Image by Ivan Walsh What do you want to see in Microsoft Office 2010? Arpan Shan, who has access to the beta versions at Microsoft, shares his favorite 10 Office 2010 features. Some of these you may already know, but he highlights some nice ideas that seem to be coming through. In Word 2010, for [...]
Entries from October 26th, 2009
10 Reasons to Love Microsoft Word 2010 & Ditch Snagit's Screen Capture Tool
October 26th, 2009 · Comments Off · Word 2010
Tags: Copy/Paste·google docs·Microsoft Office·Microsoft PowerPoint·Microsoft Word 2010·Outlook User Experience·PowerPoint 2010·PowerPoint Broadcasting·PPTX·Screen Capture·Screen clippings·SharePoint·Snagit·Sparklines·Video·Web Applications·Windows Live
3 Ways to Turn Outsourcing to Your Advantage & Travel the World
October 26th, 2009 · Comments Off · Career, How To, India, Technical Writers
Image Chris Pirillo Outsourcing is not going to go away. Our recent Technical Writers survey showed that US companies are now outsourcing technical documentation projects big-time to India, Poland and Portugal. This is not going to change. It’s just a business decision. Feeling bad/sad/mad about it won’t change it. But what you can do is [...]
Tags: Business Proposals·File Conversion·google docs·India·Mentoring·Outsourcing·PageMaker·Skype·Technical Writers·Training
Convert Word Documents into MP3s Automatically & Claim your iPod as a Tax Write-off
October 26th, 2009 · Comments Off · How To
Image via Wikipedia Remember the first time you heard your voice on the answering machine? Bet you wanted to change your voice straightaway. No? In the same vein, I found this app that lets you convert your Word documents into MP3s – so now I can ‘hear’ what I’ve written. This is how others hear [...]
Tags: Compact Disc player·Internet Explorer·IPod·Microsoft Word·MP3·Personal computer·Productivity·Speech synthesis·voice recognition·Windows Media Audio
What Your Website Can Learn From Starbucks
October 26th, 2009 · Comments Off · Business Process, Content Management
Image via Wikipedia By Gerry McGovern Like all great self-service organizations, Starbucks knows that you should never keep the customer waiting. The July 2006 like-for-like sales for Starbucks were lower than expected. This was rare for such a high performance company and resulted in an 11 percent decline in the share price after the news [...]
Tags: Business·Hardware·ibm·Jim Donald·Lenovo·Notebooks and Laptops·Starbucks·ThinkPad
Use Metaphors to Instantly Connect with the Right Side of Customers’ Brains
October 26th, 2009 · Comments Off · Technical Writing
Image via Wikipedia Metaphors connect ideas through images. Learning to use metaphors allows you to suggest things to readers that would otherwise be stopped by their logical ‘left-brain’. Right-handed people are left-brain predominant. In theory, when you use images, such as visual metaphors, you connect to the side of the brain, which interprets abstract concepts. [...]
Tags: Abstraction·Argument·Brain·data·Evolution·Memory·Social Sciences·Statistics·Writing Techniques
Reviews of 9 Mind Mapping apps
October 25th, 2009 · Comments Off · Reviews, Technical Writing, Tips, Visio
David Appleyard reviews 9 different specialist mind mapping applications. Some are expensive, commercial solutions – others are relatively budget-friendly.
Tags: books·ConceptDraw·Curio·FreeMind·iMindMap·Mind Manager·Mind map·MindMap·MindNode·MindView·MyThoughts·Publications·Shopping·Tony Buzan·XMIND·XMind Pro
5 Quick Links: Using Adobe AIR for Online Help
October 25th, 2009 · Comments Off · Adobe RoboHelp, Technical Writing
Want to develop Online Help based on Adobe AIR. Here are some resources to help you learn more:
Tags: Adobe AIR·Adobe Captivate·Adobe FrameMaker·Adobe Integrated Runtime·Adobe RoboHelp·Adobe Systems·Help in Adobe AIR·Online Help
Why New Yorkers Make Great Web Links & Tweets!
October 25th, 2009 · Comments Off · Content Management
Image by Ivan Walsh via Flickr Gerry McGovern A good link has no time for small talk or niceties. It acts like a signpost, like a promise. With a good link, what you see is what you get. If most of today’s web links were married they’d be heading for divorce. Because they never keep [...]
Tags: CMS·Content Creation·Content Management·customers·Information Architecture·Search engine optimization·social media·Usability·user interface·web publishing·Web Writing
How The Huffington Post uses Real-time Testing to Write Better Headlines
October 24th, 2009 · Comments Off · Google, How To
Zachary M. Seward http://www.niemanlab.org writes that The Huffington Post applies A/B testing to some of its headlines. Readers are randomly shown one of two headlines for the same story. After five minutes, which is enough time for such a high-traffic site, the version with the most clicks becomes the wood that everyone sees.
Tags: Arianna Huffington·audience segmentation·Detroit Free Press·Dustin Curtis·Eric Brown·Google·headlines·Huffington Post·Josh Young·Market research·metrics·ONA09·Online News Association·Oscars·Paul Berry·Research·social media·Steve Dorsey·Tagged A/B testing·Twitter·user behavior·Yahoo
Aweber Test Results: How Long Should Your From Line Be?
October 24th, 2009 · Comments Off · How To
Image via Wikipedia Justin Premick, Aweber, has the results of an experiment to determine the optimum length for the From line in emails. For those involve in writing, content development and web marketing, the results are interesting.
Tags: Business·E-mail·E-mail client·Hotmail·Marketing·Marketing and Advertising·Mozilla Thunderbird·Webmail
What is the 'search, compare, verify' generation?
October 24th, 2009 · Comments Off · Business Process, Productivity
Image via Wikipedia Gerry Mcgovern Success on the Web is not about making customers do what you want. It is about helping customers do what they want. My Lenovo laptop has great battery life. The battery lasts for 650 thousand million years if I don’t turn it on, and for 65 thousand million years if [...]
Tags: Advertising·Battery·Business·Consumer·Content Management·Customer service·Marketing·Mobile Phone·strategy·Technology·user interface·Vodafone
Make Sure your Blog Posts are Pinged Automatically
October 24th, 2009 · Comments Off · How To, Tips
Image via CrunchBase One of the hidden features in Windows Live Writer is the ability to automatically ping (send a signal) to popular blog aggregators every time you publish something to your blog. This feature actively pings the servers of the blog aggregators you specify and to indicate when there is new material.
Tags: Aggregator·Google·Ping·search·seo·Tag·Tools·Web Design and Development·Web search engine·Windows Live Writer
Create Greek Dummy Text in Word
October 24th, 2009 · Comments Off · Technical Writing, Word 2007
Image via Wikipedia Lorem Ipsum is dummy text that has its origins in the printing and typesetting industry. It has been the printing industry’s standard dummy text since the 1500s, when a printer took a galley of type and scrambled it to make a type specimen book. It came back into popularity in the 1960s [...]
Tags: Adobe PageMaker·Desktop publishing·Filler text·Lorem Ipsum·Microsoft Word·Printing·Typesetting·Word processor
Chris Brogan: If You Intend To Blog Seriously
October 24th, 2009 · Comments Off · How To, Social Media
Image via Wikipedia Chris Brogan writes: Blogs are not traditional media, and bloggers are not journalists. Unless they are. But it’s not a requirement. A blog is software. It’s something one puts up on the web to capture information, of whatever type one wants to put on there, and thus, if anyone tells you that [...]
Tags: blog·blogging·Business·Chris Brogan·howto·Inbound Marketing Summit·ing·Link·Marketing·Money·New Marketing Labs·Productivity·professionalism·socialmedia·socialmedia100
Detox your Technical Documents; put your Words on a Diet
October 24th, 2009 · Comments Off · Technical Writing
Goethe once wrote to a friend, “If I had more time, I’d have sent you a shorter letter.” Here’s why.
Tags: Cliches. Jargon·Grammar·guidelines·Style Guide·Technical Documents·Technical Editing
