I’d Rather Be Writing – Tom Johnson

With all the talk about latest trends and avoiding extinction as communicators, and integrating web 2.0 and wikis, blogs, podcasts, and other interactive social media into help, it’s a good time to look at how Google — practically the leader of the web — does help.

Last week Google released Google Voice, a service that allows you to integrate all your phones into one number and includes a host of features, including voice mail, recording, conference calling, and other services.

To help users get started, Google Voice has a list of 20 short videos. Only the overview video contains animation. It’s certainly the video they’ve put the most work into, and it also functions as marketing collateral.

The other videos are fairly simple, with short looping background music, professional voice talent, and a read script. The defining quality is that each video is short, some as short as 25 seconds. Read the rest of this entry »

When I talk to most technical writers, video is a format they haven’t done much with. This surprises me, because I find that, as a user, video tutorials are often the most helpful type of material for me to learn software. Video most closely simulates the universal desire we have for a friend to show us how to do something in an application. Perhaps I’m a visual learner, but the majority of us (some say 60 to 65 percent) are visual learners. Read the rest of this entry »

Michael Pick’s screencasts on WordPress.tv are, in my opinion, perfect screencasts. They’re the best I’ve seen — and I’m not just saying this because the video quality is crisp and the audio is rich. Pick blends filmography techniques with screencasting. Instead of the typical screencast that focuses almost entirely on the screen, with a disembodied voice narrating at length around a cursor’s boring movement, Pick fills his screencasts with eye candy and motion, moving from visual to visual as he narrates, giving you a conceptual understanding more than a detailed nitty-gritty how-to. His videos are dynamic and engaging. Like  a good movie, you forget you’re watching a screencast and are entranced by the choreography and motion, the music and narration.

Here’s an example.

Read the rest of this entry »

Embedding HD video screencasts into a WordPress blog is something I’ve been trying to figure out. The HD quality is key because it allows me to compress the file into a small space without the video looking fuzzy — a necessity for screencasts with small text. I also like the idea of showing video content directly where the reader is, rather than displaying the video in a popup or secondary window.

I learned that if you upgrade your space on a WordPress.com blog (not a self-hosted WordPress blog), you can then upload videos using the Add Video button. If you record in a 1280 x 720 px dimension, the uploaded video will be automatically rendered into HD format. You can then grab the embed code for the video and embed it on your self-hosted WordPress blog, changing the width to 640px and the height to 360px, which is what I’ve done below.

Read the rest of this entry »

This short film on youtube called “Validation” mesmerized me. If we applied these “validation” techniques to our interactions with SMEs, designers, and project managers, our world would certainly be different. The lead actor in the short film is TJ Thyne, the chemist on Bones. Read the rest of this entry »

The other day I came home to find Jane rather frustrated at the computer. She’d just ordered $40 worth of books from Half.com, but realized — two weeks after completing the order — that they were sent to an old email address with an unknown shipping address. The half.com address was apparently a Windows Live ID, but she couldn’t remember any login information about it, nor could she retrieve the password, so she was having a terrible time. Read the rest of this entry »

Last week Kristi Leach wrote a tweet about the need for help to transform into a more attractive format:

Kristi's tweet about the need for help to change

Her tweet expresses what I’ve been feeling for a long time.  There’s a massive rift between content online and content in help files. In most help files, the content is static, old, textual, boring, unhelpful, sometimes obvious, or irrelevant, never packed with eye-candy, video, or any human element. It could exist inside medical packaging. Read the rest of this entry »

If you’ve ever uploaded a screencast into a video sharing site, such as Youtube, you’ll notice that the screen quality is poor. Screencasts require a high degree of clarity to be watchable. For example, here’s a screencast I uploaded to Youtube. It’s hard to see what’s going on. Read the rest of this entry »

I believe that in order to learn something, you have to do it, for the most part. So forgive me if my first dozen videocasts here are experimental, because I’m learning. I’m finding that video is a little trickier than I thought.

To create video, you first need some type of video camera (obviously). I have a Sony handycam camcorder that I bought in 2000 and never really used much — until now. It records on miniDV tapes rather than a hard drive, and I can only transfer captured video via a firewire cable to my computer. In 2000, we paid about $600 for the camcorder. Now I believe I could walk into any pawn shop and get the same camera for $60.

There is so much to video. What program to use, what format to publish it, the video service, getting video in iTunes, and so on. This is my video learning phase, so bear with me. Just last night, while exploring the little hidden compartments on the camcorder, I discovered the microphone port I’d been looking for. It accepts a 1/8th inch microphone jack. Unfortunately I discovered the microphone port after I recorded the video.

A little explanation about the videos. There are two videos, answering two reader’s questions. The first reader writes,

I’m getting ready to publish my Manuals and was wondering if you go through a process of review, a checklist before you publish your manuals. If you do, it’d be great if you could share it. I’m sure your other readers would greatly benefit from it.

Here’s my videocast response:

(iPod format)

Another reader asks a related question:

In my organization, we have a set of controlled documentation. Changes that need to be made are requested through an Engineering Change Notification application. As part of our process, we mark the requested changes in the document with red text and a black change bar along the left margin. We are reviewing our process, and are looking for better ways (if any) to mark changes in the document.

Here’s my videocast response:

(iPod format)

These videos are actually my second recording. I initially tried recording at about 6 p.m., which is prime family time in the Johnson household. I learned that trying to record while family is up and about is challenging. My oldest daughter made rabbit ears behind me, Jane made cookies and clanked dishes, my four-year-old grabbed the camera and drove a stroller around the kitchen. I started over a few times and finally made it through an entire recording, but there were too many distractions.

If you prefer to listen to these videocasts as a single MP3 file in your iPod instead, here’s an MP3 recording of much better quality.

Download MP3 (to download, right-click and select Save Target As)
Length: 14 min.

If you have any comments about documentation review techniques or tips for creating videocasts, please leave your comments below.

Customizing Jing to auto-publish to SharePoint

The other day a developer approached me at work to ask how he could quickly capture and upload video to explain database processes he was documenting. He said he downloaded a trial version of Camtasia Studio, but wasn’t sure if it was the best solution.

Of course I had an answer: Jing, I told him. I showed him how he could use Jing to quickly capture and save video, and he seemed impressed. I thought that was the end of the story, but no. Two days later he approached my desk again and said he needed an even faster way to upload the video. He was using a SharePoint wiki to document techniques. The process of saving the video and then uploading it using SharePoint was too tedious. I need it faster, he said. A couple of clicks and that’s it. The longer it takes, the less likely I am to create video at all.

He reinforced a belief I wrote about earlier: What’s convenient gets used. With that principle in mind, the following is the quickest video solution for uploading Jing videos to a SharePoint directory. This process requires a few minutes of setup, but once you set it up, it literally takes just five clicks to initiate, capture, and publish a video to SharePoint. Read the rest of this entry »