Happy New Year! Let’s take the opportunity to look forward into 2010 and beyond. Here are, in no particular order, ten predictions to consider. As we’ve talked about some of these on our blog before, we’ve included links to these earlier posts. 1. The battle between the “Engineering” and “Craft” schools of thought within technical… Read more »
Category: Technical Communication
Your future as a republisher
Visualisation Magazine has created a diagram showing how you can use Web 2.0 tools to increase the number of readers of your content – “building an online presence”. It shows the extent to which content can be republished today, through free sites, Web feeds and embedded content. It also shows how you can monitor and receive statistical information on its progress. So why keep… Read more »
Study shows people use search to learn as well as to find facts
Researchers at Penn State University are claiming people don’t just use Search Engines to find facts – mostly, they’re using them to learn. Could this influence the way in which e-learning courseware is developed in the future? The researchers sought to discover the cognitive processes underlying searching. They examined the search habits of 72 participants while… Read more »
Whither wikis?
The BBC’s Rory Cellan-Jones reports on Wikipedia’s challenges: Will the online encyclopaedia that has become the first destination for millions of web users searching information end up withering away, as its worker bees lose interest in keeping it nourished? That’s the question raised by a study of Wikipedia editors carried out by a Spanish academic… Read more »
Find, Follow, Finesse, Feed: The future for technical authors?
A number of commentators have suggested that, in the near future, content curation will play a key role in technical communication. As more content is generated by users, there needs to be someone who manage this content and ensure users will be able to find the right information. Techcrunch has just reported on how YouTube is dealing with… Read more »