Save the Republic

It doesn't happen that much, but today MoveOn.org made me smile:

"Today, Star Wars III: Revenge of the Sith opens at theaters nation-wide. And weirdly enough, the plot of what will undoubtedly be one of the biggest films in movie history revolves around a scheming senator who, seduced by visions of absolute power, transforms a democratic republic into an empire."

Check it out.

Good Looks, Sensitive, Charming, and Genuinely Sincere

That's me, it appears.

Several months ago, someone in the office came in with a Mr. Wonderful doll. Soon after, women started sauntering by my cubicle, staring. I do love being at the center of attention, but I also like to know why.

Turns out that Mr. Wonderful and I share a look. And a sense of style.
Mr. Wonderful is 12" tall and dressed in khakis and a blue, button-down oxford. When you squeeze his hand, he always says the right thing:

• "You know, Honey, why don't you just relax and let me make dinner tonight."
• "Why don't we go to the mall. Didn't you want some new shoes?"
• "Let's just cuddle."
• Here, you take the remote. As long as I'm with you, I don't care what we watch.

So my profile photo now represents the true me...

Microsoft is to Darwin as Apple...

Direct from the mouths of indexers: "There's still a lot of unfindable information."

Now there's a statement that the creationists, er intelligent designers, might jump all over. "If it's unfindable, how do you know it was ever there?" And speaking of school boards, Microsoft may indeed be Darwin. If so, Apple is the Intelligent Designer.

Microsoft and the Origin of the Index
Microsoft has a new operating system coming out to replace XP. It's code-named "Longhorn," and with it, Microsoft proves that evolution is the way, the light, and the truth. Longhorn will have a new help system. Microft has been heard to say that its help system will not have an index, only a search engine. That's because "no one uses" indexes, or so Microsoft thinks. Its index is dying out from underuse.

Apple doesn't think so. Apple's next help engine will include a new form of indexing. Indexing is big with them.

Technical writers have to think about help systems when designing help. They design and write help to work with the system supported by the operating system. The kinds of things that a help system supports cause tech writers to stay up nights and write in their blogs.

Seek, and Ye Shall Get A Lot of Hits
Searching is all we need, right? Google rocks (much to the dismay of Microsoft's MSN, by the way). People tout their abilities to find anything in the universe in no more than two Google searches.

I don't think search is the human to the ape of an index. Ever been frustrated by a search engine? Ever given up trying to find something in a help file because the 17,452 results you got were a bit too many? Why do some bloggers categorize their entries? Too much time on their hands, perhaps? Doubt it.

No, I didn't Read the Book. I'm Waiting for the Index
Jan Wright has an article about the future of indexing called, appropriately, The Future of Indexing. In it, she states that "It's about aboutness." It still takes humans to help provide context so you can find what you want. I found it interesting.

I believe in the index. I love a good index. Buy Apple. Save the index!

Vintage Paperback Art

I'm fascinated with with J-Walk Blog (from the guy who brought us the Google Content Blocker and caused me to pen a theme song)

He has a link from his blog to the BookScans project, whose goal, "is to provide a visual catalog of ALL vintage American paperbacks... printed before 1960 and/or having a 25¢ cover price."

Pocket Books

By the way. Did you know that the kangaroo that adorns Pocket Books was named "Gertrude" after the publisher's mother-in-law? Back story. Back story. I want the back story!

Act Now

Send 50 scans from your personal library of vintage paperbacks and receive a free CD of the entire collection from BookScans!

"What's this blog thingamajig?"

If you are like me, you have a mother who doesn't understand blogging.

Amy Gahran posted a piece that may help you explain blogs to Mom, mine or yours, or it may help you understand blogs yourself.

Among other things, Amy notes that blogs are simply Web sites that are united by these characteristics:

• Format (newest stuff is at the top)
• Linkability (I can get back to this)
• Content management tools (blogging tools)
• Common features (comments, archives, searches, etc.)

I like it when people de-mystify things. Blogging, trackbacks, permalinks -- they're just fancy names for boring things. How about "my thoughts," "people who liked my thoughts," "a bookmark for a specific thought" -- these don't sound so scary to me, and maybe not to other people.

Perry Carp

When I started this entry, I thought it was about popcorn. It's actually about geeks and popcorn.

A few weeks ago, several us were standing around talking at work, when someone mentioned she had heard that researchers had figured out why some popcorn kernals don't pop. Every single one of us knew what she was talking about:

...the key factor that appears to influence popping quality is the chemical structure of the pericarp, or outer hull.... During heating, the corn pericarp acts like a pressure cooker that locks moisture inside the corn kernel. The heated moisture leads to a pressure buildup until the kernel eventually ruptures and pops, essentially turning the kernel inside out and producing the fluffy white product that we eat. (source: Science Daily)

Better pericarp, fewer old maids. Simple as that.

I won't get into the research issues -- whether it is strange that people study the hull strength of popcorn -- others are much more qualified than I about that subject. But what about the fact that my coworkers all knew about the findings of people who study the hull strength of popcorn?

I haven't done a rigorous scientific study on this, unlike the popcornists, but I believe that maintaining a mental roster of relatively useless facts is a well-known trait among geeks (it's probably a trait among pericarpenters, too) . But the kicker for those who work with software, at least on the development side of the house, is to bring up those facts at inappropriate moments.

Moments like this one. Um. Okay. Gotta go.

All hail to the Popcorn Board (striving "to raise the awareness of U.S. popcorn.")

See the Ads, Tuppence A Bag...

For those of you who despair that there's just way too much stuff on the Web.

Install the Google Content Blocker.
And sing along with me...

Superstitial-AdRealistic-XoutAlltheContent
Sung to the tune of Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious from the movie "Mary Poppins."
Play the tune for me, please!

Um diddle diddle diddle, um diddle ay
Um diddle diddle diddle, um diddle ay
Superstitial-AdRealistic-XoutAlltheContent!
All because the subject matter's
Never what you wanted.
Now the stuff is really gone,
And you can surf undaunted.
Superstitial-AdRealistic-XoutAlltheContent!

Um diddle diddle diddle, um diddle ay
Um diddle diddle diddle, um diddle ay
Because all of the text obscured
Most of the lovely ads.
An interstitial popped-up quick,
To help me with the fads.
But then one toolbar I installed,
It saved me so much time.
All of the content was forestalled,
The rest was quite sublime.

Oh,
Superstitial-AdRealistic-XoutAlltheContent!
All because the subject matter's
Never what you wanted.
Now the stuff is really gone,
And you can surf undaunted.
Superstitial-AdRealistic-XoutAlltheContent!

Um diddle diddle diddle, um diddle ay
Um diddle diddle diddle, um diddle ay
I clicked and surfed around the Net,
And everywhere I went.
I'd use the toolbar and would see
The absence of content.
A site with Flash or JavaScript
Is not to a me a shock.
Because my browser's well equipped,
With Google Content Block.

Oh,
Superstitial-AdRealistic-XoutAlltheContent!
All because the subject matter's
Never what you wanted.
Now the stuff is really gone,
And you can surf undaunted.
Superstitial-AdRealistic-XoutAlltheContent!

Um diddle diddle diddle, um diddle ay
Um diddle diddle diddle, um diddle ay
So when the content's in the way,
There's no need to shut down.
Just summon up the blocker,
And you'll never see a noun.
But better use it carefully,
As no doubt you'll see.
One night I clicked upon my blog,
And now I'm content free!

I'm
Superstitial-AdRealistic-XoutAlltheContent!
Superstitial-AdRealistic-XoutAlltheContent!
Superstitial-AdRealistic-XoutAlltheContent!
Superstitial-AdRealistic-XoutAlltheContent!

Have You Heard of ID Theft?

You have? Could you tell NBC for me?

Consider these quotes from today's (May 10, 2005) NBC Nightly News piece called "ID theft epidemic:"

• "the massive problem of ID theft"
• "a national crisis"
• "a situation that's clearly out of control"
• "yet another brazen scam"
• "financial information swirling around in cyberspace"
• "the exploding underworld of ID theft"

Why do they use such hyperbole?
Yes, I'm worried about criminals impersonating me. I know people who have had money stolen from their bank accounts. I've been amused and terrified by the CitiBank commercials. In fact, I don't know anyone who hasn't heard of ID theft. That's probably due in large part to the media.

Hyperbole is a most effectively used to persuade. Why does NBC think it needs to persuade me? Does it think that I need to call my senator or representative? But Congress is already responding. As Bill Nelson, Democratic Representative from Florida exclaimed in the NBC piece, "If we don't do something about this, Mr. Chairman, None of us is going to have any identify left!"

No identity left?

Sometimes I just appreciate print journalists. For example, in today's Boston Globe, David Abel wrote a story called "ATM cards pirated for plenty, police say." It contained information about who had been arrested and for what. It contained a graphic showing how the guy stole PINs and ATM card information (oh, and by the way NBC, PIN stands for Personal Information Number. Its just a PIN, not a PIN Number).

The story contained practical advice on how to prevent such ATM skimming with such low-tech methods as using your hand to hide the keypad as you punch in your PIN. There was no massive, exploding, brazen swirl in the story. Just the facts, Ma'am.

ID Cloning
I think so-called ID theft is more like ID cloning. After all, even if someone is pretending to be me, I'm still me, aren't I? I agree with Bruce Schneier in his essay, "Mitigating identity theft" in which he writes that identity theft is not theft at all, since an identity is not property to steal. It is impersonation using private information leading to fraud.

Schneier's bigger point is that that those who are trying to fix the problem concentrate too much on making personal data harder to steal when they should be working on how easy it is to commit fraud with personal data. He suggests that when financial institutions are liable for fraud losses, they will find solutions.

Not Valid with Signature
I agree with Schneier. Recently I used a credit card at Sears. I swiped my card and waited. The little card reader then told me to hand my card to the cashier. As I did, the cashier looked at me blankly and said, "What? I don't need that." Yes you do, Sears. You could be at the very least validating my signature on my card with the one on the screen.

But Congress is feeling the heat from the media as much as it is fanning the flames itself. Stung by such hard-hitting questions from TV journalists as "The question is, why hasn't more been done?" and the fear that there won't be any identities to vote for them, Congress will likely pass some kind of knee-jerk law that will require me to sign a pledge that I won't ever reveal my PIN to anyone, even criminals, and go merrily about their ways. Or worse, they'll come up with legislation that costs money but doesn't have any incentives to stop the fraud, and make it more expensive for me to go to the bank or use my credit card. It's been done before...

So, NBC, tone it down, OK? We get it. Give us a few more facts and a lot less hype.

RoboHelp Plays Nicely with Word

Those of you who use RoboHelp as your help authoring tool are probably already bored of the discussions about its future, now that it appears not to be the darling child of Macromedia/Adobe.

In the midst of all the hyperbole about the sky falling, some of the clearest advice I've seen reminded people that RoboHelp will not stop working even if Macromedia/Adobe fires all the RoboHelp developers tomorrow. It's a piece of software. It works today, and it will work tomorrow.

But what I hadn't seen discussed, at least not until I posted it to HATT - the "Help Authoring Tools and Techniques" group, is that RoboHelp HTML is dependent on Word in a very specific case. The two applications must play nicely together in order to generate any print documentation. In other words, if you want to generate Word or PDF output from RoboHelp, RH has to be able to access Word directly.

When Microsoft releases a version of Word that is not compatible with the current release of RoboHelp (X5), you won't be able to have that version of Word and RoboHelp X5 on your computer and expect RoboHelp to output printed documentation.

So, RH may continue to work for a long time. It just may not workwith the next version of Word.

UX Against Them

I really hate abbreviations sometimes. There I was, on a quiet Sunday morning skimming the latest issue of the journal interactions when I kept reading "UX." Maybe it was because of the hour, but I couldn't work out what the author meant by UX. Since interactions is concerned with human-computer interactions, I figured the U had to stand for user, but the X had me stimied. User InteraXtions? User TransaXtions? No. X meant eXperience.

User eXperience

Are we so stingy with space and time that we can't type user experience but have to reduce it to UX? And what about my user experience? I spent more time searching for the meaning than I did reading what the author had to say. And I guess I'm an UX professional. At least I get paid to be concerned about the user experience.

I think my reaction to UX is where my training as a writer trumps my training as an UX. I think you should do what you can to keep the reader reading. And if that means writing "user experience" time after time after time so that the reader doesn't have to stumble through a field of UX, then that's what I have to do.

Usability and User eXperience (UUX)

As I kept reading I learned that another professional organization I belong to, the Society for Technical Communication, has an group called "Usability and User Experience." So, the STC has a SIG for UX professionals called UUX. Can UUXX be far behind?

Anyway...

interactions is ACM's magazine for designers of interactive products. The May-June edition is a special issue about who owns the profession currently known as User eXperience. But even in the introduction the editor wonders if the controversy over the ownership of user experience is legitimate.

Are You For UX or Agin UX?

I suppose this discussion about ownership is one of questioning legitimacy. Some who spend time being concerned about users' experiences feel that they don't get no respect. Those in charge command respect. Therefore, we'll reckon with each other about who's in charge of user experience so that others will realize that we must be reckoned with. But for me, it's a boring discussion. I would rather spend my time learning how others make the user experience better rather than whether they think I'm an owner or an employee of UX Corp.

The American Idol Syndrome and the Proper Episcopalian

This is the first post of my first blog. I want it to be pithy, clever, and scintillating. But I imagine it won't be, and that categorizing an entry is like whispering a wish out loud -- the thing can never come true.

I've avoided setting up a blog until now for a few reasons (that I remember):

• I already know that I'm self-interested. So do my friends. But I don't want to be appear to be solipsistic (not trying to be "preachy" by linking to the definition. However, even as I knew this word existed, I couldn't remember it and had to ask my wife. I figure if I couldn't remember the word then maybe others won't remember the definition). And having been brought up as a proper Episcopalian (is there an improper one?), I know about the power of appearance. ("Whatever you do, make it look as if you meant to do that!).
  
• I think I'm much less interesting than most people who blog. I was talking about blogging with a friend recently and we agreed that while we enjoy reading blogs and find out lots of really interesting stuff from them, neither of us thinks we have anything worthwhile to post ourselves. I think this attitude must be the opposite of the "American Idol Syndrome," people believing that they are better at something than they are.
  
• I'm a bit of a coward. I also doubt that my skin is thick enough for the "collaborative" nature of blogging.

But my fascination with ideas has overcome my reluctance. I'm not sure what content I'll post or what themes I'll keep to, but whatever they are, I'll be posting them because they are interesting to me. Oh, and I'll probably think they're all pithy, clever, and scintillating.