Words of 2009

Here is a very unscientific list of words we’ve spotted coming into favour within the popular media during the past 12 months: Adjectives and adverbs Hefty Uber Trending Nouns A disconnect An ecosystem The Millennials (or the millennial generation) The Outliers Augmented Reality Verbs Hat tip (seen as “H/T”  or “HT” in messages on Twitter and… Read more »

Once more, but with meaning – how will the Semantic Web affect technical documentation and technical authors?

Web technologies expert, John Fintan Galvin, is claiming 2010 will be the year of the Semantic Web, when semantic technologies really take off. If that is the case, how could it be used by technical communicators to deliver better user assistance? The Semantic Web is all about the automation of connections between “resources” in a context-sensitive way…. Read more »

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 »

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 »