One of the subjects Doug Kim covered in his TCUK14 presentation, on the changes to Microsoft’s user documentation, was how Microsoft now normally begins its Help topics with an empathetic statement. The writers seek to understand the user at the moment they’re reading the content. For example, if someone is reading the topic on auto save,… Read more »
Cherryleaf Blog
Not so cool tools for Technical Authors – speech recognition software
Our method for creating online courses involves making an audio recording of the presenter, transcribing it, editing the script and then recording the final, video presentation. We’ve tried using speech recognition software to create the transcribed script, and it has been a deeply frustrating experience. While speech recognition is proving successful for searching and issuing… Read more »
Cool tools for Technical Authors – travel equipment
We’re sharing some of the tools we use at Cherryleaf. This time we’ll look at travel equipment. The role of consulting technical communicator can involve travel to exotic places, such as San Diego, Cologne and Swindon. Your travelling experience can be affected by what equipment you have on your travels, so it make sense to take the right… Read more »
Cool tools for Technical Authors – video equipment
We’re sharing some of the tools we use at Cherryleaf. This time we’ll look at video recording. Video is becoming an important medium in technical communication. In addition to screencast videos (walkthroughs of application screens), software like Camtasia and Captivate enable you to include video of people in your presentations. Doing this creates a more TV-like… Read more »
Cool tools for Technical Authors – audio recording
We’re sharing some of the tools we use at Cherryleaf, and this time we’ll look at audio recording tools. It can be very useful for a Technical Author to be able to record what someone is saying. If you are gathering information from a Subject Matter Expert, you can let them just speak naturally and… Read more »