RSS Primer

If you are mystified by RSS feeds – what they are and how to use them, check out graymatterminute’s great explainer: What Is An RSS Feed & Why Is It So Important? A Practical How-to Guide by Renée Lemley. SlideShare  PDF

LinkedIn Software User Assistance Group

Joe Welinske has informed me that there is now a Software User Assistance group on LinkedIn. There are quite a few active discussions on Framemaker, RoboHelp, usability, and other topics.

Speaking of LinkedIn, if any technical writing or usability professionals wish to connect, please view my profile, or just search for me there and send an invitation to connect.

Webinar – Help Authoring Tools (HATs) and Content Management

Neil Perlin will present a webinar hosted by MadCap Software. The webinar description from MadCap is as follows:

Can your HAT be a Content Management System?
Help authoring tools (HATs) seem unrelated to CMSs, but HATs have gone far beyond their help roots. They offer features like repositories,
version control, review management, content customization using
conditionality and variables, and more. This tool-independent webinar
discusses how you might use the hidden features in your existing HAT tools as a Content Management System.

Thu, Mar 12, 2009 9:00 AM - 10:00 AM PDT
Neil Perlin is the presenter
To sign up: https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/187845873

I have attended previous MadCap tool-independent webinars and have found them to be very helpful. While they might point out a feature or two of MadCap’s products, their webinars have little if any promotional content. The last one I attended was on Topic-based Authoring and included concepts that could be applied to any publishing system.

First Blog Post

I am learning the ways of blogging on this sunny cold day in Baltimore. Hopefully I have settled on Blogger template here, but like everything it will be subject to change.

For editing, right now I am testing the Windows Live Writer environment. I am using an Intel iMac with VMWare and a Windows XP partition. I’ll also be experimenting with some Macintosh blogging tools (such as Blogo) for future posts.