Content reuse is often associated with content management projects and indeed, content reuse is key to successful content management and is frequently the reason companies give for wanting to get into content management.

But, content reuse is an effective business practice on its own and can be implemented without investing the time, effort, and money in a content management initiative. In fact, getting started with content reuse will put you in a better position when, or if, you do decide to proceed with a content management project. Content reuse is really all about the content, not the technology, and the better you plan your content reuse strategy up front, the more effective your reusable content will be.

So, why reuse content? For starters, reusing content is efficient for you, for the company you work for, and for your users. Reusing content helps to ensure that content is consistent regardless of where it appears, enhancing its usability. Reuse also eliminates the duplications that result when writers recreate content that already exists. I’m sure many of us have written the same content, over and over again, simply because we can’t locate the right version for our project, or spent two hours writing a product description only to discover that someone else wrote it last week.

In a content reuse environment, content is written once and used wherever it is required, which not only enhances consistency and usability, but significantly reduces the costs to write and review content. Two (or more) writers and subject matter experts working on the same or similar content is double the cost (or more). Reusing content also facilitates translation; reused content is written, reviewed, and translated once.

Planning and writing for reuse

Reuse doesn’t just happen—you need to plan for it. Your first task is to determine your reuse goals and analyze your content, finding your best reuse opportunities. Where is most of your similar and repeated content? User guides? Technical manuals? Collateral? Online help? Web? Training?

Once you know where you want to reuse content, you can determine how to structure and write it to support reuse. If content is to be truly reusable, its reuse must be transparent to other writers and to your users. While good content should always conform to standards based on usability, in a reuse environment, standards are critical to ensure that content is reusable. If you are reusing a product description that someone else has written, it must fit with the other product descriptions in the document where you are reusing it. In a content reuse environment, all product descriptions must be structured and written the same way, ensuring their consistency regardless of where they are used.

Accessing modular content

Reusable content is modular content, allowing you to easily access components and use them where required. For example, to be able to reuse a product description, you need to be able to access it, independently. A modular approach to your documents allows you to construct with content; you can access the modules you need and insert them where required. Modules can be stored in a central location and given substantive names so all writers can access them as required, without spending hours searching through “the server”.

Summary

Although content reuse makes sense, it isn’t always easy to implement. Reusing content successfully requires much planning. You need to identify reuse opportunities, decide how to structure and write your content, create writing guidelines, and figure out how you will access your reusable content. You also need to design how your content will flow throughout your content lifecycle, from planning, writing, review, translation, and storage. And, while you do need to decide how best to use technology to help implement your reuse strategy, you don’t need to invest hugely in technology to make reuse happen.

 

By: Pamela Kostur – http://www.parallax.ca/

I was down at Harbourfront with my girlfriend as we watched the Canada Day celebrations. As we stood there watching the fireworks, the one thing that really struck me was how many people were watching the fireworks, but watching them through the lens of their camera.

Although they were indeed capturing the moments for posterity, it occurred to me that by focusing (pun only partly intended) on the filming, they weren’t fully experiencing the event; they were only watching the fireworks through the rectangle of their device and therefore oblivious to the surroundings. For me, half of the fun was to experience not only the fireworks, but also the reaction of the people – especially seeing the joy of the toddler on his dad’s shoulders.

Upon further reflection, it seems to me that this isn’t an isolated demonstration on how we can sometimes use technology as a “filter” in terms of our real world experiences. I watch people who think that it’s necessary to tweet or text message at a movie theatre. I don’t know how many times I’ve almost been clobbered as I walk down the streets and someone turns a corner, completely immersed on their cellphone, not aware of where they are going.

There are many more examples where life is experienced vicariously through an electronic device. The irony of this is that the true and full experience is easily obtained, just put down the device from time to time and look around!

Taking pictures or filming special moments help us to capture, reminisce and cherish those moments.

Photography enhances our lives just as technology can.  I’ll always like my tech toys and I’ve found things like my GPS or my smartphone (and the many Android apps that are installed on it) to be a wonderful resource that enables me to get directions, find restaurants, check account balances, or even to check news or sports.

I’d be pretty lost without technology, as it’s an intrinsic part of my daily routine.

I think of this issue as if I were using a camera that had a macro lens and I was focusing in on a flower as I was photographing it. My field of vision would be greatly reduced and I would be missing out what was no longer visible in the periphery, compared to a regular lens.

I’m not suggesting that people abandon their cameras – or their devices – to get the full experience. There’s something to be said for having a record of moments in time; that’s why many of us take pictures or videos. All that needs to be done is to stop and observe from time to time.

By: Rick McCallion

Rick is a seasoned software developer with over 25 years of experience in designing and developing systems. In addition to the software development experience, he is also experienced in training users with various skill sets and assisting organizations in determining their information technology needs.

Rick has taught numerous courses at Front Runner for mature audiences with limited computer experience. He teaches with patience and simplicity, in order for everyone to follow and feel comfortable with the software to use on their own.

Rick welcomes any comments, suggestions or questions.  This article, along with many others, can be found on his blog at http://techumanity.blogspot.com

Adobe’s 150 million user password hack was a big story in 2013.

http://www.businessinsider.com/evernote-blames-adobe-for-password-hack-2013-11

Rick McCallion reminds us how important it is to have strong passwords set up for each and every website and account we set up.

By now, most people are aware of the concept – and the importance – of having strong passwords.  Generally a strong password is one that is difficult for an individual to guess or a system to crack.  There are too many instances where security has been breached and in the cases of a corporate breach in security, this is a big problem as confidential client information can be exposed and obtained.

One of the bigger challenges is how to make passwords stronger without making it more difficult to remember.
Intel has a website where you can enter a password and it will estimate how long it would take for the password to be cracked given the complexity of it.

In a simple case, take the password Twinkletoes76.  Many would think that this is moderately strong as it’s not a dictionary term and the numbers at the end just add to the complexity.

The Intel webpage (http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/security/passwordwin.html) estimates that this password would take 0.007 seconds for an automated system to crack.

The next approach in password generation is to embed special characters in the password and substitute these characters for the alphabetic characters in the password.  Using the same base password as above, by simply changing the letter i to the number 1 and changing the l to an exclamation mark, then the new password of Tw1nk!etoes76 all of a sudden becomes much more secure and it would take a week to crack.

Here is where it gets fun.
A special character can be inserted in the password and it will not make it much more difficult to remember but it will significantly improve the strength.  By placing a – between the 1st and the 2nd characters so that the password is now T-w1nk!letoes76, the estimate is that it would take 1 year to guess the password.

Finally, to supersize the strength, just repeat that newly inserted special character and repeat it either one of more two times so that the password is now either T–w1nk!etoes76 or T—w1nk!etoes76  (with 2 and 3 dashes respectively) and the estimates increase to 33 years for the former and 1,076 years for the latter!
In terms of memorization, it’s not much more difficult for a human to remember the very last password than the original. Cognitively, we recognize that it’s still twinkletoes76 with character substitution with the i and the l and with 3 dashes added in to the strong.
“Rick is a seasoned software developer with over 25 years of experience in designing and developing systems. In addition to the software development experience, he is also experienced in training users of various skills and assisting organizations in determining their information technology needs.”

Rick welcomes any comments, suggestions or questions.  This article, along with many others, can be found on his blog at http://techumanity.blogspot.com

An integral part of our society is the connections we make with other members. In addition to the plethora of personal and familial connections, we also have any combination of social, business, religious or other types of connections.

What defines a connection, and how they relate to us is in the commonality between the two of us. On LinkedIn, for the most part, what I have in common with the vast majority of my connections is the companies I’ve worked for or followed, or those that I’ve work with/for or within the same industry as me.

To an extent, I imagine my world and my connections being like a great big Venn diagram. Those people that I have the deeper bond with are usually those where we have more common intersections between our respective circles.

I’m not a big ‘player’ when it comes to social media. I tweet a bit and I’ll make occasional posts on LinkedIn, but I’m certainly not a social media maven by any stretch of the imagination. That having been said, it seems to me that as a very rampant and unfair generalization, social media tends to encourage the proliferation of networks.  In of itself, there’s nothing wrong with that and in many aspects the breadth of social media is wonderful, it allows us to not only grow our networks but also to experience other cultures and viewpoints that perhaps aren’t so easily accessible as a result of geographic limitations.  With social media, I am able to learn about other cultures and views and to get distinctly non-North American perspectives on issues.

To me though, these networks are not always true ‘communities’. My distinction is that a network has breadth, but not depth. I may be connected to many individuals but the vast majority of these contacts, I do not personally know well, nor am I as emotionally invested in their lives or the well-being. A community on the other hand is something completely different. The lack of breadth is compensated by the depth of the relationship. I think of my ‘community’ as being those individuals that I confide in and that I love and support – and know that the same is offered to me.

The purpose of this article isn’t to say that communities are better than networks; they both have their places in a person’s life. My concern is, I think that some people spend more time nurturing their network of friends and acquaintances as opposed to building the true relationships in their lives – to me that is a very sad and concerning thing.

I feel that for our society to grow and evolve, it requires the cooperation and the synergy of like-minded individuals who not only have a passion for their goals and directions, but also towards the other individuals in their collective. This is how we unite and this is how the sum of the whole is greater than the parts.

By: Rick McCallion

Rick is a seasoned software developer with over 25 years of experience in designing and developing systems. In addition to the software development experience, he is also experienced in training users with various skill sets and assisting organizations in determining their information technology needs.

Rick has taught numerous courses at Front Runner for mature audiences with limited computer experience. He teaches with patience and simplicity, in order for everyone to follow and feel comfortable with the software to use on their own.

Rick welcomes any comments, suggestions or questions.  This article, along with many others, can be found on his blog at http://techumanity.blogspot.com