Playing With Wikis

I’ve been having great fun playing with wikis today thanks to Wikidot.com.

I’m sure that almost everyone is vaguely familiar with the idea of Wikis (e.g. Wikipedia) but for those that aren’t, a wiki is a small furry creature that appears in Star Wars (Wikipedia is an unhealthy interest in the younger members of that species).

Oh OK I’m sorry. A wiki is a website that can be edited online by one or several people (Wikipedia is an experiment to see what happens when a vast number of people, all with different agendas, try to work together).

Anyway, Wikidot.com lets you set-up your own Wikipedia type of site for free. And when they say free they really mean it – there’s no ads on your pages or anything like that. You can have ads if you want, but if you decide to do so you reap the benefit!

As I said, I’m at the playing stage at the moment, but I’ve got plans for a site that could be quite interesting. More details will be made public as they become available.

Nitens Flickr Gadgets

If you like Flickr and also statistics then take a look at Nitens Flickr Gadgets.

Currently there is a Group Trackr which gives you all sorts of interesting stats about any public Flickr Group (Number of photos/members, recent contributors and tags etc.).  Naturally there’s all sorts of code snippets so you can post the graphs on your Flickr Group page, blog or whatever. For example, here’s the graph for my Views of Nottingham Flickr Group:

Yes, I know it’s pretty unimpressive at the moment, but give it a chance – mighty oaks and tiny acorns and all that.

The EXIF Explorer (couldn’t miss the ‘E’ out of that one sadly) is ‘coming soon’. This tool will extract statistics from EXIF data in your photostream and allow you to browse pictures by aperture, focal length, exposure and ISO speed.

One of the really cool things about these tools is that there is no sign-up required – just stick in the group’s URL or your Flickr username and your on your way to Flickry statistical goodness.

So, It’s Time to Drivel!!

So, what do we have here?  A personal blog?  How fresh and exciting.  Further more a blog with no purpose or goal? How edgy.

No doubt it will be full of great insights, each one framed with witty, well crafted prose.  A great cornucopia of wisdom and useful information.  When my grandchildren ask “What did you do with The Internet grandpapa?”, I will be able to tell them and be proud when I answer  “I was Actomart!”.

“No.” they will reply in hushed tones. “Not the Atomart? Surely not the longest running blog in history?  When they debated whether they should shut down The Internet, they decided not to because people just couldn’t manage without Actomart’s blog?”.

“The very one”, I shall say in a casual tone, “The very one”.

“Oh do tell us all about it grandpapa, please do!”

And I will.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.  Start at the beginning and work forwards, that is the key.

So I welcome you to the start of Internet history in the making that is Actomart’s Drivel