It’s been a while. Kicking off today with the impact of Web 2.0 on investigative reporting.

Web 2.0 Online Collaborative Takedown: Beijing’s Gymnasts

It seems that the Chinese Olympic gymnast age issue has some new online forensic evidence that points irrefutably to the Streisand effect taking place to rewrite history within the Chinese Gymnastics statistics.

Mike Walker broke the story about He Kexin while operating under the pseudonym Stryde Hax and had this to say:

This story now is really about Internet censorship, the act of removing evidence while at the same time claiming that the evidence is wrong. For the first time I watched search records shift under my feet like sand, facts draining down a hole in the Internet.

Will this stand?

Apparently not when half the literate world researches and screen prints the cached stats…

News agencies AP and FoxNews were quick to verify the source and interview Mike Walker.

Scriptorium Launches Content-Rich Wiki

Sarah O’Keefe from Scriptorium / Palimpsest did several interesting and enlightened things. First, she gave away about thirty copies of her very cool book which I have recommended for some time. Then she commenced to launch their wiki, with a tremendous amount of content available for research, comments, and modification.

Today, we are launching wiki.scriptorium.com. Our new wiki currently includes the training content from our FM 101 (unstructured/accelerated introduction) and FM 201 (structured/introduction to authoring).

We will also add the content of our other three FrameMaker workbooks as soon as possible. Our workbook content is for FrameMaker version 7, which means that about 90 percent of it is accurate for version 8.

Articulate: Working On Releases | Revising Content

As I find the time this busy week I’ve been testing out the Articulate Online software. It appears to be a good SaaS for LMS tracking without the overhead cost, similar to the model MadCap Software has taken with their Feedback Service.

I’ll write a review later after my evaluation. As it stands, Articulate Online’s a KISS type of tool and very intuitive. I like the graphics and intuitive UX / workflow.

Cross-functional Dynamic Duo: Technical Communicators and Instructional Designers

One of Articulate’s contributors Tom Kuhlmann asks the question Is Google Making Our E-Learning Stupid?

For me, this article touches on the key requirement for revising old content to make it more relevant with the changes in reading habits we have. This is something that all of us Technical Communicators really needs to do but just can’t seem to find the time, or the budget approval in time.

This just in… Authoring Tools Still Draw Blood

In fact, just this week Bill Swallow and Tom Johnson had a key debate regarding tool usage, focusing on time savings from tools versus time spent on content. From Tom’s post:

The latest poll, “Which Authoring Tool Is Best for You?” has received nearly 600 votes from people around the world, and was discussed at length on the HATT listserv. In all this discussion, I’ve realized one thing: technical writers are passionate about the tools they use.

Bill answers within the comments and on the HATT list.

… And Back To The Rapid eLearning Dynamic Duo

My opinion is that Tom Kuhlmann has touched on one of the key reasons content needs to have a shelf life; if users are no longer understanding the dry, PDF print-based format, it’s going to cost the corporation or blended learning teams more time and money.

Therefore it seems that both the Technical Writing departments and the Online Training departments would benefit from more cross-functional workflow. A well-supported wiki or an online tool like MadCap’s Feedback Service would allow feedback at any time for changes that Instructional Designers might like to see. Of course this would be best behind the firewall and content notes safely tucked away for reasonable update cycles.

I avoid saying add team meetings for a reason; I hate them and they suck up everyone’s time. If you are having a cross-functional Dynamic Duo meeting, chief among the first topics should be updating the styles for a better flow.

Going at it the other way, I’m sure the online help files would benefit from having updated tutorials and case studies hyperlinked into them. Additionally, blog content might benefit from dissection of a case study for team-based discussion, distance learning, etc.

Articulate’s Rapid eLearning Tom Kuhlmann states:

The main point is that just because you do a course online, doesn’t mean you can’t blend the course content with offline activities.

MadCap’s Mimic 2.0 – Silverlight

MadCap released Mimic 2.0 a few months ago. Among other modifications Mimic 2.0 now allows both Flash and Silverlight output. I’ve covered Silverlight previously in this blog as an emerging technology. Even with few external feature updates I think introducing Silverlight is a strong first step for MadCap into the eLearning / LMS space. However I’m still waiting for the Mimic Product Manager’s blog…

DITA

Check out Anne Gentle’s Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA) reading list. Great information about structured writing and questions about implementation of DITA.

And Finally… I’d Rather Be Writing – Or Maybe Not!

Tom Johnson heads for the hills for a bit of peace and quiet amidst the musing on the Utopias and Dystopias of Communication:

The more you blog, the more people you attract through Google. The more search-engine-optimized your posts are, the more people find you. The more tweets you send, the more people follow you. The more social networks you join, the more people add themselves to your page. The better posts you write, the more people subscribe to your RSS feed.

The more content you generate – in whatever form and media – the more trackbacks and links people generate about you. The more you produce, the more emails and questions you get. You become like a content cloud – attracting Google searches.

Once again Tom’s analysis nails the issue precisely.

His post about his coworker mirrors my feelings regarding Twitter and why I’ve stayed away from Facebook, Plaxo, MySpace, and YouTube. I’m a reluctant technophobe when it comes to my own transparency online.

But the up side is so rewarding. Again, from Tom’s post Too Connected – Utopias and Dystopias of Communication:

Having a public space to write and publish my thoughts — where people actually read what I write and respond with comments or email or trackbacks — it’s motivating. My words no longer live solely in Word documents on an old hard drive, intended to be published in an obscure literary journal after months of slush pile dormancy.

My writing freely propagates around the Internet.

It freely connects with others.

Finding balance is one of those struggles that we all have in life. As you can tell from my blog, my postings are sporadic. That’s only one of the struggles I have.

From Starting a Conversation: The Art of Comment Fetching:

Everyone measures the success of their blog in different ways – but when it comes to measuring engagement, comments and trackbacks are what really count.

Today’s Blogging Irony

It’s funny that the Technical Communication blog of Adobe, the market leader in just about everything written, spoken, filmed, or distributed – Well, their blog hasn’t had a comment from a user in two and a half months.

Oh, it’s got 1407 links to it in Technorati… But no comments.

Then again, I could be a bit sour because my comments on Adobe’s TechComm blog the three times I’ve made them, were either held for nine months (until I posted an image of the question on my own blog during a heated debate) and then posted like they’d always been there, or in the case of my comments last month, simply ignored.

Not very engaging. Sort of like Adobe’s current TechComm Technical Support. But that subject is so 2007.

The Adobe Captivate blog OTOH, is hot. Silke Fleischer’s got it going on, and by the metrics mentioned above, she is clearly engaging her audience. Maybe that’s why I link to it on my page and not to the TechComm.adobe.whatever.com blog.

Then again, Captivate is a very engaging product while the rest of the TCS doesn’t really push my buttons…

My blog? Oh, let’s not even go there. Every other month or so I literally get too busy to post anything. So enjoy it while it lasts…

LB, this is for you… The clock started ticking when I SMS’d you so you realize how quickly someone can aggregate thoughts and collaborate with others.

I’m posting this real time to show an example of how quick and easy it is to update content. Below the fold, begin to realize how you can kill your email strings forever with a blog…

Web 2.0 The machine is using… us

Start with this… Best five minute summary around.

The single most important thing to remember is that once your content within XML is able to be repurposed virtually anywhere. 

Read the rest of this entry »

Cousin Derek doesn’t blog?!? Say it ain’t so…

…Jeter updated his [mlb.com] journal four times in 2007, and Rodriguez once.

Jeter smiled when asked if he had thought about maintaining a true blog. “That’s too much for me to worry about,” said Jeter, who was in sixth grade when Hughes was born. Maybe, he [Phil Hughes] mused, there was a generation gap.

It would be hard to picture most players holding a contest for fans to guess a favorite quote from “The Office.” Hughes did, and more than 300 people replied before a reader named giambino0522 guessed correctly.

For the contest winner, Hughes sent a game-used, autographed ball from his victory in Game 3 of the division series. Hughes had two other balls from the game, so he apparently did not mind giving up a memento worth hundreds of dollars.

“The fans are very important to me,” Hughes said. “Without them, I wouldn’t have a job, basically. I try to give back as much as I can. It’s almost a no-brainer.”

Derek, you need to step up and get with the technology! Hook up with Twitter or something, do it from your cell phone… ’cause you’re just as old as my brother, and that’s not young in baseball! Those fans are fickle as well.

As for generation gap – meh!

When you find new authors it’s exciting to read their viewpoints. I initially started this blog with a thread of analysis of Adobe’s RoboHelp 6 release with which I was thoroughly underwhelmed. I had been watching the discussion on MonkeyPi previously, and part of the enjoyment of blogging is responding to what I call distributed discussions.

Back to RoboHelp vs. Flare: The Blog Review

It’s interesting that today’s examples are all from Utah. Being a former Coloradan for several years I have to say it’s nice to see some of the Rocky Mountain crowd. Now let’s enjoy some distributed discussion of RoboHelp 7 and MadCap’s marketing.

First, a view from Paul Pehrson on RoboHelp 7’s competitive abilities with his analysis of Adobe playing the innovation catch-up game:

RoboHelp is now in catch-up mode trying to figure out how to emulate the innovative features in MadCap’s product suite. Now it is MadCap pushing the innovation envelope here.

Will RH be able to maintain pace with MadCap’s one (or more) releases per year? Will RH be able to come out with new features that aren’t already in Flare?

Maybe so, but RH 7 wasn’t proof of that yet. Again, it will be interesting to have this discussion in two years and see where the major players are at.

I found Ben Minson’s blog when he guest posted to Tom Johnson’s blog. Ben posted a critical thesis about MadCap’s marketing which, by the way, is a great opinion piece.

The thing that has bothered me the most about what has happened with RoboHelp and Flare is MadCap’s marketing approach, which caused “Flare” and “MadCap” to leave a bad taste in my mouth.

Granted, Macromedia’s treatment of the original RoboHelp team was probably less than professional. However, Hamilton seemed to make it his quest to blow RoboHelp to smithereens. It wasn’t business—it was personal. If he could carry that little ring to Mount Doom and throw it in the fire, it would be worth everything that happened in between.

In my research into my Web 2.0 Technical Support series about MadCap Software I hadn’t seen anything untoward expressed online or in print. They did, however, carry a gag gift of the die kadov tag die T-shirt, an inside joke about RoboHelp’s shortcomings.

In fact, in my podcast with Mike Hamilton in December 2007 he was neutral about Adobe. I asked Mike H. several tough and somewhat leading questions about RoboHelp and Adobe. Before, during, and after the podcast he never said anything truly outside the norm, and in fact was more generous than I was in his analysis regarding the level of dedication that Adobe may have with RoboHelp.

In my podcast program we find the relevant segment within the Hamilton podcast:

10:10
Clarifies MadCap’s focus on Adobe: “…we don’t care what Adobe does, we’re focused on solving the problems of the technical writing community… I want to dispel any myth that we’re chasing Adobe.”

11:40
Why I started analyzing the space closer: MadCap’s openness in summer 2007.

12:10
Thoughts on other blogger’s views about Adobe’s Technical Communications Suite (TCS) launch. Mike responds by comparing integration of tools within Flare and within Adobe TCS – Example of Capture’s integration with Flare to support the concept of single sourcing workflow.

We went into other discussion of workflow…

34:30
Remembering RoboHelp: we each discuss where RoboHelp came from and why it’s so different from this model MadCap’s following. Mike elaborates on the competitive edge MadCap has right now in integrating all of their products.

36:40
Mike believes that both RoboHelp and Flare will be around for a long long time, of course he and I differ on this viewpoint. He does mention the caveat of how much innovation Adobe puts into RoboHelp being questionable which we both agree upon completely.

Read the rest of this entry »

For some support may not be a factor in their software purchase decision. For others, it counts as a pivotal decision.

Tech Support as a Core Competency

Today I’ll analyze the effects that the implementation of a successful Web 2.0 Technical Support strategy has on a corporation. As MadCap CEO Anthony Olivier stated last year, tech support wasn’t something they took lightly.

Update: I just found out Thursday that MadCap Software has won the ASP Online Support awards.

Continuing my previous Web 2.0 Tech Support case study, let’s revisit our initial external Web 2.0 participation of MadCap Software’s Technical Support and analyze the effects of their participation within the blogosphere and user groups. 

Web 2.0 Beyond The Firewall: Winning Their Hearts & Minds

I’ve already blogged about MadCap’s external Web 2.0 Tech Support efforts. It’s a strategy that has worked well for MadCap. If business can be described as warfare, almost from the very beginning there was an asymmetric war going on between Adobe and MadCap for the Technical Communication / Help Authoring Tool space.

In comparison I’ve witnessed a hardcore Product Manager / Evangelist approach to the Rich Internet Applications market in researching my Silverlight vs Flex analysis series. While that’s to be expected by career marketing staff, Tech Support Web 2.0 usage beyond the firewall is a more guerilla tactic. 

Although the battle is far from over, in most online user accounts MadCap has been declared the victor currently as far as Tech Support goes. For some users, that’s a very important part of the buying decision.

That would be the ‘winning hearts and minds’ of asymmetric warfare. This gives another example of a classic military tactical description / acronym: The OODA Loop.

From Wikipedia: It has become an important concept in both business and military strategy. According to John Boyd, decision-making occurs in a cycle of observe-orient-decide-act. [OODA]

…Boyd theorized that large organizations such as corporations, governments, or militaries possessed a hierarchy of OODA loops at tactical, grand-tactical (operational art), and strategic levels.

In addition, he stated that most effective organizations have a highly decentralized chain of command that utilizes objective-driven orders, or directive control, rather than method-driven orders in order to harness the mental capacity and creative abilities of individual commanders at each level. He argued that such a structure would create a flexible “organic whole” that would be quicker to adapt to rapidly changing situations.

An entity (either an individual or an organization) that can process this cycle quickly, observing and reacting to unfolding events more rapidly than an opponent, can thereby “get inside” the opponent’s decision cycle and gain a military or business advantage.

MadCap’s gotten inside Adobe’s OODA loop regarding their customer service and if it’s a metric measured by comments from users, there is a large gap between them.

No Groupthink Allowed

In this instance, by empowering their internal staff to participate in Web 2.0 conversations throughout the internet, I observed the MadCap TS staff multiply their effectiveness.

This is because each individual acts quickly and without undue delay for review from the hierarchy. Looking again at the ‘force multiplier’ aspect from Wikipedia:

Force multiplication through technology – A small force is multiplied when a small number of units are made as effective as a much larger one.

Swarm Philosophy

Honeybees don’t ask for permission to pollinate flowers and return to the hive, they just do it. Same with what I previously blogged about MadCap’s Web 2.0 strategy.

From Wikipedia about the OODA Loop:

…Since the OODA Loop was designed to describe a single decision maker, the situation is usually much worse than shown as most business and technical decisions have a team of people observing and orienting, each bringing their own cultural traditions, genetics, experience and other information.

It is no wonder that it is here that decisions often get stuck and the OODA Loop is reduced to the stuttering sound of “OO-OO-OO” [2] 

OO-OO-OO – Adobe’s Tech Support Loop

In 2007 Adobe made two grave errors in the Technical Communication space. First, they canned the entire RoboHelp support team located in San Diego. Second, they were not quick enough to regain key support staff competency within the RoboHelp community.

MadCap quickly capitalized on this by hiring the brain trust of Adobe’s San Diego-based Tech Support and formulating a positive beyond the firewall Web 2.0 offensive. This was a strategic coup for Anthony Olivier. Yet another timely decision last year in hiring Var Galpchian after Adobe made her a free agent.

From Does Tech Support Count? Can Good Service Sell in the 21st Century? posted here in 2007:

The question is, will this create a better user experience, and therefore, a better product?

MadCap’s CEO thinks so: “We’ve made it our mission to deliver the ultimate customer experience through next-generation content solutions and a locally based, highly experienced support team that understands our users’ needs. It is a great honor to be recognized as a 2007 AeA High Tech Award finalist for our success in delivering on that goal,” said Anthony Olivier, MadCap CEO.

Although eHelp and Macromedia were both prior web support winners, Adobe is absent from this year’s 2008 ASP Online awards. Microsoft happens to be a four time winner, within the organization’s ‘Hall of Fame’. And now MadCap brings home its first ASP Online award.

With just a few of Adobe TCS staff (and not one Tech Support staffer) posting on external blogs to assist users it doesn’t seem as if the same level of trust exists within Adobe’s Technical Support staff as it does with MadCap’s Technical Support staff.

Related Articles:

• Does Tech Support Count? Can Good Service Sell in the 21st Century?
• Web 2.0 Tech Support: Part 3
• Web 2.0 Tech Support Usage On HATT Re: flare evaluation
• MadCap Software’s New Digs | More Adobe Layoffs
• Web 2.0 Tech Support (Part 1)
• Adobe and MadCap’s Cold War: Who’s the Superpower Today?
• Another Satisfied Adobe Customer…
• Company blogging 101

When Twitter first came out, I wondered if it would ever fit into the mainstream. I had no interest because, in the words of one article, people were Twittering what they had for breakfast and other complete nonsense.

I didn’t see the use for me. Why would I waste the time to Tweet (send a short Twitter message) a meal or read someone else’s Tweets. Maybe for a celebrity, but not for me.

That was until the October 2007 wildfires. Being able to receive evacuation notices and gauge the amount of progress and success of the effort was critical to all San Diegans. We were all connected. We were informed. Twitter, and the adoption by tech-savvy EMS teams made that a reality.

Being able to receive it all on my cell phone in SMS short message format was, in my opinion, priceless.

Shortly I’ll start beta testing a similar product created by a San Diego company. This Twitter successor has some greater potential in the realm of audio and pictures – MMS vs. SMS technology along with the standard Twitter features.

While this already exists in several products on the market, I know the people involved with this one so I’ll see what they have going on that’s different. There’s definitely a podcast in it somewhere.

Twitter and Blogging

It’s been long used for updating your ‘power commenters’ about a new blog post. Debbie Weil’s BlogWrite for CEOs latest blogging tip:

The way to get attention for your blog these days is to tweet your new blog post to your “followers” on Twitter.

According to Wikipedia, prominent usage of Twitter has included emergency personnel and others:

Many organizations (such as the Los Angeles Fire Department^[5]) have embraced the technology and put it to use in situations such as the October 2007 California wildfires.

Prominent Twitter users include U.S. presidential candidates Ron Paul,^[6] John Edwards, Barack Obama,^[7] and Hillary Clinton.^[8]

Higher education is also using the technology to relay important information to students in a more timely manner. Such is the case with The University of Texas at San Antonio College of Engineering.^[9]

Twitter and Technical Communication

I’m gathering information about Twitter or other SMS usage with TechComm. Could you see any use for Twitter with Technical Communication? Perhaps in notifying team members on a time crunch that updates are ready to review?

Or Twitter missing a link – is it yet one more piece of technology which hasn’t quite matured enough?

Personally, I like the GUI changes 2.5 brings with it.

Here’s the pro-upgrade snip from NowSourcing | Don’t Let Technorati Drop Your Blog:

Technorati has often been criticized of not being on top of things, but this time around I must say good job, Ian and crew! Granted that many will be running around like chickens with their heads cut off

…Technorati authority and blog search coupled with Wordpress blogging is at the heart of social media. If you woke up tomorrow and your or your client’s blog was dropped by Technorati, there could be some serious ramifications.

Conversation is quickly becoming the new form of metrics in social media (sorry pageviews), and without a guide like Technorati, we’d be up a creek without a paddle.

But what if Technorati removed thousands of authority blogs en masse? Best upgrade soon, all!

And in this corner…

And now this from WebGeek’s | Say No to Technorati’s Forced Upgrades – Bad Information Spreads Like Wildfire:

There are a lot of problems with WordPress 2.5 that need to be fixed. For example, it’s broken many themes and plugins (for a LOT of bloggers) due to some standard WordPress hooks being broken. (Being a plugin developer, I have to stay on top of it.)

Keep in mind, upgrading before these issues are fixed could damage business websites that depend on WordPress if custom themes are broken, etc. It may cause costly downtime for businesses, along with many other problems…that’s not a joke. (Not to mention security vulnerabilities that could be introduced from a broken theme or plugin.)

Now, Technorati is saying that anyone with WordPress 2.3.3 is fine, so it might not seem like a big deal. The problem is, that for most bloggers, it’s not easy for them to upgrade to that specific version. For most it’s only practical to upgrade straight to WordPress 2.5, through use of automatic upgrade plugins, etc.

Just because WP 2.5 is new doesn’t mean it’s more secure – it’s just that the security flaws haven’t been discovered yet. There could be a whole slew of new security flaws waiting to be exposed.*

And now, the Technorati Hack

Scott Allen provides this information on WebGeek about how to keep your WordPress version without losing your ranking (possibly) on Technorati:

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This falls into the research I’ve been doing recently and I’m very interested in the innovation concepts in this book. From Ten Faces of Innovation – Knowledge Jolt with Jack:

Clarke Ching provides a link to an article / review of Tom Kelly’s book, Ten Faces of innovation (and the accompanying website).  It’s a collection of personae that are critical to innovation in teams.  I like how the personae are grouped by type.

So do I, Jack. Thanks for the lead.

Continued from How This Savvy Techie Downloaded His First Virus

I got lucky. Others have had direct attacks on their sites after a trojan is installed which sniffs their passwords. I’ve got two adware programs which are a nusiance, but right now they’re isolated and cannot get out. I’ll kill them later today as I have time, and find a program that works on them better than the ones I’ve already owned.

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