bookmark_borderWriter River

I try and follow as many technical writing blogs as I can but beyond the dedicated blogs there are other good sources of information and ideas out there. Finding these additional articles can be tricky as they can be found in a huge number of different sources.

To help with this Tom Johnson set up Writer River as a way to allow anyone (with an account) to post links to interesting blog posts and articles. The website has been running for a whlie now and continues to provide links to useful and topical articles.

I monitor an RSS feed of the website and whilst that is adequate it does mean that I can go a week or more without checking which can lead to a build of too many links to check. That usually means I skim the link titles rather than click through them all and the likelihood is that I’ve missed something that may have been useful.

So I’m delighted to hear that Writer River now has an auto-updating Twitter feed. Every link posted on Writer River will be pinged over to Twitter, and as I’m following Writer River on Twitter, I’ll see the links as they are added, increasing the chances of me taking a few minutes to click through to the linked website.

Time will tell but this is either a great use of social networking tools, allowing me to keep bang up to date and probably meaning I won’t skip any links, or another challenge to my time keeping, a quick check of Twitter during a context-switch* moment at work may lead to a longer break than I had intended?

We’ll see but, as ever, Tom continues to push his ideas forward to the benefit of us all.

bookmark_borderWriter River is back!

I dropped Tom an email about Writer River last week, and he alluded to some of the issues he mentions in his post in his reply. Little did I know that Writer River was soon to be hacked!

I love the idea behind the website though, so it’s good to see Tom is still keen on pushing things forward. If you previously registered I’d urge you to go back and register on the new version of the website. The premise is the same, a website which will collate the best Technical Communications stories and blog posts.

Head over to Writer River, the more people who sign up and join in, the better it will become.

bookmark_borderThe heat is on

Just a quick note to say it’ll be a little on the quiet side here over the next two weeks as I’m going to be a little hectic. I’ve got a product release (deadline of a week tomorrow), a new developer website to launch (deadline of a week on Monday), and after that a week long series of retrospective meetings that I’m facilitating. All of that takes me through to about the 21st of July.

That plus the remortgaging of our house and the imminent launch of iPhone 3G means when I’m not here, I’ll be asleep!

Until my return, check out my TechComms RSS List (download or view online), or take a cruise on the Writer River.

See you on the flip side.

bookmark_borderWriter River

The unstoppable Tom Johnson has cranked out a new Digg-style website aimed at collating the best blog posts and articles about technical communications, as voted for by registered users (that’s you!). It’s a great idea, and I really hope it takes off (whilst secretly hoping that at least ONE of my posts makes the front page one day!).

WriterRiver.com is a social news site for technical communicators, which means you can both submit and vote on news stories. When you submit stories, they initially appear on the Upcoming Stories tab. After a story receives 5 votes, it moves to the Front Page Stories tab.

Go and check it out, get registered and start submitting.