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Rare Bird Applications Now Open
The Rare Bird Award recognizes outstanding managers and their teams. The applications should describe thoroughly an innovative practice in which your organization has been engaged. The members of the judging panel look for detailed descriptions of the practice and concrete evidence that the innovation has led to organizational change.
Click here to submit your Best Practice for consideration. The submission deadline is July 20. |
2010 Content Management Strategies/DITA North America: An Update
JoAnn Hackos, Comtech Services, Inc.
The 2010 CMS/DITA NA conference celebrated its successful 12th year in Santa Clara, CA. Clearly the high-tech industry is in recovery. We saw a 129% increase in enrollments over 2009 and an even bigger increase in the number of companies represented and the level of interest in moving away from desktop publishing and toward effectively managed content.
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the article.
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An Investigation Into Standards and Innovation
Part 6 of 6: XML: Shift Happens
Laurent Liscia, OASIS
Inspired by the Open Source revolution, Jon Bosak from Sun Microsystems and others invented XML, a subset of SGML meant solely for this amazing World-Wide-Web. The browser was neat and spectacular, but what if databases could be accessed from the browser in a standardized way? XML could do just that. It could serve as a universal data translator. If one database refers to a car as a passenger automobile, and another as a sedan, XML could describe a general "car" category that either database might understand. Thanks to XML any kind of data could now be queried, and pass from one proprietary system to another.
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the article.
Got Trademarks?
Amber Swope, Earley & Associates
Many technical documents contain references to trademarked phrases. According to Wikipedia, "A trademark or trade mark is a distinctive sign or indicator used by an individual, business organization, or other legal entity to identify that the products or services to consumers with which the trademark appears originate from a unique source, and to distinguish its products or services from those of other entities." This means that it is imperative that information developers specify the exact phrase and properly identify the type of trademark.
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the article.
Seven Steps to Structured Content
Tom Magliery, JustSystems, Inc.
Reprinted with permission from JustSystems, Inc.
Companies that adopt structured content have consistently seen it accelerate the creation, simplify the maintenance, and improve the quality of their content. They've seen structured content drive higher quality information, reduced publishing costs, and faster times to market for their technical manuals, policy documents, financial information, and other content and content-based
products and services.
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the article.
Paperless Office Crash Course
Chris Riley, Independent
Is there a stack of papers somewhere in your office? When was the last time you touched or searched the stack? Is there information in those documents that requires your attention? We assimilate paper daily and struggle with managing it. The frustration, time cost, and risk of loss that paper poses for everyone is one of the most critical reasons to become paperless.
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the article.
Strategies for Creating Localized Screen Captures
Shane Polizzano, SimulTrans, LLC
Screen shots are often used to help illustrate software functionality, but are very difficult to manage within documentation. Recreating screen captures for localized versions of documents poses particularly challenging. Factors such as software not being fully localized or difficulty in finding the proper screens often hinder the screen capture process.
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the article.
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Introduction to DITA: A Guide to the Darwin Information Typing Architecture
Comtech Services has produced a user guide for the popular OASIS DITA standard. If you have been using DITA or are just joining the DITA community, this book provides you with the information you need to accomplish your goals.
Buy your copy today! |
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CIDM is calling for contributions to the bimonthly publication, Best Practices. Please contact our Editor, Lisa Larson, for more information. |
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