The Weblog for the AboutUs Wiki

March 31, 2008

DailyBuzz 21-29 March 2008

Filed under: DailyBuzz — TedErnst

InfoToday.com’s piece on What to Do With Wikipedia is good.
Economist.com also has an excellent peice - The battle for Wikipedia’s soul ~~ MarkDilley
I created a new “Domain Box” to replace the one that was cobbled together for the platform update last week. If you want to see how it looks on a variety of use cases, here’s some pages:
- AboutUs.org — Full domain info, with map, registrar and badges
- MartinDenker.dk — Barren domain info, no map, registrar or badges
- AugustaMed.com — Domain info includes registrar but no map
- OregonLive.com — Domain info includes map but no registrar info
The new Domain Box has already started to appear on Domain pages, but it will take awhile to update the cached versions of pages (right now, clicking “Random Page” show the new box on about 10-20% pages, this will increase to probably 90% over the weekend). If you’re seeing a page with the old domain box, simply click “edit” and then save the page (with or without any changes). This will update the cached version of the page. — TakKendrick | talk 17:02, 28 March 2008 (PDT)
Congrats to the Wikimedia Foundation - Institutional support of $3 million to Wikimedia Foundation over three years will support organizational growth and technical innovation.
This Saturday, the 29th, is Startupalooza.org in Portland, OR. AboutUs is participating. See the Silicon Florist post about it: Startupalooza: Join fellow startups to compare notes
Beautiful Girls Video
Congrats to the SEOcontest2008 UK Winners
The Wikimedia Foundation, Wikipedia’s parent non-profit, is testing the capacity for a single user login across all of their projects. It’s currently available to sysops only, but should be open for all soon. This enables people to use a single login in potentially hundreds of wikis (there are eight larger Wikimedia project, but each has many language versions). Steven | talk to me 11:59, 26 March 2008 (PDT)
We get an interested link from Turbott.net My Delicious Bookmarks…. ~~ 75.148.54.233
The German website DoubleSlash.de has this great explanation of OpenID, using our website as an example - translation. ~~ 75.148.54.233
Check out this open dialogue with domain registrar Name.com (AboutUs sponsor): DomainRegistrarTransfer. Very cool! TedErnst (talk)
Pencoyd.com refers to th Jon Udell interview with Ward Cunningham — TedErnst (talk)
This excellent video, Did You Know 2.0 - encourages me that the AboutUs wiki is a place that businesses and organizations can begin to enter a world that is coming quickly. ~~ MarkDilley
Nice design at Wikia for edit (see UWEB) and version history, also nice placement of tabs to the left and right. [1] ~~ MarkDilley
ChiefTech points out two interviews at his weblog ~~ MarkDilley
From PanamaNewsBriefs.com: To Catch A Thief, quotes Udachu.com — TedErnst (talk)
From Report-Gisol.com: “AboutUs.org/Gisol.com” - Was it you?, with a screenshot and link to Gisol.com. TedErnst (talk)
Happy Friday everyone! To kick off this morning found an interesting page on WebWire.com =]. link –Nick Burrus [ Talk - Contribs ]

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March 21, 2008

Daily Buzz 19,20 March 2008

Filed under: DailyBuzz — TedErnst

Congratulations to Michael Berkley and our friends at SplashCast for raising a $4MM Series A! - Ray | talk
Among the things that the new (still under construction) “Domain Box” layout does was made the various badges show up a little weird, especially ones based on my initial template design. I fixed all the ones I knew about and added them to Category:AboutUsBadges.
- This should fix the vast majority of badge issues in “Domain Boxes”. Especially where more than one badge (like VentureNW, PortlandTech or SeattleTech) were present.
- Common issues that still happen are on pages with multiple badges where people added <br/> or <br /> tags to try to bludgeon a fix under the old “Domain Box”. To resolve these issues, just take out the <br/> tags.
- The way badges now show really is forcing some more standard sizes for these so they play nice on pages with multiple badges. To accommodate this, I created better instructions on badges, which is also on the Category:AboutUsBadges.

As there are likely to be more changes to the way badges happen in the future as we noodle with the “Domain Box”, please be sure to add the Category:AboutUsBadges category to your badge template (the code I propose on the category page includes this) so that in the event things change we can double check all the various badges. If you have any questions or problems with setting up your own badges, just let me know. — TakKendrick | talk

15:57, 20 March 2008 (PDT)

Newsletter is set to send at 8am PST (see it here)

Stewart Mader at his blog on wiki patterns calls Ward Cunningham (CTO of AboutUs) “undoubtedly the hero of the wiki world” in his post Ward Cunningham interviewed by Jon Udell — TedErnst (talk)
From the wonderful GeekCulture.com comes this cartoon on editing your own entry in Wikipedia - not an issue at AboutUs ~~ MarkDilley
Brianna Laugher notices that we are working with screencasts, look forward to what that possible collaboration brings. ~~ MarkDilley

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March 19, 2008

Welcome to the latest AboutUs

Filed under: Community, Site Info — Tak

Astute readers of AboutUs will notice that we changed our design a bit today, replacing the old layout with a slightly redesigned one.

Beyond just the aesthetic shifts (like site navigation moving to the left-hand side of the page), this move provides a foundation for a variety of improvements to the AboutUs experience, some of which you’ll notice right off, and with other features that we’ll be rolling out in the weeks and months to come.

For now, here are some of the things that have changed:

Redesigned layout: The layout now is “three columns” with navigation on the left-hand side and “account information” splitting off and remaining on the right-hand side. Among other things, this shift allows for the “useful links/site navigation” to live in its own space without hiding in the drop-down box as with the previous layout.
Fixed width: You’ll also note that AboutUs articles now are “fixed width” which allows WikiPages to maintain a consistent size, rather than having the article width scale depending on your monitor/window size. This provides a clarity of size and design across all the pages and fixes nagging issues when pages were designed to look good on laptop monitors suddenly breaking apart on 23″ or bigger screens (and vice-versa).
Backend changes: With the new-look, AboutUs supports a new backend platform on top of which the existing MediaWiki engine sits. This will allow for us to offer a variety of non-MediaWiki features shortly. Stay tuned for more information and exciting features as we unveil them.

As with all change, there are bound to be a few unintended consequences or errors. We’ve been testing the new-look AboutUs for a couple of weeks, but if you see anything that isn’t working, is broken, or just seems off, please report it on our AboutUs Bugs page.

Thanks, and happy Wiki-ing! — The AboutUs Team

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DailyBuzz 15-18 March 2008

Filed under: DailyBuzz — TedErnst

The P2PVINE.com gets it!! The Ultimate In File Sharing Website List’s ~~ MarkDilley
NickBouton.com mentions: From Wikipedia to AboutUs.org, there are a variety of wikis out there where you can get yourself listed. - although Wikipedia has several vetting philosophies: you must be notable, i.e. referenced from various sources and you shouldn’t add info about your self or organization. ~~ MarkDilley

Wow, good post and he’s local, thanks for finding this Mark. –Simon | talk 13:50, 18 March 2008 (PDT)

We’ve been logging companies in the real estate industry, in Category:RealEstatePortal; today we added number 200. :: Kasey
On the web;
- SiliconFlorist.com reposts the Techvibes.com listing: Portland Start-up Index for March 2008: AboutUs retains top spot,
- Simb.net mentions Portland Web Innovators March Meeting
- A question about the information at PowerTeamNetwork.com why do they have us at 20,133 Alexa ranking?] and
- We are mentioned in the Greek weblog: GreekLIS.org Ποια και πόσα Wikis τελικά υπάρχουν? ~~ MarkDilley
Featured wikipage DiaperCakewalk.com was Influenced by a client of theirs to which the site owner LaneyJane responded handsomely. Need tips on handing client feedback? See What if you have been Influenced. ~~ Saad
Had a little fun building this out- Category:By Decade. I am kinda intrigued about StructuredCategories as a way to give people a way to travel through the site, got interested at Wikipedia, what category traveling tools would work here? Does the By decade work? ~~ MarkDilley

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March 15, 2008

Portland Start-up Index - March 2008

Filed under: News — Tags: PortlandTech PortlandTechIndex — TedErnst

Silicon Florist notes that AboutUs retains top spot in the March edition of the Portland Start-up Index from TechVibes. He also rightly points our that:

This is a very apples and oranges comparison, in terms of companies and products. The other caveat that bears mentioning is that widget- and mobile-based tools often report far lower Alexa and Compete numbers than Web-based services.

Nevertheless, it’s fun to see our name next to the number one!

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