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Vol. 10, Issue 4

April 2008

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LEAD STORIES

	How to Rewrite Content for Reuse: Part II By Pamela Kostur, Partner, Parallax Communications Part II reviews writing modular content and continues with a how-to plan to define modules, create structure, create writers' guidelines, and to build a comprehensive reuse plan based on consistent, structured content.
	DocBook versus DITA: Will the Real Standard Please Stand Up? By Teresa Mulvihill Are these two seemingly rival standards really that different? This article from Teresa Mulvihill answers this question with comparative examples, and allows you, the audience, to decide for yourselves.

OTHER NEWS
- Losing the Paper while Keeping the Patients
- Ticket? What's a Ticket?
- Need to Know More About S1000D?
- The e-book Debate Continues

GREAT WEB SITES YOU'VE LIKELY NOT SEEN
Nintendo's Wii - Not Just for Kids

ASIDE ;-)
What's he going to do when he's Twelve?

QUOTE OF THE MONTH

FAVORITES
Popular articles from recent issues

EXTRA
Upcoming conferences

LEAD STORIES

How to Rewrite your Content for Reuse: Part II
April 30, 2008: DCLNews
In Part I Pamela Kostur outlined the benefits of reusing content, the potential pitfalls, and a strategy for getting there safely. She showed us how to determine where content will be reused, how to structure for ease of reuse, how to map an information architecture, and explained why modular writing makes sense. Part II reviews writing modular content, and continues with a how-to plan to define modules, create structure, create writers' guidelines, and to build a comprehensive reuse plan based on consistent, structured content.
Click for full article

DocBook versus DITA:
Will the Real Standard Please Stand Up?
April 30, 2008: DCLNews
More than a decade ago DocBook became the standard for the few brave souls forging ahead in XML publications. DocBook offered a cheaper and more efficient way to publish to multiple formats. Single-sourcing became a reality for hardware and software companies. However, in recent years, many in technical documentation publications have proclaimed DITA as the standard for XML documentation. DITA offered architecture in which to create and publish structured content. Are these two seemingly rival standards really that different? This article from Teresa Mulvihill answers this question with comparative examples, and allows you, the audience, to decide for yourselves.
Click for full article

OTHER NEWS

Losing the Paper while Keeping the Patients
April 2008: Advanceweb.com
Launching an electronic document project can be painful, especially if you have to maintain services while you're implementing. It helps to be able to learn from others. In this very instructive article, five brave health care facilities share what went wrong with their launches, how they fixed problems before things got worse, and what they might have done differently.
Click for full article

Related health care links:
• Some Personal Observations on Electronic Medical Records (EMR)
• The 38 Cent Medical Checkup-Coming to a Clinic Near You?
• e-Prescriptions Saving Lives and Money

Ticket? What's a Ticket?
April 1, 2008: Timesonline.com; March 18, 2008: NYT.com
In what could become some of life's liberating experiences, paperless boarding passes and concert tickets can now be texted to your cell phone. Using a unique code within the message, it can then be scanned at the gate for verification. Artists like Fergie, Crowded House, and more recently Canadian indie band, Tokyo Police Club have used it. And while paperless airline tickets have been popular for a while, they still required a paper boarding pass. However, Continental Airlines now allows passengers "to pass through security and board the plane without (ever) handling a piece of paper." No word yet on what happens if your phone battery dies, you accidentally erase the message, or how airlines verify the cell phone actually belongs to the person holding it.
Click for full article - Timesonline.com
Click for full article - NYT.com

Need to Know More About S1000D?
March 20, 2008: Aerospace Online
This free whitepaper from Continental DataGraphics (CDG) gives you the basics on S1000D and much more. Though used primarily for technical publications, many S1000D evangelists believe it's appropriate for many other publication types. "Even the US Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) are experimenting with use of the specification on document management initiatives." Register to download this whitepaper and find out:

• What S1000D is
• How S1000D works
• Advantages and benefits of S1000D

Click for full article

The e-book Debate Continues
April 8, 2008: teleread.org
The ability to "reach more readers, more efficiently" is making progress when it comes to book publishing, in the opinion of Peter Osnos Senior Fellow for Media at the Century Foundation. In fact it's now possible to send a raw manuscript through editing, design, and proofreading, put it up for sale and make it #110 on Amazon's overall listing long before a paper version is ever printed thanks to e-publishing. But not everyone is so excited. One sophomore at Northeastern University had this to say: "I wouldn't buy an electronic textbook. It hurts my eyes to read the screen for so long and I can't even go back and take notes."
Click for full article
Related article

GREAT WEB SITES YOU'VE LIKELY NOT SEEN

Nintendo's Wii - Not Just for Kids

With all the whiz-bang technology in today's kid's toys, some scientists are finding that buying a Wii might be an economical way to acquire their professional lab equipment. Johnny Chung Lee developed a way to use a Nintendo® Wii ™ remote to turn virtually any flat surface into a Smart Board and to interact with any computer simply by waving one's hands in the air. His web site has all the instructions to build them yourself.

There's also lots of brainstorming going on at wiimoteproject.com including ideas on a Wiimote control car and a way to create harmless nighttime light-art graffiti on your favorite park bench. The site, which is really a giant message board with wii support and a wii wiki, has grown to hundreds of inventive ideas thanks to the age of social media.
See Johnny Chung Lee's Wii projects
Visit the Wiimote Project

Have an interesting digital archive you'd like to share? Contact us digitalarchives@dclab.com

ASIDE

What's he going to do when he's Twelve?
April 2008: Network World
Eleven-year-old Jon Penn is the new network manager for his school. Since taking on the task, he's mapped out a network, updated the computers to Windows 2000 by removing obsolete network interface cards, Ethernet, video, print and sound drivers, and hopes to manage the system from a central network by next fall. But he didn't get the job just because he's a whiz kid. He did it to help his mom.
Click for full article

Improving Your Legacy Content with Content Tagging
http://www.dclab.com/legacy_content.asp

EXTRA

Upcoming conferences

Ultramain User Conference 2008 May 11-13, 2008, Hyatt Regency Tamaya Resort and Spa, Albuquerque, NM. Visit the DCL Exhibit.

PTC/USER World Event , June 1-4, 2008, Long Beach Convention Center, Long Beach, CA. See the DCL presentation.

Mark Logic User Conference June 10-12, 2008, Intercontinental Hotel, San Francisco, CA. Visit the DCL Exhibit.