Here is your guide to a few of the exciting technology and development topics at STC’s Summit- including the Internet of Things, API documentation, video strategies, content for mobile devices and augmented reality, analytics for big data, tools like Jekyll and GitHub, and code samples for Java, PHP, Python, and Ruby.
I knew I needed a break when I looked at a fortune cookie and the first thing I saw was a comma splice. Instead of reading the fortune, I immediately started looking for superstar word wielder Marcia Riefer Johnston to get a second opinion (we were both at Information Development World). Once my assessment was confirmed – she also said “comma splice” before making any other comment – I started thinking about editing and how to identify good editing.
I’ve been thinking about fonts lately; in particular, unfashionable fonts. If you search for “bad fonts,” you will discover a core set of fonts that no professional will admit to liking. The obvious “offenders” are Comic Sans and Papyrus—they make everyone’s list. But there is surprising agreement on several more, including Copperplate, Arial, Impact, and Brush Script. Others find their way onto both best of and worst of lists. For example, Trajan, Times Roman, Gill Sans, Courier, and Helvetica.
If you’re like me, you use a news aggregator. These are sites like The Huffington Post (news and politics), sports.net (sports), and altsounds (music). Each site focuses on different topics, but they all pull together stories from various sources into a single website. Some stories are generated by the aggregator, but many are from other sources, so when you select a story you’re redirected to another site to view the story.
It’s STC Summit time again, so I thought I’d say a few words about how I view the Summit as a publisher. The People Without a doubt, the main thing I look forward to is reconnecting, in person, with friends Read more
As a publisher, we receive a fair number of book proposals, and frankly, most of them are pretty bad. They range from proposals for books that are clearly outside our niche to proposals that look like they were dashed off Read more
Are you tired of seeing article titles like Seven Secrets to Stunning Success or Ten Tips for Tackling the Terrible Twos? As much as we roll our eyes when the Huffington Post or Digg trots out another of these list Read more
For several years I flew search and rescue missions with the Civil Air Patrol (CAP) in Colorado. One of our jobs was searching for lost hikers and missing airplanes. As part of our training, we learned that when you search Read more
To start out the new year, I reviewed XML Press book sales for the last three years. The actual numbers weren’t a big surprise; we track sales closely. But I decided to look deeper and see what I could learn. Read more
Covers don’t matter, until they do. We just released three books with three completely different covers and three different stories. Each had different challenges, and each had a new lesson. The easy one The first was easy. We continued a Read more