PC Mag’s list:

1. Circle Dock
circledock.wikidot.com
Windows
Who says a dock has to actually… dock? To the side of the screen, that is. Circle Dock brings up a spiraling launcher interface with all the icons you want to click. Rotate it with the wheel on your mouse and change the skin to suit your desktop.

2. ObjectDock
www.stardock.com
Windows
Replace the Windows Taskbar and Quick Launch toolbar with this Mac-like animated toolbar of icons for all your programs. It comes with a few “docklets” for displaying info like the time, weather, and a Web search form.

3. Launchy
www.launchy.net
Windows | Linux
“Keystroke launcher” is a fancy way of saying “command line,” but if you like to type rather than click for control—a practice that goes well beyond app launching—Launchy is your best choice.

4. Quicksilver
www.blacktree.com
Mac OS
Quicksilver does more from the keyboard than just launch programs. It can act on any item you can find or drag on your Mac. Quicksilver plug-ins add even more functions. –full list at PCMAG

*echoes the title*

Back in the way, like a lot of other people who were just venturing out into the cold exterior of the Internet, I made a Geocities page. I attended to it meticulously like a Zen gardener until one day I blew up and didn’t look at it again. And I was amazed, years later, to discover it was still around.

I am experiencing that same sort of feeling right now, though it’s on a smaller scale!

I note that it has been almost a full year since my last post to this blog. A lot has happened since then. I got fed up with Linux and reinstalled XP. Don’t shoot me; I’d been trying to get wireless working on this laptop for a very long time with no results, and there were a few Windows-only programs I was interested in trying out. Linux is a good idea, it’ll get bigger, but I’d rather stick with XP for now. My family members have enough trouble comprehending how to navigate their way through Windows, and I would like them to be able to use this laptop if required.

(I was going to put “if they need to”, but the ancient rule of “no sentence ending with a preposition” surfaced in mind. I would very much like to exorcise this grammar-daemon that lives in my synapses.)

I made a Wikidot account with the goal of collecting useful information in a central location, but the flexibility of Wikidot was starting to wear on my nerves. You can have a wiki, a blog, a forum, an issue tracker, and lots lots other things. You can modify any of the provided templates as much as you want. Nothing seems to be forbidden; you can even make a little moolah with Google Adsense.

Unfortunately I think their system is a bit too rigorous for my needs; in the end, a simple WordPress blog is best for meeeeee (somebody make a musical out of that), especially one which has such good support for pasting in source code. Wikidot probably has this too, or you can stick it in yourself somewhere; I don’t know. I didn’t check hard enough. I didn’t really feel like making the effort. For me, using Wikidot to host my mostly redundant tidbits was like using a warship to transport a crate of oranges to goodness-knows-whereland.

So I am here again. This time I won’t be so pointless, I swear!

I’ve been one of the lucky people chosen to play Grand Fantasia for Aeria Games, in Closed Beta.

Now, while most people don’t know who I am (I’m on the Alice Server, Channel 4), I’m easily identifiable by the person who shouts that they’re recruiting people who can type and are friendly to the Loki guild.

It appears the average age of the gamers is about 17. There are 4chan references abound. While the player base is relatively helpful (if you ask something over world chat for help, you’ll usually get a response), they’re also immensely childish and would sooner make “Yo Momma” jokes than cater to intellectual conversation.

The game’s graphics are up to par, with Chocobo-like creatures running around to-and-fro. Unfortunately, character customization is at a minimum. I’m afraid Aeria Games is going to pull a Fiesta Online and make customizing your character’s face and hair cost real money.

For now, though, the game is loaded with quests to keep you busy and an interesting plot that has a lot of potential (though isn’t completely explored) in order to keep you hooked.

The sprite concept is a lot like a pet system, except these pets are actually somewhat useful. They don’t help in combat, but they can get materials for you so that you can make various items.

Would I recommend this game to a friend? Most likely yes. Would I encourage them to buy things using Aeria Points? This game hasn’t shown me yet that buying anything is worthwhile, aside from the experience boost.

~~~

As a complete side note, I’m still accepting donations and am willing to write articles on a multitude of topics, given that it doesn’t require me to buy something first. Please check out the Donations Page.

L’esperienza con Obsidian Portal è stata breve ed infelice. Lasciamo stare che la feature piu importante del sito – quella di poter raccogliere giocatori per le proprie sessioni – non mi serve a nulla (e anche se mi servisse, non sarebbe molto efficace visto che buona parte dei giocatori risiedono in USA!). Lasciamo stare la grafica orrenda e dispersiva. Lasciamo anche stare sia il forum che la possibilità di inserire piu mappe siano a pagamento. Ci sono comunque troppi problemi e sbavature in quel sito che vanno largamente a superare i vantaggi che se ne potrebbero trarre. La comodità di avere una sezione solo per il DM su qualsiasi testo (sia esso parte della wiki, del blog o statico) è unica e favolosa, e solo per quello non ho cancellato l’account dopo 24 ore. Il motore della wiki però è davvero penoso, non ti da neppure la possibilità di caricare foto nei post… wikidot e wikia gli danno 1000:0. Il continuo migioramento di WordPress fa sentire ancora piu pesantemente le limitazioni del motore del blog… insomma alla fine ho detto basta.

Ecco dopo alcune ore di riflessione la nuova struttura della rete di progetti orientati al GDR che ho imbastito:

I Discepoli della Manticora: blog di riflessione sul GDR in genere, conterrà tutto quello che non è specifico di una campagna. Articoli sui mondi/setting, sullo stile di gioco, sullo storytelling e eventualmente link a programmini utili per DM e giocatori -risiederà sempre qui, senza cambiamenti.

LE CAMPAGNE

Riflessi Mentali: Campagna in Forgotten Realms, regolamento Pathfinder RPG. Avrà un suo blog, una wiki e un forum per discutere delle sessioni.

• Blog (registro d’avventura) : http://riflessimentali.wordpress.com/ (dovrò importare tutti gli articoli! Sigh!)
• Wiki: http://mickforgottenrealms.wikidot.com/ (sarà comune a TUTTE le avventure e campagne di Forgotten Realms)
• Forum: http://www.micheletoscan.com/forum/ (sarà comune a TUTTE le avventure di qualsiasi setting)

Vento e Fiamme: Campagna in Greyhawk, regolamento Pathfinder RPG. Avrà un suo blog, una wiki e un forum per discutere delle sessioni.

• Blog (registro d’avventura) : http://ventoefiamme.wordpress.com/
• Wiki: http://lombagreyhawk.wikidot.com/ (sarà comune a TUTTE le avventure e campagne di Greyhawk)
• Forum: http://www.micheletoscan.com/forum/ (sarà comune a TUTTE le avventure di qualsiasi setting)

Rise of the Runelords: Campagna in Golarion, regolamento Pathfinder RPG. Avrà un suo blog, una wiki e un forum per discutere delle sessioni.

• Blog (registro d’avventura) : http://riseoftherunelords.wordpress.com/
• Wiki: http://mickgolarion.wikidot.com/ (sarà comune a TUTTE le avventure e campagne in Golarion)
• Forum: http://www.micheletoscan.com/forum/ (sarà comune a TUTTE le avventure di qualsiasi setting)

Salvo dimenticanze, questo dovrebbe essere tutto! E’ sicuramente piu dispersivo di Obsidian Portal ma almeno ogni componente è funzionale e gratuito.

For a long time now, I’ve been hindered by the issue of utilities, or snippets. These are convenience functions and classes that are too small or too incomplete to justify a library, yet are useful enough to be used.
I’ve posted a few on my blog: Namespaces, X and now FileDict. Others I didn’t post, and include a priority queue, an A* implementation, a lazy-list, an LRU memoizer, etc. You probably have a few of those. I know because I see them on snippet sites.

However, I rarely actually use these in my code. I really want to. But once your code spans more than one file, you usually need to make a proper installation, or at least trouble your “users” a bit more. Usually saving a few lines just isn’t worth the trouble. Copy-pasting the snippet into the file is sometimes the solution, but it really pains me that I’ll have to re-paste it every time I improve my snippet.

I’m sure some of you looked at my snippets, or other people’s, thought “cool”, but never used them, simply because it was too much trouble.

Paradoxically, this is especially true when writing snippets. They are just one small file, and using another snippet would probably make them too hard to distribute. This is a magic-circle, for-ever limiting our snippets to a low level of sophistication, and discouraging re-use.

I want to break that circle. I want to create an economy of snippets, increasingly building on each other, eventually creating a “standard library” of their own. But how would one do that? I have one suggestion, along with a proof-of-concept, which I will present here.

PySnippets

PySnippets is my attempt of making snippets usable. It’s comprised of two solutions – a server and a client.

1. Server - A website for uploading snippets. Simple enough. You can rate them, tag them, discuss them, offer some documentation and of-course post newer versions.
2. Client - A python module that automagically imports snippets from the web. Essentially, it downloads the snippets you request to a cache, imports them if they’re already there, and periodically searches for updates.

The server is structured in a predictable way, so that the client knows how to fetch a snippet just by its name.

The Client

Here’s a usage example with my current client implementation, I creatively call “snippets”:

import snippets
antigravity = snippets.get('antigravity')  # "snippet-import"
antigravity.start(mode='xkcd')

Easy as that!

The snippets.get function looks for the module in the local snippets-cache. If it’s there, get just imports it and returns the module. If it’s not, it queries the server for a snippet called “antigravity” (names are unique), stores it in the cache, and the imports it. What the user notices is a 2-second pause the first time he ever imports that snippet, and nothing else from then on.

You can specify to download a specific version, like this:

filedict = snippets.get('filedict', version=0.1)

Auto-Updating Snippets

The current implementation also includes an “auto-update” feature: Periodically, before importing a module, the client surveys the server for a newer version of it. If a newer version exists, it downloads it to the cache and continues with the import.

Auto-updates can be disabled in a parameter to get.

The Server

The server is yet another service to upload snippets, however it has a slightly unusual design (which no other snippet site I know of has):

• A URL to a snippet is easy to deduce given its name.
• There is a conscious (though simple) support for versions.
• To increase reliability and trust (more on that later), uploaded snippets cannot be altered (but a new version can be issued)

Since I know very little about administration and server-maintenance, I chose wikidot.com to host my POC web-site. They have an elaborate support for permissions and most of the features I need, such as the ability to rate, tag and discuss snippets.

Trust

Perhaps the biggest issue with such a system is trust. Since you’re running code which resides online, you have to trust me not to maliciously alter the snippets, and also you have to trust the author of the snippet not to do so.

Perhaps higher-ups in the Python community would like to take some sponsorship of the project, removing the remaining trust-issues with the administrator (that’s me).

Implications

• To distribute your snippets, all you need is for the reciever to have an internet connection, and the snippets client.
• If you’re sending someone code, you can attach the client (it’s rather small, too), and just import away. The reciever will benefit from improvements and bugfixes to your snippets.
• You can use other people’s snippets just as easily, as long as you trust them.
• Snippets can now build on each other without worrying too much.

What if my user is offline?

Then probably PySnippets isn’t for him.

However, I do have some ideas, and might implement them if there is sufficient demand.

Afterword

PySnippets is my humble attempt at solving the utility/snippet reuse problems. I hope you like it and find it useful.

Please try it!

I’ve written before about how much I like wikis. I’m not paid by PBWiki in any way. Really! I do like the way they do wikis, though. There’s many others out there (they may appeal to you more than PBWiki…): Wetpaint, Wikidot, Wikispaces, and Zoho wiki. Actually, most are pretty user friendly.

Anyway, PBwiki has a series of upcoming webinars OR you could just jump right in and give a wiki a try. They really make for easy web pages and serve to promote collaboration.

Give it a try!

Over the last 3 years, I’ve stored many small snippets of information in a set of Google Notebooks. Sample topics: notes for blog posts, programming skills that I’d like to learn and preliminary (or half-baked) ideas for research or software projects. I’ve learned that:

• Whilst Google Notebook is great for scraping information from web pages, it leaves a lot to be desired in terms of editing and presentation
• Ideas left in private notebooks quickly become dead ideas

Yes you can publicise, tag and collaborate at a Google Notebook, but this doesn’t fit with my workflow – or that of many others, I suspect. So, I’ve taken as much of the material as I want to make public and dumped it on a wiki at Wikidot.com. By the way, if you’re looking for a free hosted wiki with plenty of features, you could do a lot worse.

If anything there interests you enough to add material, let me know and I’ll invite you as an editor (you’ll need to create a wikidot account if you don’t have one).

En wiki är en webbplats där sidorna kan redigeras av besökarna själva. Enligt den mest kända wikin, som heter Wikipedia, så är wiki hawaiianska och betyder snabb.

Som exempel så tänker jag ta den ridskola som jag tillhör. Den heter Örestads Ryttaresällskap (ORS). Den sidan har en hel del fakta om hästarna och om ridning. Låt oss säga att ORS satsade på en hemsida där en del var uppbyggd som en Wiki. Det skulle innebära att risdskoleeleverna sjäva skulle kunna gå in och skriva information om hästarna, ridteknik, utfodring, skötsel, produkter till hästarna osv. När en person har skrivit en artikel, så kan en annan person gå in och redigera den. Med redigera så menar man städa upp, rätta stavning, skapa punktlistor osv. Detta leder till att kunskapen hos ridskolans elever blir synlig, att de hjälper varandra och att de känner starkare för ORS.

Det finns möjlighet att skapa en egen Wiki helt gratis.

Wikidot

pbwiki

Det finns även företag som kustomiserar wikis efter företagets intresse.

Mindroute

A big big thumbs up and round of applause to Mandymoore for getting the Wikidot page up and running, I don’t know what we’d do without her and I bow to her greatness! If you didn’t get the Kin-mail Mandymoore sent out the URL for the new site is http://refugees.wikidot.com/! Take a minute and check it out because it’s awesome. I’m still learning javascript, which I really need to hop back into because I haven’t even looked at my lessons in several weeks and I’ve only got a few months before the point becomes moot. I’m going to be getting the berry business up and off the ground here shortly, funding being what it is I’m a little behind. Sorry for the short initial post more to follow. Party on killers.

O Wikidot é um exemplo do que ficou conhecido como Fazenda Wiki (Wiki Farm). Com este serviço, você tem uma ferramenta gratuita para criar a sua publicação deste gênero.

Todos conhecem a Wikipédia, por exemplo, mas nem todos têm familiaridade com o conceito que a norteia. Em primeiro lugar, a palavra Wiki designa um conjunto de páginas as quais permitem que qualquer pessoa adicione ou modifique seu conteúdo. Wiki, além de ser uma palavra havaiana, que significa “rápido”, também é acrônimo para What I Know Is (O Que Sei É).

Uma Fazenda Wiki é um servidor que possibilita a criação, atualização e modificação de páginas deste tipo. Antes, quem buscava este serviço deveria fazer tudo manualmente. Agora, tudo está muito mais simples. Geralmente, as páginas de uma Fazenda Wiki têm o mesmo layout.

E o Wiki tenho a ver com isso?

Isto significa que você pode criar uma página, publicá-la imediatamente, compartilhar documentos e colaborar com o conteúdo de outras publicações. As páginas são interativas e têm ferramentas que promovem a comunicação entre usuários, grupos e comunidades.

Mesmo sendo totalmente gratuito, o serviço não limita sua Wiki em nenhum sentido. Não há um limite para o número de páginas criadas, capacidade dos fóruns, número de usuários ou uso de banda. Também não há o uso de propagandas que você não queira.

Há o conceito de atualização e modificação constante de conteúdo, mas você não é obrigado a “liberar geral”. Você pode esconder seus dados pessoais e deixar suas páginas visíveis somente àqueles que você quer. Você decide quem pode editar, renomear, anexar e deletar arquivos em sua página.

É possível enriquecer suas publicações com vídeos, músicas, podcasts, feeds RSS, imagens do Flickr, favoritos do del.icio.us e outras possibilidades. Cada site tem 300 MB para adicionar esses arquivos. O editor do Wikidot tem mais recursos que o padrão WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get).

Download: Wikidot

Um Ausfälle zu vermeiden, die wir bei älteren Projekten teilweise hatten, sind wir umgezogen… Die Search-Bots werden ein paar Tage brauchen um die tatsache mitzubekommen, aber danach sollte es keine Probleme geben.

Der Blog liegt nun bei WordPress direkt und ist unter openmate.wordpress.com zu erreichen.

Das Wiki liegt bei Wikidot und ist unter open-mate.wikidot.com zu erreichen und kann/soll editiert werden…

The Robert Goldwater Library of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Arts of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas is the first library I’ve looked at that seems to have fully embraced the changing face of technology. The library’s homepage is actually the Robert Goldwater Library Online Resource, a blog. This format allows the homepage for the library to be updated easily and regularly, and to include comments, trackback and other blog features. This site, with all its peripheral features, epitomizes the current prospects of “Web 2.0.”

One reason I think that the Robert Goldwater Library turns the idea of the library homepage on its head is that the OPAC is not the main feature. All of the other libraries I have looked at here (and indeed every library homepage I’ve ever seen) focuses on the catalog, searching, and collection access as its main purpose. Links to library events, library news, services, blogs, etc., are secondary in some way. If there is is a search bar anywhere on a library homepage, you can usually guess that it will search the catalog and not the web (unless is specifically says otherwise). For the Goldwater Library homepage, there is a link to the catalogs, but it is below the links to the Goldwater Library Wiki, the goldwaterlibrary’s del.icio.us page, and the Robert Goldwater Library’s flickr photostream.

The catalog is listed under the category of “Goldwater Library Resources” with these other tools. This seems to put it on the same level as these other tools. This seems both astute and self-fulfilling. Internet users are using “Web 2.0″ tools alongside, and instead of searching the library catalog. Because the tools are right there with the catalog, they will be used more frequently. For users who are unfamiliar with the blog format, the homepage would be fairly easy to navigate. The catalog link may take a bit to find, but once found, the user could use the catalog as she or he would any other OPAC.

The goldwaterlibrary’s del.icio.us page categorizes the list of tags. This is a handy feature since the actual site links on del.icio.us are ordered temporally. After doing a keyword search in the catalog (yes, “fudge”), I found that the entries do not have a link to add the finding to del.icio.us. The catalog is surprisingly “Web 2.0″-free, in fact. The same issues of usability for new users that I’ve mentioned in previous posts (MIT post, K-State post) would be an issue here, too. The classification of the tags might help a new user to understand their purpose or at least their organization.

The library’s flickr photostream is also heavily classified. Some categories only contain one image. The images range photos of pieces in the gallery’s collection, to photos of crews in the process of setting up exhibits, to photos from art openings and events. A new user to flickr would have a fairly easy time navigating the site since the images are put in well-labeled categories, and are titled in descriptive, plain language. Since the only real purpose of the flickr photostream seems to be to store, make available, and tag museum photos, the only real purpose to the user would be to browse or search the photos for interest or research. This can easily be done with the help of the categories and titles.

I would use the del.icio.us account that the library has set up to access the sites that the library (and staff) think are relevant to the field and the collections. I would also browse the flickr site, although not likely for the purpose of tagging photos. I like the idea of revisioning the library homepage. It seems that the web hasn’t even been around long enough for libraries to be too attached to the way homepages are being done. Maybe it’s time to rethink.

Here I am, overloading my brain with information from Inc.com, but suddenly I read the Entrepreneurial Breaking News at Inc.com (and I felt the urge and now you can read my urge). One of the news is about Data Sharing and state that Nuospace cures the pain of

..many small businesses are still using e-mail to collaborate, store and share information, leading to clogged inboxes and lost data…

Nuospace is a Web-based business wiki that helps co-workers share data in a secure environment. On top of documents, the application also supports blogs and e-newsletters.

First thing that came to mi mind is Google Sites and what is the point of just having something that Google has and competing with them. After  putting more thought on it you can’t blame them since, (maybe) they started before Google bought JotSpot (now Google Sites). So what do you do? How do you deal with juggernaut and a market you will find many other wiki offers? Like Geoffrey A. Moore suggests in “Crossing the Chasm“, look for you niche market, which should be a “low hanging fruit” (easy to grab), dominate it and use it as a beachhead for your next niche market.

Moore states that competition is not bad, but it’s actually good. Competition educates the market, there is more buzz and there is chance for the market to grow. Also with competition make others understand your product and how it is different. So based on the above Moore, if Nouspace is to succeed, they should target small business, but a kind of market that is small enough for them to control, but big enough for them to grow. That market is their low hanging fruit niche market.

Google is all about the mass market, the mainstream and has tons of money to burn in trying to buy or destroy the competition, Nouspace (or any other startup)  lacks resources. So, Nouspace can compete with them in providing personalized solutions for small business that are near the business, in contrast Google cares about enterprises, so like a office of 10 people will not make Google excited.

Take for [a more concrete] example wikidot. In plain site is “Yet another wiki hosting site”, but if you visit the site and/or use it, you will se something different. They provide a community (such that of blogs), you get a sense of having more freedom, its more open and unlimited (only storage it not). You are not told what can you use it for instead, you get a nice welcoming message telling you some interested facts about wikidot users. Wikidot is a place for people that understand wiki and they found their niche market, where able to different themselves and attend the unattended: localized market (polish) and those seeking freedom.

If its a fight.. what about adsense ?(original image source)

What is so great about wikidot is their relax approach of telling you all their features and limitations. For example they state that you can make money providing you with AdSense FAQ, documentation and panel. They state that storage limit is 300MB, but more is coming without paying more.

Wikidot has investors baking them up, they have a revenue model, but for some reason or another, I get a sense that the wikidot team loves what they are doing and that is enough of a point to give any Goliath a fight.

Since founding my flagship project @ http://www.definitive-socionics.info I have seen traffic generation double that of another project @ http://simplysocionics.com. The Alexa Rankings are dropping i.e. getting better and the Google Page-Rank has increased to 2/10 in a relatively short space of time — 1 month.

As having built one of the most edited “web 2.0″ sites on the Wikidot Publishing Network I have gotten onto the featured-list as a “showcase” for others to learn and get inspiration from.

I cannot now wait till the release of Wikidot v2.0 with a feature I’m gagging for — page-permissions for creating a “member’s only” section which will be good for promoting a better community set of members not just allowing “freeloaders” who come to read and assimilate all the content without any reciprocation. These truly are exciting times…

“You have to let it all go, Neo. Fear, doubt, and disbelief.
Free your mind.” — Morpheus