ITauthor

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.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Professor Geoffrey Pullum, Professor of Linguistics at University of Edinburgh, recently wrote an article called ‘50 Years of Stupid Grammar Advice’ in the Chronicle of Higher Education on the 50th anniversary of the publication of Strunk and White’s Element of Style.

I visited Professor Pullum in his office in a beautiful new university building in the heart of Edinburgh to talk to him about his article and to discuss grammar and technical writing.

Among other things, we talk about:

• the split infinitive
• “none of us are” or “none of us is”?
• that and which
• the view of grammar as commandments brought down from the Grammar Mountain
• the pressure to enforce grammar rules, even when you don’t believe them
• why do most of us know so little about grammar?
• if we shouldn’t use Strunk & White, where should we go for grammar advice?
• nerdview

We also mentioned Professor Pullum’s talk at last year’s UA Conference Europe:
The Piranha Brothers, the Unwritten Grammatical Law, and the Phenomenon of Nerdview,
which is well worth reading if you find this interview interesting.

Related recordings:

• Professor Pullum on NPR’s Talk of the Nation phone-in, April 16, 2009
• Professor Pullum interviewed on NPR's Here and Now show from September 2006
• Marc Acito marks to 50th anniversary of Strunk & White’s Elements of Style on NPR, April 2006

Related blog posts:

• Happy Birthday, Strunk and White! – from the New York Times’ Room for Debate blog
• Pullum on Strunk and White from Orange Crate Art
• Hardly [adverb] convincing [adjective] from Orange Crate Art
• The End of Strunk from SLOG

Other links:

• Geoff Pullum’s Home Page
• Language Log

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

I thought about calling this “the heavy breathing episode” because there’s a lot of puffing and panting in this recording: the puffing from me, the panting from my Italian Spinone, Lottie, as she sprints and I plod up the Pentland hills a few miles from where I live in Edinburgh.

In this podcast I talk about:

• My decision to try commenting on other people’s blogs
• Using twitter
• Trying to get more done

One aspect of getting more done is trying to use my time more productively. So, to that end, I thought I’d use some dog walking time to record this podcast.

I suspect some (or all?) of you may find the rambling nature of this recording tedious, but hopefully you’ll enjoy the birdsong! Let me know what you think by dropping me a comment. If no one likes this style of on-the-hoof recording I’ll stick to the indoor type in future.

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

What's the difference between a programmer and a software developer?

Why are there so many programming languages?

What's .NET ("dot net")?

In the first of two interviews with Technology Manager Colin Paterson, I try to get some answers to these and other questions about software development.

Look out for part 2 of this interview, coming along soon(ish) depending on Colin and I coordinating a free lunchtime.

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, Graham and I discuss the best way of interviewing technical writers.

Skills/attributes we mention as being things we’d look for in a candidate for a technical writer position include:

1. Evidence of solid English language skills (particularly competency in written communication)

2. A genuine enthusiasm for technology (and preferably a fascination in software)

3. Signs that the candidate would fit into the team, provide effective peer review and would be able to interact with the developers

4. The ability to review the work of colleagues effectively – and to have your work reviewed

Podcast recommendations:

The Best of MySpace – http://www.bestofmyspace.uk.com/

Mostly Tunes – http://www.mostlytunes.com/

Note: The song I play at the end of this show is one I heard on a recent Mostly Tunes show:

Be OK by Ingrid Michaelson – played here by grace of the Podsafe Music Network.

Listen to more of Ingrid’s songs.

Application recommendations:

Adobe Buzzword – http://www.acrobat.com

Google Calendar – http://www.google.co.uk/intl/en/options/ 

Tips:

Press Q on Google Calendar for a quick, natural language way of adding an appointment.

What I’m listening to:

Graham is (still) listening to the music from the Transformers movie.

Oops! – a note about the sound quality

Despite a quarter century of podcasts (if you see what I mean) I still managed to make a couple of schoolboy errors with the recording of this podcast:

1. I didn’t check the levels properly, so Graham is too quite and my mic is maxing out

2. I accidentally recorded in mono. Usually I record with each mic into one side of a stereo recording so that I could remix the levels.

So apologies if I sound worse than usual in this recording and you’re struggling to hear Graham.   

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