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eCoustics has a helpful guide that will show you how to setup your home theater speakers for best performance.

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[Via DesignTechnica]

Sorry for the hiatus, I’ve been sick and work is fuggin’ insane.

In the meantime, enjoy today’s April Fool’s sites.

Urgo’s list of April Fool’s Jokes on Websites

I’ve said once and I’ll say it again: “it’s sad when we have to make our comedians the voice of sanity.”

Download this video [4MB WMV]. Watch it. Point people here. It explains why this is a story. Ok, no it does’t, but it does point out just how insane this whole thing has become.

I know I promised unpronounceable words next time I did a restaurant review, but I have to rave about a new place. We went to Ari Rang on Ann Arbor-Saline Rd near Godaiko and Outback. Wow. What a great lunch.

Since it was lunch (and we’re not restaurant reviewers) we both ordered Bee Bim Bop in stone bowls. All the sides that came with it were awesome; spicy radish and cabbage, fish cakes, thinly sliced squid, zucchini in a light sauce. The Bee Bim Bop lunch portion was just right for both of us. The ingredients were fresh, the smell was making us hungry before the dish hit the table, and the sauce on the side was, for us, perfect: spicy enough for me and cool enough for J– to use it twice, no small feat.

We didn’t get any appetizers, but we’re definitely going back. This is the first Korean place that we liked in a long time. They’re still working out some newly-opened-restaurant issues (they got slammed and forgot our bill at the end), but the woman that rang us up said they opened two days ago, so I’ll give them a pass. I know places in town that have been around for years that can’t get that right.

Go check this place out; it’s simple, really good Korean food at reasonable prices (lunch was about $8 for a bowl of Bee Bim Bop).

I saw this on Crescat Sententia this morning, and I thought “what an interesting question to pose”.

You’re stuck inside Fahrenheit 451, which book do you want to be? (N.B.: this refers to what book you would memorize, as do the characters at the end of Bradbury’s novel)

Mine isn’t exactly the greatest novel in the universe, but it would be great to preserve in my mind (mainly because I can’t imagine not having read the book): Hitchikers Guide to the Galaxy.

So, what’s yours?

If this isn’t telling, I don’t know what is.

Link to forum

In case the link goes dead (or the comments are deleted), here are the three posts so far (I apologize for the length):

I’m the Director of Product Management responsible for RoboHelp, Captivate, and other Macromedia products. I haven’t posted to this list before, but given the comments that are circulating today at the WritersUA conference and in this forum, I wanted to make sure that you get some feedback directly from the product team regarding these outstanding questions.

First of all, Macromedia continues to sell and support RoboHelp. The twelve years of engineering work that have gone into this product make it an incredibly viable and relevant solution for today’s Help authors. Also, beginning March 1st, 2005 the following support options have been made available:
http://www.macromedia.com/support/programs/self/robohelp.html

We have made some changes to the number of development resources dedicated to RoboHelp. Macromedia is constantly evaluating the optimal degree of dedicated resources in each of its businesses and the changes to the RoboHelp team are a part of this process. It’s really not appropriate for me to comment on specific personnel issues, however, as these are private matters involving real people. I can say that the former eHelp office in San Diego, now known as Macromedia San Diego, is a vibrant office with staffers supporting a wide range of Macromedia initiatives.

Regarding future releases, I recognize that eHelp used to provide a roadmap regarding future product release schedules, but as a public company we cannot do the same. This applies to all Macromedia products, not just RoboHelp. We do not announce future release dates, and we tend to have longer release cycles than what was the previous release schedule for RoboHelp.

It’s unfortunate that speculative comments from an individual (and Macromedia’s lack of attendance) at the WritersUA conference has caused concern. Macromedia was not able to attend the conference due to last minute booth staffing issues that could not be resolved in time to have a presence at the show. As I stated above, we are selling and supporting the RoboHelp Office family of products. In addition, another former eHelp product, Captivate (formerly known as RoboDemo) is thriving within Macromedia. In fact, we’re very proud that Captivate recently won the Software Simulation Shootout at the Training 2005 Conference (http://www.macromedia.com/software/captivate/).

We will continue to monitor the lists and respond as appropriate. Thanks for your support.

Regards,
Miriam Geller
Director of Product Management

—–

Sorry, Miriam, but your explanation is literally “incredible.”

Of course Macromedia “continues to sell and support RoboHelp.” Even if you have EOL’d the product, you still want to make as much money as possible from selling it. How else to justify the $65mm your company paid to acquire eHelp?

You say: “We have made some changes to the number of development resources dedicated to RoboHelp.” I give you credit for a great sense of humor. You have laid off the entire development team, have you not? (I know you will say it is “not appropriate” to comment on personnel issues, but rest assured most of us can all read between the lines.)

Of course you will not comment on future product releases since you do not plan to have any.

The funniest part of your post is your comment that “Macromedia was not able to attend the conference due to last minute booth staffing issues that could not be resolved in time to have a presence at the show.” Anyone with the first clue about how this industry works will immediately recognize this as the nonsense that it is. If Macromedia wanted a presence at this show, Macromedia would have had a presence at this show. To “no show” an important induistry conference makes a clear statement about how important RoboHelp is to your company. Obviously, it is not important at all — except to the extent that you can rope people into buying expensive support agreements for a product you have already decided to EOL.

Please spare us the misrepresentations. We know where you are coming from. It’s plain for all to see.

Btw, I will be curious to see whether you follow the old eHelp model and immediately delete this post from your forum, or whether you allow a public dialogue to ensue. It doesn’t matter to me, but it might matter to your other customers.

Regards,

David Knopf

—-

Sorry, Miriam, but I agree with David.

Your post was nothing but blatant, empty, and in fact, insulting, blah-blah. You start off stating that you want to give us feedback “directly from the product team regarding these outstanding questions”, but you give us nothing. You certainly don’t answer our questions as to the continuation of RoboHelp development.

While I’m sure politicians, lawyers, and possibly board members would love your post, us online Help developers, well, we usually like to stick to reality—what’s it all about, how does it work. And I, for one, don’t like someone throwing “marketing-ese” at me and calling it an answer.

My feeling upon reading your post was irritation, bordering on anger (that you would actually think us so stupid). Really, it would have been better if you hadn’t addressed the issue at all.

I also agree with David regarding the WritersUA conference. It’s one of the most important conferences of the year. No one is going to believe the reason you gave for Macromedia’s absence.

I hope the next time you (or any other Macromedia representative) address customers and members of this forum, you will remember that we are trained professionals in our field. We’re not idiots and we deserve the truth.

Regards,

Leah Shalek

If Macromedia wasn’t going to EOL this product, they could just try to kill it via PR. They’ve got a good start already.

I used to be a Tech Writer not that long ago and still have many professional and personnel friends who travel in those circles. So, when news hit the web today of the impending demise of Macromedia RoboHelp, it in my inbox pretty quickly. To scale the news up a little bit for relational purposes, imagine the ripple that would emanate throughout web design sphere if Microsoft moonlighted FrontPage. (Oh, what sweet dreams I dream.) FrontPage isn’t the de facto tool for web design, but it’s pretty popular and has a loyal following.

That’s RoboHelp; it’s got its quirks (read: huge-ass bugs that will totally screw up your week), but it’s got its good points, too. It has also ceased to be very innovative in the past few years. Just before eHelp was acquired by Macromedia, they introduced FlashHelp, which was basically a Flash UI on top of standard web-based Help. Most of the new product innovations and solutions were aimed squarely at…well, that was the problem. They had answers in search of a question, and were starting that “enterprise systems” mantra/death roll.

There are better products that RoboHelp, certainly, but the entry-level tech writer could be relatively effective with it within a week or two, and be pretty proficient after a month. Not a bad ramp-up time considering that some competitors required a base-level understanding of object-oriented single-sourcing to kick out a Help system. (Note to AuthorIT; you have a kick-ass product but you need to lower the entry threshold. Writers != database admins.)

RoboHelp’s departure from the market, while surprising, is almost exciting. The void that will be left behind is sizable. I don’t have real numbers, but if I had to guess, I wouldn’t be surprised if RoboHelp had over 50% of the market share. Now, sunsetting doesn’t immediately invalidate all those licenses out there, but it does make support tougher. Many writing companies will move away from RoboHelp. Where they move is the big question.

The major players left standing are FrameMaker with Web Works Publisher, AuthorIT, Doc-To-Help, and Web Works for Word. Honestly, they all have pros and cons, as most tools do. Web Works has the best position because of the number of companies using or going to FrameMaker for single-sourcing. AuthorIT, while great on paper, is a complete philosophical change in process for tech writing houses, and I bet that breaks a lot of deals for them. Web Works for Word is young and, well, works inside of Word. Word doesn’t exactly endear itself to many writers.

What will happen? My prediction is that another,single tool will rise and fill the void, instead of the other products gaining marginal market shares. The tool that rises will be one that will support the new scheme of Help development inside of Longhorn Aero and be able to do some cool build tricks with XML (they’ll call it single-sourcing, but it will be glorified source-control). Frankly, I think the old RoboHelp team, headed by Mike Hamilton, now at MadCap Software, will get to make the product they should have made before.

And, a note to Mike and his team. You were really, really close with RoboHelp. Honestly. The code generation was a big sticking point; it wasn’t critical, but just stop messing with the code. Give writers real tools to do real design: CSS, native XHTML, good layer controls.And clean up that UI; it sucks, and has for years. But, the conditional formatting, the multiple output formats, hell, I even liked the idea of Flash Help. Integrate with existing data management software (I still role my eyes a RoboSource Control) and let companies leverage investments they’ve already made.

Let writers fiddle and not get punished. Give them round-trip processes. In short, make the tool do what its supposed to do: let writers write, designers design, and everyone publish.

Do that, and you’ll be bigger than RoboHelp ever was. If you don’t, someone else will.

Bwahahahahaha!

Fighting back: In London, 35 Greenpeace protesters rushed onto the floor of the International Petroleum Exchange in February, intending to paralyze oil trading on the day the Kyoto environmental initiative took effect, but, unexpectedly, the traders turned on them, punching and kicking the protesters until they ran for their lives.

Link

Wow, that low, eh?

AP – About seven in 10 Americans say Congress inappropriately intervened in the case of a brain-damaged woman whose relatives disagree over whether she should be allowed to die, according to a new poll.

[via Yahoo News [Politics]]