Author: TechCommGeekMom

I found this article interesting, because it relates closely to my wallet (and everyone’s wallet), but it also relates to the availablility of internet services around the world and the availability for mobile devices as well. In my area, part of the internet package or bundle is that you have access to public wi-fi if your provider has access available to it. In other words, if I’m at the supermarket rather than my home, and the public wifi from Comcast is available and received while I’m in the supermarket, then I can sign-in and enjoy the Comcast wifi signal at no extra cost, as I’m already a Comcast subscriber.  This is fine, as many areas in the US have Comcast. However, it’s not flawless, because if I’m travelling by car or any other transportation, each time I come to a new transmission tower, I have to sign in on my mobile device again and again and again….If I’m stationary, then it’s fine. 

But it does leave one to question why the general pricing of broadband or any other internet services varies so much from country to country? Is it the amount of demand that brings on greedy providers?  I would imagine that as access becomes more affordable, it will allow more and more users to take advantage of what the internet has to offer, whether it’s social media, information or m-learning.  Hopefully, this will all stabilize soon so that costs are more feasible for all.

–techcommgeekmom 

This is a short, but interesting article. What people often forget is that language is always changing. That includes how made-up words, like "e-mail" or "email" (whichever you prefer) evolve into its final form. I will admit I’ve used them interchangeably, although I try to be consistent in a single document if I can. I tend to think of "e-mail" being more formal than "email". Isn’t that funny that I think that way? Anyway, this article shows how major style guide leaders are starting to decide for us what’s acceptable and what’s not. 

–techcommgeekmom

Love this article! Now that I’m starting to be a person who is attending more of these tech comm conferences, I have a deeper appreciation for what is noted in this guide, for sure. This also appeals to the "geek mom" in me as well. (Did you know that Douglas Adams had written an episode or two for "Doctor Who"? See, I told you I was geeky.)  This is a marvelously written article!

–techcommgeekmom

Another great blog post by one of my favorite content strategy gurus, Val Swisher. I admit I don’t know what is involved in the Agile method (although I’ve heard of it), what I’m gleaning from it is that information should be posted in a timely manner and in a way that can be changed on the fly. I have to agree with Val, based on the example that she uses in the article, that this doesn’t always fly well, and a strategy is needed. I’ve spent the last year cleaning up an internal website that definitely did not think about reuse or taxonomy–or it didn’t follow taxonomy as closely as it should have. I’ve been working on setting things up so that information can be found and retrieved more easily than originally set up. Having worked on this site for almost a year, I know if the information is in the CMS, and if I’m not sure, provided I set it up, then I can find it easily. If it was done by my predecessor, then I have a much harder time locating where it might be. In rebuilding the back-end of this website for the past year, strategy was everything!

–techcommgeekmom