The Wisdom of Crowds Meets the Wisdom of Authors: How XML Enables the Semantic Web

July 31, 2008 Blog No Comments

Paul Wlodarczyk, JustSystems I recently attended the first-ever Linked Data Planet conference, where a number of pioneers in the field of Semantic Web shared their perspectives on the state of the art — and business — of helping the world tag their web pages for meaning. So what is the Semantic Web and how is it different from the web of today? On the web, most search engines today use key words and the number of links to a page to determine the relevance of search results. This is the …

First Web 2.0 Summit Auction Benefits Charity: Lance Armstrong to Participate in Live Auction

July 30, 2008 Blog No Comments

Get more information. TechWeb (formerly CMP) and O’Reilly Media, co-producers of the annual Web 2.0 Summit, announce the Web Meets World Auction at Web 2.0 Summit on the evening of Wednesday, November 5, at the Palace Hotel in San Francisco. The first Summit auction illustrates this year’s theme of applying what we’ve learned from the Web to help solve our world’s most pressing limits. Keynote speaker Lance Armstrong, the cancer survivor, seven-time Tour de France winner and founder of the Lance Armstrong Foundation who recently joined with Demand Media to …

NYK Europe: Wiki Keeps International Shipping Firm on Course

July 29, 2008 Blog 1 Comment

By Stewart Mader, special to The Content Wrangler Can a wiki help ships’ crews and freight truck drivers keep in touch with what’s happening in the home office? That’s one of the questions I discussed with Alek Lotoczko of NYK Europe, part of the Japan- based NYK Group, one of the largest container transportation and shipping companies in the world.ﾠ NYK Group has 35,000 employees worldwide, 9,000 of whom work in Europe. Of those, approximately 3,000 are desk-bound and laptop users, and these are the workers one would typically expect …

Business Person’s Guide to Online Social Networking

July 29, 2008 Blog No Comments

Social networking has become so much a part of today’s world that Oprah Winfrey is on Facebook, Barack Obama has a Twitter account, and you can become a “fan” of ABC on MySpace. If you have been asked to connect with someone on LinkedIn, or can’t make heads or tails of a business card with nicknames for all kinds of online services, then this white paper from Duo Consulting is for you.

Call for Presenters: Web Content 2009 Tampa Bay (Deadline August 15, 2008)

July 28, 2008 Blog No Comments

The Call for Participation for Web Content 2009 Tampa Bay is open. We’re looking for great presentations from outstanding speakers on topics that address the needs of our audience and that align nicely with the theme of the conference—“The Impact of Social Media on Web Marketing Strategy”. Specifically, we’re looking for sessions that teach attendees something useful—something they can use when they return to the office. To be considered, follow these submission guidelines and use our online submission form to submit your presentation abstract, professional biography and photograph before the …

[Video] Font Conference: An Excellent Way To Waste Three Minutes and Have a Good Laugh

July 26, 2008 Blog No Comments

Some people are really creative and can take everyday ordinary things and turn them into something extraordinary. This is certainly the case with Streeter Seidell and Dan Gurewitch, the creators of Font Conference, a hilariously funny, award-worthy video that examines a fictional font selection process. If you’ve got three minutes to waste, watch this video and have a laugh or two. See more funny videos and funny pictures at CollegeHumor.

Quark Purchases In.vision Research: Now They’re Really In The XML Authoring Business

July 24, 2008 Blog No Comments

Earlier this year, Quark announced it’s dynamic publishing solution, one of the smartest moves in the industry, if you ask us. This month, Quark announced that it has acquired the assets of In.vision Research Corporation, a Florida-based software company that develops a popular add-in to Microsoft Word (XPress Author) that facilitates XML authoring. The acquisition is a smart one for Quark as they will now be in close partnership with Microsoft, providing support for Microsoft Word users, the largest group of content creators on the planet. Quark also gains products …

How a Normal Upgrade to Flash Player Ruined Two Days of My Life

July 22, 2008 Blog 2 Comments

By Bobby Lee, special to The Content Wrangler A hesitant purchase Our office recently purchased an upgrade to Adobe Creative Suite 3. We had held off on purchasing—and then installing—this software package because we work with a number of variable data printers, each with different production software. Many of our print partners were unable to accommodate InDesign CS3 package builds and unfortunately, Adobe CS3 did not allow us create backwards-compatible files in the CS2 format our partners required. Because our partners were still working to upgrade their variable data setup …

[Featured Group] Information Architecture

July 15, 2008 Blog No Comments

After a not-so-smooth roll-out of mailman listserv software on the Society for Technical Communication Information Design Special Interest Group, I decided to start an Information Architecture discussion group on The Content Wrangler Community. I hope it will be an alternative to the horrible listserv discussion groups that have outlived their usefulness and are quickly being replaced by social network discussion groups that allow more natural conversations and provide a better user experience.

DITA Adoption Committee Forms

July 8, 2008 Blog No Comments

All interested parties are invited to participate in the new OASIS DITA Adoption Committee, which will work to educate the marketplace on the value of the DITA OASIS Standard for document creation and management. By raising awareness of the benefits offered by DITA, the Committee expects the demand for DITA-conforming products and services to increase, resulting in a greater choice of tools and platforms and an expanded DITA community. Proposers include representatives of OASIS Foundational Sponsors, IBM and Oracle, as well as Sponsor member, Comtech, and others. JoAnn Hackos of …