Will the growth of tablet and mobile phone based reading lead to the return of Clippy?

Microsoft Clippy (aka “Office Assistant” or “Clipit”) is a feature remembered by many users of Microsoft Word. It assisted users by way of an interactive animated character, which interfaced with Office’s online Help. Although the concept of “embedded” or “persistent” Help was good, its application in the real-life working environment was not well received. With more and more… Read more »

Ubuntu for the Technical Author?

We run a mixture of PCs (XP, Vista and Win 7) and Macs and, earlier this week, we spent some time investigating whether the Ubuntu Operating System might be worth installing on some of our older Windows XP machines. Ubuntu is a free and user-friendly version of Linux that looks and operates in a similar… Read more »

You don’t need a Kindle to read Kindle ebooks

We’ve had a number of emails from people assuming they need a Kindle to read Kindle ebooks. Actually, Amazon offers free software applications that enable to read Kindle ebooks on Windows , Macintosh OS/X, Linux and smartphones. You can download the Windows viewer here. There are a number of free ebooks available, as well as the ones… Read more »

The gamification of assistance (aka How to boast about your Help)

Gamification is the integration of game dynamics into any medium such as a Web site, Help file or community, in order to drive a positive response, participation and engagement from a target audience. It’s used by lots of organisations: airlines via Frequent Flyer Programmes, Google via AdWords, as well as more recognisable games software, such… Read more »