Author Archives: Bill
Content Stratification
Ever-Broadening Content Horizons In her recent blog post ‘Content strategy – a revolution?’, Betty Tew is just touching the tip of the iceberg (or, whatever the equivalent in a cloud metaphor would be). I like how she refers to “the … Continue reading
Designing is Getting Touchy
Introduction Last Thursday, I joined other local TriUPA members and listened to Josh Clark‘s webinar titled “Buttons are a Hack”. He ostensibly was trying to get us to do more with gestures and less with traditional windows controls, menus, and … Continue reading
Tintinnabulation
This week I went to see the movie ‘Adventures of Tintin’ with my now grown sons. When they were boys, I introduced them to the Tintin books, mostly the English ones. So it was partly nostalgic to see it with … Continue reading
Web Analysis Project
There are many ways to interpret a web site. Through user interfaces, design patterns, business achievements, and social acceptance, one can obtain a general and sufficient understanding of a web site and what it has to offer. I am developing … Continue reading
The Social Cut
There is an intriguing movie, The Final Cut, in which implantable chips record each person’s every sight, giving a veritable recorded history of that person’s life. (See Amazon or IMDB.) Of course not everyone has the chip which makes for … Continue reading
Succint On-Site Online Survey
Recently Brian Calder asked me to participate in the beta program of a really cool mini-survey tool called Xurtle. http://blog.xurtle.com/beta-program See the survey on the right side of this blog – it’s a survey I created using Xurtle. This is … Continue reading
Authenticate This
It is becoming apparent what the next step for smart phone development will be. And I don’t mean making them smaller; they’re small enough. They now have a GPS (for locating), a camera (for taking pictures), a mirror (if you … Continue reading
Profession Realignment
Today I’m comparing the list of program tracks at the STC Summit for 2011 and 2012. Notice the difference in names of tracks. Maybe that’s telling us something about the profession. Here are last year’s tracks (“Before”): Usability and Accessibility … Continue reading
Gauging Social Media
I know that social media is sort of a soft topic for some companies – especially if you are not dealing with the general public. But with the rise of mobile devices and expectations that information should be available with … Continue reading
Streaming Video as Instant Broadcast
Only recently have I been investigating the technology of live streaming video. It is a fabulous and instantaneous way to get information out to others – streaming what is on your computer screen to the Internet for others to watch … Continue reading
Technical Writing: The Secret Profession
Years ago, when I was getting started as a technical writer I did some ghost writing – an article here and there for engineers and sales people who needed placement in industry publications and didn’t have the time to write … Continue reading
Profession in Search of a Metaphor
The challenge for technical communication is the same one that business schools face – there is no underlying discipline that already exists in the academy on which to build it. Engineers have physics, but engineering is not physics. Doctors have … Continue reading
Disappearing (Auto)Number Trick
For all you Adobe FrameMaker enthusiasts, here’s an interesting one for you. When I upgraded from FrameMaker version 7 to version 10, I noticed something funny. (Let me say that this is the only quirky thing I have noticed in … Continue reading
Vision Day 2011
You just can’t miniaturize or automate some things. You can’t miniaturize time spent with friends, time working through what a local chapter should do in one year, or time sharing ideas for reaching a new and changing demographic. Even with … Continue reading
Interviews, Tests, and Technical Writers
There has been discussion of late about tests to give to technical writers during job interviews and it’s time for me to weigh in on this topic. But before I express my point of view, let’s see what other knowledgeable … Continue reading
Minimalist Window Top Design
I have been noticing recently that this generation of Window applications and Web applications have a very minimalist approach to what appears at the top of the window or page. Rather than take up valuable screen real estate with branding … Continue reading
