BLOGS, WIKIS, RSS

Technology seems to always be a step ahead of us and the past few years
certain technologies have become available to make collaboration, information exchange, and information management easier to use.
This learning session go over some of the basics of Blogs, Wikis, and RSS.


BLOGS

A Blog is short for Web Log is a page that allows you to post information, pictures, stories ... actually anything you want for all the world to see.

Blogs fall into the category of Social media, which can take many forms which include text, images, audio, and video.

According to estimates there are approximately between 50 to 70 million blogs on the internet today.

Blogs are a great way to present personal ideas or information as well as professional information to a world audience without having to pay an Internet Service Provider for server space and an internet domain name.

Contents of blogs range from person thoughts and ideas to Corporate blogs, one example is Google's blog.

Google's Offical Blog

There are many blogs covering many different topics and finding one that will interest you may seem like a insurmountable task.
Luckily there are tools available to help, there tools include:

• Google
• Technocrati
• Yahoo
  
• IceRocket
• many more
  

Exercise:
Use one of the listed blog search engines to find information about anything that you may find interesting.

This material is placed in a popular blogging tool called Blogger.
Other blog sites include:

• Blog.com
  
• Live journal
• Open Diary
• Word Press
• MySpace

Exercise:
If you have not created a blog, take the time to now to create one using a free blog hosting site of your choice. After creating a blog, post something there and then have someone else read it and comment on it.

Since Blogs are not real time and do not have time restrictons then this can be a very useful medium to communicate information to many people.


WIKIS

The word wiki is a shorter form of "wiki wiki" which is native Hawaiian for something that is "quick" or "fast.” The concept of a wiki is that of an electronic document that can be edited by more than one person, this enables collaboration between people anywhere in the world.

Wikis can be used to work on personal or family information, for example of this would of a family creating a wiki that would contain family events and history that can be modified and added to by any member of the family.

Wikis can also be used by businesses to collaborate on documentation by people who live in different cities, or even different countries. A company may choose to purchase their own wiki software to make it more secure.

One of the best examples of Wiki at work is Wikipedia, this website allows people to create entries based on any subject or topic and then allow others to correct or add to the information that is placed there.

Wikipedia home page

Other Wiki projects include:

• Wiktionary
• Wikiversity
• Wiki travel
• Wikimapia
  
• and there are many more.

Exercise:
Explore some of the listed sites and become familar with the information and services they provide.

As with blogs, there are many company's providing free services for anyone who wants to create a wiki or who is looking for a wiki community to join.

There following companies offer free wiki accounts:

• Wiki Spaces
• PB Wiki
• Wikidot
• Wikia
  

Exercise:
Create a wiki for yourself and ask some people that you know to add of modify the content.

Wikis can be a useful tool when it comes to collaboration involving a document between multiple people. From tutorials and business plans, the potential of wikis in helping people work together are limitless.


RSS

Imagine you have all your favourite websites bookmarked, these may include news, information, and other interesting sites.

Now imagine that, to find something interesting, you have to scan all those bookmarks manually and this could potentially take a long time. Time which most people don't have.


For this problem there is a solution, RSS.
RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication. This technology allows a person to subscribe to a website and view a brief description of news from that site.

Technically speaking the information to be displayed is called a feed and the program that will display the information is called an aggregator. RSS uses XML which means that feeds are constantly updated.

Not all website's are set up to "feed" content via an RSS aggregator.
There are icons that denote that an RSS feed is available.
Here are some common ones.


If you are using the Firefox browser then the aggregator is built right into it.
To know if a particular page contains an RSS feed the check the address bar to see if the RSS icon appears. Below is an example of a website with an RSS "feed" icon in the address bar.


Adding a feed is as simple as clicking on the RSS icon and after it is done the RSS feed will look like the following.


Exercise
Go to your favourite websites and see if they are RSS enabled. If you don't have any favourite sites use Google or another search engine and find a website that interests you and see if it is RSS enabled.

RSS can help you manage all your information quickly and efficiently.