What tech writers do
It’s not often tech writers get included in a meme, so I’ll post this here.
Blog
Same as it ever was
Great post over on Brain Pickings about what’s wrong with media today — based on an editorial from 1923! The Death of the Editor and the Rise of the Circulation Manager, by Maria Popova, looks at today’s media issues such as SOPA, copyright, and content farms through the lens of an article titled “Our Changing(…)
Screws, nuts, and washers
I love references, and this Visual Glossary of Screws, Nuts, and Washers by Mike Senese warms my hardware-writer’s heart. Mike’s talking about BoltDepot, which looks like a great source. I remember writing user docs with an entire appendix dedicated to port pinouts and diagrams. And I always kept a copy of the Black Box catalog(…)
Find me on Amazon and Barnes & Noble
Just before the holidays I finished some editing work on a book called Passion in the Wind, which is now available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and from the author, Alan Leduc. The title might sound like a bad romance novel, but the book tells the true story of Alan’s 23000 mile ride around North(…)
4G or not 4G, that is the question
…And the answer is not 4G. I have spent most of my career writing about telecommunications including networking, telephony, and cellular/radio. When I started in the tech writing biz cellular standards were at 2G. Next came 3G. Then came something AT&T, Sprint, and Verizon claim is 4G but isn’t. Doug Aamoth at Time’s Techland explains(…)
Any doc, any place?
With the combination of responsive web design, modern content tools such as Madcap Flare, and the proliferation of mobile internet devices for viewing content, it has become so much easier for technical communicators to design and create documentation that meets the need of their audience when — and where — they users need it. While(…)