ITauthor

A couple of weeks ago I published a podcast on the history of RSS. One thing I didn't mention was how some of the early uses of RSS are now pretty much defunct, thanks largely to twitter.

Over the years I've used various feed aggregators, latterly Google Reader, to keep me informed of what the pool of bloggers I'm interested in are blogging about. I'm not a great fan of reading the news on the Web (I get my news through the radio mainly), but I know a lot of people also used to use feed aggregators to keep them up to date with news. I think this is largely a thing of the past.

In recent years I found that I was looking at Google Reader less and less. For the blogs I was really interested in, I used FeedBlitz to mail me every time a new post appeared on those blogs.*

But these days twitter has taken over as the main way I hear about stuff. I use TweetDeck as my window on twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn, rather than ever actually visiting those websites. TweetDeck gives you a column of tweets by the people you've subscribed to, a column for FaceBook, a column for LinkedIn, a column for direct message to/by you, etc. But it also allows you to add columns for searches of hash tags. So I have a column that shows any tweets containing #techwriting or #techcomm or #techcomms (the last one may be unnecessary now I think about it). This provides a fairly constant flow of links to interesting information about technical writing. And the good thing is I didn't even have to go out and find these people and subscribe to anything - I just get everything going into twitter that's been marked in this way. Amazingly (so far at least) it seems to be free from spam. And it's really useful.

I used to find Tom Johnson's community blog Writer River good for this kind of thing, and I used to post to it, now and again. But it was cumbersome to post to using the Publish2 browser plugin (which is buggy and required me to enter multiple sets of login information every time I'd cleared my browser cache - which is often when I'm working on WebHelp) - so I got fed up - it didn't seem worth the hassle. And besides, it's so easy to tweet. Aggregators and aggregated sites like Writer River seem like a part of history already. Twitter is so immediate and so easy. It's 140-character limit can be a challenge, but it turns out to be one of the best things about twitter because it prevents verbosity.

Dave Winer's metaphor about news aggregators providing a river of news turns out to fit twitter perfectly. According to the metaphor, you don't need to be by the river every minute of the day, you just go down there whenever you feel like it, or whenever you can, and take a dip - or paddle about a little. Tweets keep on flowing, you'll never read them all - so you don't worry about it.

RSS is still great for a number of things (particularly, for me, the magic of getting podcasts onto my iPod). But as a way of keeping up with blogs you like, or finding out about the big new thing, or being alerted about important news, or telling people you've blogged about something, or telling people about something interesting you've found out there on the internet, RSS just doesn't cut it any more. Twitter beats RSS hands down for all of those things.

And yes, I tweeted about this blog post. 
    

* Want to use FeedBlitz to get emailed about an updated feed? Go to https://www.feedblitz.com and scroll down to "Subscribe to any blog" then enter the URL of the feed you want emailed about (e.g. http://www.itauthor.com/feed/), then click Subscribe.

The test drive pages for the current (functionality-limited) IE9 preview contain a little gem for those of us of a certain age who recall a simpler kind of computer game.

Friday/Saturday-night pub crawls in the late '70s were, for me and my band of pals, peppered with games of Defender, Galaxian (my personal favourite), Tank Commander and Asteroids. Here's what the original Asteroids looked like:

The IE9 test drive pages contain an SVG version called SVG-oids:

http://ie.microsoft.com/testdrive/Graphics/35SVG--oids/Default.xhtml

Have fun and (for those of us of a certain age) relive the golden age of video games!

You can tell from my score (below) that I'm a bit rusty at this:

And for a more authentic experience, have a go at this version:

http://www.play.vg/games/4-Asteroids.html

A word of warning for Flare users who also use the Subversion version control system (SVN). The PushOK plugin that provides SVN support in Flare does not work in Flare 6. As a result, although my team have licences for Flare 6, we may stick with Flare 5. If you're considering an upgrade to version 6 you may want to think again if you're currently using the PushOK plugin.

Flare has had built-in version control support for some time now - but only for Microsoft's Team Foundation Server and Visual Source Safe. If you use a non-Microsoft version control system you have to make other arrangements.

If you're a CVS or SVN user then, of course, you can just use something like TortoiseCVS or TortoiseSVN from within Windows Explorer. But in the past Madcap have pointed Flare/SVN users in the direction of the SVNSCC plugin produced by PushOK Software as a solution that allows you more or less the same functionality offered to TFS/VSS users, in terms of being able to work with a source control repository directly within Flare.

This worked OK in Flare 5. It wasn't brilliant, it was a little clunky, but it did work, and it provided real benefits. Specifically it made it easier for writers to update the repository and it made it less likely that you'd forget to get the latest version of a file before starting to work on it. Using the plugin has definitely resulted in fewer version conflicts to resolve.

Unfortunately, after installing Flare 6, try and get the latest version of files and you get this:

Unexpected exception: Access violation - KERNEL32.dll

After clicking OK, the Progress dialog box shows an error message like this:

Querying source control server. This could take several minutes.
: D:\Alistair\ITauthor\Flare-demo-project\itauthorflare\: CustomScc:GetLatestVersion - call failed with error code -15 (Nonspecific error.)

The source control operation finished with warnings and/or errors. Press Close when you are done reviewing the messages.

This is really disappointing for a number of reasons:

• I'd obviously prefer us to use the latest version of Flare rather than having to stick on version 5.
• Flare 6 has been out a few weeks now and the forum shows no positive response from Madcap or indication that they're going to fix this. Yes, I know the plugin is third-party software, but Madcap do not provide their own alternative and have, in the past, suggested SVN users use this plugin: I found out about it via Madcap.
• I had to push to get my purchase request for plugin licences signed off and right now that's looking like a bad decision. I don't want to use something else. I don't want to write off that purchase. I won't get another similar purchase signed off next time.
• I generally have a high regard for Madcap, but in this instance I feel they've let me down. Subversion is not some weird, new, little used system. If you have Microsoft blinkers on you might think that, but you'd be wrong. Subversion has been around since 2000, it's the successor to CVS and is used in software companies around the world.

For more tales of Flare/SVN woes go to: http://forums.madcapsoftware.com/search.php and search for pushok.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Ever wondered how news and blog posts appear in Google Reader or how podcasts get onto your iPod? It's largely thanks to something called RSS.

What does RSS stand for? Who invented it? What happened along the way? This podcast tells the story of RSS, from its earliest beginnings in 1995, through the births of XML, blogging and then podcasting, to the present day.

For the full script of this podcast, with lots of lovely pictures, look no further than: http://www.itauthor.com/2010/03/16/a-history-of-rss/
This page also has a full list of references for all the quotes and clips I used.

No sooner had I recorded this podcast than it was out of date. Right at the end I describe Tim Bray as leaving Sun Microsystems. He has since taken the position of "Developer Advocate" at Google. I also said that the last Daily Source Code appeared in February 2009. That was true at the time but yesterday Adam Curry resurrected it with DSC822.

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

I was at a meeting in Ayr on Thursday. When it finished I just wanted to get home as quickly as possible (Ayr to Edinburgh is about 83 miles).

Naturally, as is my habit, I took the first available wrong turn and very soon found myself driving around an unfamiliar Scottish seaside town in the rain.

This is why I need sat nav. And it struck me, as I was stuck at yet another set of traffic lights, that context-sensitive online help in a software application is like sat nav in a car.

You never notice how badly signposted towns are until you're lost. Then it becomes painfully obvious just how often streets don't have a street sign on them, and how road signs tell you your destination is in one direction at one junction but when you come to the next junction the destination isn't mentioned and you're left to make your best guess. Signs are often only designed for locals - so they indicate how to get to places a few miles away, but they're no use if you want to get out of town and go somewhere else.

This is like software. Poorly designed software is difficult to navigate and often only takes into account the most likely use cases. If you're doing anything even slightly out of the usual, then you're own your own mate!

Without sat nav, when you get lost, you can generally do one of two things:

1. Ask an expert
   This involves stopping the car and either asking a local, or (usually more reliable) phoning your nearest and dearest and asking him/her to look up Google Maps and work out directions for you.
2. Look up a map
   Again you've got to stop the car. You've also got to keep a road atlas in the car. And you've got to rely on it being up to date.

The software equivalent of 1, without online help in an application, is asking a colleague to help you out. This takes you away from your computer, interrupts someone else's work and requires a patient local expert. There's only so many times you can use this workaround before it gets very irritating for everybody.

The software equivalent of 2 is reading the printed manual. This assumes there is one and it's up to date. Again it disrupts the flow of your work within the application (like stopping the car to dig out the map).

Other similarities between context-sensitive help and sat nav are:

• It should be available when you want it.
• It's got to give you correct information.
• It should tell you only what you need to know.
  Verbose online help is about as irritating as a sat nav that keeps telling you to "continue straight on" rather than shutting up until it's time to turn.

Anyway, to finish, here's a Sunday-best picture of Ayr (it wasn't looking like this on Thursday).