The Art of Technical Writing 2.0

When I was a dud, which is not very long back (I probably still am), I created a flickr account. Excited by the promise that it is a great way to store, search, and share photos. It is, but did you know that it only allows you to store 200 photos with a free account?

When I crossed that limit, I decided to explore flickr.

Here’s where I heard the word ‘Tags‘ (in the web 2.0 sense) for the first time. Tags are words (or phrases) to identify a photo (in flickr’s case). A photo should usually have multiple tags. It is also necessary to tag photos appropriately as flickr let’s you search photos by tags. The concept is simple (and brilliant) but I took some time to grasp it due the inertia of ignorance.

One of my first tag searches on flickr was for frogs (I love the creature), and I was amazed by the number of beautiful photos I saw. I spent an hour seeing frog photos.

Go ahead see some beautiful photos of your favorite things. You can try searching for your name and see if you get any photos.

There’s more to flickr than just tagging. I hope to continue in another post.

Here’s the Wikipedia page on technical writing.

To exemplify what it is, it says: “A simple everyday example of technical writing is a recipe for baking a cake.”

One of my favorite ways to test potential technical writers is to ask them to write – ‘How to make a sandwich’. Apart from a 100 different recipes, you may find a good technical writer.

Looking back at my brief life as a technical writer, I have a lot to thank these three solutions. All three have made a significant contribution in making my life easier. The learning process has been faster and I can’t imagine working without these tools at hand.

• Wikipedia
• Google
• Wordweb

All three are in a way similar to each other. While Wordweb is a great thesaurus + dictionary, Google and Wikipedia are also search and consume solutions.

While reading Asimov’s Foundation series, I came across the concept of Encyclopedia Galactica. Hitchhiker’s guide in turn is a funny tribute to Encyclopedia Galactica. Both Google and Wikipedia, aspire to become the Encyclopedia Galactica and together they are in a way. What Fun!