I recently joined the O’Reilly Blogger Review Program so I am receiving books from O’Reilly to review on this blog. My first review under the program I wrote about the MOS 2010 Study Guide for OneNote. Expect no change from tone and constructive criticism I’ve always had on this blog.
Now that Microsoft OneNote is part of the full Microsoft Office Suite, it was only a matter of time that Microsoft would launch a certification program for the product. The MOS 2010 Study Guide for Microsoft OneNote by John Pierce is the official study guide for the certification and while written for readers seeking OneNote certification breaks down all the major OneNote tasks for using OneNote productively. Even if you aren’t angling for OneNote certification, it’s a book worth checking out to learn about OneNote more in-depth.
Pierce is a solid writer with an easy to read style and the book is well paced. All of this is important to me in a certification study guide. The screen shots are clear and accurate (they show what that reader will actually see in OneNote) and don’t degenerate into some college freshman art student’s modern art interpretation of a screen shot like they do in the MOS 2010 Study Guide for Microsoft Word.
After having a great experience reading the MOS 2010 Study Guide for Microsoft Office SharePoint, my next read was the MOS 2010 Study Guide for Word. Microsoft Word has always been a bread and butter application for me as both a technical writer and freelance writer. Things have been a bit slow lately, so I am taking advantage of the time to shore up some old skills and learn new ones.
The book’s tendency to overlap screen captures became a bit annoying after the first 100 pages. To a novice Word 2010 user, this space saving move could lead to a minor bit of confusion. Take the screen captures on page 143 of 317 (iBook edition) which borders on abstract art not clear and concise communications. While I am on the subject of screen shots, fading out the bottom and right sides of them while certainly a special effect made it almost look like a rendering issue on the screen. There were also a few places in the text where the pagination would cut into the middle of a procedure that was also a bit disappointing considering the state of epublishing tools today. These lapses in production detracted from the overall writing of the manuscript and exercises.
Part of my 2012 learning plan is to build up my SharePoint 2010 skills. It’s a popular platform in my local employment marketplace. I’ve worked with it a lot in the past with a lot of OJT learning. Besides, I am a believer in SharePoint and hope to see it play a part of my near to mid-term professional future. I purchased the MOS 2010 Study Guide for Microsoft Office SharePoint by Geoff Evelyn from iTunes Bookstore to get the SharePoint fun started.
Using Office 365, I went to work through the exercises in the book using SharePoint Online to help sharpen my skills and learn some features like tuning the site search. While I know this book is written as a study guide for the SharePoint MOS, I am disappointed to see only a bare minimum of coverage on planning a SharePoint site. In my travels, I’ve seen multiple SharePoint implementations suffer from lack of planning and the planning issues drifted across all levels of the project including the stakeholders who were to manage the sites.
One of the dirty secrets about Microsoft Word in the technical communications world is that you have to put in the time to make it work. The Secret Life of Word by Robert Delwood from XML Press tackles some of the higher end topics in Microsoft Word like creating macros, find and replace; fields, form fields, and content controls; building blocks; and smart tags in an easy to digest manner that is accessible to even non-Word geek technical communicators.
It uses step-by-step procedures that should help Word newbies to inveterate tinkerers and even experts learn new higher end (and often underutilized) features.
The Kindle Fire is definitely one of the hottest sellers of the 2011 Christmas season. I went for the Amazon Kindle early on because I wanted to get a taste of an Android-based tablet. My expectations with the purchase were that it wasn’t going to be a game changer and wouldn’t supplant my iPad. While there isn’t a lot new in the device, and despite what Jakob Neilson bemoans it is actually a smooth 7” tablet.
I was quick to outfit my new Kindle Fire with free apps because I never intended for it to supplant my iPad and I want to see how much use I apps on my latest mobile device before I spend any money on outfitting the device any further.
Here is a list of some must have (and more importantly free) Kindle Fire Apps available from the Amazon Android store:
The longer I spend as a technical writer, the more I become discriminate about the technical writing books and publications I read. I stopped taking the academics in technical writing seriously a long time ago and made every effort to align myself and my documentation to the business — the people that pay my check — versus the theories of some professor who faces everyday in the safe predictable confines of the classroom. This means, I am very happy after reading Technical Writing Management: A Practical Guide by Steven A. Schwarzman. He writes this book from practical experience in a tone that should resonate with both long time technical writers and those still coming up through the ranks.
I am an early adopter of the Amazon Kindle who later became an avid iPad user. Currently, I split my reading time between iBooks and the Kindle so I was quick to preorder an Amazon Kindle Fire when I first got the chance. If anything, my Android experience has mostly been about trying out the Android phones owned by my friends and colleagues plus reading articles about the OS. While I have my personal favorites, ultimately I try to be platform agnostic so picking up a Kindle Fire is my first official introduction into Android (even if it is running a highly customized version of it).
The Kindle Fire is by no means an iPad Killer but it ‘s a wonderful media consumption device with merits all of its own. All of the articles written that set the iPad and the Kindle Fire against each other all seem to be written in pursuit of page views or by IT journalists that need to get out of the coffee shop and see how tablets are really used in the enterprise and in various vertical markets. The Kindle Fire is an eReader with some tablet qualities and runs a version of Android and definitely not in the same weight class as an iPad.
Staying true to my 2011 resolution to read as many books as possible as eBooks on my iPad or Kindle, I’ve only bought two three print books as of August 2011. The majority of my personal and professional reading takes place on my iPad and Kindle.
This means there was no way of me not getting around not checking out the Kindle Cloud Reader even though I’ve been content with the Kindle app on the iPad. Apple seems to be wielding the full force of their platform with content providers for iOS devices so the advent of the Kindle Cloud Reader comes as no surprise. Having my books especially my professional reference books in the cloud has been a real convenience since it means I don’t don’t have to lug books back and forth to work.
It’s almost summer – the traditional time of year when I read a lot – so it is time to put together my reading list for beside the pool. Except for magazines, I am staying true to reading as many books as I can on either my Kindle or iPad. My plan for reading this summer includes a bit of leisure, rejuvenation, and professional education. So here is my Summer 2011 Reading List, it’s just a start and a bit eclectic. read more
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