ISV Kaizen

If you are serious about writing a good documentation for your software either with our help authoring tool - Dr.Explain, or with another one, then you definitely should subscribe to the following blogs on technical writing, software help and documentation authoring. To be honest I even included links to blogs of our direct competitors.

I say “Thank you!” to our fellow customer and partner Craig Prichard, a technical communicator, who gave me many new links for this list.

Cherryleaf Technical Authors’ Blog
A blog site from Cherryleaf, a technical communication UK company by Ellis Pratt. Ellis regularly gives comprehensive review of the industry news as well as practical articles on technical writing.

Harry Miller’s Technical Writing Blog
Harry’s blog contains not only written content about documentation, technical writing, and technical editing, but many podcasts as well.

HelpStuff Blog
A famous blog by Char James-Tanny (JTF Associates) about all aspects of helping software end-users.

I Came, I Saw, I Learned…
A blog by Kevin A. Siegel who has written more than 100 step-by-step computer training books and has been a software trainer for more than 15 years.

E-Learning, Moodle, Technical Writing, and Training
William Rice is an educator, trainer, and writer. Most of his posts are either articles or tutorials about his professional pursuits: e-learning, Moodle, technical writing, and training.

I’d Rather Be Writing
A blog about technical communication by Tom Johnson. Tom covers many topics from any kind of user guides and design documentation, to audiovisual tutorials and drawings, or other explanatory content that is of a technical nature.

Gryphon Mountain Journals
Ben Minson is a technical communicator. He creates documentation and training on applications that are produced in-house. Writing is what Ben does. He thinks that when he die, the mortician will have to pry the keyboard loose from his cold, dead clutches.

OneManWrites
That OneMan is Gordon McLean, a technical author with a passion for good communicative information products. Another Gordon’s passion is web design. In his posts Gordon keeps balance between practical issues and theory of technical writing.

Charles Jeter Blog
Charles writes mainly about technical communication aspects in Web 2.0 world, e.g. work-flow collaboration and e-learning.

User Assistance
An exploration of issues pertaining to online help by Michael Hughes, PhD. As you can see from the blog’s title Michael focuses mainly on embedded user assistance, usability issues and user behaviour.

Just Write Click
A blog by Anne Gentle, a senior technical writer who is blogging about technical writing, information architecture, topic authoring, social media, and other communication technologies.

Mike’s Web Log
In this blog Mike Pope, a technical writer, covers various topics from writing and editing, to teaching and movies, and to politics and musics.

monkeyPi
An interesting point of view on usability, visual & technical communication, and software design.

Great Documents
In this blog Keith Johnson, a technical writing & software documentation specialist, gives many useful tips not only about documentation writing but on successful blogging, SEO, and social networking.

Scott on Writing
Scott Mitchell is a freelance writer, trainer, and consultant. In his technology-related blog Scott talks about technical writing, technology, and ASP.NET

Sharon’s MadCap Blog and Mike’s MadCap Blog
The two blogs by Sharon Burton and Mike Hamilton from MadCap Software. It’s always interesting to know what your competitors do

Technically Speaking
Paul Pehrson is another technical writer who blogs about various aspects of his job: writing tools, software, grammar, technologies and other important topics.

The Content Wrangler
A great resource for everyone who deals with technical content writing, editing, publishing and delivering. There is a lot of practical articles and industry news.

Communications from DMN
Aaron Davis and Scott Nesbitt, two experienced technical communicators, post their ideas and opinions, as well as links to information that they find interesting and hope that you will too. As you will see from their posts, Aaron and Scott have a wide range of interests when it comes to technical communications.

HelpScribe
A pretty young but very interesting blog by Craig Haiss, a technical writer. Craig started his blog to share his professional knowledge with colleagues. That’s great!

Usable Help
A blog of Gordon Meyer, an interaction and instructional designer. Gordon is a professional author and speaker on the topics of help system design. His posts on software help, usability and testing are always very practical and focused.

Of course there are many other blogs on help authoring, technical writing, e-learning and technical communication. I listed only the most popular and active, i.e. with new posts in 2008. If you know other good blogs on these topics, please add them through comments. Thank you!