Search Results: "fenton"

15 August 2006

Evan Prodromou: 27 Thermidor CCXIV

I went up today to visit Kasper Souren, AKA Guaka, who's visiting wt:Montreal for a few weeks. Kasper and I have been in touch for several years -- he's been involved with Wikitravel almost as long as anyone -- but we just met in person a couple of weeks ago at Wikimania. He's just returned from South America, and will soon depart for the West Coast of North America and then off to Mexico. He's quite a traveller. Guaka's here to help out with the CouchSurfing Project, an excellent wt:hospitality exchange program that lots of people say good things about. There are apparently bunches of CouchSurfers in Montreal right now helping out with technical issues, content, support, and other great Website-errific stuff. Of course, the local CS community is practicing the ethic and sharing their homes with visitors. I'm not 100% sure how it works, CouchSurfing runs on a very collective model, and a lot of people are devoting their time to this get-together. I went to visit this afternoon, partly to catch up with Guaka, and partly to visit the collective. We talked a lot about the difference between Wikitravel and hospitality exchange -- how anonymous the sharing is for an information-oriented project like a wiki, versus the very intimate person-to-person nature of home sharing. I also talked for a while with Casey Fenton, the founder of CouchSurfing and a very nice guy. We all discussed how to let CouchSurfers copy and distribute Wikitravel guides, possibly customizing them for CS needs, and also for linking back to WT to update and improve the data on our guides. I'm pretty jammed on the whole CS thing -- I'm going to sign up quite soon. Should be fun. tags:

DekiWiki I'm interested to see how this OpenGarden thing works out for MindTouch. I saw a story about their Wiki product on Port 25, which I have to admit I read pretty regularly. Every once in a while there's something I should probably know. OpenGarden is MindTouch's Open Source initiative, including a wiki engine called DekiWiki, built on the .NET technology, and a wp:REST-based Web app framework called Dream. Apparently the whole thing runs fine on top of Mono, which means theoretically I could install it. But I haven't really done a lot of Mono web stuff before -- no idea how well it works. Also, have you noticed how people involved with Mono say "MOH-NOH", like the actual original Spanish pronunciation? Unlike everyone else, who calls it "MAH-NOH", like mononucleosis? That's a weird thing. OpenGarden has a MediaWiki conversion tool, which is almost a necessity for any wiki engine trying to compete in 2006. They might want to try lobbying those guys at the Mono Project... who appear to be using MW as their main site engine! Anyways, I'm going to give this DekiWiki a try. Who knows? It could be fun. I don't know about their overreaching claims for the GPL, but it can't hurt for a local install, right? I seem to remember there was a Scheme language plugin for .NET somewhere, too... By the way, I'm still bullish on JAMWiki, the MediaWiki-workalike using Java Web Services. But I like to experiment with new software, too. tags:

SocialText Speaking of commercial Open Source Wiki software, I was really glad to see that SocialText has released a FLOSS version of their flagship product. SocialText has been such a good corporate citizen in the wiki and FLOSS world. Not only were they instrumental in the launch of BarCamp, but ST employs some of the smartest wiki minds in the world today (like Seb and Sunir). And, of course, Ross Mayfield's blog is a great clearinghouse for wiki business info. ST has made a business model in training companies in the WikiWay. I think that makes a lot of sense, and they show a lot of commitment to the idea by demonstrations like this. tags:

Fired from Technorati for my UFO beliefs So, I was having some random and unpleasant 500 Server Error errors with this blog recently, and apparently Technorati has given up on my site in frustration. No matter how often I do an update, and then ping, it still doesn't refresh my recent articles. I'll have to figure out some tricks to get back in Technorati's good graces. I like the service a lot. tags: