Make Writing Documentation 101% Easier With ScreenSteps

ScreenstepsIn my consulting work and product creation I have to write a LOT of step by step instructions.

When creating these instructions you basically have two choices:

  1. Use a video screen capture tool to make a walk-through, edit the video down, add voice over, convert to a usable video size and format, upload or send to client.
  2. Create a document using screen grabs, annotate with explanatory text, compile into a PDF, send to client or upload

For the first case I use a Mac application called ScreenFlow, while PC users will likely have heard of Camtasia. These work fine for video, where video is warranted and when you have the time and quiet to do this.

The second though becomes a laborious task. It is necessary to do lots of fiddly little activities, and switch between multiple applications.

That is where ScreenSteps comes in. What it does is enable you to be far more productive with the step by step instruction process, either using the built in tools (all the way from capturing images, adding arrows and annotations, through to exporting as PDF), or by integrating with your favorite applications.

You might think that integrating with your existing tools goes counter to what I just said about it removing task switching, but in fact this app does something very cool and forehead-slappingly obvious that I can not believe I did not already have a utility that does it.

What it does is watches your clipboard and any time you add an image to the clipboard it pastes it into the step by step workflow that you are creating. Once you are done you can stop this “recording” and then go through adding instructions and anything else that needs to be clarified. At the end you can export as Word to finish the document editing part, rather than send directly to a finished PDF.

You can even create your own templates to further automate the process.

There is a free trial, after which you need to buy either

I think it is a bargain considering all the time I will save.

See below for an example that I just exported:

Example

iPhone 3GS First Impressions

iPhone 3gs

A while ago I broke all the geek rules on this blog by declaring Why I am Waiting for iPhone

iPhoneThe iPhone is coming to the UK this weekend and I am shocked myself to tell you this, but I will NOT be in the queue to grab one.

The problem was not that I did not like the phone – I really did, the problem was that there were several features that I really needed.

I have gotten used to retrieving emails at the top of mountains, skype chat on frozen lakes, and remote managing servers from the beach. This gadget has allowed me to blog on planes and on motorways, and catch up with documents in several continent’s Starbucks.

…

Yes, I am an Apple-loving geek, and many of the iPhone features do have me lusting over the device, but after careful research I have found not one but ten deal-breakers:

1. Modem
2. 3G
3. GPS
4. App Support – (Skype, Remote Desktop, VNC)
5. Edit Word or PDF
6. Removable Storage
7. Camera + MMS
8. Downloads
9. Bluetooth
10. Java / Flash

You might be already aware that most of these are now fixed in the iPhone 3GS, so today I queued up with the other geeks early and grabbed my iPhone from the Apple store!

I did not keep my Pocket PC based smartphone for long. In fact for the last few months I have been using a combination of an iPod Touch and an aging Nokia n95 with the 3g connection shared via wifi. This gave me confidence that the platform could do most of what I need to do and my requirements actually changed over time.

Let us have a look at my check list to see how things have changed …

  1. Modem – You can now tether the phone to provide laptop internet data access but expect additional fees unless you jailbreak your phone to unlock it. I am disappointed from an over charging point of view, especially as you are supposed to get unlimited data!
  2. 3G – This was fixed in the previous iteration, but supposedly this version ought to be able to get the full 3G 7.2Mbps HSDPA speeds.
  3. GPS – Not only is there “Assisted GPS” support, but a compass for directional navigation (useful for when you are on foot), and screen rotation within turn by turn directions in apps like Tom Tom.
  4. App Support – (Skype, Remote Desktop, VNC) – Remote desktop support was the first to go, I no longer do any server management – all of that is outsourced and I am happy that way! But you can get VNC clients for iPhone if you need to. There is Skype, kind of. It is not 100% perfect (for example right now it is refusing to import my contacts) but it is there.
  5. Edit Word or PDF – You can not edit as far as I know, but using the Files Lite application I have transferred 200mb of PDF and other office documents for viewing, and you can also open them from email. Since I wrote the previous article, Google Docs has become far more popular for “road warriors” so I expect this to be less of an issue anyway.

    At this point it is important that I mention that Cogniview (the company that lets me have fun on this blog) is the maker of the top PDF To Excel converter. And now onwards with the iPhone review…

  6. Removable Storage – No removable flash memory but I have signed up for the MobileMe “cloud storage” service and expect that will mitigate this problem.
  7. Camera + MMS – Yup :) In fact I am pretty happy with the autofocus 3mp camera, and video results, see below.
  8. Downloads – There are various workarounds, including some that involve jailbreak, but file management is still an issue as Apple seems to want to force us to only use the App store and be limited with what we can download.
  9. Bluetooth – Bluetooth is present but not great, an area for improvement. In fact the staff at the Apple store today said it was the one area where they were disapointed. That said, I am not a big BlueTooth user so can live without it.
  10. Java / Flash – I have come round to the thinking that the lack of Java and Flash is not a big deal, now that the YouTube solution of a custom application has been brought up to spec with the user login now enabled.

So I am super happy :)

Applications I have installed are:

The camera quality is very good compared to previous models. Although the megapixel count is not as high as the n95 at only 3mp, the autofocus does make a big difference to the actual results. See below.

Mon-keh

Video is not only good quality, but you can even edit right in the phone!

(I forgot to rotate the phone, but it does do landscape)

So, over all happy.

Let me know what you think in the comments …

Excel Productivity Video

This is the first video from Cogniview’s Excel productivity training.

In my opinion, the approach outlined in this video is the cornerstone of productivity (Whether you are an Excel user or not). I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments.

Part I

Part II

How Do You Create a Powerful StumbleUpon Profile?

Top Stumblers

It is clear from website traffic reports that not all stumbles are created equal.

Traditionally the rule has been to get as many votes as possible. Quantity is of course an important factor, it is a lot like a popularity contest in this regard. Using the share features, the web based toolbar, and Twitter to garner more votes has become commonplace.

Variety is also important, you do not want the same faces voting on the same domains, otherwise it looks suspect and the system shuts those votes down or discounts them.

There is more to it though. As well as quantity of votes, there seems to be a quality score going on as well.

  1. Weak versus powerful accounts send fewer initial visitors
  2. Votes after discovery amplify the original strong or weak vote, almost like a multiplier of an initial score
  3. More subsequent votes amplify the original review more or less strongly

Getting votes from strong accounts is essential if you are going to reap the full benefits of StumbleUpon.

So how do you create a good StumbleUpon profile?

Here is the official stumbleupon definition:

Top Stumblers are our most active and helpful community members. These members frequently suggest new sites to be included in our database, and frequently rate new sites they stumble upon.

When you submit a site, it is shown to other stumblers (for evaluation). If those people like your suggestion (by rating it I-like-it! often) your community ‘Karma’ will increase.

Your Top Stumbler rank will also increase by frequent rating. You do not need to rate every site you see, but if it stands out as particularly excellent (a website you really like) or bad (you don’t like it, or it is spam), make sure you rate it. This regular participation will increase your Top Stumbler rank.

That is useful to know for growing your own power account. Essentially, participate. A lot.

As well as having our own good accounts, we also need to make friends with other stumblers. How do you recognize someone who has a good account?

These are the very top StumbleUpon users. Notice anything about them?

Essentially a strong account will show a level of activity over the norm, a high number of “favorites”, and a high number of “subscribers”. Plus you can tell if they are a quality user, see how many testimonials they have and the kind of bookmarks they favorite.

Also look to see your compatibility rating to see if they like the same stuff as you do.

If you take a look at my StumbleUpon profile, I have a fairly good account even though I spend less than 30 mins a week on it. It is not up there with the best, but pretty decent.

There are a good number of positive reviews of my stumbling, and I actually participate in the service rather than pimping my own stuff :)

That is the key to most social networking, it is about participating and adding to the community rather than just taking from it.

With StumbleUpon what you put in you get back out. Your participation is rewarded.

As I say above, you do not want to be stumbling the same domains over and over, and that includes your own.

The main benefit of having a powerful account is to help other people. By doing this favor you will get noticed – people look at their web stats and see traffic coming from StumbleUpon, then look to see who submitted and reviewed.

Consider it another valuable “pay forward” tool in your social networking portfolio!

Get More Organized with Evernote

How do you organize the tons of content that you are hit with each day? What do you do with the ideas, notes and to-do items that spring to mind throughout your work?

As a social media fan I have been getting a lot of use out of social bookmarking tools such as Delicious and even StumbleUpon. This has helped me store away web links, and organize them by tagging, but not the actual content.

For storing actual content that I find I have been using an excellent tool from Iterasi which allows you to “notarize” pages and save them online in folders and tagged for later access as if frozen in carbonite.

Evernote is a tool that aims to do both tasks, but in addition does a whole lot more, including text recognition in images – even hand written notes!

So you can record

I only heard about Evernote today from @masontech from DidIGetThingsDone, and I am glad I did.

The very best part, and the item that was most compelling to myself, was the fact that it syncs online, desktop and your iPhone. This means you have access to this content archive and all your notes wherever you are, even from your pocket.

So you can grab a piece of content from an ecommerce store or online review using your browser bookmarklet or plugin, and store it on the Evernote website. Later you can pick that note up while shopping on your iPhone. When you get home you can log into your desktop application and organize everything.

Very cool.

It does not end there. You Get Things Done fans can use Evernote to help you with your GTD productivity processes, as shown in this article. Very cool.

For now I am using a free account but will be upgrading to the premium account as it is only $5 a month which upgrades your capacity, speeds up image processing and removes the advertising.

Do you use Evernote or anything like it? Please let me know in the comments …

3 Seldom Used Ways to Get Quality Links to Your Blog

Every site owner is looking for more links. Links boost search engine rankings, while sending direct, quality traffic.

When discussing link building you normally see only two tactics really discussed; linkbait and pitching/link-begging. There are other, potentially more effective ways though that bloggers seldom use.

Creative Commons

The first example of using fresh and free content to get links is through Creative Commons licensing. By setting a CC license on your content you can tell other people that your content is available to use under certain circumstances and with certain restrictions. So one example might be that you can use my content for free provided you do not change it and that you link back to where you got it from.

As the unethical people will copy your content any way, and Google is getting much better at recognizing the originator of a piece of content, the risks are low, and you do in fact get a steady trickle of links from this.

By using the CC WordPress plugin you can essentially make your CC license “official” and it can also appear in CC content searches.

Read more about Creative Commons for Bloggers here on this very blog.

Article Marketing

Article, or Ezine marketing is an older form of link building where you write articles and then submit them to special sites called Ezine Directories. The most famous is EzineArticles.com

People who need a steady stream of new content for their own newsletters, blogs or web sites then come along and are allowed to copy these articles providing they keep in place your author “resource box”.

This can provide both direct traffic and generate links for you. The direct traffic comes mainly from people finding your content on the directory site through less competitive search phrases due to these directories growing a good amount of search engine visibility. When web masters utilize your content on their sites, or their email newsletters appear in a web archive, that shows up as a fresh link to your site.

Guest Posting

Guest posting is a type of article marketing where you write for free for someone else in return for a link back to your own site. These are more personally negotiated, and take a bit more effort, but have the benefit of you being able to target which blogs you want to write for to get the best results, and can often have a link both from your author attribution and, if on topic and not forced, within the content.

You need to start the relationship first with the blog owner. Comment with intelligent responses, and befriend the blog owner in social media, that way you will be familiar and they will have an idea of the kind of ideas you are capable of. Then get in touch with some potential headline ideas for discussion. Do not send a fully written piece until you have at least briefly discussed what the blog needs and audience.

Summary

Getting links for your blog is not just about emailing site owners with pitches or link bait, so think creatively how you can get more links while helping other people share your content.