Could Microsoft out-Apple Adobe?

Let’s examine a few trends and remember that Apple beat its competitors in the education market twenty years ago by having a rabid fan base along with compelling intuitive software.  Microsoft Live’s community had 60 million users last time I checked. Working within the existing Live framework will be critical for any Learning Management Systems (LMS) play that Microsoft chooses to do in the future.

The eLearning potential with Microsoft’s (NASD: MSFT) current portfolio of hardware and software, part of which is the XBox brand, is gaining momentum. I’ve been discussing current instructional design trends with instructional designers, consumer media analysts, military training officers, and gamers. We’ve reached current consensus:

There are a lot of benefits to using the XBox 360 as a training / eLearning platform, primarily because of the XBox Live community.

Having solid revenue generating Intellectual Property (IP) in both hardware and software gives a strong advantage to MSFT in this space. Windows Live Mesh is self descriptive; it meshes all the services together.

How Does Live Mesh Work?

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Just check it out… This is one of the coolest web clouds I’ve ever seen…

FLOSS Manuals: The OTHER FM for PDFs

Some writers truly hate Adobe Acrobat and any tool that can do the job better is worth a shot, particularly if it’s open source and easily navigated. Flossmanuals.net introduces FLOSS which does a lot of the single desktop Acrobat Pro’s job – collaboratively and open source.

Could FLOSS be the new Acrobat Pro killer?

FLOSS could bridge the gaps between Subject Matter Expert (SME) authoring of content and true documentation. For the specific purpose of supporting open source collaborative efforts this is heaven sent. Most open-source dev teams are simply not able to have those wonderful team meetings for doc review either for financial or time management purposes.

Update: Anne Gentle’s site talks about an event called a Booksprint that FlossManuals.net is doing for technical writers in support of open source programs.

I’ve been reading Janet Swisher’s review of FLOSS Manuals. She examines the pros and cons of Wiki briefly and explains the problem / solution of FLOSS definitively:

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How much money do you need to pay to make quality PDFs? According to Tom Johnson, the I’d Rather Be Writing author, zero.

Free PDF Generation

Tom opens by talking about that irritating little release updater that Adobe runs in the background. Speaking about PDF functionality that exists in Word 2007 Tom states:

…you can download the Save as PDF or XPS add-in for Microsoft Word 2007 for free. It’s less than 1 megabyte to download, and it quickly and flawlessly converts Word docs to PDF, even with hyperlinks. If you have non-Word documents to convert, Primo PDF (another free PDF alternative) will do it absolutely free.

I keep wondering why Microsoft wasn’t able to package this add-in with their updates, or initially with the product.

After reading my PDF summary from January you’ll know my position on this necessary but often overused documentation format. Yes, I use it. Yes, it is a standard. But not worth $700 if you don’t have to spend it.

Help Authoring Tool War – Now Led By MadCap?

What brought me to the IRBW site this evening was the poll that Sharon mentioned. Surfing over to IRBW I checked it out – here’s the Authoring Tool voting stats listed as of today.

I’m not surprised. This is what happens when you lose confidence in the software manufacturer who takes over a popular product such as RoboHelp and loses touch with the market.

Adobe, Adobe… Is AIR going to ‘Help’ you?

AIR seems to get some traction for ADBE however. The stock is still trading near 52-week high levels and has been climbing since it’s low around March of this year.

I’ll have to do a follow-up to my 2007 prediction of stock value for Adobe (NASD: ADBE) dropping this year. After all, Microsoft (NASD: MSFT) isn’t releasing Vista and ADBE’s forced upgrade tactic isn’t as relevant.

We’ll have to see how things go at the end of the fiscal year… They could prove me wrong.

Am I First to Coin The Term AIRHelp?

Then again, last month Ben Minson’s two part review of the RoboHelp Packager for AIR public beta raised some solid questions about the functionality of the software for the end user.

I’m not sold on .air taking over the world of WWW just yet. I agree with most of this take from Ben Minson on ADBE AIR:

Adobe seems to be following a good line of thinking here with AIR help. But remember, users want simplicity. Having to install each help system as an application is asking too much of everyday users.

This use case for AIRHelp would tend to put us back to the .chm days with a distributable file that needed to be on every system running it. eHelp introduced WebHelp as a way to get away from that back in 2002. 

ADBE’s RoboHelp… Innovative A Year Too Late To Be Innovative

Doing something like Web 2.0 two release cycles behind your competition is not innovative. It’s keeping up with the market that’s trying to leave you behind. AuthorIT and MadCap Flare been-there and done-that already.

I reviewed MadCap’s Web 2.0 functionality last year as the Feedback Service. It doesn’t require installation on the client side of anything special and works cross-platform. It’s been pointed out that it can run on any IIS server on your network, even your desktop in your office.

From MadCap Mike’s Musings – Comparing Documentation Server Software – MadCap Feedback Server and RoboHelp Server:

Web 2.0 – The MadCap Feedback Server support for Web 2.0 community technologies is a complete turnkey system. Once installed there is nothing that your developers or programmers need to do to make this work. All that is required is for you to select the appropriate options while publishing your Flare projects to turn these capabilities on.

In contrast, the few similar options that Adobe has introduced are limited to the Air output only (not available in the more popular WebHelp) and even then require either programmer/developer hours or Rube Goldberg-esque scenarios where data files have to be emailed back and forth between users.

Ben’s review points out the obvious flaw; why make end users download and install something special rather than transparently do the Web 2.0 on the server side? Additionally, having an attachment-based data output for the actual server doesn’t make much sense either.

Related Posts:

• Friday Comments Review: RoboHelp vs. Flare
• Ten Faces of Innovation
• Technical Communication – Teamwork and Workflow as a Disruptive Technology
• PDF: Unfit for Human Consumption (Jakob Nielsen’s Alertbox)
• RoboHelp 6 finally arrives, and it’s craptastic
• Adobe & MadCap’s Cold War: Market Share
• Web 2.0 – MadCap Feedback Review Part 2
• Web 2.0 – MadCap Feedback is the KISS principle at work…
• Comparing Documentation Server Software – MadCap Feedback Server and RoboHelp Server

Kudos to MonkeyPi for linking to this: Student ‘Twitters’ his way out of Egyptian jail

“Usually the first thing the police go for is the detainees’ cameras and cellular phones,” el-Hamalawy said. “I’m surprised they left James with his phone.”

I think this is one of those technology issues that repressive governments are just not going to be able to contain.

I’m a little late for this… But early for next week.

Kicking off with this great post:

The goal of many of the Web 2.0 tools is to reduce the overhead. Think of it as a “flat tax” for interactions, in that many of the philosophies of Web 2.0 are around transparency and participation, in addition, everyone is equal.

If you look at MySpace, LinkedIn, Youtube or other social networks, there is no hierarchy and pretty much everyone is equal (yes there are administrators for such systems who have greater powers).

Who keeps the Internet going? No one really, there are some agreed upon standards so that one computer can talk to another, and information can be displayed in a common format, and that is about it.

By the way, my condolences for this writer’s situation; I was in similar circumstances just last year with my dad.

Web 2.0 for Collaboration and Learning – This should be titled Web 2.0 Collaboration 101. Part of a six-week course set up in order to encourage exploration of the new and emerging technologies that are reshaping the way we use information.

Top Three Web 2.0 Tools for Online Education – A quick roundup which would get just about anyone started in basic collaboration online.

(8) Online Collaboration Tools – New Technologies and Web Services

9 Principles for Implementation: The Big Shift – Check out the principles for managing change. I think this applies across the spectrum and isn’t only limited to traditional schools.

Ten Trends: Educating Children for Tomorrow’s World – Specifically, Trend 3: Social and Intellectual Capital will become the Primary Economic Value in Society.

Death, Taxes, and Collaboration

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. 

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Continuing from eDMS Roshambo Part 4 | Feedback with the wiki versus the MadPak with Feedback Service.

Wikis clobber eDMS when it comes to collaboration. Wikis are great but getting the end result into a user manual format still requires an external tool.

Rock Paper Scissors (RoShamBo): Wiki vs the MadPak, Analyzer, and Feedback Service

There are strengths to not having a Wiki model introduced right away into a corporation. Dan Ortega mentions corporate policy holding back the anarchy, however it helps considerably when there is a gradual move towards the Wiki model. 

MadCap is halfway through the Wiki model already with just the MadPak. Add to that the Analyzer and Feedback Server/Service’s Web 2.0 features, you’ve got yourself a good step past Wiki as far as maintaining positive control over the content.

With Analyzer you’re looking at a Documentation Manager’s dream package.

I think the key element is… how much time would this all save each role a Technical Communicator has. Let alone the workflow’s editing search and correction time.

Cost – $1200 for the MadPak and $400/quarter for the Feedback Service ($1600/year) so you don’t even need to host a server and stress the IIS configuration. No pricing on Analyzer is yet available. I really should get some sort of Amazon Buy-now button for this stuff.

As far as the industry tools are currently set, MadCap Analyzer could save upwards of $50k – $80k a year in tech writer time and other software. That’s pretty hefty, although at the time I’m writing this MadCap hasn’t set a price for the Analyzer.

Note: Pricing for Analyzer is pretty cheap, as I edit this article I find that it’s only about $200 or so to upgrade.

Updating Any Content Effectively Requires Feedback Data

Wiki strength is that anyone can provide feedback or edit content. The passive feedback of viewed pages falls under another product’s reporting (AWStats or WebTrends to name a couple).

Let’s examine the potential benefits that usage statistics and feedback could make to eDMS and/or wiki content. The two we’ll look at are Adobe RoboServer and MadCap’s Feedback Server.

Both provide feedback about page usage and search terms. This allows content creators and technical writers to evaluate which areas to focus their attention on, sort of like a triage, but MadCap’s goes a step or two farther and adds a Web 2.0 aspect with the addition of Comments pages within the web interface.

Understanding the origins of the RoboServer and Feedback Server comes in handy when comparing their technologies.

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Getting to the gut-check level of hard truth of whether all our TechComm lives will be forever changed – Is India (Outsourcing) Winning?

Recently I’ve been examining the outsourcing market in India. Part of this came out of my extremely detailed analysis of Adobe, however I also investigated innovation in India. One further study I recently did was analyzing the STC India earnings comparison between US / North American technical communicators and India-based technical communicators. 

J Schwan, Managing Partner of Solstice Consulting just returned from a meet and greet trip overseas to India.

I visited four different potential partners yesterday. One was a smaller startup of really smart software engineers, one was essentially a sweat shop (20 programmers packed in a 12×12 room, a very hot room) and the other two were large publicly traded companies.

I’m really glad I came because on paper, the first two firms looked the same and visiting their development center proved they were very, very different.

Here’s a sketchy SWOT analysis based on my research:

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