Technology As Innovator

Friend: “Hey Tai, what is wiki? Is it a software or a website?”

TaiTran: “Neither. Wiki is a concept. It refers to a content which everyone and anyone can edit.”

Friend: “What? You’re confusing me!”

***

OK, so let me go into details on Wiki.

“Wiki” is a concept

“A wiki” might be explained as a computer software or a website. “Wiki” is a concept.

What’s the difference?

You may want to notice this difference: “A Wiki is a software/website” and “Wiki (without ‘a’) is a concept”. “A wiki” refers to a specific instance of the concept “Wiki”.

To make it easier to understand. It’s like we talk about “a person” and “person”. “Person” is general, has body organs, has character and personalities - but doesn’t have specific character and personalities. “A person named X” is specific, has X’ body organs, has X” character and X”’ personality.

Back to Wiki. So I say “Wiki is a concept. It refers to contents which everyone and anyone can edit.”

Basing on this concept, people may build Wiki software that put this concept into practice. Wiki software allows users to create different wiki websites.

Wiki is powerful

1. Collaboration

The major power of Wiki lies in its open nature to collaboration.

Anyone can edit Wikis, and it’s quick to do so. We have the power of the mass where every contribution is counted. That’s how within a short amount of time, the community has grown Wikipedia to be the world’s largest encyclopedia.

Does this work?

To some, the idea of “anyone can edit” is crazy. But it works!

You want to know that the edition doesn’t go away easily. All modifications are tracked and they are discussed by the whole community. If person A puts in an inaccurate or biased information, person B will point it out and the discussion will determine how to deal with that information.

While I agree that we can never have perfectly unbiased information, this open nature allows the whole community to reach a consensus that would benefit all.

“I’m a genius. They don’t understand what I wrote in the wiki so they removed it!” - Well if this is the case, I’d suggest you revert to your blog or your Knol whether you have full authority

2. High Linkage

Wiki pages within a wiki website link to one another through keywords. Therefore, when you read a wiki page, you are presented with information to other worth-knowing concepts.

Wiki management models

Power of the Mass

“No editor”, or “everyone is an editor”.

This is the original concept of Wiki. However, you may want to know that this is an idealism and no wiki is perfectly wiki.

People participation varies, people commitment varies, and people behavior varies. There may exist certain bias in many wiki pages.

Because of this “open” nature, many question the validity and authority of information on wiki. Researchers may need to cite from other sources accepted as “more authorized”.

Power of Authority… plus the Mass

To deal with the issue of validity and authority of wiki, Larry Sanger, former Wikipedia co-founder, has initiated a new model for Citizendium.

“Authorized editors are selected to be editors of Citizendium. The site is still open for everyone to edit.”

This model harmonizes the credentials from editors while still utilize the power of the mass.

Wiki in enterprise

Wiki is useful to teams within an enterprise to centralize their knowledge. Of course, people can write separate documents, but it will be hard to avoid duplication, hard to maintain and hard to search. Wiki solves all these 3 issues.

In Sum

Wiki is a powerful concept on which people in the last decade have built centralized massive amount of information.

Bibliography

5 ways to build effective Wikis

Wiki Software: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_wiki_software

List of Wikis: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wikis

I’m on Firefox 3 too, and I utilize addons to enrich my web experience too, like most of you there.

There have been countless of entries to useful Firefox addons, but what’s different about this post is that it measures the costs that can be saved for users when using these extensions.

What are the costs of usability and how much are they?

The descending order of severity of the costs are

1. Screen loads: this is a pain when internet connection is slow. It usually takes most time of all interactions with the computer
2. Mouse movements: mouse movements severely damage the wrist and this should be minimized
3. Mouse clicks: mouse clicks are less severe than mouse movements, but are also expensive
4. URLs: an URL takes time to type in
5. Enters: it hurts the little finger
6. Hot keys: hot keys usually consists of at least 2 keys, but are regarded as less expensive than Enters because they are mostly done with the left hand, reduces damage to the right hand

Now, let’s start with the addons!

The first six in the batch: Google Toolbar, Diigo Toolbar, StumbleUpon Toolbar, TwitterFox, CustomizeGoogle, Better YouTube

Google Toolbar for Firefox

Google Toolbar provides search, “I’m feeling lucky” and images search functions without having to go to Google.com

It also supports Gmail notifications and Google PR check

Diigo Toolbar

I have used Diigo as a replacement of delicious (I still love the old brand del.icio.us)

Though delicious tagging is smarter and usability is better, Diigo supports web-highlighting which makes it an advantage.

Diigo toolbar allows user to bookmark their favorite web pages for later reference. With Diigo, all bookmarks are centralized when users move from computer to another.

StumbleUpon Toolbar

StumbleUpon works on an interesting concept: when you hit the Stumble! button, the addon takes you to a random interesting page that matches your preferences.

The StumbleUpon toolbar makes it more convenient for you.

CustomizeGoogle

This powerful addon modifies Google search results and display preferences. It supports options for Web Search, Images, Groups, News, Products, G Answers, G Books, Gmail, G Galendar, G Maps, G Docs, Video, Reader, Cache, Blogger, History, Privacy and Filter

Twitterfox

Better YouTube

This Greasemonkey-based addon loads the YouTube video faster and allows downloading the video. Generally it saves me half an hour per day for one video.

Conclusion

With the intensity of these service I use everyday, these addons easily save at least one hour each day for me.

I can use this one hour for other business purposes which can generate other benefits.

What is your experience? What do you think of my approach when analyzing these?

Apart from built-in functionalities, these are my favorite applications so far:

Information Integration

Blog RSS Feed Reader

This is the nicest RSS reader application in Facebook. Though it doesn’t replace a professional reader, it’s nice to have in your profile since you can check the title quickly and let people see what you’re reading. Integrating this with RSS mashups like Yahoo! Pipes is a good idea.

StumbleUpon

To share cool websites that you Stumble.

del.icio.us

To share cool websites that you saves on del.icio.us.

Gifts

There are countless of gifts applications, but these 2 are very cute and the concept is nice too: to wait 4 days for the gift to grow/hatch.

Growing Gifts

Select a plant (or an object) and send to your friends. It will grow in 4 days.

Hatching Eggs

Select a cute creature (or an object) and send to your friends in the form of an egg. The egg will hatch in 4 days.

Exploration

Birthday Calendar

Although Facebook provides a birthday reminder, this application layouts all your friends’ birthdays so it’s easier for you to plan your celebration and/or presents ahead.

My Personality

The main test is based on the Big-5 traits. It also explains typical horoscope psychology and test you against it. The good thing is that it compares you with your Facebook connections.

My Types

A MBTI test with percentage. It gives you the results of your Facebook friends too.

Testimonials

You can write testimonials for your friends and receive ones from them. Testimonials give you flexibility in assessing than with mere adjectives.

How about you? What are your favorite applications?