TechWhirl (TECHWR-L) is a resource for technical writing and technical communications professionals of all experience levels and in all industries to share their experiences and acquire information.
For two decades, technical communicators have turned to TechWhirl to ask and answer questions about the always-changing world of technical communications, such as tools, skills, career paths, methodologies, and emerging industries. The TechWhirl Archives and magazine, created for, by and about technical writers, offer a wealth of knowledge to everyone with an interest in any aspect of technical communications.
In today's _Boston Globe_, technology reporter Hiawatha Bray (what a cool
sounding name) reports on CuCat, a infra red scanning device from Digital
Convergence Corp (DC), which when plugged into a computer, can read a bar
code and then automatically launch a browser to open to a web page/site
associated with that bar code. DC is giving the CueCats away for now,
seeding the market Bray calls it. You can pick one up at your local Radio
Shack while supplies last, or have one sent to you for $10 shipping and
handling from DC. Bray reports that so far the codes in circulation tend to
be advertising extensions. A current issue of _Wired_, for example, will
find most codes nestled in ads, though there are some that extend the
editorial content. For reading that's not done next to a computer, pen size
and key chain-sized devices are planned that let a reader scan and store a
bar code. When they get to a computer, they can then call up the stored
pages. This isn't new; at the start of this calendar year, I recall seeing
stories about newspapers that use a similar technology to provide "instant"
links from their paper to pixeled content.
But what's cool, for now, is that the thing is free. And kinda cute. It does
in fact look like a cat. But since so much Writing Center/WPA/teaching in
technology setting work involves the migration of moving folk from print to
pixel, getting these things and playing with them a bit, even in a limited
commercial context, can really fire the imagination about how we do things
like outreach, supplement journal articles with more detailed data and
online discussions, do WAC/WID outreach, and so on. Lots of interesting
potential for us all in this little idea.
