I’ve just been playing with a very cool method of creating a personal website. It is the Wetpaint Wiki.
This is one of the easiest and quickest methods that I’ve found to create a web page. Working from a basic template site navigation is easy to create. The page editor is extremely easy to use - and it looks great too. Essentially the Wetpaint site creation system has widgets to hook up to other site API’s . In my test portal I’ve focussed on RSS feeds - simply because I have a reasonable amount of RSS output. However that’s not the limit and my feeling is that Wetpaint have created a platform with a lot of potential. I don’t remember being impressed in such an overwhelming fashion for a quite a while.
Ok so my billboard portal thingy - how is it looking? Well you can take a look by clicking on http://sharedcreaton.wetpaint.com
What I’ve done as I write this is very simple and basic. Yet it achieved content access, organisation and also gives me the potential to kick start a community or gain writers.
I like this system - its worth taking a look at if you want to easily start talking about yourself and publishing work in a cohesive manner.
BTW - the Google Ads on the page - they pay for it. So although a Wetpaint site is free - you have to put up with Google Ads. I don’t see that as a big problem as Google ads are very endemic on the web these days. You can barely see a site without them on - so at least they don’t look out of place.
Will I expand on this Wiki? Quite possibly. I’ll let you know if I do.
Technorati Tags: Blog, Collaborate, Community, Web
Normally I’d mention a tool or product over in the blog - the magazine and journal. However I’ve just discovered Wetpaint and it applies very directly to my personal portal project. So here it goes..
Wetpaint is a WIKI designed to help build community sites about- well anything of the site creators choosing. The results seem to be some excellent community projects. It could be that a personal Wiki is a good solution to the problem of a personal project - and it could be that Wetpaint is a good hosting location.
More on this in the future…
I’ve been experimenting using the Yahoo Pipes Mashup too. The results are interesting and can be seen if you click here.
So this is a simple combination of all the Shared Creation feeds and my personal feeds from Robart and Flickr. So it is very much a personal view of my content on the web rather. Hence the name ‘Rob - Shared Creation’. I certainly haven’t gone as far as I could with pipes. I need to experiment with static urls and maybe direct images or static text as well as feeds. I still need to make the output page look a little more personal, a little more involved - but it is getting there. I have a degree of confidence in the pipes.
More on this soon.
Technorati Tags: Feeds, Profile, Promotion, Tags, Web
Shared Creation has just been extended. It is Shared Creation @ Tumblr. The idea is simple - to create a repository of cool, interesting or inspirational material gathered from the web.
I’ve written an account of this over in the Journal and Magazine section, which you can see if you click here.
I hope you like the new section. It will be updated at least 5 times a week so you always have a good chance of seeing something new.
Technorati Tags: Blog, Collaborate, Community, Web
Last time I judged Myspace and Facebook, finding them useful but not able to deliver quite what I was looking for. In the intervening week I’ve been wondering what to do next. I have spent some time messing about with Google Pages. This is Googles free to use webpage system, and basically lets you create a personal webpage to use alongside your Googlemail / Gmail account. Pages is fairly easy use and comes with some cool little plug in tools that allows you to integrate information from a number of sources. During my time in its editor I found myself not quite convinced that this was the tool for me, although fairly pleased by it’s capability.
Not sure what to do lead to fit a of old fashioned web surfing during which time I discovered the Google Mashup beta and more importantly for the moment - Yahoo Pipes
Google Mashup - looks potentially useful - but it is still on a restricted beta so we will have to wait a while before talking about it.
Yahoo Pipes - which has been around in beta for a little while now looks to be very good. It seems that Yahoo has stolen a bit of a lead from Google with this.
The next step - putting all my feeds and links into Pipes and seeing what comes out….
The fourth part of my quest to find the best free (or cheap) method of creating a portal page able integrate content from a variety of online presences.
This time - Facebook Vs Myspace.
I’ve been playing with Facebook and maintained a Myspace presence for Consumed for some time.
So which one? Well Myspace is the current market leader - more people and more creative communities. Facebook is growing phenomenally fast, and is really designed to help out people who know or knew each other. This really tells in looking at a profile; Profile viewing is for my money more open on Myspace than Facebook. So in the quest for a personal portal. So far score a mark for Myspace.
However Myspace seriously lags behind Facebook in its ability to organise information. Facebook can be extended by its applications to do almost anything. The fact that Facebook can adjusted to give you the needed functionality is a huge bonus - and I am far happier with what I am listing on Facebook than Myspace. Score a mark for Facebook.
Dead even then.
So what’s next?
Well neither can fill the role of the kind of personal portal that I am looking for - so at the end of the day I need to look at other places for this quest.
My final judgement on Myspace and Facebook. Both are useful, and help you meet up and communicate with people. So - if you are trying to get recognition or attention to your work - choose the one that you most like, but consider using both. Plugging into a network helps people find you, but may not give you all that you need.
Also - do not forget that Myspace and Facebook are not the only networks in the world. Give it some thought - at the end of the day neither may suit you.
Technorati Tags: Bebo, Facebook, Myspace, networking, People, Web
