Found via http://www.aintitcool.com/display.cgi?id=23713 - a potential shot of Bumblebee in the new Transfomers movie?

Office 2, originally uploaded by Jobriga.

Here’s a test of the Flickr blogging system. If this works out, this post will end up on my blog.

Created an embedded YouTube playlist, now available as a page on the right. How neat to be able to make my own “channel” of content!

Set up my first Wiki at www.joesanswers.com.  Intended as a users’s guide for my Mom’s frequently asked questions, I hope that over time this may be a useful resource for others with similar questions.

I chose MediaWiki as the software that powered the site; it’s the same stuff that powers Wikipedia.  Despite the harsh criticisms from Wikitruth, I chose it since

1. I was able to set it up pretty quickly – download the files, unzip them, and run the installation script.
2. It looks way cleaner than PhpWiki or its many variants.
3. It doesn’t create a zillion text files – it stores info to a MySQL database, which is what I was looking for.

Only drawback (so far) – there doesn’t appear to be any Word-like interface, so unless the user can learn wiki code (with its many bizarre [], === and || symbols) I’ll probably be the only one to edit the site.  Still, it’s nice to have a site that I can edit from afar, instead of having to edit the source code via BlueHost or edit, upload, check, and re-upload until the site looks okay. 

Ideally I’d like a Wiki with the following features:

1. Easy to install.
2. Content stored in SQL database, not a bazillion .txt files.
3. Word-like, WYSIWYG authoring.  Twiki has this, but Twiki uses CGI and doesn’t allow spaces in the page titles.  Doesn’t seem like a big thing, but I’d rather
4. “Edit” button that opens the editing on the same page, without loading a new page.  Maybe an Ajax-ified interface – click “Edit” and suddenly you can edit the page instead of constant page reloads.
5. While I’m dreaming – a Wiki with a built-in content management system for video, audio, text, and images.  Upload a file, tag it with a keyword, and link to it later.  Right now with MediaWiki you have to know exactly where your file is and what it’s named in order to embed it in your page.

I start an advanced web design class tomorrow.  Maybe at the end of the class I’ll be able to whip up a Wiki with some of the features listed above.  If not, I’ll probably just wait till someone else creates it, then download it as open-source software.

Metafilter links to The World As I Remember It, written by a Microsoft insider. 

Refreshing and scary to learn that the business world is inefficient and political no matter where you go.  Like learning there is no green grass on any side of the fence.