Maturity Model Helps Companies Do DITA Right

January 31, 2008 Blog No Comments

By Michael Priestley and Amber Swope XML gives organizations a way to create richly-described, unstructured content. But until the Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA), XML content traditionally was organized and written as monolithic documents — tightly coupled with organizational structures, such as pages and chapters, that rarely worked as independent, reusable units of content. DITA is simply the practice of taking huge XML documents and breaking them down into logical, topic-oriented chunks. Now, every content chunk is an inherently reusable asset that is coherent as an object within the overall Read the full article…

Information Architecture Featured in Forbes Advertisement

January 31, 2008 Blog No Comments

From the Information Architecture Institute: “The big news is that this month’s Fortune magazine has an advertising feature about information architecture and the Kent State IAKM program, The Architects of the Information Age” (PDF).

The Top Ten Mistakes of Web CMS Projects – and How to Avoid Them

January 31, 2008 Blog 4 Comments

By Michael Silverman, CEO, Duo Consulting Maybe you are beginning to think about developing a content management systems for your organization’s website. Or maybe you are just about to start a CMS project. In either case, you are probably wondering how to improve the chances of a successful outcome, considering the large investment at stake. At Duo Consulting, we’ve worked with hundreds of businesses and organizations on Web and content management. We know what makes a project successful, and we’ve seen the usual mistakes. In this article, we share what Read the full article…

Interview with Noz Urbina, Mekon UK

January 30, 2008 Blog No Comments

TCW: Noz, thanks for taking time out of your busy schedule to chat with us today. Before we get started, can you tell our readers a little about yourself and the company you work for? NU: I’m a Senior Consultant at Mekon Ltd., a UK-based specialist consultancy house supporting organizations with content issues. I’m myself a bit of a content solutions Swiss Army Knife, or Swiss Army Noz, if you’ll let me get away with that one. Mekon’s got a diverse range of services including consultancy, systems implementation integration, workflow Read the full article…

Finding The Lowest Price: Cheap Uncle Mashes Up Savings

January 30, 2008 Blog 1 Comment

If you have a coupon clipper or rebate hound in your family—someone who seeks out the lowest possible price on any goods they purchase—you’ll want to know about Cheap Uncle, a new online service designed by Chicago-based Duo Consulting that helps consumers find the best deals on all types of merchandise. It’s a very Web 2.0 approach, mashing up feeds of pricing information from Yahoo Shopping with discount information from Coupon Cabin. At its most basic, Cheap Uncle is a unique online price comparison search engine that searches over 3,000 Read the full article…

Some Personal Observations on Electronic Medical Records

January 28, 2008 Blog 2 Comments

By Mark Gross, President, Data Conversion Laboratory In an age when we download movies at will, store piles of personal records on our BlackBerry devices, beam software to each other’s Palms, and store truckloads of digital photos on some website “out there”—accessible from anywhere—it’s frustrating that we aren’t yet applying the same technology to medical records to make them easily accessible to those who need them. I know there are obstacles—confidentiality, liability, resistance to change, and of course paying for it—and I’m not an expert in most of these, but Read the full article…

Election Markup Language: OASIS Announces XML Standard

January 26, 2008 Blog No Comments

OASIS, the international open standards consortium, has announced that its members have approved the Election Markup Language (EML) version 5.0 as an OASIS Standard, a status that signifies the highest level of ratification. Developed through an open process by the OASIS Election and Voter Services Technical Committee, EML supports information exchange through the complete election process, including candidate nomination, voter registration and authentication, ballot information, vote casting and confirmation, tabulation, auditing, and more.

STC UK Announces “Content Management Day”

January 24, 2008 Blog No Comments

Organizations of all sizes are beginning to realize that managing content can help them deliver the right information, to the right audience, at the right time, in the right format. Every technical author’s dream, right? Well, not quite. Content Management is one of those keywords that everyone in the technical communication world is aware of. And although technical authors/documentation professionals are often called upon when an organization decides to go down the content management route, a lot of us are lost when it comes to implementing it. We seem to Read the full article…

XML and Office 2.0

January 24, 2008 Blog No Comments

By Eric Severson, CTO, Flatirons Solutions Recently there has been a flurry of activity around a concept called “Office 2.0” – another offshoot of the term “Web 2.0” – in which all traditional office applications can be replaced by online services accessible through a generic web browser. What’s making this possible is a set of new technologies including AJAX, RSS and web services, a set of actual applications such as Google Gmail and Zoho Writer, a web-based word processor, and a great deal of unbridled enthusiasm. Since Office 2.0 is Read the full article…

Coventi Pages Pulls The Plug On Users

January 23, 2008 Blog No Comments

Here’s the text of the announcement Coventi users received Monday, January 21, 2008. An important notice for all Coventi users: We regretfully inform you that Coventi, Inc. will cease operations on February 1, 2008. At that time, you will no longer be able to log in to http://www.coventi.com and access your documents. If you have important documents on Coventi, please log in before February 1 and download them to your local computer. You can do this easily, by navigating to your document and selecting “Download Revision” from the “Options” menu Read the full article…

Painting The Athletic Male: Interview with Brenden Sanborn, Studio 805

January 22, 2008 Blog No Comments

TCW: Brenden, thanks for taking time to chat with us today about your experience using a web-based publishing tool to manage your business. BS: Thanks, Scott. I appreciate the opportunity. TCW: You’re welcome. For our readers who don’t know who you are and what you, please share a little bit about yourself and your profession? BS: I grew up in a small town in New Hampshire called Exeter. I have a great family and lots of wonderful friends. I went to college in Georgia at the acclaimed Savannah College of Read the full article…

Translation Errors Likely Drew US Into Attacking Vietnam

January 22, 2008 Blog No Comments

Accurate translations are imperative, especially when the translated content is used as a reason to go to war. In a recently declassified report from the US government entitled Spartans in Darkness: American SIGINT and the Indochina War, 1945-1975 (PDF) it becomes clear that the accuracy of the translated content that led to US involvement in the Tonkin Gulf attack, which drew the US into the Vietnam War, was, at best, confusing and at worst, tampered with to make the case for going to war. Chapter 5, Skunks, Bogies, Silent Hounds, Read the full article…

The Document as Application: The Convergence of Document Publishing and Application Development

January 22, 2008 Blog 1 Comment

By Jake Sorofman, Vice President, Marketing and Business Development, North America and EMEA JustSystems The worlds of document publishing and application development are converging. Traditionally, publishing processes focused on static documents in print, PDF, HTML, and other formats. While the Web introduced rich media formats, this only provided a more compelling multidimensional rendering of static information. The reality is that business depends on dynamic data, and static documents only provide a snapshot in time. Users who need the most current information possible must go to the source – the business Read the full article…

SDL Invests In Trisoft

January 22, 2008 Blog No Comments

From Common Sense Advisory: “Nearly nine months after SDL bought Tridion for its web content management technology, the U.K. company invested in — but did not buy outright — Trisoft. This Belgian firm develops content management solutions for technical communications. SDL did not make a public announcement of the investment, but Trisoft did alert its customers who naturally alerted us. Trisoft will remain a separate company with its own sales force, and SDL will refer customers with tech doc needs to the Belgians.” Read the article