ITauthor

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Recorded at the UA Conference Europe 2008.

I talk to Mike Hamilton from Madcap Software about the newly released version 4 of Flare. He describes a lot of the new features and explains the relationship between Flare and Blaze. Mike also mentions the work currently underway at Madcap to produce a DITA version of Flare.

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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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A lack of meeting rooms forced Graham and I to adjourn to the pub to record this podcast (shame). In between munching on burgers and chips and sipping on beer, we talk about Google’s new Web browser, Chrome, and the newly released Flare 4 from MadCap.

Writing tips

1. Copying and pasting formatting in Microsoft Word.

   Select some text that has the formatting you want to copy.

   Press Ctrl + Shift + c.

   Select the text you want to apply the formatting to.

   Press Ctrl + Shift + v.

2. Keyboard shortcut to choose a style in Flare 4.

   Press Ctrl + h to bring up a style popup while you are editing text.

Application recommendations

Windows Live Writer

Podcast recommendations

The Definitive Word
Includes liberal use of the f word. Is that the definitive word?

Get in touch!

I’d love to know who’s listening, where you are and what you think of the podcast, so contact me at:
comments==AT==itauthor==DOT==com

Or just let me know you’ve listened in by putting a pin in the ITauthor map at:
http://www.frappr.com/itauthor

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

Subscribe to the podcast: http://feeds.feedburner.com/itauthor

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Virtual machines. What are they and why are they useful for a technical writer?

Get in touch!

I'd love to know who's listening, where you are and what you think of the podcast, so contact me at:
comments==AT==itauthor==DOT==com

Or just let me know you've listened in by putting a pin in the ITauthor map at:
http://www.frappr.com/itauthor

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

Subscribe to the podcast: http://feeds.feedburner.com/itauthor

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What's it like doing documentation as part of an Agile software development team? Why is it a better way of working? I mull this over these and other questions with Graham Campbell. If you want to find out more about the Agile software development methodology, I'd recommend you read some of Scott Ambler's articles. For example: http://www.agilemodeling.com/essays/agileDocumentation.htm An extract from Scott Ambler's best practices for increasing the agility of documentation:

Simplification * Keep documentation just simple enough, but not too simple * Write the fewest documents with least overlap Determining What to Document * Focus on the needs of the actual customers(s) of the document * The customer determines sufficiency Determining When to Document * Iterate, iterate, iterate: * Update only when it hurts General * Treat documentation like a requirement * Require people to justify documentation requests We also also discuss our writing tips, software recommendations and podcasts we've been listening to. Software we mentioned:

fileinfo.net

writerriver.com

Keepass

Podcast recommendations

The Penny Arcade Podcast:
  RSS feed: http://www.penny-arcade.com/padlc.xml Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: RSS feed: http://www.dancarlin.com/dchh.xml

Other links

Testing documentation: http://www.onemanwrites.co.uk/2008/08/07/testingdocumentation/ The Almighty Thud by Martin Fowler: http://martinfowler.com/distributedComputing/thud.html

Get in touch!

I'd love to know who's listening, where you are and what you think of the podcast, so contact me at:
comments==AT==itauthor==DOT==com

Or just let me know you've listened in by putting a pin in the ITauthor map at:
http://www.frappr.com/itauthor

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

Subscribe to the podcast:   http://feeds.feedburner.com/itauthor

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

I talk to Graham Campbell about being the only technical writer at a software company. Graham describes his experience of being a year into tech writing and having his Documentation Manager (me) disappear off to do another job, leaving him in a team of one, and then the possibly worse situation where, after a year, the same guy comes back again! We also also discuss our writing tips and software recommendations. This time round the apps we like are: Paint.NET
Texter from Lifehacker

Get in touch!

I'd love to know who's listening, where you are and what you think of the podcast, so contact me at:
comments==AT==itauthor==DOT==com

Or just let me know you've listened in by putting a pin in the ITauthor map at:
http://www.frappr.com/itauthor

The music I play at the beginning and end of the show is by Amplifico. You can hear more of their music by going to the Podsafe Music Network.

Subscribe to the podcast