Happy Halloween!

(Of course, he didn't look quite the same when he left for school...the bow tie disappeared, he lost the belt, adjusted his pants, and pulled out his shirt. But he kept the glasses...and the pocket protector ;-) )

Just a funny story...

I live in Lynn, Mass, about 10 miles north of Boston, in a 1905 Colonial about a mile from the ocean. It's a quiet, residential neighborhood of mostly older folks...not that many kids on the street, although there's a lot more on weekends when the grandkids come to vist their grandparents. (Jesse's made friends with many of them.)

In Lynn, I'm pretty much known as Jesse's mom, Jim's wife, and the woman who does websites. I've worked as the Executive Administrator for a non-profit (the Friends of Lynn Woods), and I've helped out at the Lynn Museum. Chamber of Commerce members know me because Jim takes care of the Chamber computers. We host several city websites.

Some people know what I do ("something with computers, right?"), fewer still know that I'm a tech writer (or even what a tech writer is). Some of my neighbors know that I'm an author. Just about everyone knows that I'm either home all day every day, or I'm travelling somewhere again. ("Where were you last week? London! Nice...")

Today, Jesse and I went to Lynn Woods to take part in Dungeon Rock Day put on by the Friends of Lynn Woods and the park ranger. When I helped the FLW board, I participated in Dungeon Rock Day for many years, which has been greatly enhanced...it originally started as a walk to Dungeon Rock and back (somewhere between 1 and 2 miles through the woods), but now includes skits by pirates. (You can read about Dungeon Rock, which explains why there are pirates. Unfortunately, the credit seems to have disappeared...the text is from an article written a hundred years ago, and accompanied the picture.) The kids love it. (Two years ago, I accompanied some of the tours, dressed as a pirate's wench.)

So we're walking along with the group, and Jesse's having fun with the different pirates. As we went to leave the last group, one of the pirates asks me how I'm doing...he and I used to work together on the old FLW website.

Another pirate then says, "Do you belong to STC?" I was, to say the least, shocked. I didn't even know there was another tech writer in Lynn, much less one who knew about STC ;-) It seems that he used to be a member and he recognized my name, but he's working for the government now and not doing much writing. But he's been thinking about getting back into it...and back into STC. We had a nice chat while Jesse went ahead with the group to the dungeon. (I caught up with our group before they went inside.)

Meanwhile...my worlds just collided ;-)

The day we've been wondering about has arrived (well, it actually arrived in London last Friday, and on HATT last Tuesday). Adobe RoboHelp is in beta!

For the last six months (maybe more), everyone wondered what was going on. Yes, Adobe announced that a new version would be out next year. Yes, Adobe spent a fortune on drinks and food at various conferences. Yes, Adobe released a FAQ that "addressed" some issues.

But a beta announcement just makes it much more real. And we have an announcement!

If you want to enroll in the Adobe RoboHelp Pre-release Program, send an email to robohelp-beta@adobe.com with the following information:

• Your full name
• Your company name
• Your company email address
• Your company's location

But do me a favor, OK? Check to see if any long-standing issues have been resolved, such as:

• Hyperlinks in Microsoft Word output now exist
• Kadov tags don't (exist, that is)
• Project management is described as project management, not content management
• No bugs in the Smart Word Import

(And let me know if you have any issues on your list.

Someone who's already started using the beta posted to the HATT list earlier today, saying that "as a long time RoboHelp user I am really happy and feel right at home." They like the improvements that have been made, and say that everything works better.

So sign up today, and let me know what you think!

Coming soon!

For the past several months, I've been co-authoring Managing Virtual Teams: Getting the Most from Wikis, Blogs, and Other Collaborative Tools with Brenda Huettner (the "Communication Vagabond") and Kit Brown. And it's almost ready to be published!

Managing Virtual Teams started as a book about wikis only, but was expanded to include blogs, RSS feeds, collaborative authoring applications, instant messaging applications, and more. The conceptual information is packed with tips for managers and team members, and part 2 covers a variety of applications that will make your lives easier.

The publisher is currently offering a 35% discount for pre-orders (and includes free shipping for those in the continental United States).

And within the next couple of weeks, we'll open our wiki to the public. (We're currently doing some minor clean-up to get ready.) We used the wiki while we wrote the book to share information...we wanted to use it when writing the chapters, but the publisher required Microsoft Word files. However, we did use it to track ideas, design the table of contents, and more. We'll let you know when the wiki is open!

Thanks to Dick Margulis at words / myth / ampers & virgule (http://ampersandvirgule.blogspot.com/)...

(I don't know why, but my blog software won't let me link to Dick's site.)