I recently conducted an experiment challenging common documentation "best practices." I found that some widely accepted guidelines may not be as effective as we think. My experience highlighted the need for data-driven approaches to documentation, such as using "was this page helpful?" feedback widgets, to truly understand what makes documentation helpful. I encourage everyone to adopt more rigorous methods for evaluating documentation effectiveness.
I've added Amazon affiliate links to relevant books on my blog posts, hoping to provide useful recommendations and earn a small commission. So far, I've had one referral. I'd love to hear your feedback: Do you find these book recommendations helpful? Would you consider purchasing a recommended book? What factors influence your book-buying decisions? Is it clear which links go to the UK Amazon site versus the US site? Recent stats suggest a low conversion rate for affiliate links (around 0.24%), so I'm evaluating whether the effort is worthwhile given the advertising benefit to Amazon.
I've joined the Sphere Beta Program and have some initial thoughts. While I find the related blogs feature useful, the blog post search results for keywords like "AJAX" aren't quite hitting the mark. I'd love to see improvements such as RSS subscription options for results, more refined date filtering (e.g., between specific dates), and a "find similar posts" feature.
I'm looking for user feedback on the next version of the AJAX Tagger. Specifically, I'd like to know if users would prefer to have the option of placing Technorati tags inline with the blog post content, or if they prefer the current method of listing them at the end. Inline placement could be problematic because the Yahoo Term Extraction API sometimes uses phrases not found in the post itself.
