My latest post is now online over on Tablets in the Enterprise.
Tablets are gaining a strong reputation as sales tools across multiple industries, which is getting the attention of sales teams who want their company to outfit them with tablets. Sales teams are ideal candidates for tablets, but organizations need to build them out as a sales productivity tool
via Seven tips for outfitting your sales team with tablets | TechRepublic.
I wrote another post for LifeHack.org:
Back in the day, we all reviewed and edited documents with a red pen, highlighter, and sticky notes. Then came track changes and comments in MS Word or maybe you used the Review tools in Adobe Acrobat to annotate comments and edits on a PDF while sitting at your PC or Mac. Now we can use an iPad and iAnnotate PDF, a powerful alternative to GoodReader. The document reviewing process has gone from paper to PC and now to iPad without missing a beat.
My Thyroid — actually the subsequent Thyroidectomy I had in October 2010 — has been perhaps the most prolific productivity teacher in my life thus far. The farther I get away from the surgery the more I’ve come to realize the productivity lessons from the whole thing.
I had to bring many things to a cold hard stop and then turn things back on in my life switch by switch like bringing up a server farm or a data center. Ultimately, I am realizing the benefits and seeing how it has been a catalyst for positive change.
Here are the five productivity lessons my Thyroid taught me:
I previously wrote about Do.com, gave it high marks, and then got to thinking about how it could work for managing offsite technical writing projects. I’ve had mixed experiences myself with offsite technical writing projects and while I still think some organizations are more equipped to deal with remote workers than others. However, I haven’t given up the hope that putting a management tool layer between the remote writer and those involved in the project at the mother ship couldn’t help improve communications and create an audit trail.
With a little bit of setup, Do.com can serve as a task management and communications broker between a remote writer and the rest of the project team.
Evernote is one of those cloud-based apps fees I have no problems paying every year. It helps me centralize a lot of information and keeps me organized both personally and professionally. I’ve liked watching the growth of Evernote’s ecosystem through the Evernote Trunk and seeing the application extended into new directions.
Evernote is ideal as a backend for information-centric applications and the Evernote Trunk shows some excellent extensions of Evernote through its API.
I’ve had a simmering interest in Office applications for mobile devices including the iPhone in particular. Therefore, since I already run iWork on my iPad, I downloaded the iWork apps for my iPhone when they first came available to me on the App Store.
Pages. Numbers, and KeyNote – the apps comprising iWork – are now considered “universal apps” meaning they work on the iPhone, iPod Touch, and the iPad. While my relationship with its Mac cousins can be described as off and on, I do use iWork and especially Pages on my iPad for reviewing documents (file attachments in particular). With the release of iWork for iPhone, I am hoping to use these apps the same way on my phone. I am looking forward to seeing how Apple can bring iWork syncing altogether with the upcoming launch of iCloud.
A lot of my technical writing career has been spent as a contractor and consultant working with organizations that didn’t have technical documentation in place and need it in place fast. Throughout my travels, I’ve also spoken to even more organizations through the course of interviewing for potential projects. One thing I’ve learned is that Johnny can’t document a product.
Creating technical documentation isn’t rocket science nor does it require a select caste of individuals. A replicable process, some standards, maybe some templates, and oh yeah some common sense can really help your technical documentation efforts go the distance.
While some of the reasons why Johnny can’t document a product, these issues can sneak up an ultimately sabotage a documentation effort and ultimately the entire project.
I’ve long been critical of the technical writing profession on this blog and in some of my other writing. It’s not because I hate technical writing – I do love it – rather it’s because I’ve seen some critical missteps from both the technical writing profession and those that hire them. After all, I am a technical writer so I do question.
One of the worst things an organization can do to self sabotage their technical documentation efforts is to make their technical writing group a parking lot or dumping ground for employees that other group’s don’t want. This can lead to a number of issues that can eventually have a ripple effect across an entire project:
In trying to get my groove back, I’ve been taking a look at many personal and professional elements in my life to look for areas that need improvement. While I’ve always been an inveterate note taker because of my work as a technical writer and side writing projects – I’ve yet to leave paper behind and make the move to taking notes electronically This has been something I’ve been meaning to revisit since I got my iPad last Spring.
I’ve been running multiple PCs in my home office for quite some time as I like to have the self sufficiency for freelance projects to run beta and pre-release software on a machine I can always blow away and rebuild as my schedule and project needs see fit.
I maintain two primary writing machines – a MacBook Pro and a Windows desktop – that I keep clean and pristine and use just for writing projects, email, and related tasks.
Recently, I decided to retire (actually demote) the Windows XP desktop I’ve been using for the past couple of years as my primary Windows machine and migrate to a new Windows 7 desktop. Outfitting the new PC has shown
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