Wikis are the big online collaboration thing at the moment. This software allows anyone to add and change content on a website. One such sites is Wikipedia, a free online encyclopedia created as a wiki. People from all over the world review entries and add or change entries when they think they can write something better than what was there already. As the Wikipedia says, “A Wiki or wiki (pronounced ”wicky“ or ”veekee“, see pronunciation section below) is a website (or other hypertext document collection) that allows a user to add content, as on an Internet forum, but also allows that content to be edited by anybody.”

The Wikipedia encyclopedia is an incredibly huge wiki project, with over a million entries. Regular journalism refers to Wikipedia entries when it needs something quick and free of royalties.

Now there is a new initiative: Wikinews. Based on the same principle, volunteers from all over the world add news items. To guarantee good information, items are categorized as 'developing stories, unreviewed', 'being reviewed', and articles which have 'passed peer review'. This way, one can be sure a passed peer review article was found to be correct by a bunch of people. Quite a step up from the regular blog journalism items we see all over the web.

It is an incredible achievement to get so many people interested in these projects and it is good to see how many people are willing to cooperate for free.

I considered installing a wiki to experiment with it, but the open nature of it is also its biggest risk: anyone can change things, and if you don't have a large staff of people willing to weed out garbage, a small group of idiots can really mess up something good. Frequent backups are a good idea.

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E-mail

Instant Messaging

Blogging and commenting

Usenet News

Internet Relay Chat

SMS

Web forum

Other

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Wikis are the big online collaboration thing at the moment. This software allows anyone to add and change content on a website. One such sites is Wikipedia, a free online encyclopedia created as a wiki. People from all over the world review entries and add or change entries when they think they can write something better than what was there already. As the Wikipedia says, “A Wiki or wiki (pronounced ”wicky“ or ”veekee“, see pronunciation section below) is a website (or other hypertext document collection) that allows a user to add content, as on an Internet forum, but also allows that content to be edited by anybody.”

The Wikipedia encyclopedia is an incredibly huge wiki project, with over a million entries. Regular journalism refers to Wikipedia entries when it needs something quick and free of royalties.

Now there is a new initiative: Wikinews. Based on the same principle, volunteers from all over the world add news items. To guarantee good information, items are categorized as 'developing stories, unreviewed', 'being reviewed', and articles which have 'passed peer review'. This way, one can be sure a passed peer review article was found to be correct by a bunch of people. Quite a step up from the regular blog journalism items we see all over the web.

It is an incredible achievement to get so many people interested in these projects and it is good to see how many people are willing to cooperate for free.

I considered installing a wiki to experiment with it, but the open nature of it is also its biggest risk: anyone can change things, and if you don't have a large staff of people willing to weed out garbage, a small group of idiots can really mess up something good. Frequent backups are a good idea.

No no, I am not insane and I won't give it a try. But this guy is doing exactly that: he is going to live a month without Internet access.

I know, there are plenty of people who rarely spend time online. I even know at least one person whose only Internet access is when he looks over my shoulder while I search for something. But as someone who is used to being online a large part of the day, I find it hard to imagine a month without Internet access. Even if there was a way to stay in touch with my loved one without Internet access, I would still find it hard to be offline. Kind of strange, considering what I do online. Which is mostly reading news sites and playing an occasional game. Surely I could just watch the news on tv and play offline games? Surely ... Well, maybe I could. But I think I would feel left out, like I would miss something really important. The kind of things that don't make the 8 o'clock news.

A month without Internet access. At this point in life, after years of (almost) 24/7 online access, I don't see how I would do it. I get severe withdrawal symptoms after a day, two at the most. I think I will have driven myself and everyone around me nuts by the end of the first week, if I ever lose Internet access for that long.

Lately I've been thinking about the surprising amount of personal information people are willingly sharing with the world, by posting it on the Web. Through their writings on weblogs, forums, and similar ways, and more recently by posting massive amounts of (family) pictures and videos online through services like Flickr and YouTube. Not to mention posting their home-made pr0n on PornoTube.

Just when I thought I had seen it all, I read about Stickam, where people post their webcam streams. Which means that at any given time you can select from a number of people who are online and watch them live. Kind of like “small brother”, so to speak. Pretty boring when they're just sitting at their computer with a cam on, but still. It probably won't take too long until someone adds a service that lets people make money by performing tasks on camera (no, not necessarily that kind of task, you pervert). [Read More!]

One of the first times I came across a web site that tied into a television series or movie, was back when Profiler was pretty new. The main villain (called Jack of all Trades) had a site in the series, and sure enough, the site http://www.jackotrades.com used to refer to a site that claimed to be his. That was really cool to discover back then, by just typing in the URL. Search engines were a bit less common back then. Sadly, it seems the studio doesn't care about the domain enough to keep it alive during show reruns and dvd sales.

Now my interest in these fake sites has been peaked again, reading something about the Lost series accompanying fake sites. [Read More!]

E-mail and text messaging has quite an effect on your IQ, according to a study. It is even more detrimental than the use of cannabis. I sort of understand the observation of people feeling compelled to check their mail as soon as they realize there is a new one. I have Thunderbird set to notify me of new mail at work, and it polls the server at either two or five minute intervals, I'm not sure. I am not quite at the point where I feel compelled to reply to each mail right away though. Some mails are easily ignored for a while.

I think IRC might have an adverse effect too though ... [Source]

Yes, I use IRC at work to talk with colleagues. Going by all this, it is surpising I can find my keys at the end of the day.

The EFF offers some good pointers that might help you stay out of trouble when blogging. It may all sound very “doh!” like, but it seems there's plenty of people who might benefit from some of this advice. Just take a look at the average “personal” blog out there. A lot of sensitive information is posted by people using either their real name, or making it very easy to find out who they are.

Don't get me wrong, I have no illusion whatsoever that I am blogging anonymously. Then again, I also don't think my opinions expressed here are likely to get me into more trouble than I'm able to handle. But hey, I guess most other bloggers (including the ones mentioned above) feel the same way. Hm ...

Creative Commons (CC) is a very interesting alternative to the old-fashioned copyright idea that is used throughout the world. I considered using it for my blog entries, but I couldn't decide which option to select. So for now, I'm sticking to regular copyright for these entries.

Yahoo! now has a search option that searches CC content. Creative Commons itself already had a search engine that does the same thing. Or does it? It seems that Yahoo! shows more results for certain searches.

Searching for CC content is good, because it should yield results that you can republish. There are different licenses people can use to distribute their content, so one should pay attention to the exact license used. For instance, some sites allow the use of material for commercial purposes, while other sites only allow verbatim copying. Both search engines let you limit your search to certain license aspects.

There is a problem with the CC licensing though: you cannot blindly trust the publisher of the content. Using a CC license is more or less the hip thing to do for bloggers, but this also results in the license being incorrectly used. Some people will post copyrighted material on a blog that is published under a CC license. If you were to reuse such material, you would violate the original copyright holder's rights. As an example, try searching Yahoo! CC for parts of lyrics. Results like these are probably not free to distribute. Unless Faithless and McKnight specifically gave permission to distribute these lyrics.

A Dutch organisation is starting courses for parents. Courses that will teach the parents about MSN, chatting, and SMSing. A good idea, since parents seem to have a hard time keeping up with their kids' use of communication technologies. I can't blame them though. When I read the modern (SMS/MSN) lingo (in Dutch), I realize I am completely out of the loop in these matters. And I consider myself fairly computer literate. Definitely not SMS or MSN lingo literate though.

When parents know about terminology such as PAW (parents are watching), they may wonder why their child feels a need to mention this fact in the first place. Don't get me wrong, I'm not a big fan of censorship or of complete control, but I do feel that parents should be somewhat aware of what their kids are up to when they are online. Not all places are equally suitable for kids. When parents are capable of understanding what their kids can do online, they may be better equipped to actually guide their kids through online experiences. Which would save us a lot of crap that usually makes the press about kids stumbling onto an “unsuitable” website or forum. [Source]

A deceiving title to get your attention. Or is it? According to a recent (US) study, 27% of internet users visit blogs. Seven per cent of internet users publishes a blog. I guess last year's predictions that blogging would fade away soon were a bit off. [Source]

So blogs are big. For this post, I focus on the really personal blogs. Not the ones that talk about the latest high-tech gadgets or a television show. The more truly diary-style blogs are what I am interested in. I have seen a lot of these blogs the past couple of months, and a lot of them have one thing in common: people are very candid in their writing. Yes, that is the big attraction of these blogs for some, it's a peek into people's private lives. Big Brother, without the opportunity to vote anyone off. [Read More!]

According to a South Korean study, e-mail is the domain of old people. Young folks prefer more direct means of communication such as instant messaging (IM) and phone text messages (SMS). I can understand the part about wanting a direct response. In the beginning of my online communication, it was just cool that someone from anywhere on the world, could receive my e-mail and would then reply. Even if it took a week to get a reply. But now? Now I often have questions that I would like answered right away.

In my case, I think one of the reasons for expecting a quicker response, is the fact that computer use and e-mail seem more normal now. That, and the fact that I use e-mail differently too. I use it for just about anything, from mailing myself shopping lists, to mailing the local road maintenance department to let them know about things that need fixing. It has taken the place of telephone communication, and as such it calls for a quick response.

Right now I don't really use IM that much outside of work. I find it hard to tell people I don't have time for them, when they can obviously see me being online. So instead of that, I just leave the IM program off. Those that use IM more frequently keep telling me that this is only a minor problem in the beginning though. Once people see me online every day, they will quickly get bored and they won't bother me anymore. Seems worthy of a try.

This seems like the perfect topic for a poll. I thought I already had one like this, but I couldn't find it, so I guess it's just one of those things I once considered, but never got around to actually doing.

Wikis are the big online collaboration thing at the moment. This software allows anyone to add and change content on a website. One such sites is Wikipedia, a free online encyclopedia created as a wiki. People from all over the world review entries and add or change entries when they think they can write something better than what was there already. As the Wikipedia says, “A Wiki or wiki (pronounced ”wicky“ or ”veekee“, see pronunciation section below) is a website (or other hypertext document collection) that allows a user to add content, as on an Internet forum, but also allows that content to be edited by anybody.”

The Wikipedia encyclopedia is an incredibly huge wiki project, with over a million entries. Regular journalism refers to Wikipedia entries when it needs something quick and free of royalties.

Now there is a new initiative: Wikinews. Based on the same principle, volunteers from all over the world add news items. To guarantee good information, items are categorized as 'developing stories, unreviewed', 'being reviewed', and articles which have 'passed peer review'. This way, one can be sure a passed peer review article was found to be correct by a bunch of people. Quite a step up from the regular blog journalism items we see all over the web.

It is an incredible achievement to get so many people interested in these projects and it is good to see how many people are willing to cooperate for free.

I considered installing a wiki to experiment with it, but the open nature of it is also its biggest risk: anyone can change things, and if you don't have a large staff of people willing to weed out garbage, a small group of idiots can really mess up something good. Frequent backups are a good idea.