Turning a Technical Author’s work on its head

Q. What’s the most popular wiki in the world? A. Most people know the answer to this: It’s Wikipedia. Q. What’s the second most popular wiki in the world? A. It may surprise you to know that it’s WoWWiki, a wiki comprising over 250,000 articles and information. It may also surprise you to know it’s… Read more »

What price Technical Authors?

Kevin Kelly has predicted on his blog that ebooks will drop in price to 99 cents: I am having trouble convincing myself why digital books will not cost 99 cents within 5 years. All books, on average. Just as the price of music does not in general change on the length or quality.Here’s a reason… Read more »

QR Tags – coming to your local Technical Author soon

We have been talking about the potential for using QR Tags since 2009, so it is great to see that MadCap Software has announced Flare version 7 will include QR Tag capabilities. MadCap states: In an online and searchable document, it is easy to include hyperlinks, URLs, etc., for users to access more information, but… 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 »

User Assistance: Prevention or cure?

In 2011, will we see a trend towards preventing users getting stuck, rather than curing them after they’ve got stuck? User Interface design is preventative. Support is curative. User documentation is, in most cases, curative. With new technologies for assisting users emerging, Technical Authors may have the opportunity to provide assistance before users get stuck…. Read more »