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| The World Wide Web is all about sharing knowledge. Here are four new web technologies that could make your work easier. For more information about these Web technologies your best source is the Web itself. Thanks for stopping by, mate!
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 Blogs and Blogging
You've probably heard about blogs, or web logs. Blogs are candid, informal and personal diaries or journals for the rest of the world to read. You can write your blog on a free blogging website, like www.blog.com, where your personal postings are saved in chronological order, most recent first.
Companies are anonymously using blogs as an undercover way to disseminate product information, to improve their image and to link to the company website. At the same time, disgruntled employees are using blogs to air their pet peeves in public. www.blogigo.com has a directory of free blogs you can use. The buzz is that search engines, such as Google, Yahoo and MSN, love blogs and index them thoroughly.
You might suggest that your company add a private blog to its own website, where employees can easily share information with each other and manage tasks cooperatively. For more info about corporate blogging strategies, this web article is invaluable, Business Week Magazine's analysis of blogs and blogging for business. |
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 : Just What is RSS?
Have you seen the tags that say XML or RSS? RSS stands for Real Simple Syndication and XML is the file format RSS uses. A fascinating way to see RSS in action is at www.my.yahoo.com or at the Meerkat site, www.oreillynet.com/meerkat. Or try these other RSS sites: my.netscape.com, my.userland.com, xmltree.com, moreover.com. There you can build your personal web page magazine from a selection of worldwide RSS feeds. No longer must you browse stale pages on the web looking for current news on your favorite topics. Instead, you select the topics or companies you want to follow on your magazine.
The RSS software at Yahoo and Meerkat, called an aggregator, reads all the RSS feeds on the web for you and pulls in only the most recent headlines and page links to topics that interest you.
Or, if you prefer, your own computer can run an aggregator just like it runs a browser. Whether you are interested in fractal research, triathlons or movie stars, you can use RSS to find out what's new in your field.
RSS is made possible because newspapers and webmasters worldwide keep a log file of new web pages, called an "RSS feed", on their websites. The RSS log contains headlines and links to breaking news stories and other new pages they've posted to their site. Displaying the latest news headlines on your web site can really help give it the extra "stickiness" that will encourage users to return. After all, users can only read your president's bio so many times.
If you frequently post new content on your site, you might want to publish an RSS feed yourself to syndicate the stories and drive in traffic. After you register your RSS feed, anyone with RSS aggregator software can find your company news, link to it and even display your company headlines on their own web page. How's that for marketing magic? Are you a believer? |
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 What's not to love about Wiki?
Wiki allows you to type content into a web page directly from your browser. Wiki also allows anyone else to edit your page and change it. This is ideal for collaborative work. Best of all, a wiki site is a forum where people share ideas!
Wiki pages are "open edit" web pages that anyone can use. "Open editing" is a simple and exciting concept that allows everyday users to create and edit any page in a Web site. All Wiki content is a work in progress. It changes as people come and go. Wiki encourages democratic use of the Web and invites nontechnical users to add their content.
In 1995, Ward Cunningham developed and named these "open edit" web pages. "Wiki wiki", which means "very fast" in Hawaiian, is the name of the shuttle bus service at the Honolulu Airport.
Wikis are a promising way to develop public knowledge bases. For example, wiki is being used to create an online electronic encyclopedia, the Wikipedia, which was launched in 2001 as a worldwide collaborative web encyclopedia of human knowledge. Anyone may contribute to Wikipedia, including you and me, and anyone can edit the contributions.
Advertising agencies have also latched onto wiki to manage client projects in-house. Wiki is the just the simplest database that could possibly work.
Behind the wiki page is a piece of server software that allows users to freely create and edit Web page content using any Web browser. Wiki also saves earlier versions of each page for review. Of course, there's a wiki Text Editing Guide for making your wiki words bold, etc., and you can include clickable hypertext links. You can even use PHP programming code in your wiki page. (Well, some people can!)
To browse some wikis, choose from a list of the most popular wikis at http://www.worldwidewiki.net/wiki/PopularWikis.
Then to practice your wiki, you can play around in the Wiki Sandbox at http://www.worldwidewiki.net/wiki/SandBox
Would your company benefit from using a wiki? To start your own wiki, pick a WikiFarm, one like Peanut Butter Wiki (http://pbwiki.com/), which provides free password-protected wiki sites. It takes less than 2 minutes to create your new wiki on any of the free wiki servers today. |
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Podcasting is Do It Yourself Radio
With podcasting, everyone can be a DJ or a broadcast commentator. Politicians are doing it. Amateurs are doing it. Churches are doing it. Indie grunge bands are doing it. Even TV stations are doing it. Anyone can create self-published, syndicated radio shows in MP3 format, and use the web to distribute them.
Browse the podcasts at sites like http://audio.weblogs.com/. Download your free podcasts to your computer and play them with Windows Media Player or Apple iTunes. You'll hear their uncensored, commercial-free ideas. You might enjoy the podcasts at Insomnia Radio (hardcoreinsomniaradio.blogspot.com) or Dave Winer's Morning Coffee Notes (morningcoffeenotes.com). Then add the podcasts to your iPod or other MP3 player for some fresh, original listening while you jog or drive.
If you want to send your voice around the web to a group of like-minded friends, become a podcaster. With a microphone and some free software, you can create your audio MP3 file. Post your MP3 file to your website; then create and post on your site an RSS feed (remember the log file from above?). The podcasting directories will take it from there, keeping users up to date about new podcasts available on the web. Just last month Apple added downloadable podcasts to its iTunes site, more evidence that podcasting is the way of the future.
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 The Wrap Up
So to wrap it up in a nutshell, you can use RSS to locate the newest blogs, podcasts and web pages. You can use RSS to syndicate your blogs and podcasts. You can use blogs to advertise your podcast, and vice-versa, and you can use wiki to promote your blog or get a conversation going with your podcast audience. This is the new marketing for the twenty-first century
Ouch, Professor, may I be excused? My brain is full!
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