Ideas

BSNL 3G Settings for Andriod phones

2010-08-21T04:39:00.000-07:00

BSNL is the only 3G provider in India. BSNL web site provide instruction to receive settings. However, some phones are still not supported for automatic download and installation. Therefore below I am providing the settings for the benefit of users who have phones like Google's G1 and My Touch 3G or any Andriod based phone. Steps to enable:

1) Ensure that you have 3G connection from BSNL and compatible sim inserted and activated in your cell phone.

Note: You can buy or exchange te 3G sim from BSNL Customer care offices in your city or town.

2) Now, for Andriod based phones:

Click Menu button (marked on cell phone body - menu)

Click on Settings

Wireless & Networks

mobile networks

Access Point Names

Push button "menu" again

Click on "New APN"

Select "Name" and add -> bsnlnet

Click OK

Select APN" and add -> bsnlnet

Leave everything else blank, except ->

MCC -> add value -> 404

MNC -> add value -> 71

Select "menu" on Phone again

Click on Save

Press "Home" button on phone.

You should see 3G icon or Edge icon on your screen at top right along with signal bar. You will get 3G or Edge depending upon availability of signal in that area at a particular time.

Now, you can browse the web site "www.google.com" to check in your browser.

Hope this helps for all Andriod lovers in India especially. Let me know if you still have any issue and will try to help to the best of my ability.

Cheers

California Government Looking For Your IT Ideas

2010-02-13T11:28:00.001-08:00

Interactive Location tool

Pardeep Sharma

We have gps system for roads
Now, let's develop a system for big companies campuses, cinema halls, Schools, Universities, Theme Parks, Shopping malls, parking areas, restaurants and offices and even office cubes inside a company
- Develop interactive clickable location wise mappings for the above and related locations/places
- This will help the common man/end user to locate his/her requirement easily without wandering around. For example a new joinee inside a company will be able to locate his cubicle without wandering into the maze of cubes
or a shopper will be able to park and identify his parking easily
- Shopper or Cinema-goer will be able to locate his required shop or seat easily.
- These maps can be available as downloads through web sites or even prompt search and download on a device
- The exact location of a place, thing or person can be easily mapped and tracked remotely by the person or authrity as per legal requirements
- Individual could be provided with the choicest seat in cinema hall or say restuarnat and then the route to same with the help of this indoor visualizing and tracking system

If implemented effectively this could be a hugely popular and useful. Please contact me for further details.

Symantec Enterprise Vault 8

2009-11-04T14:55:00.000-08:00

Symantec Enterprise Vault 8

Frequently Asked Questions

1) If we select an archive from a shortcut and forward it, will the recipient be able to read the forwarded mail ?
Yes, it will be recalled correctly. However, if we attached the shortcut as an attachment, the recipient receives a shortcut and will require access to the sender's archive in order to open it.

2) What is the size on disk of Symantec EV 8 after installation ?
The size is about 418 mb, slightly lesser than 500 mb after installation. This includes installation of EV 8 and admin console.

3) Can we have multiple EV Servers target the same Exchange Server ?
Yes, but the mailboxes can't be common. If for example we have 100 mailboxes, we can do 50 on each EV Server but this type of configuration is often complex and prone to misconfiguration errors.

4) Can there be interaction between OWA Client and EV Server with OWA 2007 installed ?
Yes, when the client sees the EV pages (Archive Explorer, Search and ViewMessage.asp) in the browser.

5) What changes the way EV Extensions integrate with Exchange 2007 as compared to Exchange 2000 and 2003 ?
Control files are not amend, no virtual directories are created and configured in IIS, no form registrations are performed and proxy bypass list is not modified.

6) How are binary files such as jpg, gif, bitmap and files larger than 50 mb indexed ?
These files are not indexed, however, the attributes (metadata) of these files are indexed to facilitate search and restore.

7) Why am I not given the option to create a mailbox when I am creating a user in Active Directory and running Exchange 2007 ?
With Exchange 2007, the user mailboxes can only be created via the Exchange 2007 recipient and create mailbox option.

8) When I run the provisioning task in report mode, it shows 5 mailbox synchronized but when I run in report mode it shows no mailbox successfully synchronized ?
The mailboxes are only successfully synchronized the Exchange Archiving Task is run and not the provisioning task.

9) Would you recommend a full backup when upgrading from EV 7.5 to EV 8 ?
Yes, a full backup is recommended before an upgrade as there are many changes and enhancements such as vault store group, vault cache and desktop policies, definitely there will be changes made to the databases. In the event of a failure, you can restore from your backup.

10) What is the primary difference between primary and non-primary file groups for the finger print database ?
The ‘Primary SQL File Group’ houses the system tables, stored procedures and views. The ‘SIS Data Locations’ house the actual fingerprint data for the Fingerprint Database, which is expected to grow very rapidly. 32 ‘Non-primary File Groups’ (each containing 1 file) are created, spread across the locations provided by the user as evenly as possible, and initially as small as possible. Therefore, a maximum of 32 locations can be entered in total (at 1 file group per location) Whether it extends automatically or not depends on whether autogrowth is allowed or not. Refer to this "Difference Between Filegroups " for more information.

11) What is the main purpose of a vault store group and the finger print database ?
The main purpose of a vault store group is for the use of optimized single instance storage (OSIS) and each vault store group has it's own finger print database which contains the metadata for all the SIS sharable parts of the archives in the respective vault stores within a single vault store group.

12) Why do we have to use the netbios name instead of the fully qualified domain name when entering the database, for example dc-sqlmanager\sqlserver ?
It is recommended to use the netbios name instead of the fqdn as this is safer, if we were to use the fqdn and there is a problem with the dns server, the name may not resolve.

13) If I have 6 Exchange 2007 servers in my environment, on which server should I install the OWA client for Exchange 2007 ?
You have install the EV OWA Client (64 or 32 bit) on the Exchange 2007 Server that is running the Client Access Server (CAS) and the end user client machines will connect to their mailboxes on this server as well as other Exchange 2007 Servers through this Exchange 2007 Client Access Server.

14) What is the purpose of verifying the transaction history in the EV Site properties when configuring Vault Cache ?
Meta Data Cache (MDC) incremental synchronization makes use of each archive's transaction history stored in the relevant vault store database. This history tracks all changes made to an archive since the last time an MDC sync was successfully completed.

15) How does the email access behave with Vault Cache when outlook cached mode is off ?
When Vault Cache is enabled, the wizard creates a copy of the user's primary mailbox archive on the user's local computer, it includes the folder structure and information about the items in each folder, EV then downloads copies of the items into the Vault Cache on the user's computer, this local archive contains copies of archives associated with shortcuts in the .ost file. However, the local copy is not a copy of the entire archive.

16) What is the Checkpoint Folder used for when configuring File System Archiving Task in EV 8 ?
The FSA task scan may not reach every folder on a large volume if time runs out, it stores information about it's progress in the checkpoint folder. The checkpointed scan allows FSA to resume scanning or archiving folders from where it stopped at the end of the last run and facilitates archiving for larger file servers.

17) Is there EVOM Monitoring Agent running on every EV Server by default ?
Yes, during the initial installation of Symantec Enterprise Vault 8 Server, we are prompted to input the SQL monitoring database and monitoring transaction log location, it is the MonitoringAgent.exe that runs on each EV Server that updates the database as well as the logs. It can be later used by EVOM Application to analyse the data collected.

18) What happens when the user double clicks a placeholder on the file server ?
The archived item is retrieved back into the original location and overwrites the placeholder shortcut, the items can be access as normal and the item is only archived again when the next archiving task runs.

19) Can users upgrade from EV 2007 to EV 8 ?
Yes, users of existing EV versions can perform a systematic upgrade to upgrade their current versions of EV Server to EV 8. Refer to "Upgrading To EV 8" documentation for more information.

20) Does Symantec EV 8 supports Microsoft Powershell ?
Yes, EV 8 is able to integrate with Microsoft Powershell tool to run cmdlets to put indexes and vault stores into backup mode (read-only mode) when performing a backup of the EV Server.

Resolving Sun Blade 150 Boot Issues

2009-10-22T16:16:00.000-07:00

Things to ensure before proceeding with steps -

Was the system working before?

Try following::

1) go to ok prompt (type in Stop + A)

then type in:
probe-ide
to verify if the system can see the Harddisk, CDROM,

if not able to see the issue could be hardware related. Check cable connetions, IDE HD,CDROM etc.

2) if step 1) is ok then, use a Solaris sofware CD 1of 2 or DVD to boot up to single user
mode, type in: boot cdrom -s
then run "fsck to all fileystsms"

eg, for root filesystem:
fsck -y /dev/rdsk/c0t0d0s0

3) if step 2 fails, try to boot up then system to single user mode again, and use the following command to make a disk boottable do:
installboot /usr/platform/`uname -i`/lib/fs/ufs/bootblk \
/dev/rdsk/c0t0d0s0

4) if step 3 does not work, then check your OBP setting, to make sure
boot-device have value for disk

To learn OBP, see these documents :
http://docs.sun.com/app/docs/doc/801-7042?l=es
http://www.sun.com/products-n-solutions/hardware/docs/pdf/816-1177-10.pdf

If you still have issues (1-4) fail, backup your data and reinstall the OS again

50 Windows 7 tips, tricks and secrets

2009-08-27T17:05:00.000-07:00

New Applets and features in Windows 7:

They said Windows 7 was just a cosmetic upgrade, a more polished version of Vista with little to offer beyond the new wallpaper.

They couldn't have been more wrong.

Look beyond the headlines about interface tweaks and you'll find Windows 7 is crammed with lesser known, but still important, new and enhanced features, which taken together deliver improved performance and productivity, better troubleshooting, stronger security and a whole lot more.

Read on for 50 ways in which Windows 7 will make a real difference to your PC.

1. Problem Steps Recorder
As the local PC guru you're probably very used to friends and family asking for help with their computer problems, yet having no idea how to clearly describe what's going on. It's frustrating, but Microsoft feels your pain, and Windows 7 will include an excellent new solution in the Problem Steps Recorder.

When any app starts misbehaving under Windows 7 then all your friends need do is click Start, type PSR and press Enter, then click Start Record. If they then work through whatever they're doing then the Problem Steps Recorder will record every click and keypress, take screen grabs, and package everything up into a single zipped MHTML file when they're finished, ready for emailing to you. It's quick, easy and effective, and will save you hours of troubleshooting time.

2. Burn images
Windows 7 finally introduces a feature that other operating systems have had for years - the ability to burn ISO images to CDs or DVDs. And it couldn't be much easier to use. Just double-click the ISO image, choose the drive with the blank disc, click Burn and watch as your disc is created.

3. Create and mount VHD files
Microsoft's Virtual PC creates its virtual machine hard drives in VHD files, and Windows 7 can now mount these directly so you can access them in the host system. Click Start, type diskmgmt.msc and press Enter, then click Action > Attach VHD and choose the file you'd like to mount. It will then appear as a virtual drive in Explorer and can be accessed, copied or written just like any other drive.

Click Action > Create VHD and you can now create a new virtual drive of your own (right-click it, select Initialise Disk, and after it's set up right-click the unallocated space and select New Simple Volume to set this up). Again, you'll be left with a virtual drive that behaves just like any other, where you can drag and drop files, install programs, test partitioning software or do whatever you like. But it's actually just this VHD file on your real hard drive which you can easily back up or share with others. Right-click the disk (that's the left-hand label that says "Disk 2" or whatever) and select Detach VHD to remove it.

The command line DISKPART utility has also been upgraded with tools to detach a VHD file, and an EXPAND command to increase a virtual disk's maximum size. Don't play around with this unless you know what you're doing, though - it's all too easy to trash your system.

4. Troubleshoot problems
If some part of Windows 7 is behaving strangely, and you don't know why, then click Control Panel > Find and fix problems (or 'Troubleshooting') to access the new troubleshooting packs. These are simple wizards that will resolve common problems, check your settings, clean up your system and more.

5. Startup repair
If you've downloaded Windows 7 (and even if you haven't) it's a good idea to create a system repair disc straight away in case you run into problems booting the OS later on. Click Start > Maintenance > Create a System Repair Disc, and let Windows 7 build a bootable emergency disc. If the worst does happen then it could be the only way to get your PC running again.

6. Take control
Tired of the kids installing dubious software or running applications you'd rather they left alone? AppLocker is a new Windows 7 feature that ensures users can only run the programs you specify. Don't worry, that's easier to set up than it sounds: you can create a rule to allow everything signed by a particular publisher, so choose Microsoft, say, and that one rule will let you run all signed Microsoft applications. Launch GPEDIT.MSC and go to Computer Configuration > Windows Settings > Security Settings > Application Control Policies > AppLocker to get a feel for how this works.

7. Calculate more
At first glance the Windows 7 calculator looks just like Vista's version, but explore the Mode menu and you'll see powerful new Statistics and Programmer views. And if you're clueless about bitwise manipulation, then try the Options menu instead. This offers many different unit conversions (length, weight, volume and more), date calculations (how many days between two dates?), and spreadsheet-type templates to help you calculate vehicle mileage, mortgage rates and more.

Don't take any Windows 7 applet at face value, then - there are some very powerful new features hidden in the background. Be sure to explore every option in all Windows applets to ensure you don't miss anything important.

8. Switch to a projector
Windows 7 now provides a standard way to switch your display from one monitor to another, or a projector - just press Win+P or run DisplaySwitch.exe and choose your preferred display. (This will have no effect if you've only one display connected.)

9. Get a power efficiency report
If you have a laptop, you can use the efficiency calculator to get Windows 7 to generate loads of useful information about its power consumption. Used in the right way, this can help you make huge gains in terms of battery life and performance. To do this you must open a command prompt as an administrator by typing 'cmd' in Start Search, and when the cmd icon appears, right-click it and choose Run as administrator.

Then at the command line, just type in 'powercfg -energy' (without quotes) and hit Return, and Windows 7 will scan your system looking for ways to improve power efficiency. It will then publish the results in an HTML file, usually in the System32 folder. Just follow the path it gives you to find your report.

10. Understanding System Restore
Using System Restore in previous versions of Windows has been something of a gamble. There's no way of telling which applications or drivers it might affect - you just have to try it and see.

Windows 7 is different. Right-click Computer, select Properties > System Protection > System Restore > Next, and choose the restore point you'd like to use. Click the new button to 'Scan for affected programs' and Windows will tell you which (if any) programs and drivers will be deleted or recovered by selecting this restore point.

11. Set the time zone
System administrators will appreciate the new command line tzutil.exe utility, which lets you set a PC's time zone from scripts. If you wanted to set a PC to Greenwich Mean Time, for instance, you'd use the command

tzutil /s "gmt standard time"

The command "tzutil /g" displays the current time zone, "tzutil /l" lists all possible time zones, and "tzutil /?" displays details on how the command works.

12. Calibrate your screen
The colours you see on your screen will vary depending on your monitor, graphics cards settings, lighting and more, yet most people use the same default Windows colour profile. And that means a digital photo you think looks perfect might appear very poor to everybody else. Fortunately Windows 7 now provides a Display Colour Calibration Wizard that helps you properly set up your brightness, contrast and colour settings, and a ClearType tuner to ensure text is crisp and sharp. Click Start, type DCCW and press Enter to give it a try.

Windows 7 Interface Tweaks

13. Right-click everything

At first glance Windows 7 bears a striking resemblance to Vista, but there's an easy way to begin spotting the differences - just right-click things.

Right-click an empty part of the desktop, for instance, and you'll find a menu entry to set your screen resolution. No need to go browsing through the display settings any more.

Right-click the Explorer icon on the taskbar for speedy access to common system folders: Documents, Pictures, the Windows folder, and more.

And if you don't plan on using Internet Explorer then you probably won't want its icon permanently displayed on the taskbar. Right-click the icon, select 'Unpin this program from the taskbar', then go install Firefox, instead.

14. Desktop slideshow
Windows 7 comes with some very attractive new wallpapers, and it's not always easy to decide which one you like the best. So why not let choose a few, and let Windows display them all in a desktop slideshow? Right-click an empty part of the desktop, select Personalise > Desktop Background, then hold down Ctrl as you click on the images you like. Choose how often you'd like the images to be changed (anything from daily to once every 10 seconds), select Shuffle if you'd like the backgrounds to appear in a random order, then click Save Changes and enjoy the show.

15. RSS-powered wallpaper
And if a slideshow based on your standard wallpaper isn't enough, then you can always create a theme that extracts images from an RSS feed. For example, Long Zheng has created a few sample themes to illustrate how it works. And Jamie Thompson takes this even further, with a theme that always displays the latest BBC news and weather on your desktop.

16. Recover screen space
The new Windows 7 taskbar acts as one big quick launch toolbar that can hold whatever program shortcuts you like (just right-click one and select Pin To Taskbar). And that's fine, except it does consume a little more screen real estate than we'd like. Shrink it to a more manageable size by right-clicking the Start orb, then Properties > Taskbar > Use small icons > OK.

17. Restore the Quick Launch Toolbar
If you're unhappy with the new taskbar, even after shrinking it, then it only takes a moment to restore the old Quick Launch Toolbar.

Right-click the taskbar, choose Toolbars > New Toolbar, type "%UserProfile%\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Quick Launch" (less the quotes) into the Folder box and click Select Folder.

Now right-click the taskbar, clear 'Lock the taskbar', and you should see the Quick Launch toolbar, probably to the right. Right-click its divider, clear Show Text and Show Title to minimise the space it takes up. Complete the job by right-clicking the bar and selecting View > Small Icons for the true retro look.

18. Custom power switch
By default, Windows 7 displays a plain text 'Shut down' button on the Start menu, but it only takes a moment to change this action to something else. If you reboot your PC a few times every day then that might make more sense as a default action: right-click the Start orb, select Properties and set the 'Power boot action' to 'Restart' to make it happen.

19. Auto arrange your desktop
If your Windows 7 desktop has icons scattered everywhere then you could right-click it and select View > Auto arrange, just as in Vista. But a simpler solution is just to press and hold down F5, and Windows will automatically arrange its icons for you.

20. Disable smart window arrangement
Windows 7 features interesting new ways to intelligently arrange your windows, so that (for example) if you drag a window to the top of the screen then it will maximise. We like the new system, but if you find it distracting then it's easily disabled. Run REGEDIT, go to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop, set WindowArrangementActive to 0, reboot, and your windows will behave just as they always did.

21. Browse your tasks
If you prefer the keyboard over the mouse, you will love browsing the taskbar using this nifty shortcut. Press Windows and T, and you move the focus to the left-most icon on the taskbar. Then use your arrow keys to change the focus to other icons, and you get a live preview of every window.

22. Display your drives
Click Computer in Windows 7 and you might see a strange lack of drives, but don't panic, it's just Microsoft trying to be helpful: drives like memory card readers are no longer displayed if they're empty. We think it's an improvement, but if you disagree then it's easy to get your empty drives back. Launch Explorer, click Tools > Folder Options > View and clear 'Hide empty drives in the computer folder'.

23. See more detail
The new and improved Windows 7 magnifier offers a much easier way to zoom in on any area of the screen. Launch it and you can now define a scale factor and docking position, and once activated it can track your keyboard focus around the screen. Press Tab as you move around a dialog box, say, and it'll automatically zoom in on the currently active control.

Useful Windows 7 Enhancements:

24. Hiding the Windows Live Messenger icon

If you use Windows Live Messenger a lot, you'll have noticed that the icon now resides on the taskbar, where you can easily change status and quickly send an IM to someone. If you prefer to keep Windows Live Messenger in the system tray, where it's been for previous releases, just close Windows Live Messenger, edit the shortcut properties and set the application to run in Windows Vista compatibility mode.
25. Customise UAC
Windows Vista's User Account Control was a good idea in practice, but poor implementation put many people off - it raised far too many alerts. Fortunately Windows 7 displays less warnings by default, and lets you further fine-tune UAC to suit your preferred balance between security and a pop-up free life (Start > Control Panel > Change User Account Control Settings).
26. Use Sticky Notes
The Sticky Notes app is both simpler and more useful in Windows 7. Launch StikyNot.exe and you can type notes at the keyboard; right-click a note to change its colour; click the + sign on the note title bar to add another note; and click a note and press Alt + 4 to close the note windows (your notes are automatically saved).
27. Open folder in new process
By default Windows 7 opens folders in the same process. This saves system resources, but means one folder crash can bring down the entire shell. If your system seems unstable, or you're doing something in Explorer that regularly seems to causes crashes, then open Computer, hold down Shift, right-click on your drive and select Open in New Process. The folder will now be launched in a separate process, and so a crash is less likely to affect anything else.
28. Watch more videos
Windows Media Player 12 is a powerful program, but it still won't play all the audio and video files you'll find online. Fortunately the first freeware Windows 7 codecs package [shark007.net/win7codecs.html] has been released, and installing it could get your troublesome multimedia files playing again.
29. Preview fonts
Open the Fonts window in Windows XP and Vista and you'll see the font names, probably with icons to tell you whether they're TrueType or OpenType, but that's about it. Windows 7 sees some useful font-related improvements.
Open the new fonts window and you'll find a little preview for every font, giving you a quick idea of how they're going to look.
The tedium of scrolling through multiple entries for each family, like Times New Roman, Times New Roman Bold, Times New Roman Bold Italic and so on, has finally ended. There's now just a single entry for each font (though you can still see all other members of the family).
And there's a new OpenType font, Gabriola, added to the mix. It's an attractive script font, well worth a try the next time you need a stylish document that stands out from the crowd.
30. Restore your gadgets
Windows 7 has tightened up its security by refusing to run gadgets if UAC has been turned off, so limiting the damage malicious unsigned gadgets can do to your system. If you've disabled UAC, miss your gadgets and are happy to accept the security risk, though, there's an easy Registry way to get everything back to normal. Run REGEDIT, go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Sidebar\Settings, create a new DWORD value called AllowElevatedProcess and set it to 1. Your gadgets should start working again right away.
31. New WordPad formats
By default WordPad will save documents in Rich Text Format, just as before. But browse the Save As Format list and you'll see you can also save (or open, actually) files in the Office 2007 .docx or OpenDocument .odt formats.
32. Protect your data
USB flash drives are convenient, portable, and very easy to lose. Which is a problem, especially if they're carrying sensitive data. Fortunately Windows 7 has the solution: encrypt your documents with an extension of Microsoft'sBitLocker technology, and only someone with the password will be able to access it. Right-click your USB flash drive, select Turn on BitLocker and follow the instructions to protect your private files.
33. Minimise quickly with shake
If you have multiple windows open on your desktop and things are getting too cluttered, it used to be a time-consuming process to close them all down. In Windows 7 you can use the Aero Shake feature to minimise everything in seconds, using a cool mouse gesture. Grab the title bar of the window you wish to keep open and give it a shake, and rejoice in a clear desktop area.
34. Configure your favourite music
The Windows 7 Media Centre now comes with an option to play your favourite music, which by default creates a changing list of songs based on your ratings, how often you play them, and when they were added (it's assumed you'll prefer songs you've added in the last 30 days). If this doesn't work then you can tweak how Media Centre decides what a "favourite" tune is- click Tasks > Settings > Music > Favourite Music and configure the program to suit your needs.
35. Customise System Restore
There was very little you could do to configure System Restore in Vista, but Windows 7 improves the situation with a couple of useful setup options.
Click the Start orb, right-click Computer and select Properties > System Protection > Configure, and set the Max Usage value to a size that suits your needs (larger to hold more restore points, smaller to save disk space).
And if you don't need System Restore to save Windows settings then choose the "Only restore previous versions of files" option. Windows 7 won't back up your Registry, which means you'll squeeze more restore points and file backups into the available disk space. System Restore is much less likely to get an unbootable PC working again, though, so use this trick at your own risk.
36. Run As
Hold down Shift, right-click any program shortcut, and you'll see an option to run the program as a different user, handy if you're logged in to the kids' limited account and need to run something with higher privileges. This isn't really a new feature - Windows XP had a Run As option that did the same thing - but Microsoft stripped it out of Vista, so it's good to see it's had a change of heart.
37. Search privacy
By default Windows 7 will remember your PC search queries, and display the most recent examples when searching in Windows Explorer. If you're sharing a PC and don't want everyone to see your searches, then launch GPEDIT.MSC, go to User Configuration > Administrative Templates > Windows Components > Windows Explorer, double-click "Turn off display of recent search entries..." and click Enabled > OK.
38. Tweak PC volume
By default Windows 7 will now automatically reduce the volume of your PC's sounds whenever it detects you're making or receiving PC-based phone calls. If this proves annoying (or maybe you'd like it to turn off other sounds altogether) then you can easily change the settings accordingly. Just right-click the speaker icon in your taskbar, select Sounds > Communications, and tell Windows what you'd like it to do.

Windows 7 Performance and Productivity Tricks:
39. Find bottlenecks
From what we've seen so far Windows 7 is already performing better than Vista, but if your PC seems sluggish then it's now much easier to uncover the bottleneck. Click Start, type RESMON and press Enter to launch the Resource Monitor, then click the CPU, Memory, Disk or Network tabs. Windows 7 will immediately show which processes are hogging the most system resources.
The CPU view is particularly useful, and provides something like a more powerful version of Task Manager. If a program has locked up, for example, then right-click its name in the list and select Analyze Process. Windows will then try to tell you why it's hanging - the program might be waiting for another process, perhaps - which could give you the information you need to fix the problem.
40. Keyboard shortcuts
Windows 7 supports several useful new keyboard shortcuts.
Alt+P
Display/ hide the Explorer preview pane
Windows Logo+G
Display gadgets in front of other windows
Windows Logo++ (plus key)
Zoom in, where appropriate
Windows Logo+- (minus key)
Zoom out, where appropriate
Windows Logo+Up
Maximise the current window
Windows Logo+Down
Minimise the current window
Windows Logo+Left
Snap to the left hand side of the screen
Windows Logo+Right
Snap to the right hand side of the screen
Windows Logo+Home
Minimise/ restore everything except the current window
41. Faster program launches
If you've launched one instance of a program but want to start another, then don't work your way back through the Start menu. It's much quicker to just hold down Shift and click on the program's icon (or middle-click it), and Windows 7 will start a new instance for you.
42. Speedy video access
Want faster access to your Videos folder? Windows 7 now lets you add it to the Start menu. Just right-click the Start orb, click Properties > Start Menu > Customize, and set the Videos option to "Display as a link". If you've a TV tuner that works with Windows 7 then you'll appreciate the new option to display the Recorded TV folder on the Start menu, too.
43. Run web searches
The Windows 7 search tool can now be easily extended to search online resources, just as long as someone creates an appropriate search connector. To add Flickr support, say, visit I Started Something, click Download the Connector, choose the Open option and watch as it's downloaded (the file is tiny, it'll only take a moment). A "Flickr Search" option will be added to your Searches folder, and you'll be able to search images from your desktop.
A multitude of other ready-made searches, such as Google and YouTube, can be downloaded from the windowsclub.com website.
44. Schedule Media Centre downloads
You can now tell Windows Media Centre to download data at a specific time, perhaps overnight, a useful way to prevent it sapping your bandwidth for the rest of the day. Launch Media Centre, go to Tasks > Settings > General > Automatic Download Options, and set the download start and stop times that you'd like it to use.
45. Multi-threaded Robocopies
Anyone who's ever used the excellent command-line robocopy tool will appreciate the new switches introduced with Windows 7. Our favourite, /MT, can improve speed by carrying out multi-threaded copies with the number of threads you specify (you can have up to 128, though that might be going a little too far). Enter robocopy /? at a command line for the full details.
46. Really remove the sidebar
At first glance you might think Windows 7 has got rid of the sidebar, but don't be fooled. Gadgets are still hosted by the Sidebar.exe process, it's just that this is now launched automatically when Windows boots. If you don't plan on ever using gadgets then you could delete the Sidebar Registry entry at HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run, and recover a small amount of RAM. That might be a little risky, though, as we're not quite sure what else the sidebar process does in Windows 7. The safest approach is to disable it temporarily by launching MSCONFIG.EXE, clicking the Startup tab and clearing the box next to the Startup entry. Now reboot and test Windows 7 for a day or two to confirm everything is still working, before finally deleting the sidebar registry entry.
47. Load IE faster
Some Internet Explorer add-ons can take a while to start, dragging down the browser's performance, but at least IE8 can now point a finger at the worst resource hogs. Click Tools > Manage Add-ons, check the Load Time in the right-hand column, and you'll immediately see which browser extensions are slowing you down.
48. An Alt+Tab alternative
You want to access one of the five Explorer windows you have open, but there are so many other programs running that Alt+Tab makes it hard to pick out what you need. The solution? Hold down the Ctrl key while you click on the Explorer icon. Windows 7 will then cycle through the Explorer windows only, a much quicker way to locate the right one. And of course this works with any application that has multiple windows open.
49. Block annoying alerts
Just like Vista, Windows 7 will display a suitably stern warning if it thinks your antivirus, firewall or other security settings are incorrect.
But unlike Vista, if you disagree then you can now turn off alerts on individual topics. If you no longer want to see warnings just because you've dared to turn off the Windows firewall, say, then click Control Panel > System and Security > Action Centre > Change Action Centre settings, clear the Network Firewall box and click OK.
50. Parallel defrags
The standard Windows 7 defragger offers a little more control than we saw in Vista, and the command line version also has some interesting new features. The /r switch will defrag multiple drives in parallel, for instance (they'll obviously need to be physically separate drives for this to be useful). The /h switch runs the defrag at a higher than normal priority, and the /u switch provides regular progress reports so you can see exactly what's going on. Enter the command
defrag /c /h /u /r
in a command window to speedily defrag a system with multiple drives, or enter defrag /? to view the new options for yourself.

Courtesy: http://www.techradar.com/news/software/operating-systems/50-windows-7-tips-tricks-and-secrets-528483?artc_pg=1

Data Dedupe - Explaining Inline and Post-process techniques

2009-06-15T14:06:00.000-07:00

Tell me - Difference between inline vs. post-process deduplication - ?

Inline deduplication means that data is deduplicated even before it is written to disk (inline). Post-process deduplication analyzes and reduces data after it has been stored to disk.

The most efficient and economic method of dedupe is inline. This significantly reduces the raw disk capacity needed in the system since the full, not-yet-deduplicated data set is never written to disk. This is best for Replication, Reason is self-explainatory.

Post-process dedupe technology wait for the data to land in full on disk before initiating the dedupe process. You need a larger initial capacity in this approach. It increases the lag time before deduplication is complete, and by extension, when replication will complete, since it is highly advantageous to replicate only deduplicated (small) data.

Practically, it also appears to create operational issues, as there are two storage zones, each with policies and behaviors to manage. In some cases, since the redundant storage zone is the default and more important design for some vendors, the dedupe zone is also much less performant and resilient.

Secure your home network

2009-06-02T10:19:00.000-07:00

Some of the key things to remember when setting up your home network (wifi) for Internet access:

1) Must Change username and password from default router u/n and pwd
Default u/n: admin
2) Assign your network a different name -> default ssid (Change this) -> e.g., Alto
3) Encryption Method to setup password -> Change ssid - Setup Encryption -> wep, wpa and wpa2 (encrypt data as travle between routers and wireless connecting pc)

This should help you secure your Home Internet (wifi)

G1 Cupcake Update (TMobile USA)

2009-05-28T11:50:00.000-07:00

I just received cupcake update for my G1 (TMobile) here in US. New features and improvements are indeed noteworthy. Especially the Camcorder, Virtual Key board and Bluetooth ADAP support are the one's I was looking for long. I got everything except the Flash support which I think will have to wait little longer now.

All in all here is the list of the cupcake update new features and improvements:

Android 1.5 Feature List:

User interface refinements

System-wide:
- Refinement of all core UI elements
- Animated window transitions (off by default)
- Accelerometer-based application rotations
UI polish for:
- In-call experience
- Contacts, Call log, and Favorites
- SMS & MMS
- Browser
- Gmail
- Calendar
- Email
- Camera & Gallery
- Application management

Performance improvements

Faster Camera start-up and image capture
Much faster acquisition of GPS location (powered by SUPL AGPS)
Smoother page scrolling in Browser
Speedier GMail conversation list scrolling

New features

On-screen soft keyboard
- Works in both portrait and landscape orientation
- Support for user installation of 3rd party keyboards
- User dictionary for custom words
Home screen
- Widgets
  - Bundled home screen widgets include: analog clock, calendar, music player, picture frame, and search
- Live folders
Camera & Gallery
- Video recording
- Video playback (MPEG-4 & 3GP formats)
Bluetooth
- Stereo Bluetooth support (A2DP and AVCRP profiles)
- Auto-pairing
- Improved handsfree experience
Browser
- Updated with latest Webkit browser & Squirrelfish Javascript engines
- Copy ‘n paste in browser
- Search within a page
- User-selectable text-encoding
- UI changes include:
  - Unified Go and Search box
  - Tabbed bookmarks/history/most-visited screen
Contacts
- Shows user picture for Favorites
- Specific date/time stamp for events in call log
- One-touch access to a contact card from call log event
System
- New Linux kernel (version 2.6.27)
- SD card filesystem auto-checking and repair
- SIM Application Toolkit 1.0
Google applications
- View Google Talk friends’ status in Contacts, SMS, MMS, GMail, and Email applications
- Batch actions such as archive, delete, and label on Gmail messages
- Upload videos to Youtube
- Upload photos on Picasa

After seeing above improvements we (G1 users) can say -
"Neighbours (iPhone) envy, owner's (G1) Pride ;)"

Selenium - All you want to know

2009-02-23T11:00:00.000-08:00

Selenium is a high quality open source test automation tool for web application testing. Selenium runs in Internet Explorer, Mozilla and Firefox on Windows, Linux, and Macintosh, Safari on the Mac, with plans to support Safari on iPhone soon. Selenium test scripts are portable, can be run from browsers (using Selenium IDE) or from JUNit or NGUnit (using Selenium RC) etc.. For example, test scripts written using Selenium IDE in Firefox on Windows can run on Firefox in Mac or Linux, without changing any code. Selenium tests run directly in browsers and so matches the end-user experience closely.

There are three variants of Selenium, which can be used in isolation or in combination to create complete automation test suite for your web applications.

Selenium Core - In Selenium Core the tests scripts (written in HTML) and the Selenium Test Runner (written in Javascript) are uploaded to the same web server that hosts the application you are trying to test. It is a simpler form of Selenium, and suitable for non-developers, but it has some inherent limitations.
Selenium IDE - Selenium IDE is a Firefox plugin, which includes the entire Selenium Core, allows you to record, play back, edit, and debug tests in browser. It provides the simplest introduction to Selenium and is highly recommended for beginners. You can save the tests / test suite created in xml or html format. However to run them in an automated fashion you need Selenium Remote Control which is described next.
Selenium Remote Control - The Selenium Remote Control allows you to develop test cases and test suites in Java (supports JUnit & NGUnit), PHP, Ruby, Python, Perl and even .NET. It is the most flexible setup but requires some development knowledge to set up and use.
Selenium Grid - Selenium Grid allows several Selenium Remote Control servers to be accessed in parallel by Selenium Grid server. This is extremely useful for automated load and stress testing of web applications.

Today we will discuss on how you can easily create automatic test scripts using Selenium IDE and convert them to JUnit tests (which uses Selenium Remote Control) which can be added to your JUnit based automatic regression test suite.

Software Build Process

2009-02-18T17:54:00.000-08:00

Software build process for a simple software system:

Getting the source code: One may require to download or fetch the source from a source code repository. Check for appropriate tag or version of the source code you want to build.
Preparing a Build area: Create the set of directories according to standardized directory layout.
Configuring the build: Determine the optional components that can be built based on the current environment. Set the build numbers and version numbers to be included in the build.
Source code validation: You may have a standard style guide and you wish to ensure all code conforms to this before you build a release.
Source code compilation
Compilationfrom code to libraries: Build the compiled code into libraries potentially including non-code resources such as properties, images and sound files.
Running system tests: to validate the build.
Documentation build for software: Build the documentation for the software. This may range from something as simple as collecting text files up to processing content through some form of publishing system to produce the documentation in its final form
Software components packaging: Package up all of the components of the software – code, resources, images, documentation, etc. – into a deployable package. You might need to produce several packages in different formats for different target users
Software Deployment: Deploy the software to some standard location for use or distribution

This is a high-level view of a software build process. A real-life build process may of course require many more and varied steps. Each of these steps may involve many individual operations.

Test Automation - Principles

2009-01-15T13:55:00.000-08:00

Original Image link: Dilbert Comics

To get started:
Ensure that you follow
=> 7 Basic principles of testing:
1. Define the expected output or result
2. Inspect the results of each test completely
3. Include test cases for invalid or unexpected conditions
4. Test the program to see if it does what it is not supposed to do as well as what it is not supposed to do
5. Avoid disposable test cases unless the program itself is disposable
6. Do not plan tests assuming that no errors will be found
7. The probability of locating more errors in any one module is directly proportional to the number of errors already found in that module

Understand test automation and benefits:
=> Key benefits (Test Automation)
1. Improve the Testing Process
2. Define Requirements
3. Prove the Concept
4. Champion Product Testability
5. Design for Sustainability
6. Plan for Deployment
7. Face the Challenges of Success

Refine testing Process:

=> 7 steps to test automation
1. Recognize Test automation as computer-assisted testing:
Test automation may provide test execution elements and other ways - computers could help testing. For example: test data generation; installations; file/database comparisons and analysing test results.

2. Decide your automated test goal (re-evaluate your test mission as it may change):
- Efficiency (Reduce testing time, cost, automate regression tests and/or improve test coverage)
- Service (Tightening build schedules, preventing destabilization, playing to computer and human strengths and increasing management confidence in the product)
- Extended testing reach (API based testing, component testing, model based tests, data driven tests and internal monitoring & control)
- Multiplying resources (Platform testing, configuration testing, model based tests and Data driven tests)
- planning issues involved in successful test automation
- test design strategies that maximize the benefits of automation

3. Recognise Test Automation scripting as akin to development and programming:
- Follow code standards and reviews as in development while scripting
- Generate re-usable components to maximize maintainability
- Use a data driven approach, so that a simple change to data can spawn a whole new raft of tests
- Use keyword approaches to enable not technical users to 'drive' the automation

4. Select the right tools:
There are many automated testing tools that can aid testing from excel spreadsheets to Code analysers. The key here is to find tools that are right for your environment.
- Commercial GUI Regression Test tools:
Mercury QTP, Winrunner, Compuware TestPartner, Rational Robot
- Unit Test Tools:
nunit, junit, jwebunit, htmlunit Existing Development tools: Visual Studio Team test, perl, ruby
- Open Source Test Tools:
Wink, rth, Fiddler, Selenium, WATIR, TestCaseManager, SwexplorerAutomation, ieunit, web test
- What environment(s) do you wish to test? Web, SAP, Client/Server, .net, Java, UNIX

It is all too easy, however to select an automation tool and be tempted to try to use it for the total automation of all applications. Some tasks do not lend themselves to the tool, but can still be automated using other tools such as command files or PC functionality. There may also be some processes where it is more efficient to test manually. You should not attempt to automate these.

5. Decide who will perform the automation and use the tools:
- Who will use/create tools
- Treat as full time project
- Allocate individual time to provide real value
- Step by step execution of tasks

Import Bookmarks among browsers - Transmute

2009-01-02T14:04:00.000-08:00

Import/Export Bookmarks among browser(s):

Above image, example import from Firefox 3 to Google Chrome browser:
Here is a wonderful utility which can import/export your favorites/bookmarks among different browsers like Mozilla Firefox, IE, Google Chrome and Safari:
Download Transmute

Once you import the bookmarks to desired browser, you might find them titled as imported with "Transmute". You can easily get rid of them by drag and drop the bookmarks into Bookmarks bar or Menu and then deleting the existing Transmute titled bookmarks.

Google Chrome Crash - workable solution

2009-01-02T13:44:00.000-08:00

Chrome is wonderful browser - fastest and capable. With Chrome around you definitely can leave IE behind. IT runs most of the standard stuff and works best for Google tools. But as Internet is expanding browsers are facing new challenges and Chrome may crash in exceptional circumstances with following error. Annoying, but we have a working solution at hand.

Google Chrome error:
"The application failed to initialize properly (0xc0000005)"

Solution:

1) Back up the registry on an affected system.
2) Open the registry on the Agent system by entering regedit from a run prompt.
3) Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\SysPlant.
4) Open the Start DWORD.
5) Change the value to 4 to disable the drivers.
6) Reboot the system to commit the changes.

Front end, Middle-ware and Back end Testing

2008-12-19T12:07:00.000-08:00

Note: Example depicting front, middle and back end architecture

Front end testing: Testing the application from the user perspective, it consists of functionality, usability, GUI and verification and validation. Front end testing related to how the application looks
Front end testing is testing GUI and functionality

Middle-ware Testing: Middle-ware is the layer that resides between the hardware layer and the application layer to provide services such as database management. "Middle-ware is connectivity software that consists of a set of enabling services that allow multiple processes running on one or more machines to interact across a network. Middle-ware is essential to migrating mainframe applications to client/server applications and to providing for communication across heterogeneous platforms."

Back end testing: Testing the application from the logical storage of the data. validating the storage data with the UI. Checking the functionality of the database, to verify the functionality of the database. Back end testing related to how we are related to validating the data that is stored in database. Back-end focuses on data stored in the database.

Oh... My God

2008-12-12T18:32:00.000-08:00

Sometimes I wonder whose fault is this. From a spiritual perspective it's nobody's fault. But from a material perspective it's the greed of modern world which led to this situation.

Frankly, mother earth have enough to give a fulfilling life to each of it's son's and daughters. But few among us doesn't want to share and think of possessing whole. Little reminding themselves that in the end everything they possess and sometimes to which call as possessed from their hard work will remain here once their life span on earth is over. And cruel part is no body knows when... it could be even the next moment.

Shouldn't we all start realizing the life - present and sharing with others is more important then thinking ourselves the lone and sole possessor. Just watched this hindi movie from Vinay Pathak - "Oh My God". Worth watching and gives a moral lesson to all of us - how we run after money and make mess of our lives - with or without it.

We should think - which direction we are heading towards and where this will ultimately lead us. For a brief span we might feel blessed because we have million dollars in our bank account - but any moment this dream could turn sour as many people world-wide are realizing this, albeit through recession.

Blue Screen of Death in Windows

2008-12-09T09:47:00.000-08:00

This is a very annoying situation, especially with my new Dell XPS M1330 Laptop. YOu could keep on scratching your head for immeorial time. However, the solution is simple -
Change the hard disk configuration in Boot Setup:
Two steps are required to change settings, first disable the cache, second change from AHCI to ATA. Save and happy working again.
1) Onboard Devices - Flash Cache Module - Switch to disable
2) Onboard DEvices - Sata Operation - Switch from AHCI to ATA

And

after you login again - Update the SATA driver (Intel Matrix Storage Manager) from DELL

Or if nothing works - Just try a system restore
Hope this helps.

Prespectives

2008-10-23T08:18:00.000-07:00

Two prespectives (Physical and Spiritual)

There are two individuals:

Person 1: Lost his job, failed to pay mortgage for his home. His wife ran away with his best friend. His elder brother informed him that he is a gay. His daughter called up to inform him that she is homeless - lost her house in hurricane. His younger son is caught by police reaized everything is wrong with his life and it's not worth living anymore. God is very unkind to him. He have only two options now - a) He hang himself
b) He jump from the bridge.

Then there is person 2:
He says everything is fine.

What is the difference in both?
- Both have similar issues
- The outlook is different.

That is what matters.

American Dreams

2008-08-22T19:34:00.001-07:00

In America: 22nd August, almost a week passed away since I landed in this country of opportunities. Really amazing the way I find discipline among the natives here. Everythingis handled professionally. So muchcleanliness in and around and everything planned. Th eroad sense, the politeness and the management gives you an idea of learning.

Splendid Sun Rays

2008-06-22T23:31:00.001-07:00

View from Paradise Valley Bangalore. Mystical sun rays at best in the evening

Mobile Blogging

2008-06-21T07:46:00.001-07:00

This is my first mobile blog. If it worked, will be incredible

Zyb - Online phone and Contact Storage

2008-06-16T17:01:00.000-07:00

Zyb.Com - A beautifull web site with online contacts storage and management. You can add/edit/delete your contacts online and at the same time sync the same with your mobile phone. Isn't this a dream come true.

Filmy Dream

2008-06-16T16:53:00.000-07:00

Today I had a real filmy (bollywood) style dream. Don't know what is the origing of same. Watched no bolly movie late night, yet it appeared.

The dream - Somewhere in Kashmir I am working with indian army tryingto stop infiltration of terrorists from the border. I am the youngest one in the camp. Thsisis a room on the hill top from where we can keep an eye on the enemey. Found out one individual is a traitor and he keep informing enemey about the plans and at the same time help them in making strategy to cross the brorder. I was able to convince my commander about this but by that time it was too late and they somehow managed to broke into our camp and were on roof top, while we in the room. The commander told me this is the time I need to show courage even though i had no formal training of gun fight. he gave me an old revolver without bullets :( just to shake of enemey. Don't understand how good was that point.

Somehow i managed to survive during a fight with another same age guy from enemey. Strangely the fight stopped and all including us came down for the food. The drama unfold there. By a river side we all sat and discussed who we are and found out that our commander and a senior guy in enemey rank have same heritage and they are two separated in the bachpan - bollywood style. Amazing dream - isn't it. I know all will say that I watch too much bollywood :(. but beleive me I don't do much especailly such flicks :).

Java Development Platform at Mobile

2008-06-16T16:48:00.000-07:00

I strongly feel an urge to have a Java ide for mobile phones. Hope we will get this one day and soon.

Watch Live Cricket Telecast

2008-02-24T04:40:00.000-08:00

Now you can watch live cricket from:
http://www.tariksworld.com/2007/11/cricket.html

Ego - Relationship Hazard

2007-07-04T06:22:00.000-07:00

Where there are expectations, EGO will appear sooner then later. True friends should never have ego.The best way to deal is keeping ego away in one/your mind at least, other will simply follow. IT MAY TAKE TIME THOUGH, BUT THEN REMEMBER - NO EXPECTATIONS. I don't mind loosing a battle with my beloved with ego in their mind, cos I know this is just a temporary phase.

Mobile software download sites

2007-05-01T22:41:00.000-07:00

www.mobango.com
www.getjar.com

F(L)ighting in the sky - Aero India 2007 in Bangalore

2007-02-09T06:29:00.000-08:00

A must see display of combat aircrafts from the forces of the world. 7th to 11th February, held at Air Force Station Yelhanka, Bangalore (India) was a treat for spectators as well the business leaders here.

Watched on 9th February, the best performance of the day went to F-18 from Lockheed Martin (USA). Indeed MIG and Sukhoi were the next contenders. With the Indian Air Force on the verge of deciding the best from the world inclusion in it's fleet, the display was simply amazing. The acrobatic stunts and war time maneuver produced by these flying machines was breathtaking.
The sarang display of tricolor in the sky with different styles was indeed glorifying part of indian air force.

While the show was a treat for the general public, exhibition was a must for the mechanical and IT folks especially. The big simulation screens and knowledgeable staff as well audiences made things interesting and useful alike. Russian and Israeli warfare stuff was the best displayed among lot.

The show web site have lot to offer in term of information at:
http://www.aeroindia.in

Indeed, the whole experience made me realize and dream I could be a fighter pilot. The courage, style and stunts were mesmerizing. Indian Air Force have pleothera of information about it's credentials at:
http://indianairforce.nic.in/

Sure, if not this life, next life I would be a Figher Pilot :).

Airtel GPRS Settings for CECT 6600 PDA Mobile (China)

2007-02-07T08:55:00.000-08:00

This model CECT 6600 PDA (Easy Call) I bought from ebay India. This is indeed a good buy in 9500 K, which include video/audio/GPRS/ and 2 mega pixel camera. Really worth, only issue was setting gprs settings for the model. Airtel guy at phone couldn't help me much and finally I travelled to their shop. Unfortunately the technician was absent that day and I was advised to go to another shop. Even that guy was unaware of the model and almost gave up. But my persistence helped the cause and I finally I was able to get the proper settings from him.

It seems they don't wanna or fail to share real settings for gprs (airtel online) settings. Airtel online costs around Rs. 5 per day for unlimited access. However, I am not very happy with the download speed, yet it is worth exploring.

I just wanna share this information with similar seekers who are unable to get GPRS working on this mode. Here you go:
Go to Services option under Network (Menu - Network - Services - Data Account). Click OK. Select GPRS. Now if you find any existing settings at #1 position. Change/Edit the same with new airtel settings. Click on Edit.

Here are other details:
Account Name: Airtel GPRS
APN: airtelwap.com
Username: ................. (blank)
Password: ...................(blank)
Auth Type: Normal

Save these settings.

Now click on WAP Browser. Select Setting -> Network Setting. Type following:
Homepage: http://www.google.com
Gateway: 100.001.200.099
Port: 8080
Account: Airtel GPRS (select).
Save the settings. Go back. Now check the connectivity by choosing home page at the top. You should be running now. If you see chinese characters. Scroll down and click on "english" on the web page. This will launch english page and subsequent page sin english. Hope this will help. In case you find any issue, write back to me as comments. I will try my best to help you.

Cheers,
Pardeep

No-sense Indian News Channel

2007-01-29T00:44:00.000-08:00

They are just surviving by eating indian viewers/listeners brains day in night just for the sake of cheap publicity stunts to earn money from common man.

They brought Navjot Singh Sidhu and Mr. Singla on the dias to be displayed as pre-election dialogue forum in Amritsar. Staged the whole show and then flare hings up with their nonsense questions/answers. Once, the environment is animal friendly, breaking news will start flashing on TV screens of this news channel "Politicians created chaos in the public forum" including all their unmindful sentences. Why they resort to such gimmicks - simply to fool indian public to ensure huge advertising revenues. All is fine, but do we realize it's cost? At a phenomeonal cost of billions of people time and energy. Apart this, the -ve side effect in our lives we may or may not notice. Like, just during this show I had an altercation with my Dad about the content delivered by both the stalwarts including the Star News Gentleman. Thankfully, I realized sooner then later that they (tv media) are just playing with people mind senselessly and so we should stay away from such crap.

The news programmes and delivery is simply baseless. For the past 3 months the simple topic discussed on the Cricket programs of this channel is simply - Greg Chappel, Surav Ganguly, and Sachin. The topics are awful starting from meaning of how Chappel was standing on ground with hand on his chins, a guy pushed the coach from behind, Saurav shaked hand with Greg and what does this mean is covered for a whole week, Saurav scored a fifty and they celebrated like kind of for rest of their lives a daily saga of comeback, Sachin sored just 60 and India lost as well so he shouldn't be selected for world cup and then the list is endless of senseles coverage. These are daily topics on this channel and then they will catch an easily available flop cricketer of yesteryears (aka Yashpal Sharma) for his important (not so) and knoweldgeable (uneducated) comments. Simply a Cricket comedy serial on a news channel. I just typed:
http://starnews.indya.com/
and look what I saw there. The program in highlights are:
APNA KHAYAL RAKHIYEGA
BENAQAAB
TOP SPEED
and coming up
Saas Bahu Aur Sazish
This is all this particular channel including other hindi news channels are left with in term of important current affairs and news around the country.

For them arrival of Amitabh - Abhishek - Jaya - Ash in the legendry political stalwart (:)) Amar Singh's 51st Birthday is far important then the padam vibhushan winners of republic day or a tragedy happening in Assam or Jammu and Kashmir.

Is there anyone out there controlling them? Are they answerable to our poor people. Or will they keep on eating our brains out non-sensibly and making my country shown as a stupid. All the good work done by my fellow countrymen in arts and science is getting drowned by this mindless display of these news channels.

Java Download

2006-06-12T20:21:00.000-07:00

Yahoo Answers - From Pardeep

2006-05-16T22:14:00.000-07:00

Visit Yahoo! Answers

Flickr

2006-04-07T04:46:00.000-07:00

This is a test post from , a fancy photo sharing thing.

Life is fair

2006-03-28T23:02:00.000-08:00

Life in it's different colors bring a different person every time. Some time we lose and sometimes we won, but every experience bring us close to a reality that this world is imperfect, yet "Life is Fair" because what we sow shall we reap and in this way we are just reaping the results of our actions in society. Our constant effort in our life time should be to recognize the purpose of our lives. Channels could be different but all human beings have a yearning undefined yet very strong, it' sonly a matter of realizing it.. Those who realize in this life time become eternal with supreme being .. Let's pray to God he bring us close to the reality of this world and make us a better human being caring and sharing with and for all....

2006-01-14T05:34:00.000-08:00

Working@

java.com: Hot Games, Cool Apps

2006-01-08T22:19:00.000-08:00

This is the best web site for Java consumers. You can find all the help and baisc consumers related faq's here.

Tsunami help blog site url

2004-12-29T19:33:00.000-08:00

One stop help web site for Tsunami hit areas people:
http://tsunamihelp.blogspot.com/

Software Articles

2004-12-16T22:10:00.000-08:00

Check these url's:

Something that Anders can perhaps learn from James Gosling !!!:

http://khason.biz/blog/2004/12/why-microsoft-can-blow-off-with-c.html



Top 100 Innovative Companies (Microsoft is not there):

http://www.redherring.com/Article.aspx?a=11067&hed=Top+100+Innovative+Companies

Train Info: Karnatka Express (New Delhi - Bangalore)

2004-12-16T22:07:00.000-08:00

Train Route

Train No	Train Name	Date
2628	KARNATAKA EXP	03-Jan-2004

S#	Stn Name	Route No	Arr. Time	Dep. Time	Distance	Day	Remarks
1	NEW DELHI(NDLS)	1	-	21:15	0000	1
2	MATHURA JN(MTJ)	1	23:01	23:03	0144	1
3	AGRA CANTT(AGC)	1	23:49	23:52	0196	1
4	GWALIOR(GWL)	1	01:23	01:26	0317	2
5	JHANSI JN(JHS)	1	02:44	02:56	0415	2
6	BINA JN(BINA)	1	05:05	05:07	0567	2
7	BHOPAL JN(BPL)	1	06:50	06:55	0705	2
8	ITARSI JN(ET)	1	08:30	08:40	0797	2
9	KHANDWA(KNW)	1	11:12	11:15	0975	2
10	BURHANPUR(BAU)	1	12:02	12:04	1045	2

Stn Name

Route No

Arr. Time

Dep. Time

Distance

Day

Remarks

11	BHUSAVAL JN(BSL)	1	12:55	13:00	1099	2
12	JALGAON JN(JL)	1	13:25	13:27	1122	2
13	MANMAD JN(MMR)	1	15:55	16:00	1283	2
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28	BANGALORE CY JN(SBC)	1	13:55	-	2464	3

Fare Enquiry

Train No	Train Name	Date	Source	Destination
2628	KARNATAKA EXP	03-Jan-2004	NDLS	SBC

Train Type	Distance(Kms)
SUPERFAST	2464
Class	SL
Base Fare	519
Reservation Charges	20
Superfast Charges	20
Other Charges	0
Total Amount	559
Concession Amount	0
Net Amount	559

Technical Communication

2004-12-16T22:00:00.000-08:00

Technical Communication

Description Technical communicators are specialists who produce clearly written, well-structured documents about complex concepts and products, including computer software. The Graduate Certificate of Social Science (Technical Communication) is designed to give students a strong grounding in the knowledge and competencies required of technical communicators.

The course is designed to develop the understanding and skills of students new to technical communication, as well as to enhance the expertise of people already working in the field.
The course has been developed in association with the Australian Society for Technical Communication (ASTC [Vic] Inc.).

Prospective students may also wish to consider undertaking the Graduate Diploma of
Social Science (Technical Communication). Aims & Objectives In this course, students will learn:
* The role of technical communicators.
* Strong written and verbal communication skills.
* Clear and practical ways to approach technical communication assignments.
* Excellent writing and editing skills.
* Analytical and problem-solving skills.
* How to create Online Help and other technical documents.
As part of their coursework, students will develop a folio of work to take to job interviews. Campus Hawthorn Career Opportunities The Graduate Certificate of Social Science (Technical Communication) provides a broad range
of skills valued by employers across a range of industries, sectors and departments including:
* Software and hardware development
* Forestry, mining and other primary industries
* Finance
* Law
* Infrastructure departments
* Publishing
* Management consultancy
* Department of Defence.
For further information on career opportunities visit the ASTC website: www.astcvic.org.au

The role of technical communicators:

The Expanding Role of Technical Communicators

Visual communication no longer refers only to illustrating verbal information but to all aspects of designing documents. To be effective as information architects, technical communicators must understand the opportunties and limitations of developing technologies, the basics of communication in general and of visual communication in particular, especially the principles of selection, design, positioning, production, and cost of graphics.

INTRODUCTION

Visual communication is becoming a primary task for most technical communicators. The discrete skills involved in communication--writing, editing, designing, producing—are collapsing in upon one other so that, in many cases, communicator, editor, designer, and producer are the same individual (see Caffarelli and Straughan 7; Vaughan 10).

Moreover, new technologies confront technical communicators with challenging opportunities in design and production of documents and of their visual components.

The paper-oriented graphic artist employed pen and paper, rule and scale, to produce the visual components of printed materials. Visual communicators today accomplish almost all visual design with keyboard and mouse on a computer screen. But the role of visual communicator encompasses far more than providing illustrations. The technical communicator now has become an information architect

who orders, designs, and presents information visually and by means of visual connections. While the graphic artist provides illustrations that support, clarify, or emphasize verbal communication, the information architect formulates the entire design of a document. The design of the page, screen, or document is an act of visual communication, and the readability and the accessibility of information are the

tasks of the technical communicator. Thus, "visual communication" has become central to the role of technical communicator as information architect.

In this essay, I describe developing technologies and identify the knowledge that technical communicators increasingly need to operate in the new environment. Then, I discuss the implications these developments have for technical communicators. Finally, I suggest elements of visual communication instruction for technical communicators as information architects.

DEVELOPING TECHNOLOGIES

In the midst of the realignment of functions served by technical communicators and of rapidly developing technology, technical communication professionals must

remember that their primary focus is on the transfer of accurate information from those who have it to those who require it. This responsibility requires technical

communicators both to understand the principles of effective communication and to possess basic skills in design and production of visuals. Clearly, interactive communication will replace, in the near future, the largely one-way communication now in place. Reconfiguration of communication avenues into two-way interaction between sender and receiver makes available a broad range of communication devices and techniques. These devices and techniques, in turn, require redesign of

information databases if users are to access the information both efficiently and effectively.

Technical Formats

At present, two basic methods exist for encoding information: analog and digital technologies. Analog technology is the form by which sound and video systems have traditionally operated; it identifies "a continuous electrical signal that can vary in frequency and amplitude" (S. M. Shelton, "Multimedia" 700). In video, analog signals are transformed into what appears on the screen.

Digital technology--the technology of computers—employs binary code (0s and 1s) or electrical impulses that are either "off" or "on," unlike the continuous analog signals. The difference from analog technology might be compared to the difference between a watch with a second hand that sweeps smoothly around the dial and a quartz watch with a second hand that jumps from second to second. A computer screen, unlike a television monitor, consists of pixels (picture elements)--squares of phosphorous that are either "off" (black or not lighted) or "on" (white or lighted). Color screens consist of a combination of phosphorous pixels in red, green, and blue (the three colors often abbreviated RGB).

Optical technology refers to the laser encoding and decoding of digital information. That is, the information has been encoded in a digital format (0s and 1s / off and on) and the signals are "read" by a laser ("[l]ight [a]mplification by Visual Communication [s]timulated [e]mission of [r]adiation"). The most common device for this process is the compact disc (CD), in computer technology referred to as CD-ROM (compact-disc, read-only-memory). CD-ROM technology continues to expand the sources and availability of information and will continue to be a primary medium of information storage and transfer for the foreseeable future.

Interactive Technology

In order to understand the future possibilities of communication technology, of new communication techniques, and of design and production of visual communication, technical communicators must understand what is meant by interactive technology. As Caffarelli and Straughan note, "the most common definition of interactivity is still limited to the ability to extract from information sources a specific answer to a specific question" (22). This limitation will change with more sophisticated technology and with more creative methods of integrating the various devices for transmitting and organizing information. These integrative and organizational developments are represented by the words multimedia and

hypertext.

Multimedia refers to a broad range of computer hardware and software--combining sound, color, moving images—and computer programs for simulating reality (lighting/shadowing, surface textures, and three-dimensions) (see Fetterman and Gupta; Shelton, "Multimedia" 694; Vaughan; and Wodaski).

Hypertext identifies the organization of information in much the way the human brain organizes itself that is, "the information we acquire day-by-day organizes itself,

modifying the information already there, and being incorporated into the total body of our knowledge" (Caffarelli and Straughan 23). Thus, to coincide with users' typical search methods, sources of information must be organized in away that encourages intuitive (i.e., "creative" or "associative") exploration and accessibility. For example,

hypertext includes coded "buttons" on key words in the text that link an idea to associated ideas; this feature allows users to branch out to related ideas and topics, so that they can follow their own nonlinear pathways through the information.

Integration of Technologies and Services

Mergers among cable television networks, telephone companies, and production studios now are actively pursued and, perhaps, by the end of the century will create a fully integrated information system. Integration of analog, digital, and optical means of recording and transmitting information will emerge as the standard. In addition, voice-activated software will complicate the methods by which technical

communicators create and transfer information while increasing the speed and the ease with which users access information. Moreover, the new systems will connect every computer terminal with many other communication sources (television and computer and telephone will likely meld into a single system).

Undoubtedly, in the twenty-first century engineers will refine other sophisticated technical systems that will offer opportunity and pose challenges to technical communicators, particularly in visual communication. For example, a standard for high-density television (HDTV) for the United States has been agreed upon (see Bowes and Elliott). In addition, holograms (three-dimensional photographs recorded by laser beams) and virtual reality (a form of artificial intelligence) will provide entertainment, instruction, and training, as well as marketing information, with machines that approach the problem-solving and decision-making capabilities of the human brain (see Larijani).

IMPLICATIONS FOR TECHNICAL COMMUNICATORS

These new technologies and integrated services will challenge technical communicators in several ways. First, technical communicators will need to understand the principles of effective communication as they apply to each of the new media. Second, technical communicators will have to be able to use sophisticated, complex hardware and software in designing and producing information that effectively and efficiently engages the users to interact with the information or services they desire. Third, they will have to employ their most versatile skills in designing and adapting communication to the demands and opportunities of new interactive media. These decisions may become the technical communicators' chief functions and involve at least the following three dimensions:.

Sorting, Organizing, Selecting, and Encoding Information

Communicators who understand how users search for information will need to construct databases to coincide with users' conceptual frameworks and intellectual schemata.

Technical communicators are particularly suited to understand how to analyze audiences and to organize textual and visual information to suit users' associative search techniques and to meet users' expectations. Organization of information that allows users to construct their own information pathways will also benefit from technical communicators' abilities to understand urincides of accuracy, accessibility, clarity, conciseness, and completeness.

Creating Accessibility

Technical communicators already understand the importance of making the use of complicated computer technology as easy and unintimidating as possible. With the advent of new technologies, technical communicators will need to design gateways into the information and create links among the nodes (locations) of information in ways that make it most usable. The "human- computer interface" and associated human factors will be crucial to effective access.

Revising and Updating Information

As information changes, technical communicators who already understand the processes of revising—addition, deletion, rearrangement, and expansion--will be able to assist in keeping the information databases current.

IMPLICATIONS FOR INSTRUCTION

From this consideration of technical developments and their effects on communication, the following implications for instruction in visual communication seem fundamental. (For an extensive bibliography, see Annette Lamb.)

Teaching the Basics

Technical communicators as visual ommunicators should know the basics: how to keep audience and purpose central in their attempts to communicate visually; and how to explore the subject matter through research, including library, clinical, field, and expert sources.

Teaching the Principles of Visual Communication

If technical communicators are to possess skills and knowledge necessary to function in the emerging environment of interactive communication, they must

understand the principles underlying decisions about effective visual communication. Communicators can make some reasonably conclusive decisions based on research; they must make other, more subjective, decisions based on aesthetics and on rhetorical principles as they apply to visual communication (see Barton and Barton; and Kostelnick). In creating effective visual presentations, communicators must consider selection, design, position, production, and cost.

Principles of selection center on appropriateness of visuals in terms of subject matter, purpose, and audience: whether the information can or should be communicated visually; what visuals appropriately communicate the information; what are the audience’s knowledge, language, and visual and aural capabilities (see Cochran, Albrecht, and Green).

Principles of design include aesthetic judgments as well as more practical decisions. Aesthetic judgments involve accuracy and clarity, balance and symmetry, and unity and coherence. Design principles also involve practical decisions about the use of such enhancing characteristics as color; typeface width of lines; use of boxes and other highlighting devices; clear and appropriate labeling, indexing, and linkages; and judicious use of white space.

Principles of positioning of graphics mean that technical communicators must understand how to position visuals to effectively utilize the dimensions and capabilities of the selected medium.

Principles of production require technical communicators to understand how various visuals are produced. If they produce the visuals themselves, they must understand the technology of production; and they must have the budget to support the project and the time required to plan, to create, and to produce the final product. If technical communicators function as members of a team, they must understand at least the possibilities and the limitations of technology.

Considerations of Cost

Underlying all of the decisions about selection, design, position, and production are the cost and budget for specific projects. Typeset production costs more than photocopying, for example; and use of color, three-dimensions, and animation can increase costs significantly. The technical communicator should be aware of the possible trade-offs between quality, ornamentation, and the cost of creating and producing a presentation.

CONCLUSION

The role of visual communicator, thus, encompasses the total spectrum of communication:

possibilities and limitations of technology

principles of effective transfer of information

principles of visual imaging of information

constraints of cost versus quality and elaborateness of presentation

Such an extensive network of knowledge and skills seems beyond the capacities of any single individual. Yet, I suggest, a considerable acquaintance with all of these areas will characterize successful, effective information architects of the twenty-first century. The more of these areas that they master, the more essential they will be to business and industry and the more secure they will be as professionals.

Strong Written and Verbal Communication Skills:

Recently I heard someone say, "Communication is easy." I disagree. Talking is easy; communication, which means an exchange or communion with another, requires greater skill. An exchange that is a communion demands that we listen and speak skillfully, not just talk mindlessly. And interacting with fearful, angry, or frustrated people can be even more difficult, because we're less skillful when caught up in such emotions. Yet don't despair or resign yourself to a lifetime of miscommunication at work or home! Good communicators can be honed as well as born. Here are a few tips to get you started.

Don't take another person's reaction or anger personally, even if they lash out at you in what seems a personal manner. Another person's mood or response is more likely about fear or frustration than it is about you as an individual. Take a deep breath and count to 10, and see it as a way of letting the other person vent before he is able to communicate what's really on his mind.
You don't have to have all the answers. It's OK to say, "I don't know." If you want to find out, say so, then follow up to share your findings. Or you may decide to work on the problem together to find the answer.
Respond (facts and feelings); don't react (feelings) -- e.g., "Tell me more about your concern" or "I understand your frustration" instead of "Hey, 'm just doing my job" or "It's not my job" (which is sure to cause more irritation). Share responsibility for any communication in which you're a participant, and realize that sometimes, maybe often, your own personal reactions may be causing your frustrations about communicating with others.
Understand that people want to feel heard more than they care about whether you agree with them. It's strange how many people complain about others not hearing them, yet they don't listen to others either! You can show that you're listening by giving someone your complete attention and saying things like:
1. "Tell me more about your concern."
2. "What is it about XXX that concerns you?"
3. "I'm interested in what you've just said. Can you share a little bit about what lead you to that belief?"
4. "What would have to happen for you to be more comfortable with XXX?"
Remember that what someone says and what we hear can be amazingly different! Our personal filters, assumptions, judgments, and beliefs can distort what we hear. Repeat back or summarize to ensure that you understand. Restate what you think you heard and ask, "Have I understood you correctly?" If you find yourself responding emotionally to what someone said, say so, and ask for more information: "I may not be understanding you correctly, and I find myself taking what you said personally. What I thought you just said is XXX; is that what you meant?"
Acknowledge inconvenience or frustration and offer a timeline, particularly if you need someone else's cooperation or your activities will affect them. For example, if you'll be updating someone's desktop computer system and need access to her office, you might say, "I know it's frustrating to have someone in your space at a time that might not be convenient for you, and I appreciate your cooperation. It'll help us to keep your system working well. We expect to be in your office at about 3 p.m., and out by 5 p.m."li>Don't offer advice unless asked. This can be tough, particularly if we have experience that we think might benefit another person. Use respectful expressions such as "One potential option is..." or "One thing that helped me in a similar situation was X. I'd be happy to share more about my experience if you think it'd be helpful to you" instead of "You should do X."
Look for common ground instead of focusing solely on differences. What might you both be interested in (e.g., making the experience as nondisruptive as possible)? One way to begin discovering commonality is to share your underlying intention -- for example, "My intention in sharing this is to help you succeed on this project."
Remember that change is stressful for most people, particularly if your activities affect them in a way that they aren't scheduling or controlling. Our routines can be comforting in the midst of what appears to be a chaotic world. So if you're in someone's space or need him to do something on your timeline, provide as much information as you can about what you'll need from the person and when. If you can, tell him how what you're doing will benefit him.
Work to keep a positive mental focus. One of the choices we always have is how we see or experience any given circumstance. Many people who are considered skillful and successful, including professional athletes and cultural leaders, work to maintain a positive mind-set. Ask yourself, "What's great about this?" or "What can I learn from this?" to help maintain a positive state. Don't forget to adopt a variety of stress reduction practices that work best for you.
Understand that most people, including you, have a unique, often self-serving, agenda. This isn't necessarily bad, because it helps us achieve and protect ourselves. Just don't assume that someone will know or share your agenda, so talking about what's most important to you and asking what's most important to others, can help build a solid foundation for conversation.
Improve your listening skill. Most people think they listen well, but the truth is that most of people don't listen at all -- they just speak and then think about what they're going to say next. Good listening often means asking good questions and clearing your mind of distractions, including what you're going to say next, whom you're meeting with next, or what's going on outside. When someone makes prickly comments or complaints, there's often a concern or fear lurking. Like a detective, ask questions that get to the bottom of someone's real concern or agenda. Only then can you have a truly rich, beneficial conversation.

This information provides food for thought rather than counsel specifically designed to meet the needs of your situation. Please use it mindfully. The most effective communication plan should be tailored to your unique needs, so don't hesitate to get individualized assistance from a communication expert.

Written Communication Skills:

Written Communication Skills

John Clayton MSc PGCE FIBMS points out that members of the Institute of Biomedical Science are now much more likely to be involved in written work than was the case previously. Whether members are involved in gaining professional qualifications or extending their own professional development and standing they are very likely to be required to produce a piece of written work.

How you meet the challenge of writing effectively depends to a certain extent on what you are writing, but there are some general, rather obvious issues which must not be overlooked and which are appropriate whatever you are trying to write.

Firstly, presentation is extremely important. Whether you are writing a first essay at university, completing a third year dissertation or submitting an article for review prior to the hoped for publication, the way the work is presented is vitally important. These days it is essential that work is typed or preferably word processed. Lenient lecturers may permit a hand-written essay in a student's first semester, but you are still likely to be
disadvantaging yourself against your peers who have presented their work with style. However brilliant the piece of work may be, in most cases a poorly presented piece is likely to be rejected.

Secondly, grammar and spelling must be accurate. The spell check facility on the word processor is a real ally to prospective writers, who are well advised to take sufficient time and ensure the spelling is right. If grammar is not a strong point, it is a good idea to find someone more gifted who can proof read the work. It is surprising how many obvious and silly errors can be eradicated in this way prior to submission. At the very least you should carefully read over your own work. It is surprising the number of students who submit assignments with glaring easily avoidable errors. Colour blindness being caused by a sex-linked jean, E coli being a Gram negative orgasm and Vagina Bottomley being the Secretary of State for Health are three readily recalled but unfortunate student errors!

Thirdly, it is most important that you structure your work carefully. How you achieve this will depend on what you are setting out to write and who you are writing for (the audience), and will be discussed in more detail.

Essay Writing
Essay writing is just as much a skill as the verbal communications of a good presentation. As Beeke and Morgan (1999, p 625) state:

"Some people are born with strong and charismatic styles and are naturally able to become good speakers, similarly some people are able to become good writers with equally strong and charismatic styles. Some people appear to have the gift of selecting the correct word or phrase and to make their work interesting and poignant. It is probable that no matter how gifted they appear, they have perfected their writing style based on simple but precise structures and focused their writing to their specific audience."

Many students who begin their university studies are horrified at the prospect of writing their first essay. This concern appears to affect most students irrespective of age and experience, the mature members of the cohort highlighting their 'rustiness' and the younger members sensing that their recently developed 'A'level essay writing skills will no longer be appropriate to meet the additional challenges of higher education. In fact, previous experience is a valuable tool, and students should be prepared to build on their previous efforts and learn from their mistakes.

In their first year of academic study, students on most university courses will normally be expected to produce well written essays which are precise and detailed but essentially descriptive. At level 1, critical analysis and reflection is a real bonus, being a feature of essays associated more with level 2 and level 3 students, who have developed an ability to reflect critically as they have progressed through their programme of study. Of course this does present problems for those students who use their professional qualifications to gain accelerated entry to level 2 or level 3 of a degree programme based on APL or APEL. These students will be expected to produce essays which are reflective and critical from the word go! In my observation this is rarely a big disadvantage as professionally qualified students normally possess the maturity and experience required to produce well argued and reflective work.

So what of structure? Undergraduate students at all three levels of study should aim to produce essays which have a defined introduction, a body in which four or possibly five main arguments are described or analysed in detail and a conclusion which is thoughtful and reflective. Lastly the work will need a list of references or bibliography. Referencing is a vitally important component of any written work. Most universities follow the 'Harvard' system and it is fair to assume that this method must be used unless you are specifically requested to use an alternative one. Referencing remains the most criticised area of the essay writing skills of undergraduate students by lecturers and external examiners and yet this can be avoided if students take the time to follow the well publicised guidelines and rules on referencing. A few guidelines are included at the end of this article.

The Effective Learning Programme (ELP) delivered at the University of Lincolnshire and Humberside uses the essay writing skills booklet developed by Kathy Bell of De Montfort University. In this booklet, Bell (1995) suggests that the body of the essay should contain between three and five arguments. My experience would support this structure. Any less than three arguments suggests that the student may have selected the wrong question, since although the student may possess some detailed knowledge of the subject, there appears to be too little breadth of knowledge to interest the writer. Where students wish to introduce too many arguments they are in danger of diluting the main arguments of their essay or seriously extending its word limit, something which is rarely appreciated by the marking lecturer. If students have more than five arguments, I would suggest they think carefully about the issues which are of greatest importance and use them. Students should not be afraid to omit peripheral arguments since inclusion of too many can destroy the structure of an otherwise solid essay.

Finally, the conclusion is the studentÕs opportunity to reflect on the topics which have been introduced in the essay. It is essential that a good deal of care and thought should go into the conclusion, which does not need to be too long but must be positive and well argued. The least effective conclusion is the one which simply lists the issues raised in the body of the essay. The most frequent error in my experience is the one in which students suddenly remember an issue omitted from the body of the essay, and decide that the conclusion is the place to introduce it. This totally undermines the structure of the essay and is seriously frowned on in academic writing. If the argument is vital, then it is necessary for the writer to introduce an additional section in the body of the essay and to reflect on this in the conclusion. This is easier to achieve if the essay draft is word processed, but students must ensure that the addition does not cause their essay to exceed the word limit of their assignment.
What should by now be apparent is that the essay must be designed to impress the marking lecturer. This does not mean that the arguments should reflect the ideas and ideologies of the lecturer, most of whom enjoy reading essays which contradict their own viewpoint, but that it should be well written, well structured and well argued. Students should also remember that successful writing is a developing skill and will improve with experience. Any feedback, whether positive or negative should be carefully considered and adopted in future assignments.

Dissertations
Naturally, dissertations pose a much bigger task for undergraduate students, and present them with an ongoing problem which will accompany them through the final level of their studies in most universities. The word limit is normally 10,000 or 12,000 words, which is obviously a substantially larger piece of work than the normal 3000 word essay. However, the issues raised above in the essay writing skills are equally applicable to dissertations. The audience is very important and students normally work with a supervisor who has helped students in the past. Students are well advised to listen to their supervisor's comments and adopt them wherever possible. Additionally the 10,000 words are likely to be broken down into manageable units in a report style with headings. Normally the dissertation will include:

An abstract - in which the student writes a short overview of the aims and objectives of the research and indicates what has been achieved; this is often the last section to be written.
Introduction -which introduces the dissertation and explains what the writer intends to research and what the hypothesis is.
Literature survey - in which students write up appropriate commentary from textbooks and journals which assist them in focusing on their own research.
Methodology - here students are expected to explain carefully the methods of their data collection; some analysis of their reasons for selecting the methods used and rejecting other methods is expected.
Substantive or results sections - students are expected to present their findings
carefully; presentation is vital here and where quantitative methodologies have been used pictorial representation and graphical displays and charts should be considered.
Conclusion - after three years of academic study this is the studentsÕ best opportunity to demonstrate their ability to critically analyse work they have individually researched; the opportunity must be taken and students should remember that their analyses should consider the issues raised in the literature review.
Recommendations - where students can reflect on future changes in practice or opportunities for future follow-up research.
Bibliography and references - which must be included and follow the required format.

Other items such as acknowledgements and appendices can be added without seriously affecting the word limit, and an index is a very useful addition. It is essential that students produce as professional a piece of work as possible as much work included in undergraduate dissertations has the potential to be published either in its complete form or as an article. Very few students exploit this opportunity, which is both a surprise and a pity.

Articles for Publication
In many ways writing for journals can be less traumatic than writing for university assignments, since once the author has selected a suitable publication for work, there are likely to be clear guidelines to assist them in getting published. Where guidelines are not included, prospective authors can gauge how to present their work by studying articles published previously by the journal in question.

Presentation and structure remain extremely important and careful referencing is once again vital. Again the Harvard system is the most used, but if authors are unsure they should examine the bibliographies of articles previously published or contact the journal direct. It is important to remember that the target audience in this case is much wider than for essays. Submitted articles must impress the journal's reviewers or referees. They will be looking to see if the work is of high enough quality to feature in the journal and also to see if the subject matter and content is academically sound and likely to be of interest to the journal's readers. It is important to write clearly and precisely and to describe your findings clearly. In my experience most articles are rejected because they are poorly structured, and hence unclear or confusing to read, or because the author makes unsubstantiated claims in the conclusion section which do not relate to the research issues developed in the substantive section of their article.

The principle of writing three to five items in the body of an essay is a useful guide to consider in article writing also. Word space is limited in journals and a 4000 word article written with precision and care is much more likely to be published than a poorly structured 6000 word article which lacks clarity of argument and criticality. Anyone has the potential to write a good article, and people employed in pathology departments are continually performing research (though they may not always be aware of it) and making discoveries which would make a first class interesting article, yet relatively few submit articles for publication. This is a great pity, and one can only assume that one reason for this is a lack of confidence in their essay writing ability. I hope that this article will assist members who would like to write essays and articles to overcome a basic lack of confidence and put 'pen to paper'.

Referencing
The University of Lincolnshire and Humberside, in common with most universities and publishers uses the Harvard referencing system. The following guide is intended to assist students employing this system.
If writers wish to reference a book, the format is as follows: Firstly the author's surname, followed by initials, then the year of publication in brackets, the title of the book (either underlined or in italics), the edition (if appropriate), place of publication and finally the publishers. For example:

Birchenall, M. & Birchenall, P. (1998), Sociology as Applied to Nursing and Health Care, Edinburgh, Bailliere
Tindall.

If a part of a book is to be referenced the format should be as follows: Name of contributor followed by initial, year of publication in brackets, the title of contribution in quotation marks, followed by ÔinÕ, then the name of the author with initials, title of book in italics or underlined, edition (if appropriate), followed by the place of publication and finally the publishers name. For example:

Clayton, J. (1998), 'The Changing Shape of the NHS' in Birchenall, M. & Birchenall, P. (eds), Sociology as
Applied to Nursing and Health Care, Edinburgh, Bailliere Tindall.

For journal articles the format is as follows: Name of author with initials, followed by the year of publication in brackets, then the title of the article in quotation marks, the title of the journal in italics or underlined, the volume number, the issues number and the page numbers. For example:

Beeke, V. & Morgan, L. (1999) 'Presentation Skills', Biomedical Scientist, August 1999, pp 625-626.

Students should look at previously published articles to decide whether to opt for italics or underlined titles in
referencing.

Clear and practical ways to approach technical communication assignments:

Designing effective technical documents requires insightful and well-designed thinking strategies. Experienced writers--usually good problem solvers--practice critical thinking to identify the problems arising out of conflicting goals and agendas. Problem solving starts with problem finding (Flower 1994), and critical thinking plays a vital role in achieving the resultant writing goals. This article describes the function of critical thinking and its practical application in a technical writing course in an occupational setting. A solid understanding of critical knowledge will enhance novice writers' capability of handling problems and making appropriate decisions.

Critical Thinking in a Complex Society

While critical thinking is the subject of some of our oldest pedagogical studies, the dialogues of Plato, recent literature on critical thinking begins with Bloom's taxonomy in 1956. He classified critical thinking into six categories: knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation (Halonen 1995). Since Bloom's taxonomy, many definitions and descriptions of critical thinking have appeared in a variety of occupational contexts. Nevertheless, they tend to have common or overlapping characteristics: Kuhar (1998) simply states that critical thinking is "thinking about thinking" (p. 80). Carole Wade (1995) defines it as "the ability and willingness to assess claims and make objective judgments on the basis of well-supported reasons" (p. 24-25). According to Angelo (1995), most formal definitions characterize critical thinking as "the intentional application of rational, higher order thinking skills, such as analysis, synthesis, problem recognition and problem solving, inference, and evaluation" (p. 6). Rather than fastening onto a single prescriptive definition, Paul (1990) suggests we remain open to wide-ranging conceptions of critical thinking, since the concept is so complex in our increasingly complicated society.

In higher education, Glen (1995) claims preparation in critical thinking is essential for "true autonomy" in such a society (p. 170). He explicitly calls for introducing and exploring self-motivation and creativity-based critical thinking in the classroom. If, as its etymology suggests, a liberal education is an education suitable for free persons, we need to develop pedagogies enabling our students to acquire critical knowledge as the backbone of their "intellectual maturity" (p. 170). Higher education, as Glen suggests, usually involves bringing a student to the front line of current social discourse in a given, particular discipline. The nurture of each student's critical knowledge, on the other hand, demands a flexible and wide-ranging educational setting, mindful of a variety of social and political forces. Ever-changing social, economic, and political situations require higher-order practical thinking skills.

While fast-growing technology helps our society become more informed, it demands enhanced critical knowledge to make well-informed decisions: the power to identify and analyze problems, generate ideas, and distinguish accurate from flawed information sources in the daily blizzard. In the US, for instance, the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) now includes not only reading and math but critical thinking skills, and President Clinton has called for new ways to assess such skills in schools. In an interview at the 6th International Conference on Thinking, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Robert Swarts, University of Massachusetts Boston psychology professor explains: "If you make a choice and can't come up with reasons for that choice, or if the choice leads to a lot of negative consequences, it's easy to judge that it wasn't a good choice" (Academics, 1994). The quality of thinking, particularly in higher education, must be evaluated based on critical knowledge (creativity, self-motivation, well-reasoned argument for good ideas, and insightful judgment) to establish intellectual autonomy.

Cognitive and Metacognitive Components of Critical Thinking

Critical thinking involves both cognitive and metacognitive elements. According to Hanley (1995), cognitive skills take information, data, as their object: they encode data, transform, organize, integrate, categorize, store, and retrieve them: familiar examples are the 3 R's, outlining, memorizing, recognizing and recalling, following a method or algorithm.

Metacognitive skills, however, are skills in monitoring and controlling one's own mental processes and states of knowledge; that is, they take as their object the cognitive skills themselves: "Metacognition is the awareness, monitoring, and control of one's cognitive processes" (King, 1995, p. 16). For example, Kuhar (1998) mentions two components: "identifying and challenging assumptions" (p. 80). We might add examples like weighing and assessing our judgments, choosing among heuristics or methods of problem-solving, judging whether one's unaided skills are sufficient to the task, whether more research or a new approach is necessary. In short, metacognitive skill involves the deliberate control of what to think about and how to think in order to maximize progress and minimize error.

While this theoretical distinction may aid planners of critical thinking curricula, in practice, cognition and metacognition are intertwined: Even as a strictly cognitive process, critical thinking is recursive, in that students discover problems, make inferences, reach tentative conclusions, then apply their cognitive skills to their own conclusions as new problems in turn, as they approach their goal. Underwood and Wald (1995) point out that critical thinking, knowledge, and skill are all interdependent. As we will see, those activities that Hanley calls "cognitive" often have a metacognitive dimension as well.

In technical writing, for example, writers need to recognize the importance of audience awareness. And they need to recognize the gaps between that inferred cognitive state and their own. This metacognitive skill plays a crucial role in the cognitively appropriate identification, discovery, encoding, and organizing of information. If they fail to identify the audience level, their writing usually misses the target, communicates with no specific purpose, and fails to meet the audience needs. This applies to most business and technical documents. Writers in the workplace, for instance, take deliberate approaches to audience analysis (individual-to-group level, needs, current problems, possible adverse effects, etc.) while collecting information and comparing with the past records. In doing so, they find problems (in the past, the current, and prospective in the near future), develop practical assumptions and finally make well-assured decisions to attain the goal. Metacognitive and cognitive critical thinking reciprocally reinforce each other throughout.

Enhancing Critical Thinking through Case Study Writing

The terms case study and discussion method are often used interchangeably for role-plays, written exercises, and other realistic simulations (McDade, 1995). Case study refers to the use of a case (a written description of a problem or situation) to present a problem for analysis; discussion method focuses on the process of the pedagogy--the method of facilitating a structure or preplanned discussion for students through analyzing a piece of material. A case is "a story about a situation that is carefully designed to include only facts arranged in a chronological sequence" (McDade, 1995, p. 9). The function of a case study is to create realistic laboratories in the classroom to apply research skills, decision-making processes, and critical thinking abilities.

In teaching technical writing, case study pedagogy is useful in nurturing what McDade calls "first-person analysis": identifying the sources and nature of conflicts and the dynamics of behavior, preparing solutions, anticipating and assessing possible results through decisions and actions (p. 9). Students design and apply theoretical constructs in a recursive, empirical manner, going back and forth between theory and practice. The more realistic the occupational setting--business title, assigned job, specific audience current business and technical constrains at workplace, etc.--the more sophisticated and strategic the students' self-motivation, self-insight, and critical knowledge will become. As a professional education course, technical communication seeks situations which emphasize hands-on writing and problem-solving skills. Consequently, the quality of case pedagogy, especially in professional courses, depends on the extent of the instructors' discourse-minded preparations--how practically and realistically occupational setting can be presented in the classroom.

The benefits of case studies can be summarized as follows:

Emphasizing the process of analyzing information.
Contextualizing understanding.
Identifying and challenging assumptions.
Imagining alternatives and exploring them for strengths and weaknesses.
Promoting integrated learning by incorporating theory into practice and practice into theory.
Developing critical listening by listening to diversified thinking processes of others.
Developing and testing theories of audience and organization function.
Learning cooperatively--teamwork, job, and collaborative learning, working together in small groups and in the classroom to solve problems, then to serve the most goals.
Experiencing, exploring, and testing alternative ways of thinking.
Considering different perspectives as various team members present ideas, analyses, and solutions beyond the reach of any single writer.

The case study method will ruin itself, however, if it oversimplifies problem solving, provides inadequate guidance for its social dimensions, or ignores its highly conflicted nature in everyday life. Bernstein (1995) concludes that any theory of problem solving or critical thinking as an aspect of problem solving "must be grounded in a more socially based view of knowledge and cognition" (p. 23). Problem-solving does not take place in a social vacuum.

For example, written assignments stimulate classroom writers to enhance their active learning spontaneously, but only if they are designed with care: Wade (1995) suggests that writing is an essential ingredient in critical thinking instruction, since it promotes greater self-reflection and the taking of broader perspectives than does oral expression. But for writers to get their full benefit, consequently, written assignments must leave time for reflection and careful consideration of reasons for taking a position or making an assertion. Writers need enough reflective time to (a) examine evidence (b) avoid personal and emotional reasoning (c) avoid oversimplification.

(Wade actually lists eight criteria for critical writing but acknowledges the limitations of working memory and realistic achievement in a semester course that must also cover basic content: (a) ask questions and be willing to wonder, (b) analyze assumptions and biases, (c) examine evidence, (d) analyze assumptions and biases, (e) avoid emotional reasoning, (f) avoid oversimplification, (g) consider alternative interpretations, and (h) tolerate uncertainty.)

In examining evidence, students need to appreciate the difference between evidence and speculation and to recognize that ideas and opinions may vary in validity according to the strength of evidence. One approach is to show students a variety of print or on-line materials or audiovisuals to cite as evidence. To discourage oversimplification, or overgeneralizing from limited data, ask students to look for competence gaps in work performance: For instance, what are the points of distinction between pieces by writers accustomed to high-tech writing and those who are not? Or between experienced writers and novice ones working on the same project? They will soon grasp that fact-based reasoning, not emotionally-tainted opinions or speculation, results in superior argumentation and decisive conclusions.

Internet Writing Assignment in My Tech Writing Course

In my technical writing class, I provide science and technology news from the Internet. Most stories are related to daily life technologies such as automobiles, electric appliances and computers, and focused on Japanese industries. In a bid to stimulate the students' critical thinking activities with their accumulated information and knowledge of technologies, I usually prepare two opposite stories--for example, one success story and one failure--in the same business field. Through the Internet, for instance, I picked up a successful cost-cutting and energy-saving story of the Honda of America Manufacturing (HAM) plant (Appendix I). Meanwhile, I presented a news article covering the sluggish business performance by a Honda arm in Thailand. Juxtaposing these opposite stories helps students recognize the critical, distinctive and decisive points in technology and business management: finding and analyzing major problems and their source or nature. Referring to the data provided in the stories, my students examine numerical evidence and related facts, and are further encouraged to assess evidence critically, avoid oversimplification, or emotional or personal speculation.

I urge my students to work on purpose analyzer--a sheet with four critical questions in writing--to clarify each student's thoughts on the paper. (See figure 1)

figure 1

Before writing, use the Purpose Analyzer to clarify your thoughts:

Purpose Analyzer

1. Why are you writing?

--Can you specify your writing goal?

2. What do you want to accomplish with your writing?

--To inform, persuade, share experience, or what else?

3. What action do you want your readers to take after their reading?

--Taking up a new action, reflecting on experience, or what else?

4. What challenge do you hope to bring about?

--Readers will adopt your proposal; they will change their ideas and behaviors; or what else?

This is quite helpful in designing goal-directed statements of purpose which often appear in the opening paragraphs of technical reports. Finally I give them some writing assignments in a related case:

Honda's head office in Japan is thinking of closing down its Thailand factory if it cannot drastically improve its cost-cutting efforts, including energy saving. The staff in Tokyo cite HAM's drastic energy reduction as something applicable to the Thai plant. As a staff member at the Tokyo office, your job is to write an informal technical report that eventually urges the Thai factory to follow HAM's successful energy-cutting strategies.

Here is the overall problem-solving writing process to achieve the writing goal--designing a short technical document under a case:

Make a digest of the Internet news (Honda of America Manufacturing's energy-saving story) then understand the whole text.
Check technical terms and mark the parts related to this writing assignment.
With the Purpose Analyzer clarify the writing goal.
Design a short technical report with an argumentative statement of purpose.

Assessment of Critical Thinking and Writing

It is difficult to evaluate each case-assisted writing assignment as a whole unit. I instead try to focus on each student's goal-directed critical thinking strategies that can be recognized through the paper. My evaluation therefore emphasizes the critical, logical and argumentative context armed with scrutinized evidence rather than writing with few mechanical errors or various information just listed to support the student's ideas. To this end, it might be useful to ask the students to submit diagrams describing the dynamics of their critical thinking processes from the initial information gathering level to the final decision making stage. Consequently, such evaluation can lead to good writing . "Good writing is a process of thinking, writing, revising, thinking, and revising, until the idea is fully developed" (Franke, 1989, p. 13). In other words, writing is not a static thing but a rapid changing technic (Mathes and Stevenson, 1991). Writing must be a challenge for the nurture of our critical knowledge and intellectual maturity.

Conclusion

Through the case study writing assignment, my students in technical writing course recognize the importance of critical thinking and problem solving activities. Most students, as a result, claim that they have understood the mission of technical writing as a reader-centered written communication (see: "the course evaluation"--Appendix III). In fact, writing must be a metacognitive act aimed at identifying the writing goal with a clear-cut rhetorical situation. In this sense, critical thinking is the key to a successful problem-solving strategy.

Critical thinking, starting from "thinking about thinking" (Kuhar), plays a vital role in professional writing. Because of its solid link with ever-changing science and technology, technical communication requires us to earn advanced problem solving skills. The more developed information technological society we have, the more sophisticated critical knowledge and intellectual maturity we need to assess and cope with various problems arising from our complex society. "The ability to think clearly about complex issues and solve a wide range of problems is the cognitive goal of education at all levels" (Pellegrino, 1995, p. 11). To this end, case study helps novice writers--unfamiliar with how to solve problems in an occupational setting--develop their goal-directed critical processes. A case, however, needs to be designed within a realistic occupational setting. A major role of using case, especially in a technical writing course, is to empower the students' problem solving skills, including information gathering, data analysis and evidence examination. Writing assignment therefore need to be carefully designed without ruining the case study benefits aimed at fostering critical knowledge. "Writing is a problem-solving activity--response to a rhetorical situation where problems arise out of conflicting goals and agendas" (Flower and Ackerman, 1994, p. 17). Consequently, the final goal of critical thinking and case study writing is to make students good questioners and good thinkers. When attaining this goal, students will be able to make their thinking visible not only to others but to themselves.

Further Developments

The appearance of interactive technologies and telecommunications, like the Internet, digital cameras, computer graphics, satellite-assisted communication networks, etc., has brought extensive opportunities to change the conventional text-based linguistic communication style. As thinking tools, these pictorial and graphic media would be integrated into the new development of critical thinking strategies. In fact, Pellegrino (1995) notes that this challenge has already began in technology education:

Teachers at all levels of education need to encourage their students to use multiple-representational strategies and explore new ways of thinking, such as switching back and forth from linguistic to visual--spatial representational displays. If we do not teach our students how to master these new 'media of thought,' they cannot benefit from the multimedia, interactive technology that is increasingly being developed and used. "(p. 11)

As Pellegrino suggests, technology lets us focus on the logic of what we are doing rather than keep track of all the details. Our thought, in both memory capacity and its conscious manipulation, is severely limited. Technology therefore has been developed partly to facilitate and extend our problem solving strategies. This is the crucial point of technology-assisted critical thinking instruction:

Students need to be explicitly taught how to use technology to relieve complex processing demands so that they can focus on finding solution paths, instead of using their limited information-processing resources to maintain information in working memory. (p. 11)

As a result, In critical thinking class, the instructor's knowledge and the capability of new technology will need to be emphasized as new criteria in pedagogy.

In addition to case study, several approaches are available in teaching and modeling thinking processes. The discussion method urges students to make their ideas visible by sharing their thinking paths with the teacher and classmates. Like case study, the learning outcomes will be focused less on the facts than on thinking processes and problem solving strategies. Similarly, the conference-style method supports students' critical thinking skills in interpersonal context, in which they to consider the interrelations among their thoughts and those of others. In the conference method, students need to read assigned materials, practice formulating analytic questions, think aloud about challenging issues, all while respecting other participants' intuitions (Underwood and Wald, 1995). In designing the occupational setting, careful selection or integration of these pedagogical methods will become more critical for the benefits of critical thinking education under the growing complex society.

Excellent Writing and Editing skills:

The Writing Process

As young children in kindergarten and first grade learn to write, their teachers vary the focus of their writing but continuously help them get their ideas on paper, accepting incomplete spelling. The teacher does most of the editing if a young childís work is to be published; but great emphasis is placed on the young author sharing his/her writing with peers, getting feedback for improvement but also a sense of ownership and celebration.

As writer become more fluent during second grade and have gained more skills in capitalization, punctuation, and sentence structure, they are led more carefully through all the steps of the writing process so that they will have ample time to think through and organize what they want to write, create a rough draft, work with others to revise their text, edit their work carefully, and then, under some circumstances, rewrite their text for publication. During each of these stages, the teacher helps his/her students develop a repertoire of writing strategies so that the students will have a wide range of writing skills to call upon when doing their writing on their own.

During prewriting, students are taught to use multiple visual organizers to help them organize their ideas for writing. Webs for topic and details, story maps for narrative texts, compare and contrast Venn diagrams, etc. are use by good writers to get started.

Next, students are taught to write a rough draft, revising their thoughts as much as they can as they write. Peer revision then takes place one-on-one with an adult or with one or more peers. Students are taught to delete or add ideas; to change sentence structure; to focus on using colorful, interesting language; and to pay attention to their audience so that their writing can be clear and straight-forward to those who are reading it.

Finally, the students are taught to go through their text several times, addressing needs in one area at a time: capitalization; punctuation; grammar; sentence structure; etc. Sometimes peers help a child look through his/her paper for errors. At other times, adults have a one-on-one conference, teaching the students new concepts that are needed to achieve a well-edited paper.

Celebration is the last stage of the writing process that should be honored whenever possible. Students need to have their work presented to an audience to appreciate the purpose of writing and to gain a sense of empowerment. This is done when a parent places a childís written work on the family refrigerator or sends it to a grandparent to read. Teachers can place a childís work on a bulletin board or submit it to a school literary magazine. Excellent work can be submitted to newspapers, magazines and newsletters that publish studentsí work.

The writing process is also cyclic. This means that children can plan, write, revise, and edit their work in an sequence, going over these stages again and again until their work is like they want it to be. Excellent writing is worth the careful orchestration of skills. As parents and teachers work together to build a "community of writers", they must promote and teach all of these steps of the writing process so that all childrenís writing can be clear and interesting to those who are reading it.

Online Technical Writing: Instructions

The focus for this chapter is one of the most important of all uses of technical writing--instructions. As you know, instructions are those step-by-step explanations of how to do something: how to build, operate, repair, or maintain things.

The assignment for this unit also focuses on description, definition, or one of the other information structures discussed in Appendix F. These are common elements in technical writing. Rather than documents type of their own, they more commonly appear as elements or parts of other documents, such as instructions in this case. However, you can imagine description, for example, being used heavily in reports on accidents, property appraisals, and product specifications. The content, organization, and format suggestions discussed in the information-structures section will give you a good foundation to write these other kinds of documents.

In the assignment for this chapter, you actually write two assignments in one: a set of instructions and an information structure (such as description, definition, or other) integrated within those instructions. This scenario gives you experience with two key types of technical writing but in a way that saves two to three weeks in the semester. This enables you to have more time toward the end of the semester to work full time on your technical-report project.

Be sure to check out the example instructions available with this chapter:

The frames and nonframes versions work only on Netscape versions 3-5, but not on Netscape 6 or any version of Internet Explorer. See Netscape 5 archives.
Example instructions 1: Using WS_FTP Pro for Windows	Frames	Nonframes	Plain
Example instructions 2: Beginner's Guide to Eudora Lite for Windows	Frames	Nonframes	Plain
Example instructions 3: Operating the Minolta Freedom 3 Camera	Frames	Nonframes	Plain
Example instructions 4: How to Raise Potatoes in the Home Garden	Frames	Nonframes	Plain
Example instructions 5: Instructions for a Simple Window Curtain	Frames	Nonframes	Plain

Note: Students enrolled in Online Technical Writing are encouraged to take the optional reading quiz on this chapter. (Anybody else is welcome to try it as well.)

Writing Instructions

One of the most common and one of the most important uses of technical writing is instructions--those step-by-step explanations of how to do things: assemble something, operate something, repair something, or do routine maintenance on something. But for something seemingly so easy and intuitive, instructions are some of the worst-written documents you can find. Like me, you've probably had many infuriating experiences with badly written instructions. What follows in this chapter may not be a fool-proof, goof-proof guide to writing instructions, but it will show you what professionals consider the best techniques.

Ultimately, however, good instruction writing not only requires these techniques but also:

Clear, simple writing
A thorough understanding the procedure in all its technical detail
Your ability to put yourself in the place of the reader, the person trying to use your instructions
Your ability to visualize the procedure in great detail and to capture that awareness on paper
Finally, your willingness to go that extra distance and test your instructions on the kind of person you wrote them for.

By now, you've probably studied headings, lists, and special notices--writing a set of instructions with these tools probably seems obvious. Just break the discussion out into numbered vertical lists and throw in some special notices at the obvious points and you're done! Well, not quite, but that's a great start. This unit explores some of the features of instructions that can make them more complex. You can in turn use these considerations to plan your own instructions.

Some preliminaries

At the beginning of a project to write instructions, it's important to determine the structure or characteristics of the particular procedure you are going to write about.

Audience and situation. Early in the process, define the audience and situation of your instructions. Remember that defining an audience means defining its level of familiarity with the topic as well as other such details. See Appendix A for discussion of audience and steps to use in defining audiences.

Most importantly, you'll need to describe your audience on a separate sheet of paper and hand that in with your instructions. This will enable your instructor to assess your instructions in terms of their rightness for the intended audience. And remember too that in this technical-writing course it is preferable to write for nonspecialist audiences--this is much more of a challenge to you as a writer.

Number of tasks. An important consideration is how many tasks there are in the procedure you are writing instructions for. Let's use the term procedure to refer to the whole set of activities your instructions are intended to discuss. A task is a semi-independent group of actions within the procedure: for example, setting the clock on a microwave oven is one task in the big overall procedure of operating a microwave oven.

A simple procedure like changing the oil in a car contains only one task; there are no semi-independent groupings of activities. A more complex procedure like using a microwave oven contains plenty of such semi-independent tasks: setting the clock; setting the power level; using the timer; cleaning and maintaining the microwave, among others. (The instructions on using a camera are organized by tasks.)

Some instructions have only a single task, but have many steps within that single task. For example, imagine a set of instructions for assembling a kids' swing set. In my own experience, there were more than a 130 steps! That can be a bit daunting. A good approach is to group similar and related steps into phases, and start renumbering the steps at each new phase. A phase then is a group of similar steps within a single-task procedure. In the swing-set example, setting up the frame would be a phase; anchoring the thing in the ground would be another; assembling the box swing would be still another. (The instructions on installing a wall cabinet, starting on page , are organized by phases.)

Best approach to the step-by-step discussion. Another consideration, which maybe you can't determine early on, is how to focus your instructions. For most instructions, you can focus on tasks, or you can focus on tools (or features of tools).

In a task approach to instructions on using a phone-answering machine, you'd have sections on recording your greeting, playing back your messages, saving your messages, forwarding your messages, deleting your messages. These are tasks--the typical things we'd want to do with the machine.

On the other hand, in a tools approach to instructions on using a photocopier, there would be sections on the copy button, the cancel button, the enlarge/reduce button, the collate/staple button, the paper tray, the copy-size button, and so on. If you designed a set of instructions on this plan, you'd write steps for using each button or feature of the photocopier. Instructions using this tools approach are hard to make work. Sometimes, the name of the button doesn't quite match the task it is associated with; sometimes you have to use more than just the one button to accomplish the task. Still, there can be times when the tools/feature approach may be preferable.

Groupings of tasks. Listing tasks may not be all that you need to do. There may be so many tasks that you must group them so that readers can find individual ones more easily. For example, the following are common task groupings in instructions: unpacking and setup tasks; installing and customizing tasks; basic operating tasks; routine maintenance tasks; troubleshooting tasks; and so on. (For the purposes of this technical writing course, you won't need to cover all of these possibilities--but in a real-world set of instructions, you would.)

Common sections in instructions

The following is a review of the sections you'll commonly find in instructions. Don't assume that each one of them must be in the actual instructions you write, nor that they have to be in the order presented here, nor that these are the only sections possible in a set of instructions.

As you read the following on common sections in instructions, check out the example instructions starting on page . Not all of the following sections typically found in instructions will show up in the examples, but most will.

Figure 8-1. Schematic view of instructions. Remember that this is a typical or common model for the contents and organization--many others are possible.

Introduction.Plan the introduction to your instructions carefully. Make sure it does any of the following things (but not necessarily in this order) that apply to your particular instructions:

Indicate the specific tasks or procedure to be explained as well as the scope of coverage (what won't be covered).
Indicate what the audience needs in terms of knowledge and background to understand the instructions.
Give a general idea of the procedure and what it accomplishes.
Indicate the conditions when these instructions should (or should not) be used.
Give an overview of the contents of the instructions.

Now remember: you may not need all of these elements, and some of them can combine neatly into single sentences. The introduction ought to be brisk and to the point and not feel as though it is trudging laboriously through each of these elements. (See the section in Chapter 10 on introductions for further discussion.

General warning, caution, danger notices. Instructions often must alert readers to the possibility of ruining their equipment, screwing up the procedure, and hurting themselves. Also, instructions must often emphasize key points or exceptions. For these situations, you use special notices--note, warning, caution, and danger notices, which are covered in Chapter 6. Notice how these special notices are used in the example instructions at the end of this chapter.

Technical background or theory. At the beginning of certain kinds of instructions (after the introduction, of course), you may need a discussion of background related to the procedure. For certain instructions, this background is critical--otherwise, the steps in the procedure make no sense. For example, you may have had some experience with those software applets in which you define your own colors by nudging red, green, and blue slider bars around. To really understand what you're doing, you need to have some background on color. Similarly, you can imagine that, for certain instructions using cameras, some theory might be needed as well.

Equipment and supplies. Notice that most instructions include a list of the things you need to gather before you start the procedure. This includes equipment, the tools you use in the procedure (such as mixing bowls, spoons, bread pans, hammers, drills, and saws) and supplies, the things that are consumed in the procedure (such as wood, paint, oil, flour, and nails). In instructions, these typically are listed either in a simple vertical list or in a two-column list. Use the two-column list if you need to add some specifications to some or all of the items--for example, brand names, sizes, amounts, types, model numbers, and so on.

Discussion of the steps. When you get to the actual writing of the steps, there are several things to keep in mind: (1) the structure and format of those steps, (2) supplementary information that might be needed, and (3) the point of view and general writing style.

Structure and format. Normally, we imagine a set of instructions as being formatted as vertical numbered lists. And most are in fact. Normally, you format your actual step-by-step instructions this way. There are some variations, however, as well as some other considerations:

Fixed-order steps are steps that must be performed in the order presented. For example, if you are changing the oil in a car, draining the oil is a step that must come before putting the new oil. These are numbered lists (usually, vertical numbered lists).
Variable-order steps are steps that can be performed in practically any order. Good examples are those troubleshooting guides that tell you to check this, check that where you are trying to fix something. You can do these kinds of steps in practically any order. With this type, the bulleted list is the appropriate format.
Alternate steps are those in which two or more ways to accomplish the same thing are presented. Alternate steps are also used when various conditions might exist. Use bulleted lists with this type, with OR inserted between the alternatives, or the lead-in indicating that alternatives are about to be presented.
Nested steps. In some cases, individual steps within a procedure can be rather complex in their own right and need to be broken down into substeps. In this case, you indent further and sequence the substeps as a, b, c, and so on.
"Stepless" instructions. And finally there exist instructions that really cannot use numbered vertical list and that do little if any straightforward instructional-style directing of the reader. Some situations must be so generalized or so variable that steps cannot be stated. (Let's ignore this possibility for this assignment, however.)

(See Chapter 5 on lists for the style and format of these possibilities.)

Supplementary discussion. Often, it is not enough simply to tell readers to do this or to do that. They need additional explanatory information such as how the thing should look before and after the step; why they should care about doing this step; what mechanical principle is behind what they are doing; even more micro-level explanation of the step--discussion of the specific actions that make up the step.

The problem with supplementary discussion, however, is that it can hide the actual step. You want the actual step--the specific actions the reader is to take--to stand out. You don't want it all buried in a heap of words. There are at least techniques to avoid this problem: you can split the instruction from the supplement into separate paragraphs; or you can bold the instruction.

Writing style. The way you actually write instructions, sentence by sentence, may seem contradictory to what previous writing classes have taught you. However, notice how "real-world" instructions are written--they use a lot of imperative (command, or direct-address) kinds of writing; they use a lot of "you." That's entirely appropriate. You want to get in your reader's face, get her or his full attention. For that reason, instruction-style sentences sound like these: "Now, press the Pause button on the front panel to stop the display temporarily" and "You should be careful not to ..."

A particular problem involves use of the passive voice in instructions. For some weird reason, some instructions sound like this: "The Pause button should be depressed in order to stop the display temporarily." Not only are we worried about the Pause button's mental health, but we wonder who's supposed to depress the thing (are you talkin' to me?). Or consider this example: "The Timer button is then set to 3:00." Again, as the person following these instructions, you might miss this; you might think it is simply a reference to some existing state, or you might wonder, "Are they talking to me?" Almost as bad is using the third person: "The user should then press the Pause button." Again, it's the old double-take: you look around the room and wonder, "Who me?" (More detail on the passive-voice problem can be found in Appendix E.)

Another of the typical problems with writing style in instructions is that people seem to want to leave out articles: "Press Pause button on front panel to stop display of information temporarily" or "Earthperson, please provide address of nearest pizza restaurant." Why do we do this? Do we all secretly want to be robots? Anyway, be sure to include all articles (a, an, the) and other such words that we'd normally use in instructions.

Graphics in instructions

Probably more so than in any other form of writing (except maybe for comic books), graphics are crucial to instructions. Sometimes, words simply cannot explain the step. Illustrations are often critical to readers' ability to visualize what they are supposed to do.

This writing assignment asks you to include illustrations or other kinds of graphics--whatever would normally be used in the instructions. The problem of course may be that you don't have access to graphics that would be suitable for your particular instructions, and that you don't feel wildly confident in your artistic abilities. There are ways to overcome these problems! Take a look at the suggestions in Chapter 7. In that chapter, you'll see not only suggestions for creating graphics, but also requirements on their format.

Format in instructions

Headings. In your instructions, make good use of headings. Normally, you'd want headings for any background section you might have, the equipment and supplies section, a general heading for the actual instructions section, and subheadings for the individual tasks or phases within that section. Take a look at the examples at the end of this chapter. See Chapter 4 for requirements on headings (remember that this course asks you to use the style and format for headings described there).

Lists. Similarly, instructions typically make heavy use of lists, particularly numbered vertical lists for the actual step-by-step explanations. Simple vertical lists or two-column lists are usually good for the equipment and supplies section. In-sentence lists are good whenever you give an overview of things to come. See Chapter 5 for requirements on lists (again, remember that this course asks you to use the style and format for lists described there).

Special notices. In instructions, you must alert readers to possibilities in which they may damage their equipment, waste supplies, cause the entire procedure to fail, injure themselves or others--even seriously or fatally. Companies have been sued for lack of these special notices, for poorly written special notices, or for special notices that were out of place. See Chapter 6 for a complete discussion of the proper use of these special notices as well as their format and placement within instructions. (Again, in our course, we have the style and format for these notices described in that chapter).

Number, abbreviations, and symbols. Instructions also use plenty of numbers, abbreviations, and symbols. For guidelines on these, see Appendix D.

Revision Checklist for Instructions

As you reread and revise your instructions, watch out for problems such as the following:

Make sure you provide real instructions--explanations of how to build, operate, or repair something.
Write a good introduction--in it, indicate the exact procedure to be explained and provide an overview of contents.
Make sure that you use the various types of lists wherever appropriate. In particular, use numbered vertical lists for sequential steps.
Use headings to mark off all the main sections and subheadings for subsections. (Remember that no heading "Introduction" is needed between the title and the first paragraph. Remember not to use first-level headings in this assignment; start with the second level.)
Use special notices as appropriate.
Make sure you use the class style and format for all headings, lists, special notices, and graphics. If that's a problem, get in touch with your instructor.
Use graphics to illustrate any key actions or objects.
Provide additional supplementary explanation of the steps as necessary.
Remember to create a section listing equipment and supplies, if necessary.
Include strong sections of definition, description, or both, as necessary, using the guidelines on content, organization, and format in the chapters on definition and description.

The Four Stages of Producing a Technical Document

The following guidelines explains the four stages for producing a technical document and should help you improve the quality of your publications.

The four key steps are as follows:

Prepare a first draft.
Review and rewrite.
Edit the next draft.
Prepare the final draft.

For any publication:

Follow the standard release process.
Follow the Style Guide’s formats and publication processes.
Consider any copyright or trademark issues

Preparing a First Draft

Step 1 - write your inputs according to the outline established during the prewriting stage. To help manage the documentation process, print out your writing objectives and audience definition. Leave a placeholder in the draft document for every required component (e.g. summary, introduction, distribution list, etc.)

If you discover your outline is faulty, consult with the writing team before you change it. Start wherever you want to. You don’t have to start at the beginning. Build your document as you go along.

Keep the introduction, summary, and abstract for last. Write swiftly. Concentrate on getting the ideas down. Don't stop to correct your material. You can edit the words, phrases and punctuation later: that's editing, not drafting.

Look for areas where you can clarify information with graphics or tables. For all references, record the complete reference information.

To write for maximum effect, and be as productive as possible, concentrate first on content and meaning. Attention to spelling, grammar, and other details can wait for later. Document production is more effective if you use a simple format for drafting. You'll save time and money if you wait until one of the final production steps to format the document.

Step 2 - Identify the graphics required for the documentation; inform the Senior Technical Writer and/or Graphic Designer.

Step 3 - The Senior Technical Writer ensures that the graphics are designed. If you decide to generate the graphics yourself, be sure that the graphics files are compatible with the software used to produce the end product.

Step 4 - The Senior Technical Writer assembles the first draft with graphics. It can save time in the drafting phase to place figures and tables together at the end of a document. There they can be renumbered easily as the draft matures, with no time spent positioning and repositioning them in the shifting text.

2. Reviewing and Rewriting the First Draft

When the reviewing and rewriting phase starts, the emphasis shifts from the content (i.e. what's communicated) to the clarity of your message (i.e. how it's communicated).

Step 1 — Review the draft for incompleteness, gaps, and overlaps in topics. Reorganize, if needed. If multiple reviewers are involved, the lead author should prepare the review schedule and supply instructions that define the scope of the reviews.

Step 2 — Review the draft as regards writing issues, e.g. clarity, conciseness, and cohesiveness.

Step 3 — Ensure that that the product complies with corporate and legal guidance requirements for specific content.

Step 4 — Rewrite the draft.

Step 5 — Confirm that the draft, as presented, meets the objective established for the product.

Step 6 — If a distribution list is required, discuss it with your client and generate the distribution list.

3. Editing the Next Drafts

Technical editing determines if the words convey the intended message to your target audience. [more on technical editing]

Editing assesses how well your documentation conforms to style guides and client-specified formats.

Before beginning an edit, consult the Senior Technical Writer on how editorial changes/comments will be noted in the document file (e.g. redline).

Before beginning a hard-copy edit, agree with the Senior Technical Writer on the use of standard editing marks.

If you opt to edit the document yourself, several helpful tools are available: your word processing program's spell-checking function provides word counts as well as verifying correct spelling of words written.

Caution about spell checkers: There subject to miss takes of a different kind.

Revising the document usually means reviewing, evaluating, and incorporating (as appropriate) the changes resulting from the editing function.

4. Preparing the Final Draft

Final draft preparation may include formatting the document as it will appear when issued; finalizing the graphic illustrations and the tables; double-checking to ensure that all the components are included and in the proper order.

When preparing the final draft, consider the following:

PSD or TIFF files are recommended for either Mac or PC generated graphics illustrations.
JPG or GIF files are recommended for web publications.

Also, consider how the final document is to be reproduced. The end reproduction process will determine how you embed/handle photo illustrations for your draft document.

Editing Your Own Documentation

Technical writers sometimes fall into the trap of thinking that the user is stupid. I have often heard technical writers say things like "well, if the user can't figure that out, maybe he’s in the wrong job!"

It is my opinion that users should not have to figure anything out. They do not read our documentation for fun, or to expand their minds, or to improve their ability to think. In fact, users would much rather not read our documentation at all. Technical documentation is usually nothing more than a necessary evil, something that users want to get through as quickly and as painlessly as possible. Our job is to make the documentation easy and painless to read. It should never cause a moment's puzzlement, stress, worry, or annoyance. The user should never have to say "huh?"

The main cause of user incomprehension is careless writing. While you may believe that this point is obvious, in fact, I regularly see user guides that contain spelling, grammatical, and punctuation errors, leaps of logic, ambiguities, missing words, and incorrect vocabulary, as well as such peculiar formatting as to make navigation difficult. Even the best writers make these mistakes at times.

While it is better to have someone else review and edit your documents, you can successfully eliminate many problems (all of which are described in more detail in other articles in this site) commonly found in technical documents by following the list below.

In the electronic version of the document:

Perform a spell-check on the document.
Search the document for the following usage infractions:
- passive voice (search for is, are, were, by, etc.); replace with the active voice
- future tense (search for will); replace with the present tense
- conditional tense (search for ould); replace with the present tense
- contractions (search for n't and 've); replace with full words
- non-parallel construction (search for bulleted lists); ensure that the first word of each list item is of the same type (noun, verb)
- unclear antecedent (search for "This"); ensure that "This" is followed by a noun and not a verb
- and/or; replace with ". . . or . . ., or both"
- forbidden words (search for "kill," "abort," and any other words that your company has deemed inappropriate or inexact)
Search the document for broken links.
Perform another spell-check.

After you have completed the steps above, print the document and look for any obvious problems in the following:

headers and footers (incorrect position of elements, incorrect text)
headings (inconsistent capitalization, improper hierarchy)
pagination (incorrect position of page number, chapters beginning on a left-hand page, Roman numerals where there should be Arabic numerals and vice versa)
TOC (incorrect alignment, tab positions, and hierarchy)
table format (improper page breaks, poor alignment)

Finally, read through the entire document while imagining that you are an inexperienced user; rewrite anything that could be misunderstood.

Analytical and problem-solving skills:

what is critical and analytical thinking?
identify the main line of reasoning in what you read or write
critically evaluate the line of reasoning for what you read or write
identify hidden agendas in your sources and in your own writing
evaluate evidence in the text
look for bias
identify the writer's conclusions
critical skills when writing

what is critical and analytical thinking?

Critical analytical thinking is a key part of university study. Many first year students receive comments such as 'not analytical enough' on their early assignments. You will find that you develop your critical and analytical skills as you go through university. In brief, this means looking very closely at the detail and not taking what you read or hear for granted. Your tutors will expect you to:

evaluate how far materials are appropriate, and up-to-date
evaluate how far the evidence or examples used in materials really proves the point that the author claims
to weigh up opinions, arguments or solutions against appropriate criteria
to think a line of reasoning through to its logical conclusion
check for hidden bias or hidden assumptions
check whether the evidence and argument really support the conclusions.

You will need to do this for materials that you read. For example, when you cite a source of evidence for your own arguments, you will need to be sure that the evidence really does support your point, and is accurate and reliable. You are expected to be very critical of your sources, using evidence that has been well researched rather than just your own opinion or what your friends think.

identify the main line of reasoning in what you read or write

What is the main argument or line of reasoning?
Is the line of reasoning clear from the text?

critically evaluate the line of reasoning for what you read or write

Note any statements from the text which strengthen its line of reasoning or prove the argument.
What statements, if any, undermine the argument?
Are points made in the best logical order?

identify hidden agendas in your sources and in your own writing

What hidden agendas might the writer have that might make you question the contents or conclusions of the passage? Consider what they might hope to gain through writing this piece.
What information might be missing that could paint a different picture?

evaluate evidence in the text

What kinds of evidence or examples does the writer use? How reliable and useful is this evidence?
Does it really support the argument? Is the evidence strong enough?
Is the data up-to-date?
Does the text use reliable sources? What are these? What makes you think they are or are not reliable?

look for bias

Do you think there may be any bias in the text? Give reasons and examples.
Comment on any statistics used. Are these likely to give a true and full picture?
Does their writing reflect a political viewpoint?
Who might disagree with the writer?

identify the writer's conclusions

Does the evidence support the writer's conclusions?
Does the line of reasoning lead you to make the same conclusions?

critical skills when writing

Apply the same rigour to your own writing as you do to analysing source materials.
Work out early on what your conclusion is and write this down where you can see it easily. Use this as a guide for what to read, what experiments to run, what examples to use.
Before you begin your main piece of writing for an assignment, write your conclusion on a piece of paper and stick this at the top of the computer. Keep referring back to this to ensure that all of your writing leads towards this conclusion. The outline plan for your writing should map out how each paragraph leads your reader towards the conclusion.
Ensure that your conclusion can be supported by the evidence. If you cannot find the evidence to support your position, you may need to change your conclusion.

Problem Solving Skills:

Problem-Solving Skills

One of the things that employers often identify as being an important quality when hiring college graduates is their problem-solving skills. Students need to develop the ability to apply problem-solving skills when faced with issues or problems that are new to them. The development and use of problem-solving skills also improves learning. Rossman (1993) suggests that when students use problem-solving skills, "The role of the student changes from a passive recipient of information to a participant in the creation of understanding. The problem should captivate students' attention, be meaningful, and allow a wide range of individual responses."

For example, here is one way to present a problem to a class.
Began with the simple question, "What is heat?" Have the students use journals and the chalkboard to record their ideas. Then collectively discuss the ideas and write down a summary of the "best thinking so far" on the subject of heat. Next, say the magic words, "Let's find out" and begin exploring information and experimenting.

In this example, the teacher gathered the students' prior knowledge so that he could assess their background and then decide how best to approach the problem. The students could also be given the opportunity to "own" the problem instead of just being given a problem that they may not have interest in or any prior knowledge about. This can be done by simply asking the students what problems they would like to solve.

Having a process for solving problems helps to keep efforts focused and eliminate becoming stalled. Problems solving usually involved the following steps

Identify the problem
Analyze the problem and gather information
Generate potential solutions
Select and test the solution
Analyze/Evaluate the results

Some of the tools used in problem-solving include:

Brainstorming. This technique is used to encourage participation from each member of the team. Brainstorming helps to break people out of the typical mode of approaching things to produce new and creative ideas. It creates a climate of freedom and openness, which encourages an increased quantity of ideas.
Root Cause Analysis (AKA as the "Five Why's."). The objective of Root Cause Analysis is to find the fundamental cause for a problem. One way is to ask "Why?" five times or more to really get at the root of the problem.
Cause and Effect Diagrams. This diagram is drawn to represent the relationship between an effect (the problem) and its potential causes. The diagram helps to sort-out and relate the interactions among the factors affecting a process.
Pareto Charts. A Pareto Chart shows a frequency distribution where each bar on the chart show the relative contribution of contributing problems to the larger problem. It help to identify where to focus energy to obtain the most positive impact.
Flowcharting. A Flowchart is a map that shows all the steps in a process. It helps in understanding the process and making sure all steps in the process are addressed.
Decision Matrix. A Decision Matrix is useful when faced with making a difficult decision. The options or alternatives are listed in the left-hand column and the selection criteria is listed across the top row. Each of the options are rated against the selection criteria to arrive at the best logical decision.

Develop Your Strategic Skills: Four Steps to Advance Your Career

Strategic skills may be more critical to your success than writing or mathematical skills. Many successful people are poor writers and weak at mathematics, but all are good strategists. Unfortunately, few students are taught the principles of strategy. Even fewer are born good strategists. “Fight” or “flight”—our natural responses to competitive threats—are usually the worst strategies.

Though we commonly use “strategy” to mean “plan,” business environments are too unpredictable for long-term plans. Ask a successful businessperson to describe his or her career path, and the steps described will look chaotic, but that doesn’t mean they weren’t strategic. Strategy is a methodology for systematically spotting and exploiting opportunities to improve your position over time. As taught in Sun Tzu’s The Art of War, this methodology consists of repeating four steps—analysis, vision, movement, and positioning—over and over again.

Sun Tzu taught that everyone holds a unique position in his or her competitive environment that provides the starting point for this methodology. The first step, analysis, details how to gather and organize information about your situation. In your first job, for example, this means not only learning your duties, but learning your co-workers’ jobs, your boss’s problems, your company’s systems, and so on. The principles of strategy teach that this knowledge, not force or strength, is the basis for all future success.

The next step is vision, which defines how you identify and evaluate potential opportunities. Sun Tzu teaches that opportunity naturally arises out of unmet needs, but that selecting the correct opportunity is a challenge. You look for small, nearby steps that you can quickly take to improve your position, but which provide you greater opportunities in the future. For example early in my career, I found that my fellow employees tended to avoid tasks involving computers. Since I saw that computers were going to be a larger and larger part of the future, I began to learn more about them.

Once you spot a likely opportunity, you use movement to safely change your position. Many people can spot opportunities, but they are unable to find ways to move toward them safely, leading them to jump into situations where they fail. Instead, The Art of War teaches us how to make moves that are certain to succeed. In my case, I began gradually taking on computer-related tasks to help my fellow employees. My responsibilities never changed dramatically, but gradually, I became the “go-to guy” for computer knowledge.

The final step in the cycle is positioning, that is, making the change in your situation pay. Positioning can arise from others automatically recognizing your increased value, but more often than not, it means asking for a change in title and pay to reflect your new responsibilities. In my case, knowledge of computers proved to be the key to my success as a salesperson as more and more my customers moved toward computerized ordering systems that I understood better than they did.

This cycle of analysis, vision, movement, and positioning is repeated over and over again to improve your position. As you improve your strategic skills, even large changes, such as moving to a new company or onto a different career, are accomplished almost effortlessly as opportunities present themselves. In my case, I moved from the consumer product industry to the computer industry and eventually to start my own successful software company.

Creating Online Help

Creating Online Help in RoboHelp
from a User Manual in FrameMaker

by Ron Kurtus (revised 24 March 2001)

Many technical communicators are tasked with converting user manuals and other documentation written in Adobe FrameMaker into online help using eHelp (formerly Blue Sky) RoboHelp. The problems they face concern not only going from FrameMaker to RoboHelp but also how to put the content in a form that is effective for online help. The solution is not difficult, provided the writer follows a methodical approach.

Questions you may have include:

What do you need to know before converting the manual?
What is the process of converting to RoboHelp?
What is a way to develop a help project?

This lesson will answer those questions. There is a mini-quiz at the end of the lesson.

Background

After writing a large user manual in FrameMaker for a Wisconsin-based software company, they decided they needed online help for their software product and wanted it done in RoboHelp. This paper provides a case study of the process used to create online help for their product, including the relationship of their product and its user manual, how I converted FrameMaker to RoboHelp and how I developed online help content from the user manual.

Relationship of product and manual

It is important to know what the product does and what its user manual is supposed to achieve before proceeding to the development of the online help.

Job costing product

The user manual was written for a job costing software application. This product helps service companies-such as in the construction industry-monitor the costs of their projects. It allows managers to keep track of such items as material, labor, and subcontractor fees. The application's menu system is arranged according to job cost functions or activities of the user. The menu opens numerous windows or forms for entering or viewing data.

This is a complex application that allows the user to drill down on data in a window and go to sub-windows for further detail. There are over 200 windows available for displaying job data, and each window requires its own procedure in the user manual. The structure of the manual is based on the hierarchical arrangement of the application's menu system.

User manual in FrameMaker

The FrameMaker book was divided into files for each of the major areas of the menu, such as job maintenance, entering transactions and viewing job status. This arrangement-with the descriptive naming of the files-was also applied to the help project. The continuity of file names used in the manual and online help proved useful in keeping track of material.

The purpose of our user manual is to show how to use the numerous job costing windows, as well as the navigation between them. The manual is approximately 450 pages long and has over 250 sections. Most of those sections include a procedure, with several screen shots. When put into WinHelp, each section results in one or more help topic.

Before starting, special paragraph styles were used in the FrameMaker book to maintain consistency and to aid the documentation, and fonts were selected for aesthetic appeal. During the writing, words and phrases were marked for indexing. This was very important, since the index is the most used feature of online help. Indexed items in FrameMaker automatically follow the conversion into RoboHelp.

Converting files to RoboHelp

The process of converting a book written in FrameMaker to the format suitable for using with RoboHelp is relatively straightforward. It consists of converting the FrameMaker files to Microsoft Word and then reformatting the text in Word to make it easy to use in RoboHelp.

Converted FrameMaker files to Word

If a FrameMaker file has any pictures or graphics included, you cannot easily convert that file to Word. Since our manual includes of numerous screen shots, as well as small graphics to indicate such things as mouse movement and warnings, it was necessary to strip all of them from each FrameMaker file. Many of those graphics would probably not be used in the online help or would not fit into the help format, so their removal was not a problem.

Once the graphics were removed, I simply saved the files as Word files. The process was painless, unless a graphic or two was accidentally left in. Since I had previously named the FrameMaker files to reflect their function, the name of the Word files would remain the same.

Reformatted files for use in RoboHelp

Paragraph and font styles from FrameMaker files carried over into Word files. When a Word file is then converted to RoboHelp, the existing font sizes and types are maintained. Each heading is automatically changed to Heading 1 and is made a topic title for the online help.

I wanted to get rid of all the paragraph styles used in the FrameMaker files and make the Word file as "clean" as possible. That may not have been necessary, but I felt getting rid of all the old baggage would prevent potential problems. I changed all the styles, except the headings, to Normal with a font of Arial 9. This would conform to the style commonly used in WinHelp. I also changed all the heading files to Arial 12 for automatic topic construction in RoboHelp.

Developing help project

Once the files were converted to Word, I created a help project, selecting the WinHelp 2000 option in RoboHelp version 7. Two important innovations in this help project were using the outlining feature of Word to aid in organization and changing major procedures into graphics with popup explanations.

Used WinHelp 2000

We decided to use the WinHelp 2000 feature of RoboHelp 7 instead of the standard WinHelp 95 format, since that is the look of the future. WinHelp 2000 appears like Microsoft's HTML Help, which is used in Window 98 and Office 2000 products. The only difference-which is also an advantage-is that WinHelp 2000 is still based on the Windows 95 help engine, thus avoiding possible compatibility problems.

WinHelp 2000 seems easier to navigate than WinHelp 95 since the contents are always available in what they call the Explorer view. Another big advantage of using WinHelp 2000 is that online help is easier to create. You do not have to designate the type of window that a jump goes to. Secondary windows are not used in WinHelp 2000.

A nice feature in WinHelp 2000 is that you can add a graphic as a watermark to your non-scrolling areas. I inserted the company logo as a watermark, such that it displayed to the left of every topic title. A disadvantage of WinHelp 2000-as well as HTML Help-is the fact that the help window is typically much larger than in WinHelp 95 and often covers the view of your application.

Outlined Word files

When you create a new topic in RoboHelp, the topic title becomes Heading 1 in Word. I wanted to be able to distinguish between major sections and their subsections when working in Word, to aid in the organization of my material, but I did not want those topics to look any different in the online help. I used the outline feature of Word, changing the headings of subsections all the way down to Heading 4. This made the section organization very similar to the user manual.

I reformatted the font style of Headings 1 - 4 to be 12 point Arial. Thus, I could examine the outline in Word and easily re-organize the position of the files. This would not affect anything in the online help, but it made it easier to keep things in logical order. I also made the headings light blue to add a little pizzazz and to look good with the company logo in the non-scrolling area of the topic window.

Went from procedures to pictures

In trying to simplify our procedures for filling out the various job costing windows, I realized that in many cases using procedures was not the best way to do things. Also, some of the procedures were well over 10 steps long, which makes them difficult to follow.

Look to user's needs

I realized that the user does not need numbered instructions to fill out text fields or to click on certain buttons. Rather, the person would like to know what specific items mean and what happens if you use the item. Thus, I decided to replace major procedures with a reduced size picture of the window in question and use popup windows to explain each item in the window. Some of those popup windows would include a jump to another topic or choices of other popup windows for more detail.

Outlined popups

After it was made into a topic in RoboHelp, each popup window was outlined as a Heading 6 in Word and the font was set as Arial 9 bold. The "keep with next" paragraph feature was turned off for the popup titles to display in the help. The popup windows were listed under their topic, making them easy to find and edit in Word.

Used reduced screen shots

Using the screen shots of the Advanced Job Cost windows with popup windows proved to be a very effective way to provide help to the user. A major outcome of this idea was the realization that perhaps our user manuals weren't explaining the material in the best way possible. Also, perhaps online help would be a better medium for giving the information the user really needed.

Conclusion

FrameMaker files can be converted to Word files suitable for use in RoboHelp by several methods. With this version of FrameMaker, it is necessary to remove all graphics from the document before converting. Another method, which is less tedious is to copy and paste sections. FrameMaker styles can be removed from the Word file to reduce clutter. RoboHelp's WinHelp 2000 is a good option for getting the HTML Help look but still using the WinHelp 95 engine.

Using outlining in Word can be helpful in keeping your material organized, provided all heading font styles are the same for topic titles. Developing online help can give you insight on a better way to structure your information. In the case of the help for this job costing application, screen shots with popup windows of the various items proved an effective way to assist the user.