In a conversation with one of the Adobe staff in the UK, an inspiring although not surprising story was told. He works frequently with a number of departments in the UK Government, and knows quite well that it is typically a long process when updating any sort of policy or procedure, even for minor updates. And so, here's the story... and perhaps a good example for others who may find themselves in the same position.
As a student at City College in San Francisco over the summer, I used Buzzword to complete my class essays. I have to confess that it's a given that I would, since I'm also Community Manager for Acrobat.com. As many of us students will be returning to class in the coming weeks, I want to encourage you all to give Buzzword a try. What I found is that Buzzword so easy to use and elegant, it quite literally makes working on assignments more fun.
For instance, when approaching a topic, I have a jumbled buzz of ideas in my head that I want to capture, and translating the thoughts into a coherent report is easier with Buzzword. Buzzword's comment feature allows me to jump to the side of the current sentence to add a note to myself - a nice place holder to remind me to look up a fact or research an example - without interrupting the flow of the writing. Here's a screenshot of what I mean:
After reading the rough draft, the comment feature also comes in handy for additional thoughts such as what I need to add, where it's best to add it, what I should consider deleting, and what I need to think about some more before committing it in my report. It's a much quicker - and also more tree friendly - process vs. printing out a copy and then hand writing comments.
It's not that we are smarter or more creative. It's not because we like each other more. It's because we've found a new way to work.
We get more work done, much better than your team, in much less time, because we use Acrobat.com.
And from a personal standpoint, by working this way I get fewer emails and spend less time in meetings, yet I get more done, have more time to think, and enjoy my work and my co-workers more. How does that sound to you?
Let me give you a real world example of how this happens.
Fred Bayles, a Professor at Boston University School of Journalism, is a hard man to talk to. Not because he's unfriendly or isn't interested in talking, but he's got other priorities. During the semester, he's generally got a desk phone attached to one ear, a cell phone on the other and his fingers on a keyboard. At the other end of the phones and on his email are his students who are on Beacon Hill (Boston) staffing BU's Statehouse Program. They're reporters covering government and politics for a dozen local newspapers, websites, and radio stations around the state. And Bayles is their editor/teacher/mentor.
I was one of those 6th grade nerds in the AV corps. We were the guys who got to run the projectors or show the filmstrips. We'd wheel the equipment around the school and feel quite important because we knew stuff the teachers didn't - like how to thread a 16mm projector or splice a film. But there was always a projector bulb or a fuse blown that would sabotage our efforts. And it seems like even today, even with our technology advances, there's always a glitch that gets in the way of our best-laid plans.
From wikipedia:
"The Wisdom of Crowds: Why the Many Are Smarter Than the Few and How Collective Wisdom Shapes Business, Economies, Societies and Nations ... is a book written by James Surowiecki about the aggregation of information in groups, resulting in decisions that, he argues, are often better than could have been made by any single member of the group."
The Acrobat.com Ideas site (http://ideas.acrobat.com) is available now for YOUR ideas, your comments and, very importantly, your VOTES. This is an experiment for us: a new way of gathering ideas, getting feedback on the ideas, and letting you tell us which are the ideas most important to you. Will this be effective? Inspirational? Yes. Absolutely. Please help us explore by adding your ideas. And vote early and often.
The Buzzword team is excited about our latest release. There are some terrific new features that many of you have requested - seeing the differences between versions of a document, justified text, and the ability to export to EPUB, for eBook publishing to devices like the iPhone with Stanza, Sony Reader and Adobe Digital Editions! And for our Macintosh users, there's support for Safari 4 (beta.) Read more about this release via a Buzzword Open Access document. There's no need to sign in to Buzzword (or even to have an account, for that matter) to read the document. So, feel free to pass the link along to colleagues and friends.
I'm going to show you some tricks I use with Buzzword to create really beautiful and professional business letters. Of course, just writing the letter in Buzzword in the first place will help your cause, because unlike Microsoft Word, one of Buzzword's strongest qualities is what you see is what you print (WYSIWYP). This is true for the layout of your document as well as that indescribably beautiful thing that happens to a document when you run it though Adobe's rendering engines. It just looks better. Period. But I'm a little off topic now. Let's take a standard business letter and put Buzzword through its paces.
(Dan Weinstein is currently Associate Professor of English at Dakota State University in Madison, South Dakota. There, roughly 1400 miles from his birthplace in New York City, he teaches both writing and web design and researches best practices for computer supported writing instruction.)
One key to good teaching is simply the habit of keeping one's teaching house in order. Usually, there is quite a bit to keep track of. Documents that range from assignment descriptions to lectures, handouts, and tests need to be created, updated, distributed, archived, and kept ready for access at a moment's notice (this is particularly true when one is teaching online, which I quite often do).
To minimize the burden of this sort of housekeeping and keep my attention where it should be (on my students), I have devised a system of file management that streamlines my workflow to the point where virtually all I have to think about are the critical human interactions the system exists to support.
To do this, I use two tools in tandem: Buzzword and a spreadsheet. Any garden variety spreadsheet will do, the only requirement being that it support hyperlinks. At the moment I use either OpenOffice.org Calc or Microsoft Excel. If Buzzword were to host a spreadsheet application, I would probably use that. ;)
I have to write documents frequently in both my professional and personal life. One thing I share in common with the rest of the Buzzword staff (and Adobe, for that matter) is a true love for crafting a really good document. What can I say, I'm a bit of a word processing nerd. When I have something really interesting to write, I look forward to the process. I really look forward to writing in Buzzword because it is so easy to produce a fabulous document. Today I want to talk about a little trick that lets you totally forget about the outside world and focus on the subject at hand – your writing.
Here at Buzzword Central, we're really excited about the extended sharing capability we added in the latest release. In case you haven't heard, Buzzword now enables its authors to make their documents accessible by anyone, with or without a Buzzword account, whether or not the others have signed in.
We call these open access documents, and we hope it will not only make Buzzword documents more ubiquitous, but will make sharing of documents easier. Especially in those cases where you have 20 or more people with whom you want to share a document (and the contents aren't particularly sensitive), you can now just send them the URL to an open access doc and they can read it directly.
So here's a little experiment in which you can view this blog entry in Buzzword...
The Buzzword team updated our servers today with our 14th release. And, the theme of this version is Easier Document Sharing.
We get a lot of feedback from our users, and at the top of the list has been the request to make our document sharing easier, and more public. So we've tackled both problems. Now it's not only easier to share documents with teams but also publish to the whole world.
Most crosswords in the daily newspaper are written by freelance constructors who submit proposed puzzles to the various editors. One such constructor is Andrew Greene, the author of this post. When not engaged with his cruciverbalism hobby, Andrew is a developer on the Buzzword team. Most recently he brought you spell checking in 19 different languages.
Guest author: Andrew M. Greene
Many people think of constructing and solving crossword puzzles as a solitary activity. While this may be true for some, there are organizations like the National Puzzlers' League and events like the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament (which was featured in the 2006 movie Wordplay) that bring puzzle solvers and constructors together.
Today's puzzle in the Wall Street Journal was constructed by a team of three hobbyists who know one another from the National Puzzlers' League. One lives in Denver, one lives in Vancouver, and I live in Boston. We used Buzzword to collaborate on writing the clues for this puzzle.
There was an interesting post today picked up by my blog alerts from a site called "Criminal Defense Law with an Apple". The alert for references to Buzzword picked up the post because it contained the following line:
I see no reason to review Adobe’s Buzzword, because we already have really solid solutions for word processing.
This was stated in the context that there were so many other useful new applications emerging on the web, that evaluating "traditional" categories wasn't worth the effort. We clearly haven't reached that blog author yet, so let's be clear again here: writing with Buzzword is something new, it's not the same as writing in Word. Yes, the keystrokes all translate neatly and in an orderly fashion to letters on the screen. And, as with Word, in time and with enough of these keystrokes, a document emerges that is worthy of sharing.
Having lived abroad for a while, I appreciate some Buzzword features that are very convenient when communicating with people outside of North America. Just properly spelling European names is helpful. Call me traditional, but if your name is Siân or François, or Sinéad, for example, then that's how I want to write it. But it's very hard with a lot of systems out there to do that. Buzzword makes it easy.
We are very excited to announce the release of a new version of Buzzword that adds support for other languages. You might recall that our last release enabled choosing languages other than US English for spell check. With this new version of Buzzword, we now offer you the ability to choose French, German or even UK English as the language to be displayed in Buzzword menus and dialog boxes. C'est très bon, n'est-pas?
This post looks at some of the ways in which PDF files can be used with Acrobat.com. In addition to offering the ability to create five PDFs, there are a number of ways that Acrobat.com helps you work with PDF files.
(Dr. Ice is currently the Director of Course Design, Research & Development at American Public University System. He has been using Buzzword in his teaching for the past year, and has conducted extensive research on the impact of using Buzzword versus alternatives.)
In the traditional online classroom students complete papers and projects in Word and submit them to the instructor as an email attachment. When the project is collaborative in nature, the typical workflow model involves using the track changes and commenting feature. At the point that a project is deemed complete the changes and comments are removed and passed to the instructor, via an email attachment, who adds yet another layer of comments and markups.ﾠ
In the spirit of web 2.0, an alternative to the above process has emerged in the form of free, online document editors. Buzzword, Google Docs and Zoho are some of the best known products in this sphere. A core function among these is the ability to create a document online and invite others to view and / or collaborate. Other features vary by product and include the ability to include tables, images and other fundamental features found in Word. However, the means of editing vary significantly from product to product.ﾠ
In four online, graduate-level, education courses students (n = 78) were asked to submit group projects using Word and Buzzword in alternating fashion. Buzzword was selected from the available online document collaboration tools as it offers several unique features, including pagination, intuitive media editing mechanisms and a visually oriented sharing mechanism.
This might go without saying, but let's say it anyway: at Buzzword, we're interested in making things look good. This interest applies not only to the application itself, but also to the final product that the user creates using the application. Bearing this in mind, imagine our delight when our PR team took a document we'd finished together in Buzzword and redesigned it, returning with the following:
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Note: The widget used here is from Acrobat.com's Share; we copied the embed code directly from Share, and inserted it directly into this post. Feel free to flip through and read the file.
...WHAT?! We were thrilled with the results, but also intrigued: how did they do that? Although we'd love to claim responsibility and say it was all done in Buzzword, that's not exactly the case. Here's the full story.
[Today's post is authored by Andrew Greene, the developer responsible for bringing a host of new languages to Buzzword.]
We at Buzzword have always realized that the first two “W”s in www stand for “world-wide,” and we’ve been looking forward to the day when we could provide spell-checking in languages other than the dialect of English used here in the U.S.
One of the advantages of being a part of Adobe is access to a lot of world-class resources, including the spelling dictionaries that Adobe has licensed for use in our desktop products. With this week’s upgrade to Buzzword, we are pleased to respond to the many requests you’ve sent in asking for spell-checking in more languages.
The Buzzword team has delivered again - a mere six weeks after our last version, which appeared as part of the Acrobat.com launch in early June. We're very excited to be back in regular release cycles, and we have lots of great features planned (see Lisa's recent blog post for specifics).
This new release (our 10th in 14 months) has a few very important new capabilities, designed to broaden our appeal globally and to make it even easier to share documents.
There are myriad different opinions on what the best conditions are for reading text on a screen. Debates rage about whether or not to use serif fonts and how long a line of text should be. A surprisingly sensitive issue, and possibly without a clear resolution.ﾠ
Here we've tried to delineate a few of the more widely accepted tips on how to optimize readability. Although they can be forsaken in the name of personal style, they're generally considered the most conducive to easy reading. Here are a few key points plucked from various takes on the subject:ﾠ
The second Acrobat.com podcast again features a discussion with David Coletta, and includes the following topics:
Buzzword design process
• Feedback email as source for new features
• Visual design and functional specifications
• Designer-developer interaction: how to interpret static designs
• The value of a good spec
• Buzzword excellent for writing specs
New feature discussion
• Focus on reducing speed bumps, improving the invitation process
• New language dictionaries
As a recent addition to the Buzzword team, it's become part of my task to do some research about good document design and what it means for a document to look good. To that end, this blog will be the sometimes venue of a few document-crafting ideas that we run into. These posts could be design-related findings in areas we think are important (such as online readability, layout or issues related to font choices, etc.) or they could be ideas for how to use Buzzword tools to make super good-looking documents.
There will also be a case study or two—that is, we'll bring up a few examples of documents made with Buzzword and walk through the creation process with an eye towards Buzzword's role in the work flow, from inception to finished product.
For now, to whet everyone's appetite for document aesthetics, here are a few innocent diversions to get you thinking about the visual elements of a page:
ﾠThe Web is a wonderful place; it never stops. Buzzword continues to do frequent releases. The challenge is to keep up with the many and varied requests we receive. The team truly likes to hear from our users - your comments and ideas keep us focused on what's important and give us new points of view.
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Buzzword has come a long way since we first launched the Preview. And there's still a lot we want to do. Here's a look at some of the features that are on the drawing board - some are ideas that came from many of you (thank you!)
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More writing tools:
* As one user wrote to us, "Named styles, named styles, named styles." This is one of the most frequently requested features and it is high on our enhancement list
* Tools to track changes made by each co-author
* Justified text, in addition to left, right and centered text
* Import and export of Open Document format (ODT)
* More fonts (please see the posting on why there is a small number of fonts in Buzzword)
* Table enhancements - merged cells, more formatting options
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Organizing your documents:
* Folders for grouping and organizing your documents
* Tagging documents for search
* Search within the organizerﾠ
And more:
* Spell check dictionaries for languages other than US English
* An off-line version of Buzzword
* and many, many more smaller enhancements
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The Buzzword team has been releasing new features on a regular basis since our debut last summer. Our users get the benefit of new functionality as it's ready. Each time you sign in to Buzzword, the latest and greatest is there - no installations, no upgrades, it just works.ﾠ
Please, keep the dialog going. Tell us what you need and what you think would make Buzzword a better solution for your work. The Buzzword forum is open!
In a world too full of very ordinary software products, its nice to find one occasionally that just does its job very well, with a feature set that has all the stuff you want and is not cluttered up with stuff you don’t, and perhaps most importantly, an interface that is intuitive and clean so that it can be used without any real learning curve.
Kim Cavanaugh and Lee Keller of Palm Breeze CAFE offer three nice video segments, on YouTube as well as TeacherTube. In their reviews, which are targeted at educators, they point out the value and potential of using Buzzword in educational settings - for students submitting assignments, or for teachers to check in on their students’ writing process
We heard about a Buzzword user recently who happily created a document on-line and after getting through the first draft, he promptly exported the document to a Word file and sent it to his collaborators as an email attachment.
One area where Buzzword has been very popular is in educational settings. We had hoped for just this scenario when we first conceived the product because academia is where you find users who:
* Write a lot
* Write from multiple locations, often on different computers
* Write together with fellow students
* Share their work with reviewers (often teachers)
* And, finally, care about the quality of the writing experience and the printed output.
Because Buzzword documents are stored on the web, it’s easy to allow others to read, review or even co-author them. You don’t have to email your documents to others; just invite collaborators to your shared document, and you will all be working on the same version.
It couldn’t be easier to start using Buzzword - the sign up process takes about 15 seconds. Just go to www.buzzword.com and click on the “Sign Up” link in the upper right corner of the screen, then fill in a few fields and get started.
Buzzword is often compared with Google Docs, so it might be useful to discuss the relationship between them - both the similarities and the differences. The short version goes like this:
Similarities:
Free web apps. Buzzword and Google Docs are both driving the move to on-line applications, and are rapidly gaining popularity and market share.
Comments and Collaboration. Ubiquitous access to your documents enable better collaboration, and both tools have useful commenting functionality to support this.
Differences:
Layout and Pagination. Google Docs has the sophistication of Notepad, with no page payout or pagination capability. Buzzword, on the other hand, shows a true and accurate representation of the page in real time.
Experience matters! Buzzword’s user experience is rich and elegant, rewarding users and encouraging authors to write more.
A while back, a young marketing professional visited our humble offices to inquire about opportunities. After getting a thorough demo of Buzzword, she stated in no uncertain terms, “It’s lickable!” We didn’t really have an opening for a marketing person at the time, but her comment has had a lasting effect on us.
We have frequently heard reactions like that since. Of course, it’s gratifying to hear such euphoric praise and we all think our designer, Robby, is worthy of every syllable.
Here’s another way we think Buzzword might be useful in working on documents, whether you’re working alone or in a group setting. One measure of whether this post might be useful for you is the number of paper clips that are visible in your Inbox.
In other words, if your Inbox is choked with messages that contain attachments, especially if those attachments are Word documents, then Buzzword is worth considering.
It almost goes without saying these days that when there’s collaborative authoring and editing work to be done, email is the channel that supports the process. We have become so accustomed to emailing documents around, that we have become generally inured to just how hideous the process can be.
Disruptive innovations often initially result in worse performance compared with established products and services in mainstream markets. But disruptive innovations have other benefits. They are often cheaper, simpler, smaller, and more convenient to use. After taking root in a simple, undemanding application, disruptive innovations inexorably get better until they change the game, relegating previously dominant firms to the sidelines in often stunning fashion.
–Clayton Christensen, author of The Innovators Dilemma
Since Monday’s press announcement of Adobe’s pending acquisition of Virtual Ubiquity we’ve seen a storm of coverage by analysts, bloggers, and the press. Most of it has been extremely positive and encouraging. And it’s resulted in our servers being bombarded by what used to be called “The Slashdot Effect”. Only in this case it’s the total blogosphere/press effect.
We'd like to think that Buzzword represents a new application category that could be called Rich Collaborative Authoring. Though this isn't a popular buzzword, and probably never will be, it explains a niche that Buzzword fits nicely and one we think is important.
Let's start with the basics: writing has always been a killer app. However, Rich Authoring goes farther than basic writing by allowing for more expressiveness and polish. Here you have more ways to express yourself than plain text, including graphics and other media. You also have more control over the look of the final product, including layout, pagination, spacing and typography.
Word and similar desktop applications are essentially the only tools that currently enable Rich Authoring. This involves providing a rich canvas through which users can express themselves, supported by a page / typography engine that structures and lays out one’s content. But Word is essentially desk-bound, so collaboration becomes a manual and often awkward process.
We'd like to use this space to describe some of the usage scenarios that we think would be addressed and improved by a rich, on-line authoring and collaboration environment.
Our expectation is that the task commonly known as "word-processing", though constantly maturing, is in the early stages of a dramatic evolution. Migrating the authoring environment on-line isn't just about moving the same feature set to a different environment; more importantly, it's about exploiting the capabilities of the new platform to better suit what users are trying accomplish.
We've designed Buzzword for people who a) write a lot; b) need access to their documents and tools in more than one place; c) collaborate with others when writing by soliciting comments and peer editing; d) do not have an IT department supporting their computing environment.
And, very importantly, we designed Buzzword for people who care about how their documents look.
Word processing is the most-used of the desktop office applications and those of us on the Virtual Ubiquity team have been in that business for a long time. Some of us have built word and text processors for Lotus, Atex, Interleaf, Trellix, and Texet. Others have worked on collaborative software like Notes, eRoom, and QuickTopic.
And we've all used word processors like Wang, WordStar, Word Perfect, Lotus Manuscript, Volkswriter, PFSWrite. But, my guess is that many reading this have heard of few of these.
There's a reason for that - word processors live and die with their platforms.
