Tag: technical communications suite

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A bold move into the wild blue yonder, aka the Cloud!

Posted on by TechCommGeekMom

After my recent run-in with scammers, I’ve now come to better appreciate cloud computing and everything that is has to offer. It’s not that I didn’t appreciate it before, but in having to restore several items and back up others very recently, I was glad that I had several cloud storage accounts set up, and that much of my software could be restored easily because I had downloaded them from cloud accounts. Some of the programs on my laptop which I didn’t worry about included most of my Adobe software. Why? Most of the programs I use were downloaded through the Creative Cloud 6 subscription I have. I’m glad I made that move, instead of getting the disks. Not that the disks would be bad–they would do the job too, but at least I’d have the latest and greatest on my system, no matter what.

Well, I was just reading on Twitter from @saibalb79, @maxwellhoffmann and @AdobeTCS that the Adobe Technical Communications Suite 4 is cloud-bound! I think that’s awesome, really, and rather forward thinking. It supports mobile initiatives for some computers, like the impending Microsoft Surface, to be able to access the information more easily, but also for the rest of us as well. It appears that the subscription is offered either monthly at US$99.00 per month, or when signing up for a one-year plan, it would be US$69.00 per month. That seems like a pretty good deal if you ask me! Since I already have a copy of TCS4, I won’t need to subscribe for a while, but for those who have not upgraded yet, this seems like a great opportunity.

I think what’s also great about this is the fact that it works well with the idea of using Creative Cloud 6 apps in conjunction with the apps in TCS4. Imagine…always being up-to-date because you have subscriptions. I know that Microsoft is starting to promote this concept more as well, but knowing that Adobe is trying to stay on the cutting edge and keep up with technological needs and taking advantage of the cloud more and more is rather proactive thinking, in my opinion.

You can find out more by checking out Adobe’s website at this link: adobe.ly/Qp18q9.

Now tell me, do Flare or Doc-To-Help, or any of those other tech comm software suites offer cloud services like this? Let me know if I’m missing something…I’ll gladly present those to my tech comm readers as well, but I haven’t heard anything as of yet…

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Adobe has Tech Comm Suite 4 Superheroes? Find out in August!

Posted on by TechCommGeekMom
Scan of the Adobe TCS4 software cover by TechCommGeekMom
Scan of the Adobe TCS4 software cover by TechCommGeekMom

Adobe has a lot going on this year with, seemingly, many of their major product lines. First, they upped the ante with the Creative Suite package by not only upgrading it, but putting it in the cloud and creating the Creative Cloud service, allowing users access to many more products for a fairly reasonable monthly fee (especially with the starter fee for students and those upgrading from ancient editions like myself). I love having access to more products this way.

Then, some other major productivity tools also got updated in a major way as well, namely the Technical Communications Suite 4, which included the latest updates of Framemaker, Robohelp, Captivate, and now included the latest update to Presenter as well as several other programs.  This is a big deal! I’m so thrilled that all these technical communications tools that I can use for both general tech comm and e-learning uses are the latest and greatest versions now. 

Ever since my Adobe webinar in June, I’ve had a very nice relationship with Adobe’s Technical Communications Suite group.  They invited me to the preview of TCS4 several weeks ago, and they are nice enough to keep me informed of new things going on, and now and then ask if I can pass along information to my readers as well, knowing how much I do like Adobe products in general.  So, it was great to see that the TCS4 marketing department is pulling out all stops to make sure that technical communicators everywhere–whether they use Adobe’s Tech Comm Suite or another product–know what’s going on with the Tech Comm Suite products. Saibal Bhattacharjee, who is a Product Marketing Manager at Adobe, let me know that Adobe is making August their “What’s New?” month within the TechComm Suite products, and they have several Adobe experts (seen as some superheroes to some) lined up to do informational webinars to introduce the new Tech Comm line-up of products in Technical Communications Suite 4.

Having been part of Adobe’s “thought leadership” webinar series back in June, as well as having attended several Adobe webinars myself in the past few months, I can tell you that Adobe seems to go to great lengths to provide quality information in a way that is not only easily accessible (they are done through Adobe Connect), but also accessible in that there’s no fancy talk–it’s real people who actually know and have made an effort to know the products and how users are using them.  So I can only guess that this new “What’s New?” series is going to be just as top notch.

So far, for the month of August, there are three webinars–all free of charge–set up to get technical communicators up to speed on the new Technical Communications Suite 4.  They are the following:

I predict that a lot of great information will be coming out of these webinars that will help technical communicators with these great new products, and understanding how Technical Communications Suite will help them become more productive workers producing state-of-the-art documentation and output, especially when it comes to single-sourcing and mobile projects.

For more information about the webinar series, check out the Tech Comm Central by Adobe blog.