By Neil Perlin | Fellow
This column presents overviews of new technologies that may affect technical communicators in the near future. If you have feedback, or would like to suggest topics for subsequent columns, please contact Neil Perlin at nperlin@concentric.net.
Ever had a technology sneak up on you? There’s no one clear event to which you can point and say "this is when it happened." Instead, the technology slowly insinuated itself until it reaches a critical mass that you suddenly notice. This happened recently when I spoke with consultant Karl Hakkarainen for a blog post he was writing called "Documentation’s New Cloud Models" (http://developinthecloud.drdobbs.com/author.asp?section_id=2283&doc_id=247452).
I hadn’t thought of myself as working in the cloud but, as Karl and I spoke, I realized that I was doing that more and more. In this column, I’ll describe three examples of cloud-based work that I’ve done recently, then draw some conclusions as to what the cloud might mean to tech comm.
What Is "the Cloud"?
From Wikipedia, at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud_computing:
"Cloud computing is the use of computing resources (hardware and software) … delivered as a service over a network (typically the Internet). The name comes from the use of a cloud-shaped symbol as an abstraction for the complex infrastructure it contains in system diagrams. Cloud computing entrusts remote services with a user’s data, software and computation."
An analogy—think of electricity that’s generated somewhere and delivered to users over the grid. We don’t know or care where it’s generated as long as a lamp lights up when we plug it in. The cloud is similar—we don’t know where the data is stored and processed as long as it’s there when we plug our PC into a network.
The cloud isn’t perfect. Corporate users have concerns about security that cloud vendors are working to handle. And yet, for nonproprietary data or noncritical work, the cloud has some benefits.
Example 1: ViziApps Studio
ViziApps Studio (www.viziapps.com) is a mobile app development tool that I’ve used since 2010 and for which I’m a certified trainer and consultant. ViziApps is completely cloud-based. Neither the tool nor the apps that I’m working on are on my PC. Everything is in the cloud and, as long as it all works, I don’t care where.
And, by and large, it all does. The tool will sometimes slow down due to network traffic loads. A timeout feature logs me off if I’m inactive too long. It can be hard to keep the training up-to-date because, with the tool on the network, it’s in continuous-release mode; features may get added or changed overnight. But if a bug pops up, engineering’s fix applies to any computer that I may use. No point releases to worry about installing.
Working in the cloud like this isn’t that new. If you use Google Docs (now Google Drive), you’re working in the cloud. But working in the cloud can have some interesting and unexpected benefits.
For example, I can use ViziApps Studio on any computer without worrying about what version is on what computer. That’s expected. What I didn’t expect was how the tool handles photos taken with the iPhone or Android camera as part of an app. Rather than my having to name and store photos, they’re named and stored in the cloud automatically. All I have to do is call the URL for a photo, knowing that all the housekeeping details are handled for me by the cloud software. That brings up my second example.
Example 2: Moving Help Project Resources Into the Cloud
MadCap (www.madcapsoftware.com) Flare projects store images with the project and distribute them with the deliverable files. This means that the deliverable for a graphic-rich help system can use a lot of disk space. I encountered this issue, and an unexpected cloud-based solution, in July when I wrote help for some of the database functionality in ViziApps Studio. The final help system was about 20 megs big—a lot of graphics.
Michael Kuperstein, ViziApps’ CTO, suggested that it might be possible to reduce the size by removing the graphic files from the deliverable, storing them separately in the cloud, and replacing the paths in the img commands in the help topics with the URLs to the now cloud-based images. I’d never thought to do this but it seemed feasible. A call to MadCap support indicated that it should work. And it did. Moving the graphics files into the cloud reduced the deliverable’s size from 20 megs to 3, with no slowdown in the display of the topics. So, with no real difficulty, a "traditional" help project moved into the cloud.
Example 3: Cloud-Based Training With SnapGuide
If you use elearning tools like Captivate, Camtasia, and Mimic, you have to move the deliverable files up onto a server. It’s not inherently difficult, but what if the uploading could be done automatically for you? Enter SnapGuide (http://snapguide.com/). (Thanks to STC member Craig Prichard for pointing me to this tool.)
SnapGuide is a smartphone-based tool for quickly creating training slide shows, like a very light version of Captivate, et al. It basically integrates the phone’s camera and note-taking capability to create slides that combine photos and textual instructions. To teach someone to change a tire, for example, you’d take a photo of each step, add instructions to each photo, and save all the "slides" as a slide show.
SnapGuide isn’t as powerful and feature-rich as the mainstream e-learning tools. But I was able to use it to create a slide show showing how to use Windows 7’s calculator to convert a number from decimal to binary, in fifteen minutes, half of which was spent fumbling since I’d never used SnapGuide before. My best time to create the same movie using Captivate, which I’ve used for ten years since its inception as RoboDemo, is about 45 minutes.
In addition to being simple and quick, SnapGuide offers another benefit—it moves the movie up into the cloud for you. All you need to do is distribute the URL and anyone can run the movie on a mobile device or on a full-sized screen. The housekeeping has moved into the cloud.
Summary
The idea of moving our applications and files into the cloud isn’t exotic by itself now, although its use for tech comm may still be. But look at specific tasks you perform to see if the cloud may make them more efficient or effective in unexpected ways. (Like my moving the graphics to the cloud for the ViziApps help project and reducing the deliverable’s size by 85%.) After that, I’ll be paying more attention to other tasks that I perform to see how the cloud might benefit them.
Neil Perlin (nperlin@nperlin.cnc.net) is an internationally known consultant, strategist, trainer, and developer for online content in all forms from traditional online help to mobile. To this, he brings 33 years of experience in tech comm, 27 in online formats and tools past, present, and future (having represented STC to the W3C). Neil is MadCap Certified for Flare and Mimic, Adobe Certified for RoboHelp, and ViziApps Certified for the ViziApps mobile app development platform. He provides these services through his company, Hyper/Word Services (www.hyperword.com). He is an STC Fellow and the founder and manager of the Bleeding Edge stem at the STC Summit.
