A recent edition of Fortune Magazine featured an advertisement for Kent State University’s Information Architecture and Knowledge Management program titled, “Architects of the Information Age.” In reading the advertisement, I paused to ask myself a question: How do you define information architecture? I’ve heard the term described in a number of different ways. Some people seem to use the term on a micro level to refer to the structure of documents while others take a more macro viewpoint by looking at information structures as a whole. The advertisement defined an information architect as someone who can,

…spot recurring patterns, organize meaningful categories, give things names people will recognize, and place information where people can easily find it. They help businesses arrange their products and services; and they help search engines accurately index the Internet.

How do you define information architecture? Click here to see the full article.

I’m often asked to explain social software to others, and it seems, more often than not, that people fail to see the benefits. The connections between RSS, social bookmarking, and even blogging to career development, increased knowledge, and networking are not often made. Am I not explaining the concepts clearly? I think this is a common problem with social software. Some people simply don’t understand how to apply the technology.

A post on Collaborative Thinking offers links to several videos that help explain social software in simple terms. The videos are very entertaining, so, feel free to check them out here.

Many organizations are moving to XML-based authoring to ensure the consistency and reusability of content everywhere it flows. To do this, these organizations are adopting information standards such as the Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA). The problem, as many see it, is that the DITA Specification is more geared toward technical documentation such as policies and procedures. Will this always be the case?

Yesterday, the Content Wrangler reported that OASIS formed a new sub-committee to address narrative-based documentation. To find out more, refer to the full article here.

I just stumbled on a tool that may increase my productivity via Web Worker’s Daily, and I thought I’d share it with everyone. It’s called Jott and it allows you to call a phone number, record a message, and transcribe the results to text for dissemination to a folder, link, email, or other web-based application.

The best part, Jott works with a number of applications including Google Calendar, Remember the Milk, Twitter, WordPress, etc. Give it a try and let me know what you think.

Since many organizations are moving to DITA, or at least thinking about it, I thought I’d take a little time to start writing posts related to DITA basics. To begin then, let’s start by defining the core topic types of task, concept, and reference. These topic types tend to address most technical publication needs and provide a baseline for understanding the DITA architecture. They are as follows:

• Concept Topic - used for the development of conceptual, descriptive, or background information. The concept topic answers the question, “What am I reading this for?”
• Task Topic - used for the development of steps, actions, and other procedural information that end users must complete. The task topic answers the question, “How do I…?”
• Reference Topic - used for the development of reference information such as figures, tables, glossaries, lists, etc.

Each of these main topic types share a common structure consisting of a title, short description, prolog, body, and related links. The information types also differ from each other through the inclusion of very specific information elements.

For anyone interested in information development, TechSmith is offering free downloads of Snag-It 7.2 and Camtasia 3.1. TechSmith’s rationale is that if users like these versions they will be more apt to upgrade to current versions.

Both of these products have been long time tools in my information development arsenal. For more information on how to download visit Digital Inspiration.