Also, when I am shopping or even walking, I need to be aware of things around me. If we are all busy using mobile applications on our mobile devices, then we are all going to start bumping into each other and crashing into each other! This is too much for me. If you want to call me over the hill, that is fine. But, for me, the limits of technology will remain on my computer desktop. I believe a laptop, notebook or even netbook computer is acceptable. But, at least you are sitting down and you are not going to be walking into people! 100,000 applications for the iPhone shows that trends happen. But will this trend last? I hope not! I hope things will slow down a bit and that people will still value sitting down to work with their virtual applications. There are already too many car accidents out there as it is. The last thing we need now is people walking into each other because they are immersed in their mobile device and its almost endless range of applications. Look up, there is still a beautiful sky to see! So, if anyone sends me an IM on my phone, they just might have to wait. I am probably driving somewhere, walking somewhere, and that comes first. Then, I will sit and attend to my virtual applications. OK, have a nice weekend everyone.

In terms of resources you discover on the Internet, yes, you can download many e-books, applications and more for free. However, if that company or individual does not make enough money to stay in business, then you will one day type in their URL only to find nothing there. So, if you really value what you have received from a website, is it too much to ask to give a small donation, especially if the website asks for donations? I think not. In fact, the only organizations that can weather total non-reciprocation from people who download their products are giants like Microsoft, Google, etc. However, for the small business or entrepreneur, your donation makes a big difference. It offers these individuals the chance to pay their basic bills and keep on doing what they do best. So, you see, free is not really free – because it costs real money to keep a basic business afloat. So, if and when you can find the time and energy to click the donation button for a quality e-book or application, then please find it in your heart to give a dollar or two. If you can give such a donation to a homeless man who is just walking around a downtown area and just hanging out, why not give this donation to a hardworking entrepreneur who will be able to pay his office rent, hosting services and keep on producing great works? Great, glad you agree.

A good friend of mine, Mr. Gaetano Caruana has just informed me that his program “Fruitful Time Task Manager” has just been updated and is now ready to be used by the public. What are the updates to this program?

1. TaskManager now uses a database engine instead of XML files to store and manage your tasks. This results in increased stability, improved performance, and a stable platform on which we can build future improvements and features.

2. Backup and restore functionality to easily backup your important task list information.

3. Various minor bug fixes and tweaks to further improve stability, performance, and user experience.

What exactly is the Fruitful Time Task Manager? Well, it is a project management software that lets you enter, update and delete major events that you need to do. This may be applied to your work activities as well as personal ones. In the Fruitful Time Task Manager, you establish all major tasks in the upper part of the screen and you can assign priorities to these tasks.

The bottom half of your screen is devoted to assigning sub-tasks that correlate with the larger tasks. So, this software could become extremely useful for both project managers as well as quality assurance personnel who are both working on matching program functionality of a software with business and technical requirements. Also in the bottom half, you can state whether the sub-task is completed, in-progress, and also to whom this task has been assigned. If it is just yourself, then you don’t need to complete that field.

This is a really useful and practical desktop application. Today, there is a major move toward accessing remote applications. A good example is Google Docs. You basically only use your computer to access a remote server that has the software. But this is not the case with Fruitful Time Task Manager software. This program is downloaded to your machine, easily installed, and if you are travelling and don’t have Internet access, don’t worry – the application can run right from your desktop and you can immediately check on your tasks that you need to do.

Again, I highly recommend this software for Project Managers and Quality Assurance Professionals who can assign tasks and related sub-tasks to their list of items that need to be addressed. It is not easy to organize one’s thoughts and projects. However, with a fine program like Fruitful Time Task Manager, this job of self-organization just got much easier. Thanks, Gaetano for this great task management application!

Here is the link to the Fruitful Time Task Manager.

All The Best,

Keith Johnson

Visit me at LinkedIn
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I have watched the evolution of this product especially through Microsoft’s Official Windows 7 blog called “Engineering Windows 7″. Also, I downloaded two of the RCs (Release Candidates) and tested them on my Acer Laptop (my backup laptop at home). Everything worked nicely, as many people expected.

For those of you who wish to have a “pocket guide” for Windows 7 to help you with all of its most important options, please visit Rich Robinson’s website Minty White, where he has both a free version and also a paid version of his ebook about Windows 7.

It will be interesting to finally test the public release against its RC predecessors.

All The Best,

Keith Johnson, M.S. Education
Technical Writer & Documentation Specialist

Visit Rich Robinson’s website Minty White

Read more about Windows 7 at MSNBC

Why do I say this? Because so much time is wasted each day when people don’t listen to one another. What happens from not listening is misunderstanding. Do we want to live with misunderstanding?

Listening will save us time and energy in many ways. Listening will help us to success and completion of important projects. Listening will help us gather the right information and also deliver the right answers.

Even in the world of IT – listening is the greatest skill of all

In fact, it is very important for technical professionals also to remember that our image and salesmanship are an integral part of our career. It is easy to shy away from sales and self-promotion thinking these are only vain and self-serving activities.

However, like Seth said in one of his presentations, we can have millions of friends through the web, however, we also need to cultivate quality and true relationships that really serve our business direction. All businessmen need money, financing, equipment, location, personnel, and more.

So, again, thanks to Seth Godin for all of his great ideas and suggestions. I will do my best from this point on to integrate my technical training career with a bit of positive salesmanship and marketing.

We are all people (technical and non-technical professionals alike) and it is with other individuals that successful relationships are formed and establish successfully-driven projects and endeavors.

Image: From the Seth Godin Blog

Regards,

Keith Johnson

Visit me at LinkedIn
Visit me at IT Toolbox
Visit me at StumbleUpon

In addition to text that you can enter and style in the left pane, you can also enter important key words in the Key Words section of the right pane. These serve as tags which you may later use to find the note. Click the Save button to save your entry. When the program redisplays with the note, you will notice that the left pane of the program enables you to find notes in three ways: (1) categories, (2) sources, and (3) keywords. As a test, I closed the note I just made and then typed in “TOC” because I know that Table of Contents (TOC) was a keyword I established to help find this particular note. Sure enough, this note reappeared after my search.

If I wish to save this particular note in a notebook other than the default, I can go to the Tools Menu and select Manage Notebooks. The program displays the following window.

Here, I can create a new notebook. In this case, I will call it “Microsoft Word 2007” and then click on the Create Notebook button. The program displays another window asking me if I want to create a database called “Microsoft Word 2007”. Click Yes.

Next, change the notebook name in Edit Notebook field and select Change Notebook. The system loads the new notebook. Currently, there is nothing in this notebook. So, go to the File menu and select Import Notes. Go to the directory where your note was saved (or exported with the NoteScribe extension .nse) and then double click on the notes file to import it into this new notebook.

As the note is imported, you can select (in the Import Notes window that appears) the attributes and whereabouts of this newly imported file. Once in the new notebook, if you enter a major keyword of the note in the database search box (upper right corner of your screen), the notebook will then display the newly imported note.

Overall, NoteScribe is a great program, and I give it my highest rating. It is easy to navigate, easy to use, easy to understand, and built for those who don’t have strong computer skills. It is really build for students who need to spend more time worrying about creating and managing notes than worrying about technicalities of computer software programs. So, I say thanks to Jeff and his team at Higher Symmetry Software for creating such a resourceful, intuitive, and useful program for students. Software development is not an easy business. You have two major goals to achieve: “user-friendliness” and “usability toward higher and greater goals than just the program itself”. In this case, NoteScribe is built to help students get the most out of their notes using their desktop environment.

Here is the link for Higher Symmetry Software:

http://www.highersymmetry.com/

Well done Jeff!

All The Best,

Keith

One. Computer-Based Training – especially with websites like YouTube, video training is on the rise. So, even superficial documentation can be applied to computer-based training.

Two. Administration Guides – every business has an IT administrator who helps its employees. Documentation can be written to help administrators with their work, projects, and spell out important details that they might otherwise forget.

Three. Customer Support Guides – documentation can be written, especially for User Interfaces, to help customer support professionals who are helping clients over the phone. As a Media Temple client myself, I am immensely grateful to the staff at Media Temple that hosts this blog. I am sure they have some nice documentation guides to follow for troubleshooting tough problems.

Four. How-To Guides – these are especially important when someone wants to learn a “specific” task only. So, the documentation writer needs to first assemble a laundry-list of items to cover and then slowly, one by one, address each one, keeping the reader in mind.

Five. Installation Guides – like the Administration Guide, the Installation Guide is very useful for software applications that must be not only installed but also configured for successful use. Fortunately, installation gets easier and easier as web technologies improve. At the same time, security issues need to be addressed in the documentation that comprises an installation guide.

Six. HTML Help – Microsoft has a technology that enables help-file developers like myself to save the file in to a “CHM” format, which is essentially an executable file that can be run right from the desktop. These files are easy to manage and navigate – and that is why Microsoft has been successful propagating this format for Tech Writers like myself. Easy to build, and also easy to read (for the user).

Seven. Operations Manuals – these are more of a high-level documentation that empower and assist managers, directors and executives. Items are addressed at a very conceptual level and there is a drill-down type approach to covering operations – whether they be busines or technical.

Eight. Policies and Procedures Manuals – this type of documentation is especially useful for banks and businesses that need to follow strict procedures. Policies and Procedures manuals are usually written in step by step formats.

Nine. Programming Guides – if a technical writer has a good source-code documentation tool like Doxygen then he or she can document the actual source code developed by programmers. Then, further comments can be included to comment on the code and how individual snippets contribute to great concepts in a system architecture or design.

Ten. Release Notes – especially in the world of software development where release after release is done, technical writers can assemble very specific “notes” that discuss what has been improved, fixed, upgraded, etc. Release Notes are usually very readable since they only cover very specific changes to the overall product.

Have a nice weekend!

Keith

Essentially, if you are a developer or worthy quality assurance professional who can help them with testing, then you have a chance of seeing it in this release. I, myself, have applied but have not yet heard back from Google. I hope I get selected, and hope you do too.

Again, WAVE is a web-based service, computing platform, and communications “protocol” designed to merge e-mail, instant messaging, wiki, and social networking. Pretty cool, eh? Indeed, this is cool stuff. This could very well be the “next generation of collaboration” as some are already saying on the Web. WAVE has a strong real-time focus supported by extensions that perform spelling/grammar checking, automated translation between 40 different languages, among other things.

So, let me know if you agree or disagree about whether Google Wave constitutes the next generation of collaboration. Is Wikipedia the real collaborative tool out there? Perhaps version control and document sharing is the real collaboration? Is Google Wave just more commenting and messaging? Let me know your thoughts; I would really like to hear them. Thank you

Click here to learn more about the Google Wave.

Click here to ask for your invitation to test Google Wave.

Click here to watch the video about Google Wave.

All The Best,

Keith

Note: Image for this blog post taken from Google Wave entry at Wikipedia (Creative Commons).

Is this a pipedream? Well, I prefer to live with hope and so indeed it is possible for hard-working individuals to commit to a savings plan where you will benefit in the future. Simply plug in the numbers in this calculator according to what you find feasible (e.g. possible), and perhaps that will give you an idea about what you can save for retirement.

Click here to visit the MSN Calculator.

Wishing you all a restful and relaxing weekend,

Keith