In Rahel Bailie’s excellent presentation at the STC Conference (“The New Face of Documentation“), she looked at the “No Documentation” approach to software user assistance. This, she summed up, as the “we don’t document it; we just fix it” view of software development. She argued that a “No Documentation” approach doesn’t lead to no documentation. Users soon… Read more »
Category: Web 2.0
What Web 3.0 is really about for technical authors
On Monday I had a good chat with John Fintan Galvin, who is a true expert in Web technologies and SEO, about Web 3.0. According to Fintan: “Web 3.0 is all about the automation of connections between resources in a context-sensitive way. These connections can be made between anything defined as a resource, e.g. people,… Read more »
Six ways to add Web 2.0 functionality to your manuals
This is an end of a long day post, so forgive me if I miss anything obvious. Here are some suggested actions and ideas for creating Web 2.0 technical documentation: 1. Put your documents on the Web, as Web pages.2. Create a link to the Web version on folksonomy/tagging sites such as Digg, Technorati and… Read more »
Is this video on advertising-customer break up also true for technical communication?
Brian Solis, Principal of FutureWorks PR and New Media agency in Silicon Valley, has posted a blog on the need for organisations to listen directly to the needs of the customer. Solis states: “You can’t manage a relationship, you need to be a part of it, fully engaged… …If a conversation takes place online and… Read more »
How will the Semantic Web affect user documentation?
Tim Berners-Lee said, in 1999: I have a dream for the Web [in which computers] become capable of analyzing all the data on the Web – the content, links, and transactions between people and computers. A ‘Semantic Web’, which should make this possible, has yet to emerge, but when it does, the day-to-day mechanisms of… Read more »