Poor documentation helps land Microsoft with a $1.35bn fine

Arjuna Krishna Das posted a link to an Information Week article on Microsoft's fine from the European Union.

http://www.informationweek.com/news/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=206900497

"Specifically, the EC ruled that Microsoft was overcharging rivals for the documentation they need to make their server products interoperable with Windows-based PCs and servers. The decision was upheld last year by Europe's second highest court.

Following the ruling, the EC ordered Microsoft to make its technical documentation available to rivals under "reasonable" terms and conditions and to work to make its technologies more interoperable with third-party products."

I seem to recall a presentation a few years back, where someone said that Microsoft was using journalists rather than technical authors to develop the Help for the Microsoft Vista Operating System.

Maybe there's now a ROI case for Microsoft using more technical authors?

Is the "working on screen culture" changing our brains?

The IET's "Engineering & Technology" magazine always contains articles that catch my attention. In the current issue, it includes a piece on Baroness Professor Susan Greenfield's research on how the "working on screen culture" will change the way our brains think.

She argues this is because "our standards of satisfaction and fulfillment may be different". She also argues the information overloaded, screen culture is "not conducive to taking time to think".



Baroness Greenfield is a leading neuroscientist and director of the Royal Institution of Great Britain. She is known for her research into the brain including the effects of Information Technology on the brain cells of the young and the old.

A bit of Web searching brought up some quotations from a speech she made in December 2007.

" (Workers') interaction with screen culture often suggests they are not accessing intuitive feedback (pattern recognition), but acting in the moment, out of the buzz of instant sensation. Excessive reaction to external stimuli, rather than internal analysis can make people prone to being more reckless."

"The answer is creativity. People who can make connections and see what others can't - who can generate those 'Aha!' moments - will see the world and its problems in new ways. This means that as we shift from consumerism to experience to active creativity, there will be a corresponding workforce shift."

"Managers need to lead differently:

Cater for the individual
Guide them in being constructive with risk
Promote creativity"

Although she is looking at how this change will affect the way organisations are managed, it seems likely it would also have an impact on those involved in communication.

Online user assistance can cater for the individual (e.g. segmented, filtered, views of information) and it can guide workers in being constructive with risk. However, it is currently weak at providing a "direct experience" and at promoting creativity. Maybe these weaknesses should be addressed?

Could technical authors help you get closer to your customers?

BBC Four is currently running a series on advertising called "Selling Power", which is followed by the rather good "Mad Men" drama about advertising people in the 1960s. In "Selling Power", someone (I can't remember who) argued one of the benefits of modern day, Web-savvy, advertising is it enables companies get closer to their customers. I took that to mean it enables them to both get a better understanding of their clients and to create customer loyalty to the brand.

Well, I know another way of getting closer to your customers. It's through your technical author. He or she stands as the customers' representative, giving developers feedback on what works and doesn't work. He then explains the product in the language of the user.

I wonder if any organisation has its technical authors in the same department as it has its copywriters and advertising directors?

New software for technical authors from MadCap Software

MadCap Software has released on details some new products it will be releasing shortly. These include MadCap X-Edit and MadCap Press.

What is striking is that MadCap really does seem to understand the problems technical communicators face in the real world.

One of the issues technical authors often face is dealing with reviews of drafts and dealing with any amendments. If the drafts are sent out as a Word document, your nicely styled document can come back with as a formatting mess. It's partly due to the fact that most users just don't understand Word's Styles features.

Whitney Potsus has posted on her "Connected Content" Blog some handy suggestions on how to avoid this by using some of Word's less well know features ("You turn into Style Gallery Cop and put your documents into lockdown."), but these can create barriers between the reviewer and the documents you want them to review.



X-Edit promises "a document solution for the everyday content contributor that combines both editing and publishing into a single document solution...Send Blaze or Flare topics to reviewers with direct Outlook integration. The reviewer can make edits, changes, and annotations within the topics. When the reviewer is done, sending the topic back is as easy as one click."



MadCap Press seems to park MadCap's tanks firmly on Adobe's lawn. MadCap Press promises the ability to create high-end print documents, such as product brochures. It also promises seamless integration with MadCap's translation tool, Lingo.



I still have concerns that Adobe still really doesn't understand the practicalities of technical communication, that features appear as solutions looking for problems to solve. However, Adobe is the market leader and, as we've seen in IT many times before, it's often the company with the best marketing (rather than the best software) that wins. This means MadCap needs to be good at marketing (which they are), as well as good at development.


I think Author-It will still be a player. They seem to have a strategy of developing a community of advocates and influencers and of disrupting the market. In some ways, Author-It makes FrameMaker and RoboHelp look very old fashioned.

Contract technical author in central Manchester needed

Our client has a requirement for a contract technical author who could work on site, starting in April or May. You will be documenting updated financial processes, which will be used across 5,000 stores. This printed manual will be a cross between system and business process manuals. You need to have experience of documenting financial software procedures; ideally, you'll have some experience of Cedar E5. The project is estimated to take between 2 and 3 months.

See our vacancies page for details on how to apply.

Microsoft asks for suggestions wrt. more collaborative document authoring capabilities in Word

Spotted on the Microsoft Office Word Team's Blog:

"I'm curious what everyone would like to see enhanced in Word in terms of collaborative document authoring. Francis suggests the ability to "…break down (and recombine/build back up) our documents simply and reliably into (from) chunks/blocks/sections/subdocuments that individual authors could work on…" I'd love to hear more details and what others think.

What type of collaborative authoring are you involved in today? What are the pain points? How would you like to see Word address them? How wouldn't you like to see Word address them?"

You can make your suggestions at http://blogs.msdn.com/microsoft_office_word/archive/2008/03/06/comment-on-collaborative-authoring.aspx

Contract Technical Authors and e-learning courseware developers needed

We've a client who is looking to build a team of e-learning courseware designers or technical authors capable of developing e-learning courseware. This team will work on a MOD IT project it has won, with the project likely to run May (or June) 2008 - November (or December) 2008.

The team will be developing online courseware that will help UK military personnel to use IT hardware. The work will be mostly carried out in Sheffield, although the client might consider 20% off site working.

Candidates need to have some experience of developing e-learning and other training materials for IT equipment. Ideally, you will have MOD security clearance; have experience of developing technical training to the armed forces; plus experience of documenting Windows Server administration and set-up. The contract will be on a 6 month contract basis, with possible contract extensions. Rate is negotiable, so you'd need to tell us your salary expectations.

Quick Parts in Outlook 2007

One of the new features in The Microsoft Office Outlook 2007 is Quick Parts. This feature provides snippets-like capabilities in Outlook, namely reusable pieces of content that can be called up when you're writing a message.

It would be very interesting if these were stored as accessible XML file(s)that could be incorporated into a single source content management system. Then, it would open up the potential to re-use this content in other documents or bring in content from other data repositories.

You can save content and distribute them with Microsoft templates for other users, but this approach doesn't seem to give provide authors with a great deal of version control.