Wikis
What’s a wiki? Wikipedia explains it better. Now that the year 2004 was pronounced the year of the blog, I’m quite certain that Wikis are the next big thing. Wikis, unlike blogs, might appeal to those who keep a reference book instead of a diary (by the way, they already appeal to bloggers in a big way). Unlike blogs, Wikis are essentially search based, i.e., you search for something that you know might exist on a wiki and you find it. They are also considered better tools for collaboration efforts. For examples, there can be none better than Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Wikis are wonderful and a must have. Why? With wikis:
- Wikis can be used store information of relevance and reference by:
- Engineers (project cases, research, lessons learnt, engineering databases, reference portals, etc).
- Doctors (medical info, cure, research, case history, etc).
- Lawyers (case history, citations, special cases info, etc).
- Business (client list, info list, purchase order list, sales figures, tax information, cost profit analysis log, etc).
- Students (lecture notes, project work, collaborative work, thesis, reference and cross-reference info).
- Senior citizens (pension pay dates, savings count log, birthday list of their grandchildren, etc).
- Task forces can create and update processes as things change.
- You can carry your wiki archives in your pocket thumb drive.
I can go on and on. Bottomline is that Wikis have a huge huge potential in any imaginable area of work or leisure.
At the moment, the existing wiki systems are harder to setup and rest within a geek’s domain to setup and run (even those like Mediawiki that powers Wikipedia and Instiki, which is powered by Ruby).
I will not be surprised if 2005 becomes the year of wikis. Will Google realize this potential as it did with Blogger? It would be wonderful if they do. Who better than the search engine company to power our wikis.
Google could create a sign-up for a wiki just like a Blogger account and invite it’s users to create their own online reference material. Now that would be wonderful!