[RC] Wikpedia, Blogs & RSS (oh my)

[Dr. Ernie Prabhakar]

Hi all,

Thanks to the Centroid who forwarded:
> you are into Wikipedia. following link is with founder:
> http://interviews.slashdot.org/interviews/04/07/28/1351230.shtml? 
> tid=146&tid=95&tid=11

I've posted this link -- along with some brief commentary -- on my new  
blog, "News from The Radical Center":

http://radicalcentrism.org/news/index.html

In the future, I will try to post news and external links on that site,  
and use this list for topical discussions -- though of course there  
will often be crossover.  You can watch for news via my RSS feed:

http://radicalcentrism.org/news/rss.xml
(feed it into any RSS viewer )

-- Ernie P.

A quick glossary;

* A Wiki is a collaborative environment for document editing.  
<http://wiki.org/wiki.cgi?WhatIsWiki>

* The Wikipedia uses Wiki <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiki> to create  
a surprisingly useful and comprehensive, yet entirely volunteer,  
encyclopedia

* Blog is short for "weblog", a kind of an online journal.
http://marketingterms.com/dictionary/blog/

While often associated with personal diaries, or reviews of other  
websites, blogs are becoming a increasingly important source of news in  
their own right:
http://www.internetweek.com/allStories/showArticle.jhtml? 
articleID=26100951
http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/07/29/wed.blog.roundup/
http://www.topix.net/news/blogs
"the blogosphere is simply the democratization of punditry, with the  
result that talent wins."

* RSS, an acronym that sometimes stands for Rich Site Summary.
http://www.xml.com/pub/a/2002/12/18/dive-into-xml.html

RSS is a way to poll websites to obtain summaries of their articles, to  
decide if you want to go to the trouble of visiting them and reading  
them.  A good RSS reader makes it easy to scan dozens of sites quickly  
and easily.

http://directory.google.com/Top/Reference/Libraries/ 
Library_and_Information_Science/Technical_Services/Cataloguing/ 
Metadata/RDF/Applications/RSS/News_Readers/

Particularly useful for frequently-updated content like blogs, as well  
as many corporate and news sites.

http://www.apple.com/rss/