Blog + Wiki = a new way to collaborate.
21 year old Lucas Carlson has integrated these two existing technologies in an exciting new way… For years, programmers have used versioning tools to collaborate on writing software. In that way, hundreds of programmers can work on a single program at the same time. It has only been a matter of time before programmers brought the same concept to collaborative writing in general. He has called it Web Collaborator.
To quote the site…
“Discussion Through Blogging.
The discussion section of any collaboration is done in a blog. Descending from the words “web log”, a blog is basically a journal that is available on the web. Postings on a blog are arranged in chronological order with the most recent additions at the top.
A blog is a perfect arena for discussions where you can attribute who is saying what and when they said it. This allows a group of people to focus on certain parts of a collaboration. For example, if I noticed that a paper we were working on needed more citations, I might say so in the blog. It is the first page people see when they come into a project, so any news of interest that might be inappropriate inside the project should go there.
Many people have heard about blogs, but not as many people have heard about Wikis. The most famous wiki is Wikipedia, an online encyclopedia. In Wikipedia, as in any wiki, you can see all of the pages just like any other website. The difference is that at the top of the page is a link that says “Edit this page”. That’s right, anybody in the whole world at any time can edit any page. You don’t even need to register for anything. All you have to do is start typing away and press save.
What happens if someone deletes the whole page? No problem, the next person to see the page can simply go to the history of the page, click a previous version, and press save. It keeps track of every revision of every single page.
The wiki becomes the record keeper, updating changes to projects, always providing the latest copy, showing who changed what and when.
Two problems exist with major wiki implementations as of today.
1. Only those skilled with high technical skill can install them
2. Not many wikis exist for people to use for their own personal projects
Those are the two problems that Web Collaborator sets out to solve. In Web Collaborator, starting your own personal wiki is as easy as typing in the names of your collaborators. No need to install complicated software requiring database systems and whatnot.
Thus Web Collaborator gives you all the power of cutting edge technologies without any of the fuss of setting them up. Go ahead and try for yourself.”
Nice idea…