The Content Wrangler Community: 2500+ Members and Growing

November 19, 2008 Blog No Comments

If you’ve not yet joined our global network of content professionals, The Content Wrangler Community, consider doing so today. The community provides members with a keyword searchable member directory, job listings, discussion forums, topic groups, blogs, videos, and much more! Over 2500 of your peers from 30 countries around the globe have joined the community. What are you waiting for? And, did we mention, it’s free?If you’ve not yet joined our global network of content professionals, The Content Wrangler Community, consider doing so today. The community provides members with a …

DITA Metrics: Developing Cost Metrics

November 19, 2008 Blog 12 Comments

By Mark Lewis, special to The Content Wrangler Table of Contents Introduction Cost of Metrics Overview Cost of a Project Cost of a Topic Cost of User Guides Without Topic Reuse Cost of User Guides With Topic Reuse Cost Comparison: User Guides With and Without Topic Reuse Cost of a Reusable Master Topic Cost of User Guides With Reusable Master Topics Cost Comparison: Topic Reuse Versus Reusable Master Topics Conclusion About the author Introduction You’ve read all the papers (and attended all the webinars) on return on investment (ROI) for …

Alfresco Is Not A Picnic: The Problem With Metaphors And Content Management Systems

November 11, 2008 Blog 3 Comments

By Felice Bochman, special to The Content Wrangler “Humans are wired to put things in buckets. We have an innate need to create categories and sort things into them.”—Richard Hamilton on content delivery, The Content Wrangler, September 2008 Many editors and other language-oriented professionals I know look for metaphors as a way of figuring things out. We tend to see the world through a “this is like this” lens complemented by a “how does this fit into the big picture” manner of thinking. At its most elemental, this is simply …

Social Networks Are the New Porn

November 10, 2008 Blog No Comments

It’s quite a surprise to many internet traffic analysts. But, it’s true. College students, one of the largest groups of web-savvy folks on the Net, spend more time on social networks than they do surfing for porn. This is a recent change in which porn and sex sites are no longer the number one type of website visited by students. Internet analyst Bill Tancer studies such metrics and has written about his findings for Time Magazine and on numerous technology blogs. College students use sites like Facebook and MySpace and …

Hey, My GPS is Getting SPAMMED!

November 7, 2008 Blog No Comments

That may seem like a crazy headline, but it’s closer to reality than you might realize. Insignia GPS is the first unit of its kind, according to manufacturers, that has its own email addy. Why would a GPS need an email address, you ask? So you can send it driving directions directly from your laptop or iPhone (a la Google Maps, for instance). Using a mobile cellular connection, the Insignia GPS also utilizes the internet to obtain real time directions and traffic jam avoidance instructions from online sources, including Traffic.com. …

Unrealistic Fears

November 6, 2008 Blog No Comments

When making a move to a new authoring tool or content management system, one of the biggest obstacles to success is the unrealistic fear of change experienced by those being asked to work differently. It’s a human problem that stems partially from our inability to properly calculate the odds that something we fear might happen. Take for instance our inability as a species to understand the odds of dying in a car crash compared to the odds of dying in a roller coaster accident (40,000:1). Annual risk of dying in …

The Largest Database Breaches

November 5, 2008 Blog No Comments

According to FlowingData.com, Attrition.org and Forbes magazine, here are the list of some of the biggest database breaches during this decade: TJX (T.J. Maxx, Marshall’s, Home Goods) reported in January 2007 that 94 million records were stolen by thieves. Visa, Mastercard and American Express reported a breach in June 2005 in which 40 million records were snatched. America Online reported a similar situation in June 2004 when 30 million records were digitally pilfered. Other breaches include: U.S Department of Veterans Affairs (26.5 million in May 2006), U.K. Revenue and Customs …

Microsoft, Welcome to the SaaS World (and See You in a Year)

November 3, 2008 Blog No Comments

By Rodrigo Vaca, Director Marketing, Zoho Microsoft confirmed recently a widely circulated rumor and announced, with gran fanfare, that next year they will be announcing a web-based version of their Office product. Yes, you read it right, Microsoft announced that they will be announcing… You can read the full story in PC Magazine, ComputerWorld and many other publications. The question for many will be… what does this announcement of an announcement means for Zoho and other SaaS vendors? It’s simple: it means two things. First—it means fantastic news! Microsoft had …