What it means to be a Technical Writer?

Simple definition can be technically sound person who can write for the targeted audience. During the early stage of my career, I was in the impression that anybody who can write can be a “technical writer”.
According to me, a writer should have the following qualities:
- good observation/analytical/patience skills; understand the pattern of the work; this differs from one organization to other.
- learn and unlearn the standards; a standard that you might have learned now, would not be a standard at a later point.
- think and write from the perspective of the end user.
- good researching skills, if it mean just googling and finding definition too.
- excellent editing skills, should be able to translate the technical terms to a language that the end user understands.
- detail oriented work culture.
- should ask questions to the right people at the right time, not just interviewing skills.
- [Nithin] more to be added when I can

Finally, the challenge part! a technical writer should be ready to face any change in his work, whether it is schedule change or scope change. My argument is most of the time, you do not create content, you either edit/re-write the content from the input provided to you over multiple communication channels (emails, phone, face to face and so on)

3G Enabled India

We have been hearing round the technical-corner that 3G is coming in India too, and the Indian government has decided for auction the 3G spectrum.
hmm…so do you know much on this buzz-word and what it can do for a person like you and me? Third-generation (3G) is a general term that refers to the technology which offer increased capacity and capabilities delivered over digital mobile phone/wireless networks.

In mobile telephony terminology, 3G protocols support much higher data rates, measured in Mbps, intended for applications other than voice. Let me put it this way, the 3G technology is commonly described as refined enhancements to the GSM cellular standards.
The current technologies like GSM and CDMA networks are classed as second-generation (2G) while the inoperative analogue network was the first of the mobile network generations (1G).

It will be interesting to see how fast 3G dominates the common man. With a 3G phone and access to the 3G network you can send and receive video calls, watch live TV, opportunity to surf the internet, receive emails – send and receive large emails and attachments – and download music tracks, as well as the usual voice call and messaging services found on a mobile phone. In short the new systems will enhance the services available today and will robust the connection for mobile phones, ain’t it interesting?

Technically, the major change is how quickly data can be sent and received. The 3G networks has the capacity to send data 40 times the rates of earlier digital networks. 3G provide service at 5-10 Mb per second.

3G was introduced in the US in the year 2002. By late 2004, it was finally providing transmission speeds to handle full-motion video, even though over short periods of time (15 seconds to three minutes, in most cases). The third generation technology used in the UK is called UMTS, which operates at 2100 MHz (2.1GHz).

The technology has already moved to Fourth-Generation (4G, also known as Beyond 3G), is a term used to describe the next complete evolution in wireless communications. A 4G system will be able to provide a comprehensive IP solution where voice, data and streamed multimedia can be given to users on an “Anytime, Anywhere” basis, and at higher data rates than previous generations. Interesting eh? I’m curious about the affordability of this technology during the initial period, since it is common that anything ‘new’ is expensive.

Computer Science in Future

• What …. Talk on Computer Science in Future
  
• Who …. John Hopcroft
  
• Where …. IIIT, Hyderabad
  
• When …. 29th September, 2008

Abstract -

Technology has always been on the edge of change, which has fascinated people who lived in their era. We should really feel lucky to witness the Information Technology revolution. Here I am articulating my views on the talk given by John Hopcroft at IIIT, Hyderabad during the 10th Year Celebrations of the university.

Time of Change was the slide with which Hopcroft welcomed us to talk and it caught my interest; Silence permeated the hall as he started his speech. The focus and importance that computing and communications has brought in today’s world was the topic of discussion. As most of us had guessed it, it is about the World Wide Web. However, there were a few more topics in his list – large sensor networks, large quantities of information in digital form, and the widespread use of computer for accessing information.

The talk stretched from the evolution of Computer Science to the role that Mathematics has in shaping the future of Information Technology. Also, the discussion on the theory that is needed to support the world of information and sensors was highlighted.

Hopcroft’s vision of the future search engine is that they would be smarter to suggest results for your queries like,

• What car should I buy?
• Where should I go to college?

These could be possible with the inputs like your favorite make of the car, list of factors that might influence your choice of education etc.

The next topic, which was about the comparison between Wikipedia articles and Britannica Encyclopedia was interesting. I was’nt aware of the fact that Wikipedia has more articles/documents than Britannica Encyclopedia. It is needless to say that the reason for this is that anybody can contribute to Wikipedia.

The speaker gave us some great examples for tracking information:

• Marker models for modeling bird migration – by following the pattern of birds’ flight path, recording the time people saw the birds in their locality – and how the Cornell university created a mathematical model out of it.
• how it was possible to track the blogs on hurricane hit
• flights tracking by the traditional method of calling to the airport helpdesk, and the latest method by tracking it through search engines like Google.
• speed of the traffic recorded in Google online in different colors, with which one can understand the density of the jam in their locality and plan their moves.

The theory to support new directions were,

• Large graphics – vertices and edges that exist universally
• Spectral analysis
• High dimensional data

The speaker talked about the access to information SMART technology which includes:

• creating a vector of a document
• clustering the document to refine the cluster
• using examples of gates and booleans

The rest of the hour focused on the importance of page ranking and how effective it could turn your search for restaurants, movies, web pages etc.

The two top methods for ranking were briefly explained:

• Capture Restart method
• Capture Random Walk method

Another method of increasing the page rank is using discovery time method. Discovery time is nothing but, the time to reach vertex (site) first by random walk from a uniform stand.

I concluded that any information is important and when you have to extract information from large data sources you will have to analyze data streams, large data collections and/or detecting the changes in patterns.

The conclusion that the speaker emphasized was:

• We are in the exciting time of change
• Information Technology is a big driver of that change
• The Computer Science theory of last 30 years needs to be extended to cover the next 30 years

About IIIT-H

The International Institute of Information Technology, Hyderabad is a research university that was established in 1998 under the not-for-profit public-private partnership (NPPP) model. A special lecture series brings eminent academicians, builders, and thinkers to the institute to commemorate the completion of its tenth year.

About the Speaker

Prof John E Hopcroft received his M.S in 1962 and Ph.d in 1964 in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University. He spent three years on the faculty of Princeton University and has been at Cornell since 1967. Hopcroft’s research centres on ‘theroetical aspects of computing, especially analysis of algorithm, automata theory, and graph algorithms’. He has coauthered four very influential books on formal languages and algorithms with Jeffrey Ullman and Alfred Aho. His most recent work is on the study of information capture and access. Prof Hopcroft was honored with the Turning Award, the Nobel Prize of Computer Science, in 1986 along with Robert Tarjan. He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and a fellow of ACM, IEEE, among others.