuse, or syndication more efficient.

Glushko gives several examples of document engineering, such as creating a calendar event model that allows an event to by shared across numerous calendars. Or a syllabus document model, which allows students to pull specific data from syllabi across the university in unique ways. Read the rest of this entry »

Although the podcasts I listen to are usually tech podcasts, such as the highly entertaining TWIT (by Leo Laporte), I also enjoy a good alien podcast now and then. Mysterious Universe, produced by Benjamin Grundy, is one of the most fun-to-listen-to podcasts I’ve come across.

I’m not someone who believes in aliens, but dude, you should hear some of the content Grundy plays on the show. For the sake of pure imaginative entertainment (similar to perhaps WWF wrestling), the podcast keeps me coming back.
Read the rest of this entry »

Heidi Miller has some excellent tips on interviewing. In a presentation she gave at the Portable Media Media Expo, she explained several techniques that have encouraged me to change my interviewing style. Here are four key points from her presentation:

Don’t send the interviewee the questions before the interview.

I guess I’m a latecomer to this style, but I’m now totally convinced that it’s best not to send questions beforehand. Sure you want the interviewee to be prepared, but he or she is most likely an expert on the topic anyway. Having a list of expected questions detracts from the flow of the interview. It makes the exchange less natural, and leaves less room for surprises and unexpected turns. Instead of a list of questions, Heidi recommends sending the interviewee 4-5 topics you plan to cover.  Read the rest of this entry »

I watched a couple of interviews this week that spiraled downhill. The first is a Luke Burbank interview with the Icelandic band Sigur Ros. The second is a Sarah Lacy SXSW interview with Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg.

Read the rest of this entry »

In this SXSW podcast — Body Optimization: Why Stop at Health and Fitness? –panelists describe techniques for health and fitness in the language of tech geeks and designers. They share “hacks” you can do to “optimize” your body profile. (Listen directly to the MP3 here, or right click and select Save Target As.)

Although the advice they give isn’t revolutionary, it is inspiring. One panelist explains what it feels like to have more energy. When you finish eating, you don’t lay down on the couch and say ugghhh as you digest for 2 hours. Instead, you say, great, what’s next? You maintain an active level of energy despite having just eaten.

Another panelist recommends carrying healthy snack food with you wherever you go so that when you’re hungry, you’re not grabbing the most immediate thing in site (e.g., hamburger and french fries).

Read the rest of this entry »