syamsul's domain

I’ve been dabbling with wikis for a while and so far I’ve found them to be useful for collaborative writing tasks. For instance, I’ve edited a document with a group of colleagues and I’ve also had students build up a knowledge base on characterisation using Wiki. The ability to share and edit text online, without the need for cumbersome emailing of a document to-and-fro is truly amazing!

So, why isn’t everybody using them?

Well, for one thing, installing a Wiki isn’t exactly the most trivial and some have interfaces that are actually off-putting. My personal favourite is DokuWiki which I like for its simple installation (no MySQL database required) and clean interface. Yet, even with DokuWiki, setting up access permissions (i.e. limiting who gets to edit or read which pages) isn’t the straightforward process for more people.

And then I came across pbwiki – simple and clean interface, and no messy installation to deal with. It’s even easy to handle access controls. Most impressive, I must say. There’re quite a  few wikis up now, including:  a Penn State Writing Program, a freeware roundup site and even a…free novel!

I’m going to explore the wikis on pbwiki a little more – this is really opening my eyes to the potential of a wiki!

When my school started the rather ill-fated webpage-for-every-teacher drive a few years ago, I found myself with some webspace..but no MySQL support. Which meant that there was no way I’d be able to put up a site like this blog, much less a course management system like Moodle.

Teachers were advised to export HTML pages from Microsoft Word, but I found it simply too clunky. And I didn’t really want to go through the hassle of editing HTML code every time I edited my website. So I looked around and came across the then-uniquely-easy-to-use RapidWeaver. And as its namesake claims, it really did weave a nice-looking website most rapidly.

Fast-forward almost 2 years. RapidWeaver has gained some very nice features but it’s no longer the only game in town. About a week ago Karelia Software (makers of the Watson software…which was prominent till Apple bundled similar functionality for free into OS X) finally unveiled their SandVox (still in beta by the way).
And then this week Apple unleashed iWeb via iLife 06.

iLife 06 is, as everyone knows, free with every new Mac so just about everyone can very easily create very nice-looking websites.

But does this spell a Watson-like fate for RapidWeaver and Sandvox? I certainly hope not. There should be demand for different capabilities at different price points. I’ll post more on iWeb and Sandvox when I get around to trying them out (hopefully soon!)

Whew, almost half-way into January and I’m only doing my first entry! I must say, I never thought this new school year would be so much more fast-paced with new classes, new roles & responsibilities and…night-classes (yep, I’m working on getting a Masters..at last!).

Now, back to the subject matter – I can’t say I’m sad that I can finally bid farewell to the WIMP i.e. Windows Media Player on the Mac. It just feels so clunky..almost “unbecoming” of a Mac app! Seems like the reason is that Microsoft  would rather focus on other priorities. Well, power to them then – I, personally, have always preferred to use the likes of the (open-source and free) VLC or Mplayer which also have the added bonus of being capable of playing many other codecs such as DiVX, xvid etc.

But those  who might prefer not to muck around with third-party software may actually find Microsoft’s offered alternative more palatable – a free Windows Media component for Quicktime. This means that you can simply use Quicktime to open Windows Media files – including for browser-embedded Windows Media content. Quite a decent offering really, created by Flip4Mac.