We try to check the currency of the links on this page from time to time. If you find a link has gone away, as a service to others who follow, please let us know via the e-mail at the bottom of this page and we will amend the page ASAP. Thank you.
Select-a-Net — if you work on different client
sites, this tool is a must. It captures the settings for the current site (including IE and
Netscape settings) and lets you save them to a file. When you visit this site next, you can
load the settings again, reboot and you are connected. This bets keying all the settings in
by hand!!
CS-RCS — Component Software -- Revision
Control System . If you work with a lot of files, frequently changing files and/or on
your own, this is a must have piece of software. For a single licence it is FREE. You can
create your own document repository on your PC and check files in/out to keep track of
versions. Once you have created the initial file, the proper way to work with it is:
Check out the file, make mods, update your server (if working on site), Check
in the file. Periodically backup the RCS directory (or daily if working off site). This
works especially well if you have a Jazz drive or CD-RW (running Adaptec Direct CD )
attached to your PC or portable.
Explorer Print — would you like a to print a customised
directory listing from Explorer? This is the way to do it. You can choose have landscape or
portrait and you can choose the fonts, column widths, the number of subdirectories and the
amount of indentation for each level etc etc. We use it all the time for controlling our
production environments. It saves a lot of time.
ReadPlease 2003, and upwards — if you write anything on a
computer for delivery to someone else (documents, email, etc) this is brilliant little
tool. Highlight the text, copy it to the clipboard, right click on the ReadPlease tray
icon, select Past and Play. Marylin Monroe will read your text back to you. This is the
way proofreading was intended to be! If it is text on a computer screen, ReadPlease will read it back. Price? Free! This excellent program has been around since at least 2000 and regularly updated.
WinCommander — this neat file manager program does all the
things Microsoft left out of Explorer. In particular, the default setting is to have two
directories open side by aside (to copy or move files by drag and drop between them). You
can also compare directories for differences and act on one or other of the set of files so
marked. We find it is worth it just for those two functions alone. Explorer print also works
in WinCommander (described above) so it provides an extra safety step in working with our
production environments.
Kodak's Digital Learning Center If you are
struggling with the whole digital camera image world thing, this is a great place to
go. I have been there and can assure you it is worth the trip. (This link was found from
following another link to Kodak that was published by the Saturday Sydney Morning Herald
Icon magazine.)
StickyNote This freeware program provides yellow sticky notes that live on your
screen and you can send them across the network to other people (they appear on their
screen). The only ways we know of obtaining this program are from magazine CDs, such as Australian PC User or if all else fails, try
sending e-mail to Christian Carrillo at
ccarrill@fas.harvard.edu (but she may not be there any more!)
Opera Browser. This browser makes it into
the ProductivityWare list for one reason only: it is fast — which is exactly what they
advertise. We find Opera is second to Microsoft IE (never thought we would write something
like that!!) in handling Cascading Style Sheets. Netscape seems to be a long way third, in
our humble opinion. If you want to jump on the net and do something straightforward and get
it done quickly, this is a very good way to do it.
Arachnophilia. This is a wonderful
CareWare product — its costs no money, but it is not free. You will understand
when you visit the site. In our opinion, this is the web weaver's editor of choice. It
has so many features and capabilities. You can build and test your whole web site in this
product and its implementation of Cascading Style Sheets is probably the best around. We
like it because the first rule of developing a web site is Get it working and the
second rule is Refine it for other browsers . Both tasks are very easy in
Arachnophilia.
The other absolutely wonderful feature is its Update Site tool. This can be set to upload only those files that have changed anywhere in the whole site. This saves a huge amount of time in tracking changes and in uploading.
Guess what we used to build this site!
WS_FTP Pro. A very nice FTP program. We
have heard Cute_FTP is also good, but WS is the one we use. It supplements the Arachnophilia
FTP functions by providing functions such as file delete and file view. You definitely need
a program like this irrespective of what software you use to create your site files.
CompuPic. Graphics view and management
program. It is fast and saves good .png format files (which are excellent for reducing file sizes in Word.
Ulead GIF Animator. For the power and
versatility of this program, it has to be one of the easiest-to-use-on-first-start of any
program we have encountered.
DotHLP. This is one of those really
wonderful programs that let you get on with doing your job. It is a Windows Help authoring
tool that has an amazing bonus: it turns a .hlp file into a Word file! For example, if you
ever tried to learn VBA, you know how absolutely frustrating it can be to try to find
examples of the code — sometimes the really useful bits consist of one or two lines
buried in an example for something else. But there is no way you could find them until
DotHLP came along. With DotHLP you convert the file to a Word document, print it in Acrobat
PDF format, index it with the Acrobat Catalog utility, and Hey! Presto! you can find every
instance of any word in the whole .hlp file. This is a huge time saving step. And, by the
way, you can create .hlp files in a very straightforward manner too!
Index DOT Html and Index DOT Css. When
you are tired of trying to figure out what HTML 4 and Cascading Style Sheet features are
supported by which browsers and what are the quirks in the way each browser handles this or
that command, go to this site. You can either browse on-line or pay a small fee and download
the whole site and use it locally. The fact that this Lasotell site works as well as it does
(in our opinion!) in the three main browsers is largely due to help and advice we found in
these indexes.
Time & Chaos. This is a PIM program
with one huge advantage — all the features are contained in one user-defined window.
Click and Learn is the home of one of
the most useful CD subscription services we have ever seen. How would you like to have a
real, live, honest-to-goodness Corel expert show you everything you ever needed to know, and
then some? And, have it presented with screen movies and voice over? These people supply
just such a subscription. It is an Australian product and it is brilliant. Did you
forget that clever little trick you learnt about extrusions? Jump back to the CD. Magic.
Comtech Services is the home of
JoAnn Hackos and this site is a must for anybody who wants to learn about the state of the
art in Useability Testing, Online Documentation and Training Development. In addition, JoAnn
has made templates from her books available as PDF files. There is also a comprehensive list
of training courses/workshops in case you are going to the US and want to pick up some
training while you are there.
JoAnn also has an Australian office if you would like further information and to obtain a schedule of JoAnn's courses and other writing/editing courses in Australia (a web site will be available shortly).
Corel is the home of CorelDraw and
WordPerfect. This site is worth visiting from time to time for patches, updates and other
goodies.
HCi is probably the leading Information
Development company in Australia. Apart from being in the business for 20 years, they have
in-house expertise in areas such as Standards (one of the Principles has chaired committees
writing Australian Standards and attends the international ISO meetings) and Knowledge
Management. They also have oodles of contract technical writers available — it is where
we go for overload staff.
Australian Society for Technical
Communication, NSW. This site covers the society that every Australian technical writer
should visit and if there is no society in your state, you should join this one.
Society for Technical Communication. This
is the American society for technical writers. It has a number of useful magazines and
interest groups that are relevant to Australian technical writers.
WordTips. This is a weekly
mail list of useful tips for working with various versions of Microsoft Word. You can also
initiate a contact by sending e-mail to wordtips@lists.lyris.net .
Biblical Greek Mailing List. This
list comes in a digest form and provides insights to the Greek of the Biblical text.
Biblical Hebrew Mailing List-Hebrew.
You can use this mail link to send an empty message (no subject and no body content) to join
the Hebrew equivalent of the B-Greek list.
The Earth — any
height, any angle, any time. This site is truly amazing. If you want a picture of any
part of the earth, with or without cloud cover, day or night (with or without city lights),
this is the place to go!
Woody Leonhard' site. If you have
problems with Word and you have never heard of Woody Leonhard, then you are probably not a
serious Word user. Woody writes books — lots of 'em — covering Windows and
Word. His programming books are the best way to get started if you want to learn about Word
macros.
Scan Tips — includes tips on
scanning 35mm slides.
Scanning
Glossary — it is a whole lot easier to understand things when you use the correct
terminology.
Scanning techniques
— including how to scan a book properly.
Product information
— this is a Ziff-Davis net site and they always provide good insights into product
performance.
Greek study reference
site. If you are into Biblical Greek this is a very useful site with more links.
The Ecole
Initiative. This site provides the text of a huge number of the early Church documents.
The value of these documents lies in the insights they provide to the views and
understandings of those early days.
Biblical Greek
Archives. Archives of all the discussions that take place on the B-Greek mail list.
