Random burblings since 1999
Upgrade complete – sidebar borked.
Apparently the introduction of the new tagging doo dah means a table is now no longer valid, the table that quite a few plugins were using, one of which was powering my miniblog posts.
Hence why they’ve all, suddenly, appeared here.
So, until I get some free time to get the code sorted out myself, this is how it’s gonna be… mind you, maybe a switch to single column…
Needless to say, portions of the internet are abuzz, discussing the ins, outs and possible impact of the way Radiohead have handled their recent album sales (they are allowing the buyer to set the price when downloading the MP3s, and yes, you can set the price to zero – more on that here).
Having heard on the radio that the band won’t be releasing (at least not in the short term) the sales figures, I am starting to wonder why they did it. Aside from the obvious “all the money goes to us and not a record label” reason of course. Protecting their artistic investment is fairly valid, rather than having earlier versions and whatnot floating around the internet, and it is pretty obvious that the band don’t place value on chart positions and so on.
However they must have known that releasing their album, without a record label, through their own website, would be looked on as a test case for a way forward in the industry. There seems to be the view that all record labels are evil, and the people that work for them are idiots. That is patently not true, yet they do seem to be slow to react, and let’s face it, there is hardly a lack of opinion in this area…
So, if Radiohead aren’t going to release figures then the record labels won’t find out if it was a success or, and you never know, if it failed. More importantly the same holds true for other bands.
But, on the flip side of this, the way people are dealing with this neatly focusses attention back on the consumer. By allowing you to set the price of purchase, the price of your integrity, then perhaps this is a (rather bizarre) yardstick of how humanity is fairing.
When it comes to digital content, it’s not that hard to find out where to go to be able to steal it. It’s a little like entering a new neighbourhood and learning which bars to hang out in to get the best score… umm… allegedly. However many people, myself included, argue that what we are really doing is previewing the content first, before purchasing it later on.
As an aside: TV shows are an odd one. I downloaded the entire first series of Heroes from the internet, but as I pay my license fee (and it’s shown on BBC2, yes?) then surely I’ve already paid for it?? Ditto for 24 and Smallville which I pay for with my Sky package and by being blasted with adverts. No?
Music wise, this kind of ‘preview downloading’ is akin to the days when you could stand in your local record store and ask to listen to the latest Adam Ant album. However as no-one shops in stores these days, and typically most online music stores only offer a 30sec snippet from which you can preview a track (completely useless for a lot of Pink Floyd tracks, many of which seem to just be starting around the 25sec mark), then currently this is the only way to replicate such a service.
Except it’s not, is it. Services like Pandora, and Last.fm allow you to search for, and listen to, entire tracks and albums. So why do people still download them?
Because it’s free.
It doesn’t cost anything (internet access prices aside), and you have no emotional buy in when you download music tracks from the internet. You only have your guilt to deal with and the price that you pay for that varies from person to person.
The question then becomes, how many people will suffer the guilt, and how many will “do the right thing”?
Is it just me, or are we seeing a notable growth in the tools and voices linked to our profession? Are we, the technical communicators (writers, authors, designers, whatever..) finally clued in to the internet and making the best use of the global space? Are the tools we use starting to touch other areas of our organisations, thus raising our profile, which raises the bar for the tools, which expands the reach, which raises the profile…
It’s just me, isn’t it?
I’ll happily admit that, a couple of years ago, I was growing apathetic with this industry. I dreamt of working in a zoo, tending to cute fluffy animals and having nary a worry in the world (and likely not enough money to pay the bills). Since starting a new job in January this year I’ve rediscovered my vigour and enthusiasm, and that seems to have been matched by the tool vendors. I would also try and lay claim to the growth in technical communications focussed blogs and websites but that’s a little generous of me I fear.
FrameMaker has launched a new version and a new suite, AuthorIT has launched a new version, MadCap blazed onto the scene (geddit) and ruffled some feathers, and the XML focussed single source arena seems far more active than it was. Now, I’m happy to admit that it may just be that I happen to be more aware of what is going on, but the coincidences are a little too high to ignore.*
Of course what this really means is that, at some point in the near(ish) future, people are going to start to select a tool. The XML guys are reasonably future proofed in that respect for, as they all share a common file format/standard, the choice of tool isn’t the locked in choice it once was. In a way, AuthorIT is in the same boat as they can roundtrip through XML, even though they store their information natively in a database.
But our dear old FrameMaker, despite the new version and a seemingly re-invigorated development team, now sits as the odd one out. When I heard that Adobe had launched a Technical Communications Suite I presumed, instantly, that it would mean “instant single sourcing”. Possibly a simple CMS backend, from which you could pluck topics and edit them in FrameMaker or RoboHelp. At the very least a proper roundtrip between those two tools and, as we now know, we don’t get any of that. In fact Adobe have introduced even tighter coupling between their two applications and I’m still trying to figure out if that is a genius move, or a final throw of the dice.
Regardless of which tool you choose, or which blogs you read, this profession is growing. Links are being established between other groups, and as software continues to increase in complexity the understanding of the need for good documentation is continuing to rise. I’m certainly spending less time explaining both what I do, and why it is needed and that can’t be anything but a good thing.
The ability to self-publish has created millions of “writers”, and an astonishing change to the way people view the written word, in a very short time. Some of those people write about technical issues, indulging themselves by sharing their hobbyist knowledge and, as such, they are both the subject matter experts and the technical writer of their niche.
As a profession, our ability to collate, filter, sort, and organise information, tailoring it for the right audience, providing that information at the right time, in the right place, will be the key differentiator. The playing field is levelling out, but we have some tricks up our sleeve yet.
man vs cursor. A silly little animation. Me loves t’internets.
Weird that Radiohead didn’t include cover art with the download of In Rainbows, I’m currently using this image though.
