Poor documentation helps land Microsoft with a $1.35bn fine

Arjuna Krishna Das posted a link to an Information Week article on Microsoft’s fine from the European Union. http://www.informationweek.com/news/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=206900497 “Specifically, the EC ruled that Microsoft was overcharging rivals for the documentation they need to make their server products interoperable with Windows-based PCs and servers. The decision was upheld last year by Europe’s second highest court…. Read more »

Is the “working on screen culture” changing our brains?

The IET’s “Engineering & Technology” magazine always contains articles that catch my attention. In the current issue, it includes a piece on Baroness Professor Susan Greenfield’s research on how the “working on screen culture” will change the way our brains think. She argues this is because “our standards of satisfaction and fulfillment may be different”…. Read more »

Could technical authors help you get closer to your customers?

BBC Four is currently running a series on advertising called “Selling Power”, which is followed by the rather good “Mad Men” drama about advertising people in the 1960s. In “Selling Power”, someone (I can’t remember who) argued one of the benefits of modern day, Web-savvy, advertising is it enables companies get closer to their customers…. Read more »

New software for technical authors from MadCap Software

MadCap Software has released on details some new products it will be releasing shortly. These include MadCap X-Edit and MadCap Press. What is striking is that MadCap really does seem to understand the problems technical communicators face in the real world. One of the issues technical authors often face is dealing with reviews of drafts… Read more »

RoboHelp Packager for Adobe AIR

Back in the Autumn I posted about Abobe Air and how it could be used to provide a new medium for online Help. Today, I came across RoboHelp Packager for Adobe AIR, which is currently in beta. It converts RoboHelp 6 or 7 generated WebHelp files into a single AIR file, which can be shipped… Read more »