From The Official Google Blog:

Google Chrome OS is an open source, lightweight operating system that will initially be targeted at netbooks. Later this year we will open-source its code, and netbooks running Google Chrome OS will be available for consumers in the second half of 2010. Because we’re already talking to partners about the project, and we’ll soon be working with the open source community, we wanted to share our vision now so everyone understands what we are trying to achieve.

That is exciting news! I am still excited about Google Wave that will be released later this year, but Chrome OS is even more exciting!

(Image Source: http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2009/07/five-things-googles-chrome-os-will-do-for-your-netbook/)

What we know about Chrome OS:

1. It is free and open source..
2. It will be released later this year.
3. It will work on PCs and netbooks.
4. It will run on both x86 and ARM chips.
5. It will be fast and lightweight.
6. All Google software and web applications will integrate seamlessly with its OS!

I purchased an HP laptop earlier this year that came bundled with Microsoft Vista x64 and a bunch of junk applications that come typically with HP computers. I uninstalled almost everything (minus the OS) and replaced them with free, open source applications. I would have uninstalled Vista too, except I didn’t have a Windows XP installation CD. I don’t like Vista at all and had contemplated whether to upgrade to the free Windows 7 Release Candidate. However, I didn’t want to be stuck paying a hundred dollars for the official operating system if I didn’t like it.

Now that Google is releasing its own operating system, I’ll be waiting eagerly in anticipation to have an all free, open source environment on my laptop!

More articles about Google Chrome OS:

• Official Google Blog: Introducing the Google Chrome OS
• Wired: All Roads Lead to Chrome OS
• Time: Google’s Chrome: Taking Aim at Microsoft — and the iPhone
• Time: Five Things Google’s Chrome OS Will Do for Your Netbook
• CNN: Google takes on Windows with Chrome OS

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Here’s a video of a Chinese high school student doing a rendition of Michael Jackson’s Beat It.

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The thing with German games as well as the newer games is that they are super fun to play but also super hard to learn. Unless somebody already knew how to play the games, they’re difficult to learn because the setup is complicated, the rules are complicated, and there’s a bunch of different ways to play.

Fortunately, most of my early exposures to these fun German games have been introduced by friends. Some friend or friend of friend got a new game, taught someone or me how to play, then I went and bought one too. I’ve never had to learn a game by reading the instructions/game rules. I’d occasionally look at them to reference a specific rule or game play, but that’s about it.

Learn By Reading?

Every so often, I’d go to Board Game Geek to check out board game rankings, reviews, and awards. Then I’d order some of the popular games from CardHaus, which has one of the lowest prices for board games online.

Last year, I went overboard and bought 10-15 board games all at once. When the games arrived, I was excited to learn these new games. Unfortunately, nobody knew how to play any of them.

The instruction booklets that come with these games are like 30-50 pages with a million and one rules to remember. I’ve tried reading through some of them, but have had no luck deciphering the game play/rules. I wouldn’t exactly say that the instructions were poorly written. That may or may not be the case, but I am slowly coming to the realization that I can’t learn by reading!

Learn By Listening?

Last week, my husband and I went to a friend’s house. My friend wanted to play Risk 2210 A.D., which neither of us knew how to play. The game is very different from the original Risk. My friend spent a good half an hour explaining the game play/rules to us. I was completely lost and daydreaming about Nazis with their silly moustache, the crazy Kamikaze pilots, and that one time when I played a 6-hour long game of Risk several years ago. When my friend finally finished explaining the game, I came to another shocking realization that I am a TERRIBLE listener. I can’t learn by listening either! How tragic.

So we started the game, and I had no clue as to what I was supposed to do. I volunteered to be last, as always. I let everybody else go first, observing what they were doing, and asking a few questions here and there. It didn’t take very long to figure out the game play. By the time we made the first round, I got the gist of the game. Granted, I was still discovering a few rules and caveats throughout the game, but I had a lot of fun playing Risk 2210 for the first time. The game lasted 3+ hours! I was winning all the way up to Year 5, then I lost because I was first to play the round instead of last (which is what you need to do to win). Next time…

Learn By Watching and Doing?

Last night, some friends came over and brought new games over! One friend spent 15-20 minutes reading the instructions for this game called For Sale. She read the rules out loud while my husband listened attentively. He’s definitely an auditory learner. I just sat and twiddled my thumb played with the game pieces, waiting impatiently for the game to start. Once the game started, I caught on immediately and wouldn’t you believe it, I actually won the game by a huge margin! I am definitely a hands-on person!

My friend commented on the strangeness of how I can be a technical writer and not be able to learn by reading. I laughed and said jokingly, “I know. I hate to read what I write.”

I wish I could turn all instruction manuals into cartoons and videos. That’s how I would have liked to learn things.

Learning Styles

Last October, I went to Austin for our internal technical communication conference. I gave a presentation addressing this very issue regarding learning styles in technical writing. Since most manuals are in the written/text-based form, you’d think that people like to learn (or learn best) by reading. However, in my 6 years of experience teaching elementary and middle school students, that is far from the case. Most of my students preferred learning via hands-on activities and interactive projects that require minimal reading/writing.

Perhaps learning styles change over the years when students move on to adulthood? For me, I learn best using visual and hands-on (kinesthetic) methods. Am I the only one still stuck in my elementary ways of learning? That was what I wanted to find out during my presentation about learning styles.

Origami Mini-Activity

At the start of the presentation, I surveyed the room to see what people thought their main learning style was. There was an even distribution of different types of learners across the room, as expected. Then I divided the room into 3 groups for a “hands-on” activity—folding origami boxes.  The goal of the activity was to fold an origami box using the instructions assigned to each group.

• Group 1—This group received a text-only set of instructions.
• Group 2—This group received a picture-only set of instructions.
• Group 3—This group had an instructor that taught them how to fold the box.

I gave everyone 5 minutes to complete the activity without looking at anyone else’s box or asking for help. At the end of 5 minutes, I had everyone lift up their origami box (or what they were able to make of it). You can probably guess what happened!

• Group 1—A few people were able to finish making their origami box, but most didn’t because the instructions were “poorly written” (or so they thought), difficult to understand, or they just didn’t have enough time to finish the activity. Some had origami folds that did not even remotely resemble a box! The problem with the written instructions was that if they missed a step, it was hard to continue. One person screwed up on the first step, so the rest was disastrous.
• Group 2—This group did very well. Almost everyone finished their origami box in a short amount of time.
• Group 3—This group also did very well! EVERYONE finished their origami box, perfectly! This group took almost the entire 5 minutes to complete, slowly but surely.

When everyone saw the results of the 3 groups, there was a lot of chatter in the room. This “hands-on” activity confirmed my suspicion all along that people are more visual/kinesthetic/auditory learners than they are read/write learners. Some were quite surprised to find that they weren’t the read/write learner as they thought they were. The funny thing was that everyone in the room was either a technical writer or a translator, and we spend the bulk of our working hours writing mostly text-based documentation! And that was exactly the point I wanted to drive across in my presentation—that while most technical communicators are good with words, we need to look at technical “writing” in a new light and take into perspective that our end-users may or may not be read/write learners.

Learning Puerto Rico

So anyway, back to my love for playing board games. I have this game called Puerto Rico. Puerto Rico ranked #2 on the board game ranking, so I bought it. The game was SUPER HARD to learn! I couldn’t understand the manual because it was really long and wordy. My brother-in-law played it once with friends, so he tried to explain the game to me one time when I was jetlagged. We gave up playing after the first turn and never attempted to play it again.

Later, I found an online interactive tutorial that explained the game play/rules. I also found this Excel macro that somebody created. The macro allows you to play the entire Puerto Rico with bots. It took a while, but I was finally able to figure out how to play the game from watching the interactive tutorial and playing with bots. And yes, Puerto Rico is A LOT of fun!

If I had a dream job, it’d be working for a game company and coming up with interactive tutorials. Actually, that was the job I turned down to work at NI because the office was all the way in Xujiahui (Puxi). The commute would have been 3 hours roundtrip instead of my current 10 minutes bike ride to work!!

Next life…

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What is Google Wave?

Google Wave is a communication and collaboration tool that combines aspects of emails, wikis, instant messaging, social networking, web chat, and project management right inside your browser. Simply put, Google Wave is a wiki version of instant messaging that allows collaborators to organize thoughts, ideas, and conversations in real-time.

Google Wave Video Demo

If you have not heard of Google Wave or seen the demo video, I’ve embedded the video below. If you live in China, YouTube is blocked. Try using a personal VPN access like Witopia or YouTube proxy to view the video. (Direct video link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_UyVmITiYQ)

Several weeks ago, I watched the entire hour and a half video demo of Google Wave. I was completely blown away by the innovative ways in which Google Wave can facilitate better and improved communication and collaboration on the web. As I watched the demo, I could immediately relate to the difficulties and challenges of project collaboration using today’s tools, especially with people across the globe. I can’t wait to try out Google Wave!

All-in-One Platform

What’s game-changing about Google Wave is not so much that Google came out with a new product. Google basically combined every useful communication and collaboration tool we use today, streamlined all common day-to-day tasks, and packaged the tools together in an all-in-one communication platform. It’s like Apple coming out with the iPhone. Why didn’t anyone think of that before?

Actually, many did. But none achieved the innovative, simple, and easy-to-use platform that are consistent with Apple and Google products.

I was reading The Design of Everyday Things by Donald Norman for a book club at work. The book, written in 1988, talked a lot about the psychological aspects of human interaction with products/design. Norman pointed out the paradox of technology—that while new technologies and added functionality simplify a few things, they also add to the complexity and difficulty of learning how to use them. It takes a really good design (and a brilliant team) to come up with innovative technology that combines many things, but without the complexity. iPhones and Google Wave are perfect examples of such innovative technology!

Transforming Communication and Collaboration

Google Wave combines many tools that are already being used in the workplace today.  Let’s take a look at how some of these same tools used inside the Google Wave platform streamline the way we communicate and collaborate.

1. Email Organization

The Old: I use Lotus Notes at work. I think Notes is a horrible email application. I’ve also used Microsoft Outlook before, and I don’t think Outlook is any better either. I often get 5-10 emails about a particular subject. They take up a lot of lines in my inbox, not to mention the difficulty of organizing emails by folders. Which folder do I file to when the email is about both Work and Personal? And of the 10 emails about troubleshooting a broken link, which one was it that contain the solution? Searching for old and archived emails in Notes is a nightmare.

The New: With Google Wave, the inbox looks similar to a Gmail inbox. Instead of having individual or threaded emails, the entire conversation between collaborators is contained in a wave, shown as one item in the Google Wave inbox. And just like Gmail, you can label, archive, and search waves.

2. Wikis for Internal Collaboration

The Old: Many companies are adopting wiki as a tool for internal collaboration. With wiki, everyone can contribute new content or edit existing content. Wikis help facilitate collaboration within and across groups, departments, and centers. Since wikis track revision history, it’s easy to see what changes are made. However, if a page contains numerous revisions, it’s not always clear which changes were made when, why, and by whom. Comparing revisions is a cumbersome task.

The New: Google Wave allows you to edit emails and conversations like a wiki page! Rather than having a string of emails that you read and reply to from top to bottom, Google Wave allows you to organize thoughts, conversations, and ideas in a more logical fashion, that is, wherever they are relevant in a wave. In addition, Google Wave has a playback feature that allows you to view the entire conversation, or wave, from start to finish. This features is very useful for collaborators that joined the conversation later. The playback helps to simulate the entire thought process. Why didn’t anyone think of that before?

3. Instant Messaging

The Old: Got a quick question for Bob Smith in the IT department? That’s what instant messaging is for! Open the instant messaging application, find his name, send him a message, then wait for his reply. Instant messaging transformed communication in the workplace. No more walking over to Bob’s cubicle to get the answer. You could just pick up the phone and call him, but then you wouldn’t have any record of the conversation in case you need to reference it later. 

The New: A wave is like a wiki version of instant messaging. You can insert and edit your replies wherever and whenever they are relevant, instead of just sequentially by timestamp. Every conversation also takes place in real-time, like an instant message. Online collaborators are able to see your replies as you type each character!

4. Social Networking

The Old: Found something interesting on the web? Email it. Share it. Blog about it. Digg it. Tweet it. There are so many different social networking sites out there. Somewhere I read a quote from a geek, if you didn’t stick it on the Internet, it didn’t happen.

The New: Soon, people will be saying, if you didn’t wave it, it didn’t happen. You can add extensions, gadgets, and robots to Google Wave to include or embed various social media contents to your waves. Google Wave is an all-in-one platform!

Looking Forward to Being Part of the Wave

The Google Wave demo video also showcased many other cool features like natural language spellchecker, drag-and-drop file sharing, embeddability, gadgets, robots, and extensions that keep you wandering, why didn’t anyone think of that before!

Well, that’s Google for you, always coming out with cool new technology and innovation!

I can think of a number of ways in which Google Wave can make great improvements, not just in our documentation process, but throughout the course of LabVIEW software development. I’d like to take a detailed look and analysis at how Google Wave can be used in our day-to-day tasks, but that’s another post for another day.

Meanwhile, I look forward to the release of Google Wave. I’ve already signed up for updates, so the moment Google Wave becomes available, I’ll be one of the first to try it out!  And geek speak, that makes me the Innovator, or the technology enthusiast, in Geoffrey Moore’s Technology Adoption Lifecycle. I am a 100% pure-bred geek.

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If you’re interested in applying for a position, send your cover letter/resume directly to the contact person listed in the job posting. If you’re interested in posting a job opportunity (positions in China only), send me the job description/details using the Contact Me page.

Why am I doing this? I am interested in promoting the field of technical communication/writing in China.

Technical Writer - Position based in Beijing, China

Qualifications:

You have at least 3-5 years experience as an English technical writer in the Software field. You will be in charge of the following tasks and duties:

• Design, write and/or update administration and user manuals, installation and reference guides.  This includes the creation of text and graphics in Structured FrameMaker, produce pdf and html files, rebrand documentation for OEM products
• Interview developers and chase information on the products from various sources.
• Liaise with our R&D team for technical support, based either in France or in China
• Be autonomous in your work
• Respect strict deadlines

Skills:

• English mother tongue or excellent writing skills in English.
• Experienced writer in IT/Software fields
• Adobe FrameMaker (Structured a plus).
• Webworks
• Experience in data integration and/or master data management fields, an asset

About Talend:

The first pure play provider of open source data integration software, Talend makes data integration solutions available to organizations of all sizes, and for all integration needs.

Talend offers open, innovative and powerful data integration solutions, used primarily for integration between operational systems, ETL, and migration.

If you are interested, please send your resume/cover email to jobs@talend.com with the following reference: [Technical Writer position]

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At home, I’m able to tailor my online activities depending on how fast my Internet connection is. If my connection is fast, I can watch a streaming video from Hulu or ABC.com. If my Internet connection is slow, I can read a few articles from my RSS reader or blog offline.

At work, I don’t have as much flexibility in terms of waiting or postponing the task at hand. If I need to do some research or download some files that require a faster connection, I’m able to remote to a test machine in our Austin office and take advantage of the faster connection there. With a few thousand employees at the corporate office in Austin, the connection in Austin is quite fast, especially in the middle of the night (day time in Shanghai) when no one else is hogging the bandwidth! 

I used SpeedTest.net to check the connection speed between the two offices. See below of comparison.

Connection in Austin

Connection in Shanghai

Pros and Cons of Using a Remote Computer

As you can see, the Internet connection speed is 15 times faster in Austin compared to Shanghai! However, there are pros and cons to using a remote computer to connect to the Internet.

Pros

• Internet connection is four times faster in Austin.
• Faster connection to U.S.-based websites.
• Access websites that are otherwise blocked in China. (The list of websites blocked in China is quite long!)
• Minimize the number of windows open in my taskbar because the remote computer appear as just one item in the taskbar.

Cons

• While the Internet connection is faster in Austin, there’s a slight delay in displaying the screen of a remote computer.
• Streaming videos do not display well when using a remote computer.
• Using a remote computer hogs up computer resources.
• Slow connection to China-based websites.
• I don’t have access to a remote computer at home.
• Cannot download contents directly to my computer. Need to download to remote computer, then transfer the files to Shanghai.

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FedEx took its standard 30 second TV commercials, played it on fast forward with a voice-over narration commenting how viewers want to skip through commercials so they can continue watching their favorite shows, and ended with how things are done at FedEx. FAST. The entire commercial lasted about ten seconds!

Wow! What a brilliant idea. I think this commercial definitely caught everyone off guard and gained a lot of attention!

You can read the blog post about why they came up with these commercials here.

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Below is a video from CNN. If the embedded video does not appear, you can view the video directly from CNN’s website here.

Below is a video from AFP. If the embedded video does not appear, you can view the video directly from YouTube here.

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But thankfully, I use a personal VPN service through Witopia to gain access to all these websites. For about $40 USD a year, I get a secure tunnel that allows me to browse the Internet as if I were physically located in the U.S. That means, I’m also able to watch online streaming videos from major TV networks and watch the latest episodes of 24, Prison Break, Lost, Fringe, and many more!

$40 is a small price to pay for a fast, consistent connection without all the annoying pop-ups and ads. But if you want something that is free, check out these other alternatives to accessing blocked Websites in China.

• Hotspot Shield
• YouTube Proxy
• Anchorfree
• G-Proxy
• GLadder (Firefox Plugin)
• TOR
• GAppProxy
• Coobai

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Working on a Sunday

Today is Sunday and it’s a work day  here at the Shanghai office. Actually, only half the people are at the office today. Thursday was Dragon Boat Festival (holiday in China), so the company gave us a three-day weekend, substituting Friday workday with Sunday. We were all supposed to come in to work today, but unfortunately the global IT department decided to have a network maintenance this weekend. We were notified only earlier this week that the network was going to be down on Sunday. . . which happens to be the project deadline for most of us!

We were given the option to work on Friday (with network) or Sunday (without network). I had already made plans for Friday, so I opted to work on Sunday. I finished most of my project tasks anyway, so here I am, at work on a Sunday with the network down. At least the Internet connection is working, so I decided to update this blog (and on company time too!). It has been a while since I’ve been blogging consistently here at Shanghai Tech Writer. I do apologize for the lack of (quality) posts. The past few months have been extremely busy due to family and personal matters. It’ll probably continue like this for a long while, so I apologize in advance that this blog is dimming its light for a while.

Cleaning Up My Cubicle

While I am very OCD in some ways (like keeping my computer desktop extremely clean and running CCleaner every 3 days), my actual work desktop is not so clean. Lots of things pile up during the course of a release cycle—marked up review copies, checklists, notes, specs, NFDs, documentation plans, project schedules, to do lists, scraps, taxi receipts, letters, boxes, contracts, plastic bags, candies, wrappers, sticky notes, pens without caps, caps without pens, paper clips, and dust bunnies.  You never know what you shouldn’t throw away before release (ironically I empty my Recycle Bin quite often), so things just pile up!

Well, it’s the end of release and I already checked in all my help files, so it’s housekeeping time! I filed everything away, shredded things from last release, tidied up my desk, and wiped my desk clean! Yay for a semi-clean and organized cubicle that will last for about a week.

The Law (and Feeling) of Inertia

The longer I don’t do something, the harder it is to get back. Take my RSS reader for example. My Google Reader has over 1000 unread items. Technical writing-related blogs alone have over 400 items! The more unread items in my reader, the less I want to read them. And so the number of unread items just keeps on getting bigger and bigger…

I took a three-month leave of absence earlier this year and almost didn’t want to come back to work. The longer I didn’t work, the less I wanted to go back to work. I questioned whether what I do at work (writing documentation) makes any difference. I toyed with the idea of becoming a freelance writer / health advocate. When I finally came back to work, I remembered how much I actually enjoyed technical writing despite the fact that only a few people will ever read what I write.

I used to spend a lot more time thinking, processing, and coming up with topics, ideas, and posts to add to this blog. Due to other more important priorities, I haven’t been able to write much here. The less I write, the less motivated I am to blog even when I do have time. 

I am out of ideas and words. Until next time… whenever that will be.

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