Info developer

Freely you have received, freely give – Part 4

Anindita Basu — Sun, 14 Dec 2008 10:24:34 +0000

My team is here: TWIN team. When I say “team”, I refer to the people who stayed on. I had assumed a drop rate of 20%; it was actually 50%. Other assumptions went wrong too (in hindsight, they were presumptions not assumptions ); the lessons I learnt are: Volunteer work needs [...]

Freely you have received, freely give – Part 3

Anindita Basu — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 18:43:38 +0000

So, did it work? Yes. Like a dream. Neeta said several weeks later, “…no phone calls or video conferencing, and yet it all works! It is a pleasure to be associated…with the project”. Because pictures speak more than words, here are some… caption id=”attachment_114″ align=”alignnone” width=”450″ caption=”categories”][/captioncaption id="attachment_117" align="alignnone" width="450" caption="metrics1"][/captioncaption id="attachment_119" align="alignnone" width="450" caption="scrum"][/caption] And, who [...]

Freely you have received, freely give – Part 2

Anindita Basu — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 18:02:42 +0000

While waiting for people to volunteer, I started thinking about the execution… What is the project size Authoring: As of Jun 8, there are 36535 messages. Assuming 10% of the messages are job postings, 33000 messages to sift through. Assuming one message takes 1 minute to read, and another minute to do a basic copy-paste if the [...]

Freely you have received, freely give – Part 1

Anindita Basu — Sun, 07 Dec 2008 20:17:36 +0000

TWIN (Technical Writers of India) is the first mailing list of Indian technical writers. It was born in 1997. Like any other mailing list, it is a coffee shop where people come to ask questions, post answers, share information, et cetera. Posts to the mailing list are archived; the TWIN archives, like the TWIN mailing [...]

Comparing Blogger.com and WordPress.com

Anindita Basu — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 12:35:28 +0000

For the past few weeks, I have been comparing the free blogging facilities offered by Blogger.com and WordPress.com. First, the similarities: Both are free. Both have fairly easy-to-use Web user interfaces. Both let you create private blogs and limited-access blogs. Both allow readers to post comments; both allow comment moderation and spam control. Both allow a [...]

If it’s not easy to use, it’s not used

Anindita Basu — Sun, 30 Nov 2008 15:27:10 +0000

Debates about Microsoft Word vs. Adobe Framemaker appear with regular frequency on the tech-writing mailing lists I am subscribed to. Everyone agrees Frame is an awesome publishing tool. Yet, everyone keeps cribbing about it. So, why does a bright bunch of people who are masters at figuring out stuff, otherwise known as [...]

User is king

Anindita Basu — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 18:09:00 +0000

I have an account with a public-sector bank. It’s a bank that opened a branch right next to the office I was working in then, and it’s where my salary was credited. I still have that account, but since it’s about 7 kms from my residence, I was thinking in terms of internet banking… “Not a [...]