Thought of the day

Publishing and Technical Writing are two separate fields. The notion of a documentation department probably creates the needed umbrella for the two fields. It is my belief that you probably only have enough time to engage in either of the sides of documentation. Unfortunately, I believe that many corporations push their workers toward wearing both hats.

As an example, I'm on a Framemaker listserv. I'm not sure why I joined exactly, but I've learned a lot. As someone who really loves technical writing, the difference becomes stark when the contributors to the list get all excited about getting Framemaker to make their lives easier - making the publishing aspect of the company's documentation needs accurate and efficient. Personally I'd rather concentrate on writing great docs - I'd publish to a .txt file if need be!

technical+writing technical+writer documentation Framemaker publishing

poor facebook

Disclaimer: I have never viewed or belonged to facebook.com.F or those who know, correct my errors, but facebook is similar to myspace (and livejournal), i.e. a social networking site.

Facebook is getting hammered by a select set of critics charging that they are releasing person information about members. In actually it seems that Facebook has implemented RSS/whatever feeds of each friend-type user's page, such that any subscriber to the feed can easily view (or be alerted?) of page updates. (I think that the feed is placed directly on a user's home page… much like LJ friend’s lists)

Now presumably Facebook, with its .edu bent, attracts a wide range of users, not necessarily the Internet elite. The Internet elite, heralding all things web 2.0, love when you can add technologies on top of each other to make for a more connected and collaborative online world. News feeds are one of these tools. So I find it funny that the implementation of a tool, which in the abstract can only do good, is being resisted so fervently by the rest of us. (OK, i gotta say, I probably fall into the category of Internet elite)

Only speculating, but the real error here is that the developers and product managers at Facebook were probably too personally involved in the web 2.0 scene to step back and think for a second that their user base wasn't.