Let’s chat, mingle, and wiki together.

One of this month’s topics may easily include the recent “Universal Edit Button” (http://UniversalEditButton.org) or the upcoming Wikimania event!

and we imagine the rest will self organize - itself.

at the AboutUs office, 107 SE Washington #520 5:30-8:30

On June 18th - The Web Page Toolbar and UEB - both came out at the same time. Since we were pushing hard on the UEB - we temporarily missed Andreas’ great work.

Inspired by AboutUs Bookmarklet, he got more interested in creating a full service tool!

I’ve been doing some thinking since then and I figured out that I wanted some more from a toolbar, like all the web sites I use when looking up a web page I visit. … The toolbar lets you look up web sites at Alexa, AboutUs.org, BuiltWith.com, Technorati, WebSiteValued, Compete, Quantcast, eXavier, WayBack machine and many more.

While Andreas was building this great tool to find out information about websites, he added into it much functionality (some still to be realized) in relation to AboutUs.org. The ability to add websites to your AboutUs watchlist, look at the history of the wiki page and even edit!

The thing that really caught our attention is that Andreas has added some links to our basic pages, our tour - WikiAnatomy, What is Wiki?, Spotlighted Articles, Recent Changes and our weblog.

Please go and download this toolbar.

Let Andreas know what your suggestions, questions or bugs are here at the official website for this toolbar - WebPage.nu

For some reason I am now just stumbling across this newish weblog by our own fabulous Kristina Weis

Her latest post is about the new feature on AboutUs called Recent Contributors and is most excellent!

“This new feature on AboutUs is so exciting for me! It makes the history of each wiki page leaps and bounds more transparent and personal by showing a Recent Contributors box to the right with portraits of the most recent editors to the page. (Contributors who have not yet uploaded a portrait are indicated by a question mark, and a page that has yet to be edited invites the person viewing the page to be the first contributor.)

Check it out! Go to any page on AboutUs and see how it looks. Then edit the page and watch yourself get added to the first slot in that page’s Recent Contributors box. (If you aren’t seeing your photo upload it this way.)“

I was lucky enough to be included in a podcast set up by Justin Kistner with Ward Cunningham and Peter Kaminski earlier this week regarding the Universal Edit Button.

Rick Turoczy just posted it over at his weblog Silicon Florist, with added commentary. Check out the 20 minute podcast!

Well after many months, (how long has it been?) the wiki community is kicking this thing off and AboutUs is excited to be a partner in the launching of the new Universal Edit Button!

The development of this web icon and edit button is the result of many conversations and contributions over the past two years. Today’s public announcement is a tribute to the collective work by web editors, wiki enthusiasts, and Internet contributors all over the world. The turn around for this project was remarkably quick and intended to coincide with the launch of Firefox’s 3.0 browser. We want to especially recognize the work of Brion Vibber at Wikimedia for his code contributions, and Travis Derouin at wikiHow for building the extension.

For AboutUs users, the Universal Edit Button will make editing pages easier, and promote the concept of editable pages to audiences worldwide.

For me personally, it has been a whirlwind 30 hours and I am so excited to be collaborating with the many fine people in the wiki community, this has come off really nicely!!

See the post at ReadWriteWeb:Wiki Providers Come Together to Offer Universal Edit Button

John McCain clinched the nomination in early March, but this past weekend, the web was abuzz from NY Times’ article “The Wiki-Way to the Nomination” of Barack Obama.

We think that is great. Not only great, but fantastic! Not only fantastic, but continued endurance for the ideas of wiki on people and our culture.

Let’s take a look at the wiki way, from several different prospectives:

At Ward’s Wiki, the Portland Pattern Repository,(the original wiki), one of the things it says is: “Wiki feels right and that rightness can be applied elsewhere.” (source)

The fabulous Wikipedia relies on the technical side of the Wiki Way… “A wiki is a collection of web page designed to enable anyone who accesses it to contribute or modify content.” (source)

Here at AboutUs.org, we have spent a fair amount of time considering how The Wiki Way impacts us. Check out the values-based work we’ve done on this.

Another great aspect of the NY Times’ article is that they used a photo of Barack Obama in Portland, Oregon – our home town!

Not only was wiki invented in Portland, but the gathering of grassroots wiki folks (RecentChangesCamp) also has its roots here.

Portland is Wiki City, USA

We’re lucky to be here & luckier still that wiki is universal.

See you on the wiki!

A couple things:

1) Tonight is PortlandBeerWiki.com night, Kerry Finsand will talk about his vision of organizing Portland beer drinkers!

Ward Cunningham will add some words to that as well, wiki and beer, yum

Oregonian reference

3) Pete Forsyth, Steven Walling and myself will be available to give a brief presentation to the RecentChangesCamp in San Francisco a few weeks ago. Yea!!

4) Presentation of Wikipedia Oregon Project’s new weblog

5) Also, anyone interested in salivating over next weeks Wagn launch - Connectipedia.org

As usual, feel free to self organize anything else that you would like to talk about.

Best, Mark

p.s.

if you want to sign up at the official wiki wednesday list, please do so:

http://groups.google.com/group/pdxwiki

A lot has been written lately about the Awesome Power of AboutUs.org to increase the SEO (or search engine optimization, aka “Google juice” or “search juice”) of a site, company or domain. The main point is that using AboutUs.org is a cost-free way to attract attention to your doings and goings-on.

We have previously made much of the “Hoovers on a wiki” element of our site.

The cool thing about what we do, the fact that it’s all-wiki-all-the-time is that the community determines its value. Working both individually and together, you materially effect what this little company of ours is.

So, we’d like to know more. What do you use AboutUs.org for? Either of the above, both, neither? Something we could scarcely imagine? Share your innovations and experiments in the comments below. Don’t forget to include the URL of your AboutUs.org pages.

For power users and new feature daredevils! The AboutUs Bookmarklet will open the AboutUs Wiki Page for the website that you are currently browsing. So if you are looking at the InstituteOfMosaicArt.com website and you want to add something to its Wiki Page on AboutUs, you can get there in the click of a link in your web browser!

Andreas mentioned it a week ago and Pat Cunningham wrote several over the past month and is happiest with this one. You rock Pat!

—->> AboutUs <<—-

1) Drag this to your bookmark bar.
2) Then click on it! Yea!!

P.S. in Internet Explorer right-click on AboutUs choose “Add to Favorites” and add to the “Links” folder.

Let us know what you
think about this handy tool.

No one likes being sold. No one. People love to buy stuff that’s going to satisfy a need they have. They love to spend money to make more money.

About 8 or 9 weeks ago I volunteered to change jobs here at AboutUs because we had more people expressing interest in our article-writing service than we could phone back to give them more info. Since then, I’ve been on the phones every day, talking with all kinds of people about their businesses and how an article on AboutUs can help with their visibility and credibility on the internet. It’s hard work! Every day I dial between 30 and 50 phone numbers, leave lots of voicemail messages (busy people out there building their own businesses!), and talk with about 10 people.

So how do I speak with people on the phone in a way that conveys to them how great the service is, that helps them see how it will benefit their business, that doesn’t make them feel like they’re being sold? I find it very difficult. And why is that? I know how much our articles can benefit a small-business. I’ve seen it first-hand …