I recently mentioned to someone I’ve been about as far underground as the Chilean miners that were recently rescued. Twice I’ve been about half way down Soudan Mine outside Tower Minnesota. The experience is genuinely otherworldly. It was here I experienced absolute darkness. Soudan, once the deepest deep shaft mines in the world (iron mine) is now a state park and is also a physics lab for many interesting physics experiments that benefit from significant shielding from the sun’s rays; such as anti-matter experiments.

More information about this mine turned state park can be found here: http://www.dnr.state.mn.us/state_parks/soudan_underground_mine/index.html

I was recently honored to speak with Alan Shimmel of NetworkWorld, which was recorded as a brief podcast. Alan writes here:

MindTouch is one open source company that has established itself as a leader in its market (enterprise collaboration), open source or not. They are also a great example of how to do open core right. Their MindTouch Core, free and open source edition has literally millions of people using it daily. Their commercially licensed versions likewise have millions of additional users as well. Now with their Technical Communications Suite (TCS), MindTouch wants to make it "mindless" to create web based technical documentation and technical communities.

…

The TCS is a great example of a company listening to its customers in how they are using and what they want to do with their product. MindTouch customers were using MindTouch to create online technical documentation and support communities. 

I encourage you to listen to the short podcast. We discuss technical communication, documentation, content strategy, open source and even briefly about software patents. Alan is a great guy to speak with and it’s been great seeing him quickly becoming one of the most relevant people covering open source.

http://ashimmy.podomatic.com/swf/joeplayer_v10.swf

Also, I had my first article published in ReadWriteWeb (RWW). I’m proud to be published in Forbes, Fortune and many other fine publications, but RWW is something I’m especially pleased by because it is has long been my favorite technology publication. My article is titled “What Do Online Documentation and Museums Have in Common?” I hope you’ll read it, tweet it, Facebook it, and comment on it.

I flew in from San Jose this evening to San Diego. Home. The moon was a massive orange crescent over the Pacific Ocean. It was one of those uncanny and other-worldly celestial bodies that makes you think there is a higher power. A supernatural force signaling you. For me this deity—of natural sorts—was commanding me to take a dip in the frigid Pacific Ocean. I headed this call. I had the freedom to do so. God bless freedom. Freedom is a duty that few realize and we all pursue, but we all contain.

A senior astronomer has said that the hunt for alien life should take into account alien “sentient machines”.

via BBC News – Alien hunters ‘should look for artificial intelligence’.

Coincidentally, just last week at work I quoted Terry Bisson’s 1990 short story: “They’re Made Out Of Meat“.

It’s very short and starts like this:

“They’re made out of meat.”

“Meat?”

“Meat. They’re made out of meat.”

“Meat?”

“There’s no doubt about it. We picked up several from different parts of the planet, took them aboard our recon vessels, and probed them all the way through. They’re completely meat.”

“That’s impossible. What about the radio signals? The messages to the stars?”

“They use the radio waves to talk, but the signals don’t come from them. The signals come from machines.”

“So who made the machines? That’s who we want to contact.”

Read the whole thing, it’s great.

“Thinking meat! You’re asking me to believe in thinking meat!”

This is fantastic.

As for how to write well, here’s the short version: Write a bad version 1 as fast as you can; rewrite it over and over; cut out everything unnecessary; write in a conversational tone; develop a nose for bad writing, so you can see and fix it in yours; imitate writers you like; if you can’t get started, tell someone what you plan to write about, then write down what you said; expect 80% of the ideas in an essay to happen after you start writing it, and 50% of those you start with to be wrong; be confident enough to cut; have friends you trust read your stuff and tell you which bits are confusing or drag; don’t (always) make detailed outlines; mull ideas over for a few days before writing; carry a small notebook or scrap paper with you; start writing when you think of the first sentence; …

Keep reading, it gets even better: Writing, Briefly.

Product and services documentation is now a core business asset that can drive revenues.

If your business hasn’t been paying attention to your documentation, you’re ignoring a sales tool and a revenue generator and you need to rethink your priorities.

Forbes just published an article I wrote on the importance of product and services documentation in driving top-line revenue, decreasing support costs and increasing customer satisfaction. It’s a good read regardless of your discipline. Let me know what you think.

That was a fun night. 🙂

Today I was flattered by an interview at OpenSource.com the Red Hat community news site.

One misguided fellow made the following comment about MindTouch:

That thing is not open source at all. On their site it says: “Software License: Shared Source”. As far as I know, that is code name for Microsoft quasi-open source licenses which are in conflict with section 6 (and some with 10 also) of open source definition.

What else to expect from ex-Microsofties…. openwashing.

I tried posting a comment, but Mollum is configured to disallow comments that trip it’s spam filter and I couldn’t.

So, here’s the response I was trying to post in reply to the above comment titled “Openwashing”.

Open washing? 🙂

MindTouch Core is released under GPL v2 but some components (MindTouch Dream) are released under Apache. Download here (Core is GPL2 and free). I write about Open Core here, which links to several other posts on the topic.

The gist is, you can think of MindTouch Core as an up-stack app server that is specialized in collaboration. MindTouch 2009/2010 is a commercial product built atop MindTouch Core. MindTouch 2009/2010 is designed to be the killer app for strategic (product and service) documentation.

I’m confident most, if not all readers, readers at OpenSource.com have used MindTouch before. For example, the Mozilla Developer Network is powered by MindTouch. There are many other documentation bases that are powered by MindTouch including those for Zmanda, Fonality, RightScale, Intel, Microsoft, Intuit, ExactTarget, AutoDesk, EMC and many others.

Anyway, GPL v2 and Apache…not open washing. 🙂

Perhaps someone at OpenSource.com can help me post this comment.