Advising Web2 Immigrants— What do you think?

One of my Toastmasters friends asked me the other day if I would put together a 45 minute workshop to introduce other web2 immigrants in our local club to Facebook, and Twitter, and blogging. I think her idea is for me to launch the various sites, give them a tour, and let them see what it takes to set up the accounts and pages. She would like to blog, and she would like to check out Facebook, but has already expressed concerns about privacy.

What do you think? Is Facebook the best place to start? That's how I got started. I found it very encouraging to find people I knew who already had a presence in Facebook.

I have a couple of weeks before I'm scheduled to do the workshop. I'd really like some advice. What's do you think is the best approach?

Been lookin’ at podcast directories

Decided to find a good web design podcast. Many of the web design podcasts were way too chatty for my taste— too much personality, and not enough content. I also found that you can find many of the same podcasts on different directory sites.

Discovered that some podcast directories had better browse categories than others. ODEO was pretty good, but to find the web design content in ODEO I had to choose Arts, and then Design to find the web design stuff.

Found the web design stuff at ITunes by gong to Arts, and then to Design. ITunes has a great sorting feature. You can sort the podcasts by Name, Time, Artist, Album and Genre.

Podcast.com has a web design channel. From there I sampled podcasts from CreativeExpert who does design interviews. I also sampled WebDesignTV. If you are interested in CSS3, I've included a link to a video interview with Hakon Wium Lie. He discusses many of the new features and font options available in CSS3.

wikiHow and How to Deskunk Your Dog

According to their introductory tour, “wikiHow is a collaborative writing project aiming to build the world's largest and highest-quality how-to manual. As of this minute, wikiHow contains 56,674 articles. We are read by tens of millions of people from multiple countries every month making us the most popular wiki after Wikipedia..” I can believe it. It is populated with practical, as well as entertaining, how-to wiki articles. After browsing several categories I recognized an article that I felt qualified to edit.

One of my dogs had a short encounter with a skunk at 2 AM Saturday morning. This is not my first experience with the skunk versus dog aftermath. Tomato juice and those commercial remedies from the pet store don't work! The deskunking method I found on the internet at 2 AM is so much better! The wikiHow site had a How to Deskunk your dog article which also included the same deskunking solution. I felt confident in adding a little more information to the article because of my recent experience. The editing feature at wikiHow was easy to use.


How to Deskunk Your Dog

Wiki Wiki What’s the Hurry

I've been browsing in Web 2.0 Wikiland. Of all the communication formats I've encountered on the Web, wikis are the most difficult to navigate. I have found that most, but not all, wikis are very poorly organized; with what appears to be little attention given to design and screen layout. It’s like the the person who designs the wiki site is just following their personal stream of consciousness to organize. You know . . . they put in one category, their cell phone rings, and by the time they get back to the wiki, they forgot where they were. Then they remember something else that needs to be added; and wherever it's convenient to place it on the screen is where it stays. Oh my gosh! Some wikis don’t even have a content list, or primary tool bar at the top of the screen. What's the hurry? They need to slow down long enough to organize the site! What are they thinking!?

I could give you some examples, but I'd rather provide examples of well-designed wiki sites. I think that the State of California Best Practices wiki does a good job of organizing their site. All the navigation and resource page links are to the left, and their main seven subject areas sections are prominently displayed on the main content area of the main page. Then once you are on the secondary pages there are bread crumbs to help you find your way back through the levels to the main page.

My second example of a well designed wiki is wikiHow. In addition to having a nicely organized and clean look, it is also very entertaining. It is worth a look.

I spent a very long time looking for other good examples, but this is all I could come up with. Help me, have you seen any well designed public wikis? I'm not talking about popular wikis, I'm talking about good visual design and well thought out organization.

Technorati Blogosphere

I'm exploring the ways that tagging effects traffic to blogs and websites. I understand that Technorati is a huge community of users who share tags and streamline the process of searching blogs through special tagging tools. I'll let you know what I find out. I'm in the process of claiming my blog at Technorati and becoming a apart of the Technorati blogosphere. I've already tried out their blog search feature, and I like it better than Bloglines so far.

Technorati Tag: 87u95xck3s
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