ITauthor

I love listening to spoken-word audio on my iPod,, but, on the whole, I don’t like listening to audio from a Web page. Partly this is because the sound card on my Dell Vostro 1700 is extremely poor and picks up interference from the hard disk drive. But mainly it’s because I like to listen to audio when I’m walking the dog and when I’m commuting to work in my car.

Most of the time this means listening to podcasts and usually these days, where audio is available on a Web page it’s in MP3 format and it’s also available as a podcast. But in some places audio is still only available as RealAudio, which has to be played on your computer using RealPlayer.

So, if you’re like me, you need a way of getting audio that’s only available in RealAudio format off a Web page, into MP3 format, and into your iPod or other MP3 player.

My particular case was that I wanted to listen to the well-known audio documentary “Ghetto Life 101”. This is available from Sound Portraits (http://soundportraits.org/on-air/ghetto_life_101/) as a RAM file. Alternatively you can find a collection of David Isay documentaries, all as RAM files, here: http://www.talkinghistory.org/isay.html.

So here’s one way of doing this (this relies on using Firefox as your browser):

1. Download and install Firefox if you don’t already use this as your browser.
2. Once you’ve installed Firefox, download and install the DownloadThemAll Firefox add-on.
3. Browse to the Web page containing the RAM file you want to play on your MP3 player. For example, try going to http://www.talkinghistory.org/isay.html.
4. Choose Tools > DownloadThemAll! Tools > DownloadThemAll!
   
   The DownloadThemAll! dialog box opens, listing all the downloadable files on the Web page.
5. Unselect any selected Filter checkbox and enter *ram in the Fast filtering field. This will select just files with the .ram file name extension.
   
   In this screenshot I’ve used the filter *isdn*ram, because the page I’m processing has three versions of each RAM file and I only want the ISDN-quality files (which all have “isdn” in the file name)
   
   
6. In the Save files in field, enter the location where you want to save the file(s).
7. Click Start!
8. Download and install FormatFactory.
9. Start FormatFactory and click All to MP3.
   
   
10. Click Add File.
11. Select all the RAM files you downloaded.
12. Click OK.
    
     
13. Copy the resulting MP3 files to your MP3 player, or drag them into your music folder in iTunes and sync your iPod.

If you’re downloading a lot of files, you might like to give them all the same artist or album tag. To do this really easily, right-click this link and download and install ID3-TagIT (note: this link points to a zip file containing an .exe file – always run your virus scanner on any executable file you download before running it).

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Matthew Ellison runs his own UK-based training and consulting company, specializing in user assistance design and technology. He coordinates the annual UA Europe Conference and is himself a popular speaker at conferences and training events around the world. He also regularly publishes articles and reviews on user assistance.

In this edition of the ITauthor Podcast I talk to Matthew about the UA Europe Conference.

 
We discuss:

• the number of countries from which delegates attend the conference
• what it’s like being the organiser of a large conference for technical communicators
• how can delegates justify the budget to attend the UA conference in these difficult economic times
• the sessions and speakers we can look forward to at this year's conference
• the No.1 issue affecting technical writers today
• trends or changes technical writers ought to be aware of
• what keeps Matthew busy when he’s not organising and running the UA Europe Conference

Talking about the “good enough” philosophy for user assistance, Matthew says:

"There's a fine line between doing documentation that's good enough and not being professional, and I certainly would never want to put something in front of a user that I didn't consider a professional piece of work."

Find out all about the UA Europe Conference at: http://www.uaconference.eu.

 The music I play at the beginning and end of the show is by Amplifico. You can hear more of their music at Podshow.

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The voices in this podcast belong to: Graham Campbell and Alistair Christie.

This time round – recorded over Skype – Graham and I discuss:

• “technical author”, “technical writer” or “technical communicator”
• being forced out of technical writing by personal economics
• why contractors are more productive than permanent documentation staff
• an occasion where the tech writer was the closest thing to a Subject Matter Expert in an application development team
• tech writers being considered “the lowest of the low”
• why management find tech writers the easiest people to “let go”
• using voiceovers rather than written callouts in videos
• is documentation sometimes really remedial work on a bad user interface?
• what do we actually need to document in an online help system?
• being proud of the work we do

StoryCorps recording in this podcast

This episode of the podcast ends with a StoryCorps recording of Ed Miller talking to his son EJ. This audio was provided courtesy of StoryCorps. Please visit www.storycorps.org for more details and, if you like what they do, please consider making a donation to help keep the StoryCorps mobile units on the road.

The part of this recording that I really identified with was where he says:

We go to the mall nowadays, me and Mom, and I see dads walking with their sons or daughters, holding their hands, and I tell you, my heart aches for the days when I used to do that …

Podcast recommendations:

The Writing Show  –  http://www.writingshow.com/index.html 
(Graham refers to the recording I made for the Writing Show.)

 
The StoryCorps Podcast – http://www.storycorps.org/listen/podcast

Application recommendations:

 
Skype – http://www.skype.com

 
Techsmith Snagit – http://www.techsmith.com/screen-capture.asp 

The music I play at the beginning and end of the show is by Amplifico. You can hear more of their music at Podshow.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

The voices in this podcast belong to: Graham Campbell and Alistair Christie.

This time round – recorded over Skype – Graham and I discuss:

• Migrating online help projects from RoboHelp to Madcap Flare
• How I use twitter and why Graham doesn’t
• Integration of social media – for example, information flowing from your blog to twitter to Facebook
• The death of blogging?
• Hard times for ITauthor’s stats
• Geoff Pullum, Geno Washington and the Ram Jam Band 

This is the photo I mentioned of Geoff Pullum (who was calling himself Jeff Wright – bottom left) with Geno Washington and other members of the Ram Jam Band.

I hadn’t realised, until scouting around the internet to find this picture, that Geno Washington and The Ram Jam Band had two of the biggest selling UK albums of the sixties. Hand Clappin, Foot Stompin, Funky Butt Live was in the album charts for 48 weeks during 1966 and was only out-sold by The Sound of Music and Bridge over Troubled Water.

Podcast recommendations:

 
Adam and Joe – http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/adamandjoe/

 
Great Lives – http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/greatlives/

 
Application recommendations:

WebEx iPhone application – http://www.webex.com/iphone/

 
Freemind – http://freemind.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/Main_Page 

The music I play at the beginning and end of the show is by Amplifico. You can hear more of their music at Podshow.