LEAD STORIES:
Preserving Ancient Ways with 21st Century Technology (Part 2)
When to Wiki, When to Blog - Is either ready for your business?

EXTRA:
DCL's "Digital Information" Survey: Detailed analysis and iPod winner announcement
Limited Time Offer - Life Sciences Survey
Upcoming DCL conference participation

OTHER NEWS:
SEC raises the XML ante with XBRL
Is print Dead? - they don't even want to talk about it
General Aviation goes digital
Video Game designers should limit their creativity?

ASIDES:
Lennon: "I've been an idiot. One should read the manual."
Real Life "Dilbert" Quotes

FAVORITES:
Popular articles from recent issues

New feature!
QUOTE OF THE MONTH

LEAD STORIES

Preserving Ancient Ways with 21st Century Technology (Part 2)

Last month DCLnews reported on the origins of a program to develop data conversion facilities on remote Native American reservations. This month we discuss the reality of creating these high-tech facilities in remote locations, and how the opportunities the program offered affected the tribes.

More...

When to Wiki, When to Blog - Is either ready for your business?

For anyone disseminating information (and who isn't?) the current buzz is around Blogs (web-logs) and Wikis. But what are they? And are they for you? DCLnews takes a look at these new presentation methods and presents some guidelines on when you should use them.

More...

EXTRA

DCL's "Digital Information" survey - Detailed analysis

80% of Companies are making improvements to documentation process.

A detailed analysis of the results from the recent "digital information" survey carried out by DCL showed that 57% of organizations are already in the process of implementing process improvements while an additional 23% have plans to make changes.

>> Survey iPod Winner Announcement

More...

Limited Time Offer - Life Sciences Survey

Are you in the Life Sciences industry? Enter to win an iPod Shuffle by taking our survey on documentation issues in the Pharmaceutical, Medical Devices, OTC, Vaccines, and other related Life Sciences markets. We've put together a survey on "Digital Information" and we would appreciate your input. It's a great way to understand what your peers are doing, what documentation related challenges you have, and what issues are important to you. The results will be announced in a audio conference on November 30th hosted by Foreign Exchange Translations and later in the December issue of DCLnews.

Besides gaining some basic benchmarking information, you can also win an iPod Shuffle. We'll be randomly selecting five winners from respondents who complete the 10-minute survey.

The survey is at http://www.dclab.com/ipod_survey.asp and is available through November 17th.

Upcoming DCL Conference Participation

Framemaker 2006 Chautauqua
November 8th to 10th, Austin, TX
DCL will be presenting a paper on Planning A Large Scale Conversion Project
http://www.travelthepath.com/conf/chautindex.html

OTHER NEWS

SEC raises the XML ante with XBRL

XML continues to make inroads into the world of high finance following an announcement by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) that they will be awarding three contracts totaling $54 million to modernize the EDGAR (Electronic Data Gathering Analysis and Retrieval) public company disclosure system into a dynamic real-time, interactive search tool based on an XML application known as XBRL (eXtensible Business Reporting Language - http://www.xbrl.org). With the new system the SEC joins the FDIC, the Federal Reserve, and the Comptroller of the Currency in the adoption of XBRL.

More...

Related topic: The SEC’s Plans to Reinvent EDGAR

Is print Dead? - they don't even want to talk about it

It's no secret blogs and news Web sites are killing print newspapers, but how sad is it when you can't even round up people to exploit your death throes? The New York Society of Security Analysts called off a breakfast seminar scheduled for this Wednesday due to "speaker unavailability." The title of the seminar? "Finding Value Series: Opportunities In The Newspaper Industry." To quote Austin Powers, "Ouch baby. Very ouch."

More...

General Aviation goes digital

Airport Business magazine reports that many general aviation pilots now have the opportunity to replace the paper documentation in the cockpit with digital versions loaded on the new eFlyBook developed by ARINC. The eFlyBook comes preloaded with several industry standard documents. The device can also accept uploads of PDF documents so aircraft manuals etc. can be easily added.

More...

Video Game designers should limit their creativity?

When running through alien landscapes blasting away at bug-eyed monsters we rarely give much thought to how a video game's story line was constructed, written or documented. Yet it's a major part of any game development project. A recent online article for game developers suggested that one way to approach story documentation, and stay focused, would be to adopt the Technical Writing techniques.

More...

ASIDES

Lennon: "I've been an idiot. One should read the manual."

At the recent opening of his new record label offices singer Sean Lennon, son of ex-Beatle John Lennon, declared his new found appreciation of Technical Manuals. Lennon said that as a kid he had what he felt was an intuitive understanding of machines and never bothered to read the owners manuals. It was an ex-girlfriend and band mate who suggested that he should try and read how things worked before using them. Lennon continued "So I did for this sampler that I bought, and it changed my life. I realized, my god, I've been an idiot. One should read the manual."

More...

Real Life "Dilbert" Quotes

Do you find yourself nodding your head in silent recognition when you read the Dilbert comic strip? Is his cube dwelling life all too familiar? Well you aren't alone. A recent survey asked readers to submit their favorite examples of real life Dilbert style management quotations. These gems of management insight were among the top submissions:

• As of tomorrow, employees will only be able to access the building using individual security cards. Pictures will be taken next Wednesday, and employees will receive their cards in two weeks.
• What I need is an exact list of specific unknown problems we might encounter.
• E-mail is not to be used to pass on information or data. It should be used only for company business.
• This project is so important we can't let things that are more important interfere with it.
• Doing it right is no excuse for not meeting the schedule.
• No one will believe you solved this problem in one day! We've been working on it for months. Now go act busy for a few weeks and I'll let you know when it's time to tell them.
• Teamwork is a lot of people doing what I say.
• We know that communication is a problem, but the company is not going to discuss it with the employees.

QUOTE OF THE MONTH

This month's quote:

"How does a project get to be a year behind schedule? One day at a time."

FAVORITES

Popular articles from recent issues

21st Century Tech Preserving Ancient Ways
http://www.dclab.com/21st_century_tech.asp

Converting From PDF To XML & MS Word: Avoiding The Pitfalls
http://www.dclab.com/converting_from_pdf.asp

New S1000D Specification Fuels Content Reuse and IETMs
http://www.dclab.com/S1000D_Standard_Interview.asp

Virtual Exercises Beef Up Your Biceps...
http://www.dclab.com/aside_biceps.asp

Quark to XML Conversion
http://www.dclab.com/QuarktoXML.asp

Adobe PDF Conversion: How, For Whom, And When?
http://www.dclab.com/pdfwhitepaper2.asp