Techwriter10 in a Nutshell
I've been writing about technology since 1988. I divide my time between technical writing and technology journalism.
I am Contributing Editor at EContent Magazine and Contributing Writer at InsideCRM. I am also the editor for the Fierce Content Management newsletter. I have written for a variety of other publications including Streaming Media Magazine, CIO.com, eWeek, CMP, BusinessWeek Small Biz, PC Magazine Online and many others.
I won an Apex Award for Publications Excellence in Feature Writing in 2006, 2007 and 2008.
You can subscribe to my blog with Feedburner by following this link: My feedburner subscription link
I am Contributing Editor at EContent Magazine and Contributing Writer at InsideCRM. I am also the editor for the Fierce Content Management newsletter. I have written for a variety of other publications including Streaming Media Magazine, CIO.com, eWeek, CMP, BusinessWeek Small Biz, PC Magazine Online and many others.
I won an Apex Award for Publications Excellence in Feature Writing in 2006, 2007 and 2008.
You can subscribe to my blog with Feedburner by following this link: My feedburner subscription link
Blog Stats
Entries: 102
Last Entry: 1 Day Ago
Overall Rating: 
On a Friday afternoon before a holiday weekend, Comcast released its latest volley against its customer base, announcing a 250 GB monthly download limit. According to reports, after the first violation, you will get a message from your friends at Comcast warning you about your dastardly behavior... (Read More)
Featured Aug 30th, 2008
For the past couple of years I volunteered at my son's elementary school to set up blogs for his classroom, but the projects never got off the ground. Nervous school IT staff unable to find a platform that offered them the privacy and control they wanted, and knew parents would demand, always nixed... (Read More)
Featured Aug 29th, 2008
Web 2.0 came crashing into the enterprise a couple of years ago and was given the new moniker: Enterprise 2.0 (which was coined by Harvard Business School Professor Andrew McAfee). While business has come a long way when it comes to understanding social networking tools and how to use them in the... (Read More)
Featured Aug 25th, 2008
Microsoft has announced a $300M dollar ad campaign, featuring 90s TV star Jerry Seinfeld, which according to multiple reports has been designed to save Vista and salvage Microsoft's battered reputation. There is so much wrong with this strategy, it's really hard to know where to start.
First of... (Read More)
Featured Aug 22nd, 2008
Microsoft products have always presented a paradox for organizations. On one hand they seem to be universally derided. On the other, they remain the corporate standard. Open source, SaaS/online and other alternatives have had a hard time gaining widespread traction in large organizations. That's... (Read More)
Featured Aug 18th, 2008
Community journalism encourages members of the community to participate in the news process, not just as passive readers, but as active producers of the news itself. This direct connection to the product is similar in many ways to the kind of community building that goes on in open source... (Read More)
Featured Aug 14th, 2008
I'm on vacation right now in Germany, and I thought I could watch some American TV here on my PC. But I've learned that US sites consistently block their TV shows outside the US, a practice I find more than a bit curious. I tried the network sites. I tried alternative sites like Hulu.com, but all... (Read More)
Featured Aug 13th, 2008
Many of the operating system tools that come with Windows are far inferior to free alternatives, and you can't beat the price. This post looks at some of my favorite free utilities.
Firefox – Web Browser
No round-up of free utilities would be complete without the fabulous Firefox, perhaps the... (Read More)
Featured Aug 9th, 2008
There’s an old saying, 'What do you want for nothing, your money back?' But the fact is there is lots of good free software out there. Much of it has a much smaller footprint than your typical Windows software from Mega Corporation (you know which companies I’m talking about) and these programs... (Read More)
Featured Aug 5th, 2008
Alfresco released Alfresco Labs (Beta) 3 today and with it announced a new capability that enables businesses to leverage Microsoft Sharepoint functionality without buying additional Sharepoint licenses. Sound too good to be true? It’s not, and what has allowed Alfresco to do this is the 2004 EU... (Read More)
Featured Jul 31st, 2008
When you make changes to your site design, it’s not always easy to figure out how the changes affect traffic and visitor behavior. That’s where the Google Website Optimizer tool comes into play. You can experiment with two or more designs and see which one works best to achieve your design... (Read More)
Featured Jul 28th, 2008
By most people’s measure, it was quite a quarter for Apple, but apparently not for the geniuses on Wall Street. While Apple sold almost a million iPhones in the first week (think about that for a second) and had what BusinessWeek called a “blowout quarter,” an off-handed remark by Apple’s... (Read More)
Featured Jul 24th, 2008
In a promising technology mash-up, the New York Times (NYT) has entered into an agreement with LinkedIn that displays a list of suggested content for readers on the NYT web site based on information in their LinkedIn profile. For now, the service is confined to the Business and Technology section.... (Read More)
Featured Jul 22nd, 2008
Is your vendor giving you trouble? Won’t respond to your calls? Won’t help with your problem? Who you gonna call? Well, when I spoke to Brent Leary, a partner at CRM Essentials, yesterday, Leary surprised me when he suggested if your vendor won’t help you, go on Twitter, find a person with... (Read More)
Featured Jul 18th, 2008
Though nothing will
Drive them away
We can beat them
Just for one day
~David Bowie, Heroes.
That collective sigh of relief you hear this morning is probably the millions of YouTube users who are relieved that Google and Viacom have reached an agreement to protect their privacy. All I can say is... (Read More)
Featured Jul 16th, 2008
By all rights, iPhone consumers should be storming the gates of Apple headquarters this morning in true Bastille Day fashion after Friday's mishandling of the iPhone 3G launch, but as far as I know all remains calm in Cupertino, and consumers remain strangely silent over the whole affair.
In a... (Read More)
Featured Jul 14th, 2008
It's not always easy,
And sometimes life can be deceiving,
I'll tell you one thing, its always better when we're together
~Jack Johnson, Better Together.
AP is reporting this morning that Eric Schmidt, he being CEO of the great and almighty Google, thinks it would better if Yahoo! remained... (Read More)
Featured Jul 11th, 2008
The other day, my buddy got a shiny new 32GB iPod Touch. This morning he was kind enough to let me play with it and I’m glad he did because I learned that using that touch keyboard takes some practice. The bad news: you can get frustrated in a hurry trying to type with your finger tip. The good... (Read More)
Featured Jul 9th, 2008
Nothing's wrong as far as I can see
We make it harder than it has to be
and I can't tell you why
~Eagles, I Can’t Tell You Why.
Apple and Adobe have both gotten some press lately for going to the trademark police after a couple of small business people had the audacity to publicize their... (Read More)
Featured Jul 6th, 2008
I’ve been highly critical of many of Microsoft’s moves lately, mostly because they have felt like the awkward ramblings of a company one step behind the curve, but the other day Microsoft made, what in my view, is a smart play. They bought Powerset, a San Francisco-based semantic search company... (Read More)
Featured Jul 3rd, 2008
You might have woken up this morning to a distant noise not unlike the pounding of hoof beats. Yesterday you could see the dust cloud forming far off on the horizon, but today, July 1st, it’s a little easier to hear the slow and steady march toward July 11th when Apple releases its second... (Read More)
Featured Jul 1st, 2008
My colleague Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols recently wrote a piece on his fine Practical Technology blog called Dear Microsoft, Thanks for the help, Linux in which he argues that Microsoft’s ill-timed decision to cut off easy access to XP tomorrow (June 30th) combined with its announcement it would... (Read More)
Featured Jun 29th, 2008
Yesterday a (slightly) risqué ad for JC Penney made the rounds on the internet. It depicted two teens getting ready for a date by timing how fast they could get dressed. At the end of the ad, the boy comes over to the girl’s house and they let the stern looking Mom know they are going to “hang... (Read More)
Featured Jun 25th, 2008
Last week Adobe surprised a few people—well, at least it surprised me--with the announcement that it was including Alfresco content management services as part of its LiveCycle Enterprise Suite Update 1 package. The surprise was two-fold, that Adobe felt it was necessary to add content... (Read More)
Featured Jun 24th, 2008
Cloud computing or software as a service (SaaS) has a lot of advantages, especially for small and medium sized companies with fewer resources to devote to an IT infrastructure. The cloud vendors, whether Google, Amazon, Salesforce.com (or whatever company) provide all the software and back-end... (Read More)
Featured Jun 20th, 2008