Posts - Tom Resing's Collaboration Blog

An open source UX writing example from Mastodon

By Tom Resing on November 7, 2022 / Content design, Writing / Leave a comment

Unlike Twitter, Mastodon developers use an open-source model. Open-source means, if you take the effort to, you can see the source of the messages you see on screen. Because Mastodon is an open-source app developed on GitHub, you can create an issue when you see something wrong. The following screenshot highlights some text I see on my Mastodon home page, “Pinned post”, followed by a screenshot of the same string, in code. The next screenshot shows the same message “Pinned post”, in the file

King County, Washington – Make an informed vote

By Tom Resing on October 16, 2020 / Community, Writing / Leave a comment

Tags: voting

King County, Washington – Make an informed vote

Today, October 16th, 2020, nearly 1.4 million registered voters in King County, Washington should have their ballots and voting guides from the state and county. The amount of information can be overwhelming. If you’re like me, you have 39 different items to vote on. Take some time to read the words on the printed pages you’ve received. Voting is one of the top ways to make your voice heard in the United States. We’re so lucky to live in cities

Words can save lives

By Tom Resing on June 29, 2020 / Writing / 1 Comment

Tags: coronavirus

Disputes delayed early reporting On January 27th, 2020, Dr. Camilla Rothe discovered Germany’s first case of the new coronavirus. The case involved one person at risk for the virus. According to the New York Times, the visitor from China had “no coughing or sneezing, no signs of fatigue or fever.” Coronaviruses were only known to be contagious from people showing symptoms. Confusion over the words used to describe this case caused delays. Thousands of people who caught the virus from

3 ways Epic’s Fortnite is changing gaming

By Tom Resing on January 27, 2019 / Games, software development / Leave a comment

If you know 5 people under the age of 20, chances are, you know someone who’s played Fortnite. Epic Games, creator of this free, massively scaled, multi-platform game, is making billions of dollars from in-app game purchases. How did a game that didn’t exist at the beginning of 2017 come to dominate the gaming world before the beginning of 2019? In some ways, Fortnite is the ultimate software as a service success story. Whatever device you own, you can download

Putty for Linux Azure SSH authentication

By Tom Resing on June 24, 2018 / azure, cloud / Leave a comment

Tags: linux, robotics

Putty for Linux Azure SSH authentication

I created my first Linux Azure VM this weekend. I chose the option to secure it with an SSH Public Key instead of a password. Creating a password would have been easier. SSH public key will be much more secure. It took some learning to get it right. First Step – PuttyGen for creating the key After choosing the ssh key option, the Azure portal required entering a public key. On Windows, PuttyGen was the tool suggested to create the

More on UI Text Design

By Tom Resing on January 18, 2018 / Microsoft, Writing / 6 Comments

Tags: ui text design, voice

Today, Episode 46 of the MS Cloud IT Pro Podcast was published. I was the guest and our conversation included some discussion of UI Text Design. UI Text Design was new to me a year ago and it’s something you don’t hear about every day, so I thought I’d share some more on the role. The screenshot above shows the list view drop down in SharePoint. Even as I look at it now, I see UI text that doesn’t follow

The Power of 9 Characters

By Tom Resing on October 28, 2017 / Administration, Books, Content Development / 1 Comment

Tags: ms-dos

format c: The MS DOS Manual taught me the true power of the PC. Typing those 9 characters and hitting Enter made a very large change in my computer. Before I ran that command, my computer booted. I turned on the power switch and I got a prompt to perform an action. After, it didn’t do anything. Something like this had never happened with my last “home computer,” the Atari 800 XL. No matter what I did with that device,

1 Year at Microsoft!

By Tom Resing on April 24, 2017 / events, Microsoft / Leave a comment

Last week marked the one year anniversary of my employment with Microsoft in sunny Redmond, Washington. It’s been an honor and a privilege to work with the SharePoint product team after so long as a partner and community member. It’s really amazing how much work goes on to make SharePoint the best product it can be. And, I had no idea how much work went into content design, both the in-product experience and writing and maintaining user assistance articles. I’m

“Alexa, ask Graph Bot to Send Email”

By Tom Resing on March 28, 2017 / Bots, Microsoft, Office 365 / Leave a comment

Tags: alexa, microsoft graph, top

Alexa and the Microsoft Graph are connected in two new ways. Office 365 Calendar Did you know that Alexa can now check your Office 365 calendar? Connect your calendar to Alexa from the Alexa app or alexa.amazon.com. If you don’t have an Alexa device, try echosim.io for free. Graph Bot If you want to learn more about how Alexa connects to Office 365, check out the new Graph Bot skill added to the store by Paul Stubbs. When you add

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