The missing manuals

Nature, they say, abhors a vacuum, and David Pogue has created a business selling "books that should have been in the box". That is, manuals for popular consumer software and hardware products.

"Missing Manuals ... are not only bestsellers, they're the most popular books on their topics."

So does this mean you should charge for the manuals you produce? If you don't ship good user documentation, are you passing a revenue opportunity over to someone else?

What do you think?

Office online - portal on using MS Office

Microsoft's new Assistance Platform (AP) Help engine has gone live - it now handles all of the assistance queries, Tables of Contents and feedback for Office Online. Office Online is a portal for all things Office. Has Microsoft pushed the bounds of what you can do in creating community around assistance, templates, support, and learning? You can check it out by using Office Online Help in Office 2003 or by searching http://office.microsoft.com.

Microsoft claims it now offers an immediate response. There are also changes to search relevance, which should get better over time based on user feedback.

What do you think?