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SIGDOC Newsletter
June 2009 :: Volume 10, Number 2
Interesting Items
- SIGDOC on Wikipedia
- What is a technical writer?
- Don Norman's jnd site
- Nielsen's 10 Best App UIs of 2008
- SIGDOC 2008 Proceedings
- SIGDOC Europe Chapter?
- IBM Offerings for Students
- Whitepaper: What is Intelligent Content?
- Content Wrangler
- WritersUA
- Dilbert Newsletter
SIGDOC on Wikipedia
There’s a new entry about SIGDOC on Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SIGDOC
This site should be a very beneficial opportunity to increasing the visibility of SIGDOC and the membership.
Please review the topics and the content you see there and feel free to make recommendations or enhance what you see at the Web site yourself. If you want to share your opinions about this new Web site with other members, please send your feedback to me (robertp@us.ibm.com) for inclusion in the next Newsletter.
These are areas where we can add more information:
- Description – Needs content that could be based on what we currently have available on our SIGDOC Web site.
- A link to becoming a SIGDOC Member!
- History
- Links to related SIG sites (SIGCHI, SIGWEB, etc.)
- Add a section for recommended resources? Links to important books, papers and other resources?
- Links to SIGDOC member Web resources?
- Updated information about awards (student competition, etc.)
- Accurate links to information about award winners? (Such as this year's winners. See Susanne Bødker & Pelle Ehn)
- More information (and/or links to more information) on current research and areas of interest that helps demonstrate to potential members the breadth of topics that SIGDOC encompasses – such as “activity” research, HCI, usability, User-centered design, use case diagrams and modeling, retrievability, accessibility, design, graphics, usability, “learnability,” “memorability,” translation/localization/internationalization of content and of user interfaces, Web design, development, and usability, content management, and best practices in design and development of technical content and communication.
- Additional links of relevance in the Reference section.
In addition, there's also a wikipedia page for “Technical writing”:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technical_writer,
and we now have a link to the SIGDOC page from it!
From Google, it is the first link you get when you search for “information developer.”
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What is a technical writer?
Here is an example of what a technical writer does: http://www.answers.com/topic/technical-writer.
Does this fit your description?
Don Norman's jnd site
http://www.jnd.org/
Essays: http://www.jnd.org/dn.pubs.html
Design as Communication - http://www.jnd.org/dn.mss/design_as_comun.html
Nielsen's 10 Best App UIs of 2008
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/application-design.html
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SIGDOC 2008 Proceedings
The 26th ACM International Conference on Design of Communication (sigdoc2008.net) was held in Lisbon, Portugal, on September 22-24, 2008 at ISCTE (http://www.iscte.pt).
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SIGDOC Europe Chapter?
Carlos Costa is pursuing the possibility of a new ACM SIGDOC chapter. Please contact him if you are interested in supporting his leadership:
Carlos J. Costa, PhD.
http://dcti.iscte.pt/cjc
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IBM Offerings for Students
Six new on-line offerings designed to get students up to speed quickly on hot technologies and topics. With access to tutorials, forums, games and other resources, IBM is helping students develop marketable skills in hot job areas such as enterprise computing, Web 2.0 programming and database management. We have created simple step-by-step roadmaps in an easy-to-use organized format so that students can independently familiarize themselves with the technology and/or topic and expand their skills profile. The following student offerings are now available:
- Database Technology
Designed for students interested in open standards-based Relational Database Management Systems, the DB2 Express-C student offering includes an introduction to the technology, free download of the software, access to a support forum, games and hands-on tutorials for enhanced learning, publications, and prep materials for certification exams.
- Enterprise Computing
The Enterprise Systems student offering will provide students with an introduction to the mainframe and large systems-related careers focused around the New Enterprise Data Center, IBM's best practices model for virtualization, green IT, service management and cloud computing. Access to mainframe-focused games in Second Life, instructions on how to gain remote access to a live mainframe hub, and experience labs and exercises based on components of IBM's "Master the Mainframe" contest from prior years are also available on the site.
- Situational Applications and Web 2.0
WebSphere sMash is an agile development environment optimized for producing rich REST-style services, integration, mashups and user friendly Web interfaces through scripting runtimes such as Groovy and PHP. This student offering includes an introduction to the technology and free software download, hands-on tutorials and other resources for learning, and access to the development community (located at ProjectZero.org) which delivers frequent builds, latest features, and developer's forums.
- SSME
To prepare students with skills for use in the services sector, universities will need a multi-disciplinary curriculum that covers the study of people, business and technology in service systems. The SSME tutorial includes resources for discussion and interaction through the use of case studies. Contrasts between the manufacturing and service sector issues are raised to understand differences in supply chain, information systems and operations practices.
- Team-Based Development
Jazz is Rational’s future platform for collaborative software delivery that will transform how people work together to deliver software and embedded systems. Students will be introduced to the Jazz platform and provided a free download of the Rational Team Concert software, access to the Jazz community and a wealth of learning resources.
- Web Server Technology
WebSphere Application Server Community Edition (WAS CE) is a lightweight Java EE 5 application server based on the open source technology delivered in Apache Geronimo. It harnesses the latest developments from the open-source community and provides a readily accessible and flexible foundation for Java application development. Students can now "kick-start" their Java applications with this leading-edge technology with an offering that includes an introduction to WAS CE, free download of the software, quick-start and user guides, access to Eclipse updates to WAS CE, and rich articles and tutorials demonstrating hands-on use of the technology.
All of these no-charge student offerings are available through the IBM Academic Initiative’s Student Software Catalog, accessible via IBM Student Portal at http://www.ibm.com/university/students/.
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Whitepaper: What is Intelligent Content?
Interested in learning about intelligent content, who is using it and how it's saving them time, money and improving the accuracy of their content? Are you interested in doing this yourself? Download Ann Rockley's latest whitepaper What is Intelligent Content? to learn about it. She defines Intelligent Content, and describes a number of scenarios where real organizations have put it in place to solve real problems.
http://www.intelligentcontent2009.com
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Content Wrangler
The Content Wrangler Newsletter - http://www.thecontentwrangler.com
abelsp@netdirect.net
WritersUA
The WritersUA Web site offers original, free articles, surveys, and resource listings: http://www.writersua.com
Dilbert Newsletter
http://www.unitedmedia.com/comics/dilbert/dnrc/html/read_the_newsletter.html
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