#26494
There's a new blog out there that looks promising—professional bloggers can now turn to Performancing for advice. This new blog is focused on professional blogging by offering keywords tips, advice about headline styles, and how to increase your blog traffic.
Hartzer, Bill. Search Engine Guide (2005). Articles>Reviews>Web Design
#22920
Review: Quality Technical Information: Paving the Way for Usable Print and Web Interface Design 
Principles of information style and design have been around for years. Look at the shelf life of Strunk and White's classic The Elements of Style, published in 1959 and still a bestseller. Producing Quality Technical Information is a gem of a book, whose precise, bullet-style list of seven requirements and a checklist is now even more insightful in the fast-paced world of online information and the World-Wide Web. As a writer, I'm amazed how the IBM authors crystallized the essence of good information design in less than 100 pages. This commentary describes how the book's seven qualities and thirty individual requirements can easily and usefully be extrapolated to address key issues of interface design and usability for today's professional designers and developers.
Mandel, Theo. Journal of Computer Documentation (2002). Articles>Reviews>User Interface>Usability
#29106
By emphasizing the negative meanings of words, ignoring variations in translations, and quoting out of context, Steven B. Katz has argued in an influential article that an 'ethic of expediencyunderlies technical communication and deliberative rhetoric, and by extension writing pedagogy and practice based on it.' Katz's assertion misrepresents the motive of technical communication and its pedagogy, and it brings discredit to the professions of technical communication and the teaching of technical communication. His attempt to discredit the motive of technical communication is part of a two-millennia-long contest for status between intellectuals and the working classes, and it creates unnecessary mistrust at a time in history when people must focus even more on cooperating socially in order to sustain democratic cultures and our physical environment for future generations.
Moore, Patrick. Journal of Technical Writing and Communication (2004). Articles>Reviews>TC
#22017
Review: Reporting Technical Information
When I first picked up Reporting Technical Information, I thought from the title it was going to be a primer on writing technical reports. Instead, this book turned out to be a basic, though somewhat better than average, textbook on technical writing.
Coleman, Colleen. Technical Communication Online (2002). Articles>Reviews>Reports>Technical Writing
#23874
Review: Reshaping Technical Communication: New Directions and Challenges for the 21st Century
Reshaping Technical Communication: New Directions and Challenges for the 21st Century by Barbara Mirel and Rachel Spilka, eds. offers great insights that might help you gain an understanding of how each world operates, why they operate as they do, and how the two worlds affect and can alter the future of technical communication.
Staples, Jeff. Usability Interface (2003). Resources>Reviews>TC
#22104
Review: Reshaping Technical Communication: New Directions and Challenges for the 21st Century
Ever wonder about the relationship between academia and the corporate world? Or if you are on the corporate side (as I am), have you wondered why academia operates as it does? (And vice versa.) If so, Reshaping Technical Communication: New Directions and Challenges for the 21st Century offers great insights that may help you gain an understanding of how each world operates, why they operate as they do, and how the two worlds influence and can alter the future of technical communication.
Staples, Jeff. Technical Communication Online (2002). Articles>Reviews>TC>History
#22924
The editor and principal writer of Producing Quality Technical Information (1983) responds to the commentaries: answering questions about the sources of PQTI; discussing what the System Information group at IBM's Santa Teresa Laboratory were doing about usability from 1979 to 1983; comparing the predecessor nine 'ease-of-use factors' with the seven 'qualities' of PQTI and the nine 'quality characteristics' of Prentice Hall's subsequent editions of PQTI, published under the title Developing Quality Technical Information; and revealing his own motives and thought processes in working on several usability initiatives in the laboratory at that time, including the publication of PQTI.
Dean, Morris. Journal of Computer Documentation (2002). Articles>Reviews>Documentation
#26938
Review: Review of 'Podcasting Solutions: Complete Guide to Podcasting'
I thoroughly enjoyed reading Podcasting Solutions: A Complete Guide to Podcasting by Michael W. Goeghegan and Dan Klass. I was able to digest the material quickly. The frustrating thing for me was that the title just didn't seem to fit the approachable and practical content that made the book such a treasure. For example, the subtitle 'A Complete Guide' is a bit overstated, because it is not a compendium but a getting starting guide. Especially as time goes by and the field progresses, and more techniques and tools are developed, this book will become more out of date.
Albing, Bill. KeyContent.org (2006). Articles>Reviews>Multimedia>Podcasting
#26475
Review: Review of "User Interface Design for Programmers"
This is ostensibly a review of Joel Spolsky's book "User Interface Design for Programmers" by way of a comparison with Jef Raskin's "The Humane Interface."
Albing, Bill. KeyContent.org (2005). Articles>Reviews
#20040
Ever wonder about the relationship between academia and the corporate world? Or, maybe if you are on the corporate side (as I am), have you wondered why academia operates as it does? (And vice versa.) If so, Reshaping technical communication: New directions and challenges for the 21st century offers great insights that might help you gain an understanding of how each world operates, why they operate as they do, and how the two worlds affect and can alter the future of technical communication.
Staples, Jeff. Usability Interface (2003). Articles>Reviews>TC
#27672
Review: Review of Cladonia Exchanger XML Editor
This article is a review of the Exchanger XML Editor version 3.2 from the Cladonia company. Being such a broad field, the XML Editor category is necessarily far-reaching, and can cover both database management systems and authoring tools. For this reason, this review narrows the scope by looking at the suitability of Exchanger for use by technical communicators and Help authors to create and edit manuals, user guides and Help systems. Much of the focus of this article is therefore on the software's suitability for DocBook or DITA authoring, and its appropriateness for users without coding skills.
#22966
Review: A Review of Free, Online Accessibility Tools
This article reviews eight, free, online web accessibility tools and examines the general characteristics of accessibility tools. The review provides a comparison between tools, and offers suggestions as to which tool would be appropriate for each of the following audiences: web designers, web developers and web evaluators.
Blair, Peter. WebAIM (2004). Articles>Reviews>Accessibility>Software
#31194
Review: A Review of Morae 2.0 for Usability Testing
TechSmith's recent release, Morae 2.0, features a new graphing tool, integrated satisfaction survey, and embedded task definitions. The editable marker log in Observer and the improved timeline controls in the Manager improve operator efficiency. This article highlights these and other new features of the new 2.0.
Shrestha, Sav. Usability News (2007). Articles>Reviews>Usability>Testing
#26461
Review: Review of Nine Books on Digital Photography
This article reviews the following books on digital photography: Shoot like a pro!: Digital photography techniques by Julie Adair King; Digital photography bible: Desktop edition by Dan Simon; How to do everything with digital photography by Dave Huss; Total digital photography: The shoot to print workflow handbook by Serge Timacheff and David Karlin; The practical guide to digital imaging: Mastering the terms, technologies, and techniques by Michelle Perkins; Digital photography expert: Light and lighting by Michael Freeman; The essential lighting manual for digital and film photographers by Chris Weston; Digital photography expert: Close-up photography by Michael Freeman; Professional techniques for black & white digital photography by Patrick Rice.
Sullivan, Bill. Technical Communication Online (2005). Articles>Reviews>Photography
#20033
Review: A Review of RoboHelp Office 2002
This is the first in a series of articles that builds into a personal review of RoboHelp Office 2002. This first article introduces the new release and discusses Topic Templates, Headers and Footers, and the new MS Word Import capability.
Ellison, Matthew. WritersUA (2002). Articles>Reviews>Software>Adobe RoboHelp
#27644
Review: Review of Screen Capture Tools
Describes the important attributes of a capture tool and examines and compares the features of five popular products.
Ellison, Matthew. WritersUA (2005). Articles>Reviews>Software>Screen Captures
#25296
Review: Review of Writing at the Edge: Student Webs from Brown University
In Writing at the Edge, George Landow has provided a hypertext that is both in and about hypertext.
Eyman, Douglas. Kairos (1996). Articles>Reviews>Hypertext
#30690
Review: Rhetorical Grammar, 5th Edition
Throughout the book, Kolln works to build the readers' confidence and encourage them to think of grammar as a tool. Rhetorical Grammar is a textbook for undergraduate students, and Kolln keeps this target audience in mind by making the 322- page book user-friendly.
Tutt, Bryan. Business Communication Quarterly (2007). Articles>Reviews>Grammar>Rhetoric
#24031
Review: Scientific Style Manual Aspires to International Scope
Despite what some U.S. editors may see as flaws or debatable recommendations, sooner or later anyone who edits scientific writing will consult Scientific Style and Format. Some may disagree with its style conventions, but they can be defended as serving the editors' stated goal of achieving a uniform international style for scientific publications.
Ivey, Keith C. Editorial Eye, The (1996). Resources>Reviews>Style Guides>Scientific Communication
#22422
Review: Scrolling Forward: Making Sense of Documents in the Digital Age
If you like to think about your work philosophically, or even if you don't, David M. Levy's book tackles some of the big questions in our profession: paper versus digital, reading versus viewing, libraries versus the Web, brick and mortar schools versus distance education. And the great thing about the book is that he thinks you don't have to choose between one or the other in each of these apparent dichotomies; in fact, what's needed is a balance between the two.
Crawley, Charles R. Technical Communication Online (2003). Articles>Reviews>Publishing>Online
#21355
Review: Small Pieces, Big Thoughts
'Small Pieces Loosely Joined' is touted on the cover as 'A Unified Theory of the Web.' But its author, David Weinberger, knows better. And he says as much in the book. It's a unified theory, but not the kind you sum up in a tidy little equation.
Hinton, Andrew. Boxes and Arrows (2002). Articles>Reviews>Information Design
#14452
Review: The Social Formation of Technical Communication Studies 
As a species of rhetoric and composition, technical communication studies is wrestling with issues of identity, professionalization, and status that help to define an academic discipline. Recent scholarly work has debated the research methods that might be productive for an applied field in a postmodern age, the theoretical and pedagogical connections between composition and technical communication in an electronic age, and the tensions between training and education in a global age that requires new models of work.
Selber, Stuart A. CCC (1998). Articles>Reviews>TC
#22921
Review: Some Reflections on the Emergence of a Profession
Producing Quality Technical Information played a major role in the shift from product-oriented information to user-oriented information. It brought to a large community of technical communicators an awareness of the role that technical information should play: not a description of a technical product or process but, rather, a description of what people need to do to use the product or perform the process. This shift in focus -- from product to user -- led to many changes in our profession and in our professional careers. No longer mere documentors of what others had done, we emerged as professionals who added value and usability to the project on which we worked.
Grice, Roger A. Journal of Computer Documentation (2002). Articles>Reviews>User Centered Design
#26069
Want to know more abou words? Or want some more brilliant snippets? Log on to The Word Spy. It is a site maintained by Paul McFedries, the well-known author and word-follower.
Dalvi, Meghashri. Indus (2005). Articles>Reviews>Web Design
#30648
Review: SQL Server Integration Services Using Visual Studio
Beginners Guide to SQL Server Integration Services Using Visual Studio 2005 provides you with the basic knowledge that you should have before you move on to more advanced ETL [Extraction, Transformation, and Loading]. The book will also provide you with a comprehensive description of the many designer windows that you may encounter while working with the designer. This guide provides the building blocks describing each block by way of an example as well as describing the nuts and bolts that bind the blocks. A majority of SSIS tasks are covered in this book and they are described fully in the summary of table contents section. You start building packages right from Chapter 2 and continue on to Chapter 20 gathering and building upon your knowledge in each step.
Krishnaswamy, Jayaram. Packt (2007). Articles>Reviews>Databases>SQL
