Just like a farm, a wiki farm is a collective effort…grouping many smaller web communities into a larger whole. Another feature of a wiki farm is that a user can log-in to multiple wikis using the same account username. Thus, an enthusiast need not limit himself to one wiki community but can hop from one community to another.

As we get into Wikia, a major wiki community portal, we will learn about the power and potential of the crowd driving the knowledge mines through wikis.

Wikia is all about passionate fans. So passionate in fact that it’s a wiki community portal with at least 50,000 communities on various subjects pulling in 30 million eyeballs each month. That’s what makes it a Top 100 web property.

Wikia should not be confused with Wikipedia. Both are entirely different web and creative entities. They are not even sister projects. Both though share some content and are based on the same MediaWiki software.

To clear the air, this Wikia page marks out what Wikia is and what it’s not.

A 50,000 strong community should cover anything under the sun. Wikia does; with communities as diverse as steampunk to the more unvaried ones like politics and sports.

The communities are arranged around Hubs which are akin to categories. Hubs are the broader collections…the big topics covering the many smaller but related sub topics. For instance, entertainment has movies, TV shows, and books under it.

All Wikia sites can be edited by a visitor. Creating an account is not binding but it does make one feel part of the community that’s behind the wiki. A Wikia account can be easily created by clicking the green Create an Account button that’s on the top right of all pages. The green Log In button is right next to it.

Searching for your favorite wiki is easy using the search box on the homepage. All wikis also have a search bar on the left hand side of the page below the wiki logo. A Search link also takes you to the Special Page for more specific needle hunting.

Some pages come with an Edit link which allow visitors to edit or correct any detail. Edits can be done via a text editor and updated instantly. Pages where the Edit button is not available are locked for changes. Wikia editing is simple using the markup language common to all wikis.

Creating a wiki in the Wikia community portal is as easy as planning out a topic, logging in and filling out a creation form. The creation form lists the wiki’s name, URL and category to place under. From then on, you can add your content.

Ultimately, Wikia is about the content. Thousands and thousands of pages of it. Consider the World of Warcraft page…said to one of the largest in Wikia at 78,000 pages and is also one of the top 1,500 websites in the world according to Alexa. The Wikia gaming page in all has ended up with 500,000 pages of content and growing.

Did you know that the word ‘wiki’ comes from the Hawaiian word ‘wikiwiki’ which means ‘fast’? It’s fast to setup or edit but with the huge amount of information; it certainly will be slow going for the reader.

Have you visited Wikia? Let us know your favorite wiki amongst the heap.

Image Credit: Goran Zec

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The Sidewiki’s intent is to pool together the mass of readers who visit a webpage and use their collective knowhow to enhance the content already present with their own website reviews. Don’t muddle it with Searchwiki, that one was for search results. This one is for annotating webpages.

Google Sidewiki installs as a browser sidebar. As you visit a webpage, you can read commentaries and inputs from others who have passed through before you. This information can broaden the original information contained in the webpage by way of additional reference links, tips, inside information or simply a critical website review. The stream of comments is intended to further conversation around a topic.

Google’s page on Sidewiki draws out several examples of potential uses and benefits. So, let’s check if it’s worth the swipe.

Installing Sidewiki

The browser tool for Internet Explorer and Firefox installs as a sideswipe sidebar. It’s a default part of Google Toolbar. So all of us who avoid the Google Toolbar, or any toolbar as such, tough luck.

It’s also a part of the toolbar’s enhanced features which involves sending user browsing info back to Google.

Once installed, you can click the Sidewiki icon or click a little blue tab to open the sidebar to view comments.

Reading, annotating and sharing

As this is a new service, most of your frequented sites won’t have many entries. In that case, you can log in with your Google ID and publish your own. Put in your two bits for the whole page or select a specific section to remark on.

Sharing some info could be a direct benefit. It’s quite simple – click the Share link at the bottom of an entry and pass it on using email, Twitter or post it on Facebook. You can also click the chain icon to copy the link and paste it anywhere like instant messengers. Blogger post integration is also there for those who have one.

Sidewiki entries are coupled with Google Profiles (i.e. those who us them). You can read the other entries by the author and his complete bio on Google Profiles.

Sidewiki website reviews can be edited and deleted any time. You can also disable Sidewiki by clicking on the wrench icon for the toolbar settings and going to the Tools tab. Uncheck the box for Sidewiki.

Sidewiki’s intent as explained by Google is not to have a free-for-all commenting platform. A ranking program is inbuilt to weed out the useless info from the ones that are relevant. The exact tech behind the show is quite beyond me but it does take heed of user feedback (voting), commenting track record of the author and relative quality. Ranking is something Google is good at, so hopefully Sidewiki will show the worthy ones.

Is the footnote clear yet?

It’s still early days so the jury is still not out. Looking at the comments floating around on the web, opinion seems to be divided. Yes, universal sharing of knowledge seems to be a great idea. Questions though remain how strong will the ranking system be? Will it filter out comments which express opposite views? How will webmasters take to this ‘intrusion’? In-site comments can be controlled and blocked, but Sidewiki is open to all. Early indications say that not all comments will make the grade. Algorithms will ensure that the most relevant will appear first. Also, Google’s intent seems to be of adding value rather than start a town square hullabaloo.

Sidewiki’s success is not assured because it’s a Google baby. Annotation tools and web highlighters like Diigo, DotSpots, Trailfire and Fleck are among a few. It will be the value of raw words that might determine Sidewiki’s quality.

What are your early thoughts on sideswiping Sidewiki? Comment or annotate away.

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I think it’s a very interesting concept that might have its followers in other subjects. The idea is that you can make a profile for yourself with all the unusual and cool gadgets you own. It feels good to collect them and see them nicely lined up. But it doesn’t stop there.

All of the gadgets on the site are added by users, making it a sort of “Wikipedia of gadgets”. It’s possible to start a discussion around a gadget and ask owners questions.

Another nice feature is that you can also note that you want a certain gadget or have owned one. This way you can impress everyone with your 1st generation Gameboy!

I will show you some of the parts of the site and tell you how to get started. If you won’t take my word for it or prefer watching a video over reading than listen to Veronica Belmont explaining.

Make your profile

Of course you start by signing up and making a profile. If you want to use gdgt as just a gadget database, than you don’t need a profile, but of course it’s more fun when you use all the features – and you get to show off your gadgets!

Start by signing up and filling your profile with some information about yourself and perhaps a nice avatar. Find tips for making avatars in this MakeUseOf article.

Find some friends on the site or persuade some friends to join. As a start you can always befriend me of course.

Find and add your gadgets

You can add a list of all the unusual, cool gadgets you have, want or have had to your profile. This makes for a perfect way to get nostalgic over your Amiga console or Gameboy, but also for keeping track of that new SRL camera or Android phone.

You’re able to view reviews of a gadget or ask questions to owners. To find your gadgets go to the gadget finder and search on name, category or company.

If you can’t find the gadget you’re looking for, than just click add gadget to do just that. You can also add companies or tech terms to the database. This way gdgt could become the Wikipedia of gadgets.

Once you’ve made your list, a widget becomes available for you to share your list on your blog or facebook page. See a working example below.

Discuss, ask questions and read reviews

As with any community based website, the site is as good as its community. I haven’t seen growth or user numbers but I can tell there are already enough people around to have a question answered or have a discussion about your favorite camera. But it’s not really crowded yet.

Just go ahead and read some of the concerns of fellow gadget owners. Maybe you can help someone with a question or improve the database by correcting a specification. I really enjoy the way that it’s a central hub of reviews for items too. Users can add reviews from professional sites or write their own review. All in all this creates a great center for the true gadget geek. And I think we all have a little gadgetgeek inside of us.

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It’s essentially a big public chalkboard where everyone has a say as to what gets published. This works well on sites like Wikipedia for the entertainment factor alone. However, at the end of 2008, Google entered into the world of Wiki madness with its “SearchWiki” feature which integrates a wiki within the search engine. The new feature received mixed reviews when it was originally offered at Google Labs, but since its public launch last year, it slowly gained a user base.

A Few Cool Features of Google SearchWiki

Many people who’ve been using Google for years have probably noticed a few interesting, new tiny icons showing up throughout search results (provided you’re logged into your Google account). A lot of users have simply ignored the strange, new icons, while the curious geeky types (raise your hands – you know who you are) started to poke and prod this odd new feature.

The very faint icons circled on the image above are Google’s new SearchWiki features that allow you to customize your search results. Why would anyone want to customize search results? I suppose if you perform the same searches often, like “best movie websites,” or “best sites to watch tv,” you probably prefer a select number of top websites that serve up great content on those topics.

In the example above, I typed in “the best sites for watching TV”, and the fourth site listed is the article I wrote not long ago about watching TV for free with your computer (I’m not bragging or anything…really). Well, let’s say that I feel MakeUseOf has far better content on this topic than the other three silly sites above it in Google’s results (because it does) – what’s a web traveler to do? Easy – I’ll customize my web results by clicking the little “up” arrow icon to the right of the MakeUseOf link and bring it up to the top listing.

So now, at least in my own little Internet world – this MakeUseOf article is now king of these Google search results. The only sign that anything has been changed is that now the up arrow turns green – letting you know that the listing is one that you’ve customized.

If you want to move the listing back, you just click the down arrow. Now, another cool feature that I like the most is the ability to just wipe out the listings that you really don’t care for. Sick of seeing the same lame websites turn up in the search results that you perform often? Just click the little “X” box and it’s gone forever.

If you notice in the image above, I’ve circled the one place on the listing where there’s public evidence of your tampering. Each time someone promotes or deletes a link, those “votes” get added to the SearchWiki’s public area.

Apparently, I’m the first person to vote for my article for first place – go figure. Don’t think that you’ll be able to make a positive or negative impact on a website’s search ranking by doing this – according to Google, the actions in SearchWiki have no effect on site ranking. However, they could certainly have an effect on the public perception of a website.

Exploring the SearchWiki

My favorite feature of the SearchWiki is the ability to comment on particular listings. Maybe you just want to jot down a quick reminder for yourself about something at the link that struck your interest and you want to get back to when there’s more time. Or maybe you hated the article and want to jot down why. Clicking on the text bubble lets you enter those comments.

As you can see from my comments of shameless self-promotion in the text box above, I’ve just made a public remark about the link that gets added to Google’s public SearchWiki. If you want to view comments that other folks have made in the SearchWiki, you can browse those by clicking the “See all notes for this Searchwiki” at the bottom of the page.

Any time you conduct a Google search, whether or not you’ve personally contributed promotion, deletions or comments to the public Wiki, you can view what everyone else may have said about those particular listings by clicking on that “See all notes” link. For example, for a “best movies” Google search, I did just that and received the following page back.

The SearchWiki can get pretty entertaining at times, especially for searches and search results that are someone controversial. It’s a bit like watching a very political movie in a theater that allows patrons to voice their own opinions during the movie. Be forewarned however, watching what other people say about certain links can make you laugh, but other times it may also get you pretty angry. Of course, you’re also free to express your own opinion about the link – it is a wiki after all.

Have you ever used Google SearchWiki? Share your own opinion about this new Google search feature in the comments box below.

Check out the SearchWiki demo video from the SearchWiki team at Google.

Image credit: brianinsanfran

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Another factor is the hunger of people for information, knowledge and understanding. The faster, the better.

If you have ever been caught up in reading Wikipedia for hours on end, you’ll know what I mean. One page leads to the next, it never ends. For students, wikis can be an incrediby useful and compared to textbooks, they are a quick source of support and information.

Here is a list of three Wikis that may help boost your online studying:

DiRT – Digital Research Tools Wiki

DiRT contains a comprehensive collection of tools and resources that can be used by students or scholars in their research.

The focus is on humanities and social sciences. However, containing articles on brainstorming, how to communicate with colleagues, how to prepare screencasts or network with other researchers, this wiki covers tools and guidelines that may prove useful not only for researchers, but also for people with other career backgrounds and especially for students who are still exploring fields. Check it out and let us know what you think.

I’ve also written about other tools you can use for research besides wikis.

Medpedia

As the name suggests, Medpedia is a recently-launched wiki concerned with medical topics. The goal is to share “the advancing knowledge about health, medicine and the body among medical professionals and the general public.”

At this point, it contains hundreds of articles covering all types of human diseases and related medical background information. Nevertheless, the site states that you are not likely to find an article on the topic you are looking for. However, I did find everything I was looking for.

For med students, this Wiki can serve as a quick and easy way to research diseases and symptoms. Physicians and other experts are welcome to contribute to the site by editing pages or adding articles. Everyone else may suggest changes. All contributions will receive proper recognition.

If you’re a medical student and you are searching for the best websites to for medical information, check out Jackson’s article: The Best Reference Sites For Medical Students.

Textbook Revolution

Here we have a resource specifically for students or those who wish to learn new tricks.

Textbook Revolution features free educational materials on a wide variety of topics such as biology, earth sciences or world history.

The site is run by students and was founded in response to overpriced textbooks whose publishers only have profits in mind, rather than educational value.

If you know of high quality free textbooks, make an account with Textbook Revolution and share the resource. If you have used any of the listed books, provide your feedback and review them.

Aside from wikis, I’ve also listed 10 Tools For Online Learning in a previous article, check it out. Looking for a textbook? Check out TextBook Torrents: Torrent Directory for Text Books.

As a student, what is your favorite Wiki and how did you discover it? Share them with us!

Picture credits: xlucas

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On the font page, you’ll see an interesting comparison for the traffic that has taken place on pages over the course of the past month.  For instance, when I first visited Wikirank, they had a comparison to see who is the most popular on Wikipedia among John, Paul, George or Ringo.

You can also search for whatever topic you like.  As you begin to type into the search bar, you will see a list of article pages appear in a dropdown.  Just select the page you want from the dropdown when you see the page you’re looking for.

When you are viewing the visitor statistics for a particular Wikipedia article, you can easily add new topics to compare the traffic between multiple articles.  I found it interesting that the Linux Wikipedia page is more popular than the Windows and OS X pages.

What do you think of Wikirank?

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Perhaps that’s why the guys at Wikimedia Foundation, the non-profit parent body have several other pet projects running. We often have given them a go by without realizing there niche value.

So, I would just like to pause here and take a look at the informational value of the eight sister wikis from Wikimedia.

1. Wikimedia Commons

   

If you are looking for public domain photos to use, then this is bookmark worthy. At last count it had a repository of ‘4,127,824 freely usable media files’. The term ‘freely usable’ implies files under public domain, Creative Commons Attribution Sharealike and GNU Free Documentation Licenses. The content (audio, music, image, and video files) is arranged by topic, location, type, author, by license and by source. There are some gems to be found – type Greg Williams in the search box and you will be taken to his Wikiworld Archive of illustrations and cartoons.

2. Wikinews

   

There’s a coterie of news hounds calling themselves as citizen journalists behind Wikinews. The news is not classified into channels but Wikinews taps into the distributed nature of the internet to break news from all parts of the globe. Sources are cited below the news article to give the piece authenticity. News can be also read by region or by language. Tickers on the Weather, Crude Oil Prices, Market Indices and Sports Scores give a rounded picture. One can also catch up with the latest on Wikinews on an IRC channel, on Twitter or through a RSS feed. There is an audio brief option too.

And if your sense of fun lies in current affairs why not try out the World News Quiz page through the link at the top of the page.

3. Wikibooks

   

Wikibooks is an accumulation of free e-book resources comprising of textbooks, language courses, manuals, and public domain books. The direct beneficiaries of Wikibooks are students, and teachers in high-schools and universities. It is an important resource for self learning and reference. The English version alone has nearly 28,000 modules from over 3,000 developing books. Subjects cover the gamut of Natural Sciences, Social Sciences, Computers and Humanities.

Within Wikibooks, there are two diverging links which point to Wikijunior, a wiki resource for children and Simple English, a wiki with simplified English books. Both are still developing works which focus on creating content for children upto age 12 and books for easy readability.

4. Wikisource

   

It’s an internet archive of free content totaling to about 123,965 texts in the English database. More tuned towards the serious reader, there are some literary gems to be found in Wikisource. You might like to try out ‘The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin’ or Abraham Lincoln’s speeches. Wikisource is arranged around an Index of Works and an Index of Authors which along with the search box helps us to drill down to any relevant text. Classics, speeches and translated text can be found here.

5. Wikiversity

   

Wikiversity serves like an education portal where teachers and students can collaborate in an open learning environment. It is a method of ‘experimental learning’ where teachers combine with students to create educational content from the ground up. ‘Learning by doing’ is the central theme around which Wikiversity hopes to evolve. For those interested, Wikiversity is a vital e-learning medium. Belying its name, Wikiversity has educational courses across all educational levels. For instance, I got interested in the Technical Writing course which was offered Level 1 and Level 2 courses on the subject with a workshop on writing system requirement specifications. The resource allows me to learn, contribute and even interact with an instructor.

6. Wiktionary

   

Wiktionary is now not only a dictionary but also a thesaurus and also includes etymologies, pronunciations, sample quotations, synonyms, antonyms and translations. It is building itself up to be a comprehensive word reference source. A Rhymes listing, Frequency listing and a Phrasebook are also part of Wiktionary. With 1,195,489 English words, it is a useful catalogue. A user can get to all the nuances of a word using the Define box on the page. An audio translation is also available to understand the typical pronunciation. One can also link to the other language Wiktionary pages to get the meaning of a foreign word.

7. Wikiquote

   

Wondering who said ‘Fools rush where Angels fear to tread’? It could be among the 16,508 citations in Wikiquote. A compendium of quotes from around the world, this wiki is browsable by People, Literary works, Films, TV shows, Special Themes and Miscellaneous entries.

Note: The quote was by Sir Richard Francis Burton

8. Wikispecies

It might not immediately goad our interest but this wiki lists 179,317 taxonomic entries sourced from species records in the natural world. This makes it an important resource for a life science student.

Wikipedia and its sister sites have offered us what no other information medium has so far – a comprehensive knowledge wealth and the power to share and edit it for free. So are you among the ones who go over to the other Wikis for information or do you remain rooted to the main Wikipedia? Let us know how you use Wikipedia’s knowledge for your own.

Also make sure to check out 12 Popular Wikis that actually ‘WORK’. While Wikipedia is the biggest wiki out there, there are a number of other niche wikis that are very popular in their medium.

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Disposable services are incredibly useful when you just want a bit of anonymity online. Can’t trust a website that looks a little dodgy with your real email? Use a fake one which you can gain access to later.

Disposable services are also good for cases where you just need something to exist for a limited amount of time and not reside in cyberspace forever, for example files you want to share with your friend, or in this case – a webpage which expires after a certain timeframe. Below, I’ll show you how to create a disposable webpage in a matter of seconds.

Why would you want a disposable webpage?

The aptly named service is called DisposableWebPage and is completely free. What it does is that it creates an instant wiki for you to edit, share and perhaps collaborate with your friends. This also means you reap all the benefits of a wiki system with rich text editing and collaboration built directly into the system – plus you have version control so you can easily revert back to previous forms if something goes wrong.

These web pages can last up to 90 days or less, and can be very useful for event based discussions, for example, party or travel decisions – where it’s important to get everyone’s input but you don’t need to have the details stuck online after the event.

With this service, you don’t have to worry if all your friends use Facebook, Friendster, or whatever social networking service to organize and plan an event. Everything is on a single web page, accessible by all.

You can also put in photos, and even easily integrate sticky notes, and maps to make the page more dynamic.

Finally, you don’t have to worry about the site expiring without your knowledge. Every time you visit the page, a countdown timer to expiry is prominently displayed.

How to set up your own disposable page

What I really liked about it is that it’s pretty much quick and dirty. You don’t need to register in order to create a page, so your disposable web page can be set up in just a matter of clicks. To show you how easy it is, I’m going to walk you through making one for yourself.

Step 1: Go to DisposableWebPage, and click on the big red link, and name your page

Step 2: Your page is created! Now you can bookmark it right away, start editing it, change the timer, or send editor keys to your friends so they can edit this page as well.

Step 3: After you make the changes you want, send it to your friends so they can collaborate as well.

That’s all there is to it! Simple, and flexible for quick and dirty solutions where you need a web page which expires after a certain amount of time.

Do you use disposable tools? If so, tell us which ones you use in the comments!

Photo Credit : Wok

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If you’re tired of having your notes and thoughts relentlessly scattered all around your desktop while the thought of having to manually organize these things has your mind cluttered up, then WikiPad is the ideal candidate that will bring forth a solution to the change you’ve subconsciously been searching for.

I stumbled upon WikiPad while doing a search with the set of words “notepad” and “organized” in it. To be honest I’m actually quite surprised at the fact that I was able to come across this application, because it seems as if it were nested deep within the internet’s layer after layer of endless information. Until a couple of days ago, I had never even heard of the word Wiki and Pad in the same sentence, let alone as one word. However, as this application has allowed for the simple, quick, and effective organization of what was once my self-indulged mess of papers and thoughts, I am glad I stumbled upon it at this precise time!

You can use this application to keep track of projects, personal contacts, general information, to-do lists, storage of HTML files, and more, later allowing you to place them on a website, CD, or any other HTML based application.

A warning: once you begin to use WikiPad you’ll probably conform to an incredible amount of usage! This application is original and lets you keep track of information, search detailed specific data, and use it in any way you’d like as it is an Open Source application!

Features

Here’s a list of WikiPad’s solid features:

• On the fly WikiWord linking, as you type
• WikiWord auto-completion
• Easy WikiWord navigation
• Wiki text styling
• WikiWord History
• Wiki document attributes
• Dynamic views
• Tree/Outline view with over 100 icons
• To-do lists
• Incremental search
• Search and Replace
• Autosave
• Export to HTML
• All your data is stored in plain text
• URL and file linking
• Intuitive keybindings
• Help Wiki included

WikiPad’s Uniqueness & Origin

The difference between WikiPad and other notepad-like applications is the simplicity and facility it offers when cross-linking your information. You’re able to create links by typing in WikiWords. It’s no shocker to me that this application exhibits the word Wiki in its name, since wiki means quick, and these application-based names are known for the quick and easy combination of useful information (i.e. WikiPedia).

Verdict

WikiPad is a useful Open Source application that delivers the astounding organizational skills that sometimes we professionals and computer savvy people alike seem to lack. With this being said, I enjoyed and will continue to enjoy using WikiPad.  However, one major implication (in my book) that I didn’t like about this application was its GUI (graphical user interface). I think it should be a bit “easier” on the eyes and it should be somewhat more inviting instead of simple and basic. As well as the format in which you can view the way it categorizes your notes.

Plug and Play

You’ve read how great WikiPad is, and also how it can be configured to be made a little better. However, now you’re ready to install. Here is a quick review on how to install and setup your WikiPad to get it up and running in no time!

First thing you have to do is visit the WikiPad site and download the latest version of Wikipad (1.8) by scrolling all the way to the bottom and clicking on the link shown below:

(The Wikipad wiki software available for Windows, Linux and Mac PCs. So it covers pretty much everyone here.)

After you’ve clicked on the above outlined link you will be directed to a page with the following link in it:

Click on this link as it will open up the download zip file as seen below:

Once you’ve clicked OK, your copy of WikiPad will start downloading instantly. If your Internet connection ranges from DSL to a T1 then it should take a matter of minutes or even seconds.

Now lets open up your newly installed WikiPad. Arrive at your start menu, click on programs and scroll down to view the WikiPad folder and open it up.

Once you open it up you’ll arrive at a help Wiki page, read the page, get familiar with the software, and once you’ve done this you can access WikiPad’s menu and create your new Wiki by clicking on where it says “Wiki” on the top bar:

Give your new Wiki a name and that’s it! You can now begin to write countless amounts of information cross linked between different Wiki’s!

WikiPad Bonus

Well, you didn’t think I was going to leave you empty handed now did you? Sending off our readers without useful tips and thoughts isn’t what we’re accustomed to here at MakeUseOf, thus I’ve compiled a list of useful shortcuts for your WikiPad, enjoy!

Ctrl + J: Wikize
Ctrl + L: Goto Link
ALT + left/right: Move Across (History)
(I defined: ALT + W/D instead)
Ctrl + up/down: Move Across (Parent/Child)

Ctrl + O: Open Wiki
Ctrl + Alt + F: Search (globally)
Ctrl + F: Search in page
F3 / Shift F3: Incremental Search

Ctrl + Q: Home
Ctrl + T: Hide Tree
Ctrl + space: Auto-complete
Ctrl + Tab: Tab Browsing (previous)
Ctrl + Shift + P: Referrers to Page (Ctrl + UP)

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Wikis are great for collaboration and note taking. Web workers have been using it to collaborate, Ubuntu has been using it, we use it here at MakeUseOf. However if you don’t have a web server and can’t install Wiki online, the next best thing is to have a wiki on your desktop.

ZIM is one such package that helps you create a wiki on your desktop. Or in other words you can use it as an excellent note taking application.

ZIM is a WYSIWYG text editor which aims to bring the concept of a wiki to your desktop. So why would you need a wiki on your desktop?

Well, here are some things you can do with it :

• Create TODO lists
• Create a notebook to keep important ideas or a general scrap book to note down your thoughts.
• You may then export it in HTML format and view them in a browser just as you would view webpages.
• Any other creative non-traditional ideas?

So it’s a note taking application. Why ZIM then? Just have a look at some of the features of ZIM:

• Saving transparently as you type and finish.
• You can even have a revision control of your notes/pages
• You can embed images as well (I missed it badly in Tomboy). Just link to them from within the text file.
• You can use the wiki syntax and keybindings or the editor to style and manage your notes/lists.
• It also supports plugins to perform tasks like spell checking, export, calendar, todo list and more.

Here is a small screenshot tour to give you an idea of some of the capabilities:

Open or create a new notebook:

Type in the notes with all the formatting using either the wiki syntax or the toolbars or shortcut keys:

Manage Plugins:

Using the calendar and plugins:

Export to HTML or another format using a variety of options.

The notes are stored as text files with wiki markup. This means that you can edit them with other applications as well. With the keybindings and wiki syntax, ZIM has become my favorite and I seldom use Tomboy now. If you are using Ubuntu, ZIM is just a command away:

sudo apt-get install zim

If you are using another distribution then you might want to check out your package manager. Nevertheless, here is the download page.

ZIM can be used on Windows as well, only you require the gtk+, perl and gtk-perl bindings. Also check out the instructions for Windows Install. Try it and let us know how you liked it or do you use another note taking application? I know BasKet can do similar things but I am not a big KDE fan.

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But imagine that you are marooned on an island with just your rusty laptop….OK, strike out the ‘Gilligan’s Island’ scenario and look at a more realistic setting of being away from a net connection. Get the picture? Here’s where some of the offline tools for Wikipedia browsing come in handy.

The Wikimedia Foundation has set up an offline Wikipedia version themselves understanding this need. The English version with a collection of about 2000 pages can be had in the form of a CD (an ISO file). But it comes at a cost of $13.99.

The penny pinchers among us have to put in a bit more effort and megabytes. But despair not. Here are four free tools for taking the Wikipedia knowledge off the net and into an anytime, anywhere experience.

I. WikiTaxi (OS: Windows)

All downloaded pages are stored in a WikiTaxi database. WikiTaxi uses compression to make sure that the database remains compact enough. For instance, the huge English Wikipedia easily fits on an 8 GB memory stick. WikiTaxi itself does not require an installation as it runs from an executable. The process to download the information is a bit long drawn out as you have to essentially download a XML database dump from the Wikipedia site containing the wiki content (The largest English Wiki is 3.5 GB).

An included WinTaxi importer contains this database into a WinTaxi database for you to browse offline. The database dumps are updated every few weeks. So you need to go online to get the most recent version of the information.

II. Zipedia (OS:Windows)

Zipedia is a Mozilla Add-on for Firefox enabling offline browsing. The Zipedia page describes it as the ‘poor man’s choice’. But when we don’t have access to the real thing, then it’s a worthy choice isn’t it? You will still need to download the Wikipedia database dump. Zipedia does not need any external database as this is done by the browser itself. The add-on works with Firefox v2.0-3.0+. To access the offline resource you need to just type in – wikipedia://wiki/

III. Wikislice (OS: Windows)

Wikislice is an application that allows the user to collate Wikipedia entries based on a particular topic or subtopic. Wikislice as the name suggests gives you a ’slice’ of the information in a downloadable format for easy reading offline. Wikislice comes as a web based tool as well as a desktop interface. To use Wikislice, just type the topic of your interest in the search bar provided and Wikislice will display all the applicable information for you to browse or download.

Here’s how it works -

1. Type in your topic and click ‘Go’.
2. You get the information and related subtopics (for more narrow searches).
3. The Top 50 topics are displayed over 5 pages.
4. Download the Wikislice (part of Wikipedia) offline if the number of pages is less than 2000.
5. The downloaded pages can be used with the Webaroo software. The app will check if you have the software installed on first use. In case you don’t, it will prompt you for the download.

Here’s a simple slideshow from the main site.

IV. Pocket Wikipedia (OS:Windows/ Linux and PocketPC)

Pocket Wikipedia is a carefully compiled handpicked selection of Wikipedia information and comprises of nearly 24,000 images and 14 million words. That’s a stack of fifteen volume encyclopedias (Encyclopedia Britannica has 40 million words and 24,000 images!). All within a 180MB free download in a single zip archive. This software differs from the others in one aspect – you get pictures within the text as in the original version. But remember that it does not contain the entire gamut of Wikipedia; just the more important ones for ready reference.

(Bonus V) How To Get Wikipedia on Your iPod

If you have an iPod and couple of GBs of spare space you can also install Wikipedia right onto it. For more details check out Mark’s excellent guide on How To Install Wikipedia on Your iPod.

Have you used any of these four software apps? If so, which do you prefer? Do you have another that you prefer instead? Or do you prefer accessing Wikipedia via the web?

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Maybe something like Wikipedia but on a smaller scale?

Hmm….maybe I should start this article off with the definition of what a wiki is:

According to Wikipedia :

A wiki is a collection of web pages designed to enable anyone who accesses it to contribute or modify content, using a simplified markup language. Wikis are often used to create collaborative websites and to power community websites. The collaborative encyclopedia Wikipedia is one of the best-known wikis.

“Wiki” (/wiːkiː/) is originally a Hawaiian word for “fast”. It has been suggested that “wiki” means “What I Know Is”.^[4] However, this is a backronym. “Wiki Wiki” is a reduplication of the same word.

Now why would you want to create your own wiki?

How about a central repository to update information on a specific subject. Let’s take a real world example. Say you are an international spy organization and you know that your secrets will be safe on the interwebs

So you create a wiki and allow all your spies to login and update information on targets, weapons, gadgets and all things spy-related.

Ok, it’s not secure and no spy organization in the world is going to use this but you can use it for your next project, party or just for the fluck of it.

A while ago MakeUseOf had a story on How to Install a Wiki on your Website. The article recommends MediaWiki which is a popular open source Wiki software. It’s an excellent alternative who want to install a wiki website on their own domain name. The only thing, you need to have some experience with alike tools and be comfortable with modifying config. files.

On the other hand, if you’re looking for something simple and straightforward then you can go on over to the WetPaint web site and sign up. Start by hitting this big green ‘go!’ button on their home page.

Once you hit the button you will be on your way to setting up your account and having your wiki built for you. Check out the three easy steps.

In the first step we will pick our wiki’s name, URL and tell WetPaint a little bit about your wiki’s personality.

Then you need to tell Wetpaint who can edit your wiki – registered users, ANYONE (Including the anonymous trolls) or only specific people you choose.

Next we should choose a style for your wiki. There are a bunch more than the few below. There are actually 3 pages of 9 styles.:

After choosing the style, you get to brand your top banner. You can opt to leave it as is and this is what it looks like by default.

You can upload a custom graphic or point to one on the web. Once all that is out of the way it is time to get your WIKI on! Are you ready? Are you excited?? No?

Well what if I said I already set up one at http://asktheadmin.wetpaint.com and YOU can go ahead and edit and play with it to your hearts content! I have opened up edits to anyone and everyone – now go have some fun and play around with it . Post links to your wetpaint wiki’s for us to check out as well.

Leave us some notes in the comments on how much you love or hate this service. Do you use something similar? Put us on!

(By) Karl L. Gechlik is a superhero of the IT industry who wears many hats and changes in telephone booths. Karl mostly uses his powers for good and the occasional hysterical prank. Get your geek on & follow his geeky antics at the NEW askTheAdmin.com today. Stop by and see what we are all about!

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So considering the state of affairs with Google’s dominance over search, it’s nice to see some creativity and “out of the box” thinking still going on with regards to search. That is why I am fascinated with Wikia Search and whether it has the potential to go far in the long term. I am a big believer in user generated content on the internet so this project is right up my alley. I highly encourage you to get involved. It’s your chance to get involved in the building of a search engine from the ground up.

Wikia Search is the pet project of Jimmy Wales who also created Wikipedia and he is applying the same philosophy to Wikia Search as he did to Wikipedia. That is, anyone can help to create Wikia Search and anyone can edit it. We’re all in it together and let’s see what comes out at the other end (fingers crossed). Some people might consider that a perfect recipe for anarchy and total chaos but I consider it web democracy in action where anything can happen. Exciting isn’t it?

Basically (in case you haven’t worked it out yet), Wikia Search is a search engine. They use a web service called Grub to crawl the web and you can apparently download Grub yourself to make it go faster (although this is not required if you don’t want to do this). I am not an expert at this kind of thing so my understanding of the technical side of things is a bit hazy. If anyone who understands this better wants to clarify it in the comments, please feel free.

Anyway, the main part of the project is to go to the main page of Wikia Search and start typing in search terms and see what comes up. Now this is where you start to run into the first start-up problem of Wikia Search – the speed (or the lack thereof). The pages load very slowly. I really hope Wikia Search solves the speed issue very soon as I can see people with slow internet connections giving up really fast.

Once you type in a search term and results come up, you can then start to modify the results if you don’t like what you see. For example, if you type in a domain name and the domain name isn’t one of the results then you can use the “add to this result” box on the right hand side of the page to add the domain to the results.

So to use an example, I have a website called “Camelot Online” and after typing it into Wikia Search, it didn’t come up. So I typed it into the “add to this result” box and clicked “add” :

Just like Wikipedia, your edits are instantly added to the page. and as you can see from the screenshot, a RSS feed is instantly generated. So if someone came along and removed my domain from Wikia Search, I will know right away in my RSS reader. So don’t mess with my stuff!

Just as you can add URL’s to Wikia Search, you can also delete pages that are there if you consider them irrelevant (but bear in mind that pages you consider irrelevant may be considered relevant to others so cue lots of online feuding!). As you search on Wikia, you will find a lot of spam and adult material cropping up so you can delete those pages if they don’t apply to that search term. To delete a page, just mouse over the result and a “delete” link appears. But of course someone else can immediately come along behind you and reinstate the link. Such is the nature of a web democracy!

It remains to be seen how successful Wikia Search becomes and whether it becomes a serious rival to Google. My argument has always been that the Google algorithim is good but only to a point – a computer algorithim cannot detect websites that are a scam or websites that are showing inaccurate facts. Only human users can do that. That’s why I love Stumbleupon so much – because human users vote websites up and down and that in turn influences the search results. If Wikia Search gets its act together, it has the potential to do the same and that could seriously influence Web 3.0 when it comes.

(By) Mark O’Neill is a blogger, professional freelance writer and the editor of Make Use Of. Check out his personal blog at BetterThanTherapy.net

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Insufficient information for your trip?

Try WikiTravel

WikiTravel is a user-powered travel guide. There are about 18,000 travel guides and articles written and edited by regular travellers from around the globe. You can find pretty much anything here. So if you’re looking for relatively non-biased destination reviews definitely check it out.

There is one other emerging website that I want to mention here. Chokti is a YouTube-inspired site where you can find virtual tours of places you are planning to visit. At the moment there are about 1200 video/audio tours there. Mostly submitted by users themselves. While it’s highly unlikely that you’ll find a video tour of some remote village in India here, it does cover most of the major cities. Chokti does not require an account – however if you plan to upload videos, you need to register.

Hotel Reviews

For hotel review, pics, and map locations I recommend TripAdvisor. Not always true and objective, but usually offers enough info to get a basic idea. If photos are not enough and you want a visual preview of the hotel then try TVtrip, Trivop and Tripr.

Lonely on your trip?

Try Dopplr

Dopplr is essentially a virtual travel log. It allows you to add friends, share your travel schedule with them and discover other people with similar travel plans. It includes an action-feed on your profile page that shares all your current travel activity with all your friends. In addition to comparing travel schedules with friends, Dopplr also allows you to link your Dopplr account with Facebook and share travel activity with Facebook buddies.

Another useful feature Dopplr has to offer is picture sharing. It allows you to link your profile to your Flickr account and share travel pictures with friends and family. Registration is absolutely free, and they rarely send you emails so there’s no need to worry about “Great Offers” or “Daily Newsletters”. Check out Dopplr infocommercial below:

Delays on your trip?

Try FlightStats

Weather and air traffic make travelling a pain. With flight stats, you’ll know of any flight delays and weather issues BEFORE you leave for your trip. We have already briefly mentioned it here.

Flight Stats uses a cool map in which all major airports are mapped out and color-coded. The colors represent the Flight Delay Index which is based on weather conditions and data sent out from the airports themselves. Red representing major delays and green representing smooth flying. Upon clicking on the dots, you’ll receive more detailed information about the airport in question, such as the exact temperature and the weather conditions.

A sub-feature of the map is the weather overlay. With this feature activated, it is possible to view cloud conditions overhead and predict beforehand if there will be any delays.

If you usually leave for the airport a hour and a half before your flight, you can glance at the ticker-tape at the top of the webpage that shows minute-by-minute delay updates on major international and domestic flights.

Some other included tools are mobile/email updates, real-time flight tracker, airport information, etc.

Other

Not so long ago Aibek published 10 travel websites that should be bookmarked. Check it out as well, there are a number of really useful tools there. These include ATM locator, Taxi fare estimator, public-transport maps and more.

(By) Anthony is a student, blogger and a distance runner. In his free time, he enjoys running track, and sifting through the web. Drop by his blog at Radicitus, Dude!

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While writing my own blog actually I found that a Wiki was the best way to convey some information. If you too own a blog you may want to write some more detailed guides, build knowledgebases and so on. I can think of at least a dozen of reasons why you may need one.

Show off your product in an in-depth, much more technical way, allow others to contribute to this with their own experiences, you could also use it as a personal blog form, a way to manage your information, a way to collaborate with others, the uses are endless. The reason that a Wiki is so powerful is that it is not constrained to one of these uses, you can use it for all at once.

My Wiki of choice is MediaWiki, for two distinct reasons.

• The first is that it is the framework that was (is) developed for Wikipedia. It sets the standard, and is indeed best suited for general use.
• The other reason is that I am not an expert in the field and I felt the safest with MediaWiki.

To find out if your webhost offers one, go to your hosting account and log-in to your Cpanel. You may find that there are a few installations already prepared for you, all you need is to click on install. I use Bluehost and it has two Wiki’s ready for installation (via the Fantastico module), but neither are MediaWiki. So we will have to work manually.

Download and Extract

First of all, head on over to the MedaWiki download page and download the latest version.

Windows users, don’t worry, it’s a tar.gz file but you won’t have to extract it on your PC. When finished, go to your file manager on your webserver and upload the file (or use FTP).

The easiest way to extract I think is to find the extract option, and let it extract to the location it’s in. It will then be put under the directory ‘mediawiki-1.11.0‘ (or the current version) and all you need to do is rename the directory, say to ‘wiki‘. At this stage, you should have your Mediawiki files at ‘www.yourdomain.com/wiki/‘ location.

Installation

The next step requires you to point your browser to the ‘config’ directory. This would be ‘www.yourdomain.com/wiki/config‘. Next, just follow the instructions on screen, everything should be pretty obvious, down until databases. Apart from the database name and user name and password I would leave everything as is.

Wiki can not (or at least won’t in my case) create the databases for you, so you may need to do this yourself. Go to your webhost and create a new database and a user for it. Make sure to set this newly created user as the admin or at least give it read/write rights. Once that’s done, enter the new database and user into the above form, and click on install. After a short while, you should see “Installation Successful” in cheerful, big, green letters.

Finally, go to the file manager again and navigate to the ‘config‘ directory (www.yourdomain.com/wiki/config) and move ‘LocalSetings.php’ file to the main directory of the Wiki (www.yourdomain.com/wiki/).

That’s it, you should see your Wiki on ‘www.yourdomain.com/wiki/’. Want to see a fully-functional demo? Check out my own Mediawiki setup at wiki.hackyourday.com.

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Yes that’s right. Thanks to iPodLinux, you can now have the entire Wikipedia encylopedia on your iPod. Clocking in at only 1.7 GB of space, it is a very handy tool if you have the sudden uncontrollable urge while out at the shops to discover the capital of Mongolia or the mating habits of eels. The Wikipedia file is updated approximately once every 6 months so you won’t have the most up-to-date version but hey it’s free and Mongolia isn’t going to change their capital anytime soon.

[Update: Please note, this doesn't seem to work on all iPod models. For more details check comments section.]

It’s very easy to set this up but the actual Wikipedia file is so huge that it takes a long time to download. I have been waiting for 35 minutes and the download is only at 40%. So be prepared to wait a while for the file to be finished.

1. First connect your iPod to your computer and fire up iTunes. Then make sure the box “enabling disk use” is ticked. This is extremely important otherwise you won’t be able to move any files on there. Then close down iTunes.

2. Download the program installation wizard and install. Make sure your iPod is still plugged into your computer as the program installation wizard will automatically detect your iPod presence and install everything directly there.

3. One important thing to remember during installation is that you will be asked if you want to make the Wikipedia your “default system” on your iPod. This means that when you switch on your iPod each time, do you want to see your music menu or the Wikipedia menu? I recommend you say no to making Wikipedia the default view.

4. When the installation is complete, eject your iPod from your computer.

5. Now is the time to see if the installation worked. You need to reboot your iPod which you achieve by holding down the play button and the menu button together at the same time for 5 seconds. You will then see the Apple logo which is the iPod re-booting. When you see the Apple logo, press down the re-wind button for 5 seconds and this kicks in the new Wikipedia section of your iPod.

6. If everything looks OK, you now need to download the huge 1.7 GB Wikipedia file. When it is downloaded, go to your iPod folder on your PC, specifically to “data\encyclopodia\library\” and place the file in there.

7. Again, eject and re-boot the iPod, use the rewind button to go to your Wikipedia section and see if the Wikipedia file works properly.

To make a search, just use the scroll wheel to choose letters to spell your search term (just like you would choose the keys on a mobile phone to type a SMS message). Then press the “play” button to start searching.

A few extra pointers:

*When accessing the Wikipedia file on your iPod, you have to go into “settings” first and alter the screen contrast and the wheel sensitivity. It will be totally off-whack the first time you access it.

*The older your iPod, the slower it will be to retrieve information from the Wikipedia file. Your iPod might even crash, prompting you to re-boot. So this works best with the newer iPod models.

*Every 6 months or so, download the Wikipedia file again so you get the latest version. However, saying that, the current file is dated February 2007 so maybe once a year is more accurate!

*When you are in the Wikipedia section, pressing the menu button turns the back light on. The back light will stay on until you switch it off again so you can read the text easily. Be aware though that having the light continually on is a real battery drainer.

*To get back to your music section, you need to reboot the iPod again by holding down the menu button and the play button.

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Popular Wikis

(1) Wikipedia – all-favorite, biggest online encyclopedia

(2) WikiTravel – world-wide travel guide, covers destination guides, hotels and resorts

(3) WikiHow – ‘How-To’ manuals for the problems of everyday life. (‘HowTo’s: Hack a Coke Machine, Get Six Pack Abs, How to choose a Debt Management program, etc.)

(4) WikiBooks – huge collection of user-edited, open-content textbooks and guides. (Textbooks: Chess guide, Learn French … )

(5) CookBookWiki – recipes and cooking related wiki. Sections include: dishes, recipes, cuisines and channels

(6) WikiSummaries – short, quick summaries for thousands of books. (Summaries: Freakonomics, Getting Things Done, …, see other bestsellers)

(7) WikiMapia – cool mashup between Google Maps and wiki-style editing. Lets you browse, view, search and add descriptive notes to any location on the globe.

(8) Wiktionary – multilingual, comprehensive, user-edited dictionary. Provides word definitions, etymologies, pronunciations, sample quotations, synonyms, antonyms and translations.

(9) Uncyclopedia – extremely entertaining wikipedia clone, that is filled with funny and not-necessarily correct articles. Check out: Colonel, Britney Spears, Donald Trump, …or an image pulled from an article about Women. (No offense ladies, it’s just funny…)

(10) EncyclopediaDramatica (update: this entry was removed from the list. More on this in comments)

(10) ProductWiki – collaborative product reviews.

(11) LyricWiki – comprehensive, user-edited source for lyrics. Claims to host lyrics for any song from any artist.

(12) WikiCars – a collaborative guide about cars and all auto-related stuff.

Some Smaller Topic Specific Wikis

• Ebaywiki – read and share ebay-related knowledge.
• Lostpedia – all about ‘Lost’ serial (episode guides, flashback characters, timeline, etc.)
• Dunck – a collaborative guide about Greasemonkey scripts.
• Mozillazine – wiki focused on Mozilla’s products (Firefox, Thunderbird, etc) and services. (Ex: Problematic Firefox Extensions)
• Operawiki – tips, customization, technical details of the latest version of Opera browser.
• Muppet.wikia – for everything related to Jim Henson and the Muppets.
• MemoryAlpha – fictional universe of Star Trek
• TvIV – encyclopedia of TV shows
• MentatWiki – exploring ways to become a better thinker.
• Voip-info – a reference guide to all things VOIP, i.e. software, hardware, service providers, reviews, etc.
• (update) GPwiki – game programming tutorials and source code for a variety of languages and platforms

Technorati Tags: wikis

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If you are not using it yet, then you are missing something…Wikipedia is the biggest online encyclopedia, which is 100% edited by users. Nowadays, wikipedia has articles in almost any language you can think of. Below You can see number of articles wikipedia had in different languages at the time this post was published.

1. English: 1.354.000 + articles
2. German: 457.000 +
3. French: 352.000 +
4. Polish: 287.000 +
?5. Chineese: 250.000 +
6. Dutch: 223.000 +
7. Italian: 191.000 +
?8. Sweedish: 180.000 +
9. Portuguese: 175.000 +
10. Ispanyol: 147.000 +
…
As I have mentioned, Wikipedia is 100% maintained web users, meaning that anyone including me and you can go to wikipedia, select/search for an article of your choice and edit any information you would like on that artcile. While this may raise some questions regarding the credibility of several articles, it seems that this process works quite well. That is because several hundreds or even millions of people visit wikipedia daily and many of these people act as editors, and some of these people are experts in one or another subject. If someone publishes a misleading information(or change correct information about something to something false) it is usually corrected within minutes.

Wikipedia is extermely useful when you need to quickly access to information about a particular term or concept.

Ex; ajax,debt consolidation,data mining, Mozart, web2.0 and etc…

The terms that may encounter some terms while browsing web, talking to people or watching TV. Usually wikipedia will have a detailed description to whatever you are looking for, however sometimtes it may not very simple to comprehend. In many cases, you will also be provided with not only description but several online resources/websites related to this term.

Some example Pages Examples:

1. Article about eminem: (Wikipedia-Eminem)
2. Article about blogging: (Wikipedia-Blogging)

To make best use of wikipeadia I highly recommend to use it as a toolbar for your browser. I use Mozilla firefox. Whenever
there is term or a concept I need to check I just enter the term into the search field on my browser and select wikipedia as a search engine. This is extremely handy and very fast way to get information on allmost anything instantly.

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