wiki archive at Information Innovation Exchange

Archive for the 'wiki' Category

Google Unveils Customised Search

Published by rwatstein November 23rd, 2008 in search, Google and wiki. 0 Comments

Google has unveiled a tool that will allow users to customise and refine their search queries. The company’s SearchWiki lets users re-order, remove or add specific web search results. This means the next time they perform the same search, the personalised version will pop up. “I would call this revolutionary. It’s a huge step, not a baby step in the world of search,” Google’s product manager, Cedric Dupont, told the BBC.

Read the full article here

Share This

Forrester Projects Which Enterprise Web 2.0 Collaboration Technologies Will Grow, Which Will Decline

Published by rwatstein November 9th, 2008 in web 2.0, podcasts, blogs, social sites, social networking, corporations, wiki and RSS. 0 Comments

As IT departments struggle to justify technology spend during trying economic times and vendor companies look to capitalize on the exploding market for social technologies, Forrester Research, Inc. has released new research that tracks the business value, maturity, and future adoption of enterprise Web 2.0 collaboration tools. Forrester’s TechRadar(TM) methodology helps enterprise technology buyers understand which emerging technologies they should consider adopting and those they should consider retiring — and when. According to Forrester, social networking tools and internal wikis will have the greatest impact on workplace collaboration. Technologies such as forums and RSS have a future in the enterprise but are currently underused, while podcasts have a limited future as an enterprise tool to increase productivity and enhance collaboration.

Read the full article here

Share This

Wikia Green

Published by rwatstein September 27th, 2008 in environment, wiki and green. 0 Comments

Wikia Green asks users to sign up and be a part of creating a green wiki guide. Created by Jimmy Wales, cofounder of Wikipedia, the goal is to offer more lifestyle tips, product options, and how-to’s. The content differs from that on Wikipedia in three main ways: Content is written from a green point of view, is focused on things you can do, and is more accessible and relevant to an average reader.

Read the full article here

Share This

Wikibooks

Published by rwatstein September 14th, 2008 in education, books and wiki. 0 Comments

“Wikibooks is a Wikimedia community for creating a free library of educational textbooks that anyone can edit.” Searchable, or browse by topic, featured book, or other factors. Also includes links to Wikijunior (non-fiction books for children from birth to age 12), textbooks in “simple English,” and books in languages other than English.

Wikibooks website

Share This

Scientist Develops Next Gneration Wiki with Better Author Attribution

Published by rwatstein August 31st, 2008 in wiki and science. 0 Comments

Dr. Robert Hoffmann, Society in Science fellow, has developed what is claimed to be the first Wiki which ensures due credit for the author and lets users ascertain the source of data. The scientific Wiki project, introduced in the September issue of Nature Genetics and released online, is projected as a milestone in the Mememoir project. Based on an authorship tracking technology, Dr. Hoffmann’s new version of the Wiki links every word to its corresponding author. This way, readers can always know their sources and authors receive due credit.

Read the full article here

Share This

Encyclopaedia Britannica Goes — Gasp! –Wiki

Published by rwatstein June 7th, 2008 in publishing and wiki. 0 Comments

Long a standard reference source for scholarship, largely because of its tightly controlled editing, the Encyclopaedia Britannica announced this week it was throwing open its elegantly-bound covers to the masses. It will allow the “user community” (in the words of the encyclopedia’s blog) to contribute their own articles, which will be clearly marked and run alongside the edited reference pieces.

Read the full article here

Share This

Wikis, Blogs & More, Oh My!

Published by rwatstein May 4th, 2008 in web 2.0, blogs, education and wiki. 0 Comments

Web 2.0 tools sure are nifty and ‘next-gen,’ but are they actually making a difference in the way students and educators collaborate? Everyone seems to have a different definition for “Web 2.0,” but most people agree the phrase describes a second generation of web-based communities and hosted services that aim to facilitate creativity, collaboration, and sharing between users. Technically speaking, these new technologies include blogs, wikis, folksonomies (collaborative or social tagging), and social bookmarking sites such as Del.icio.us. In the business world, these technologies enable colleagues in different offices to work together on projects, and thus move those efforts ahead quickly and more easily than traveling to an in-person meeting or even teleconferencing. In higher education, however, achieving measurable results with these tools is a bit more challenging. And maybe that’s because-for the academic community, at least-questions continue to swirl around the use of these technologies. Questions such as: What do these tools bring to the table? How can educators be certain students will use them? How does restructuring a curriculum around Web 2.0 actually make a difference in how students learn? Across the country, as more and more colleges and universities consider embracing Web 2.0, the educators and technologists involved feel a certain amount of trepidation, and even ponder the future of the movement.

Read the full article here

Share This

Making Wikis Work for Scholars

Published by rwatstein May 4th, 2008 in research, Wikia and wiki. 0 Comments

Even if they won’t admit it, students are using Wikipedia to kick off their research and fill the gaps in their class notes … right now. It might not show up in the bibliography, but the free, open source online resource has long since become the starting point for settling factual disputes, brainstorming paper ideas and even offering suggestions for further reading. If that’s an open secret, then so is this: For all the hand-wringing over whether Wikipedia is a legitimate source for completing college assignments, some professors are quietly incorporating it into their classrooms and even their research. Others, noting features of the Web site that contribute to inaccuracies and shortchange the value of expertise, are building variations on the model that are more amenable to academics and to peer review.

Read the full article here

Share This

New Wiki: A Guide to the Professional Status of Academic Librarians in the United States (and Other Places)

Published by rwatstein November 20th, 2007 in librarians/information professionals and wiki. 0 Comments

This wiki was created as a place to gather information about the professional status of academic librarians. Specifically it is intended as an aid to Rank and Tenure committees, library administrators, librarian job applicants, and others interested in issues related to professional status in the library science field.
Love it or hate it, faculty status, the tenure track, and variations of these designations are facts of life for a majority of academic librarians. As such, peer reviews in one form or another are among the most relied-upon validations of a librarian’s work when up for review. One form of this is the external peer review that is sometimes solicited by a rank-and-tenure committee or administrator. When soliciting external reviewers it’s usually important that the requests be directed toward librarians with similar status. The chief goal of this wiki is to simplify the process of finding an institution comparable to one’s own in regard to the professional status of it’s librarians.

View the blog website

Share This