95% of Mac users downloaded the wrong version February 14, 2008
Posted by Andy Roberts in : Wiki , add a commentThanks to “Observer” for leaving a comment pointing to this salutary story of the worst download page ever, which caused 95% of Mac users to try out a two year old version of a piece of software called Mono, instead of the current one. 95% of Windows users downloaded the wrong version too, the page was so bad. The faulty design was caused by exactly the problem with mediawiki image linking which I explained how to get around in my recent post how to make image links in mediawiki
Well done Miguel de Icaza for honestly blogging about the mistakes as well as the accomplishments, there’s a lesson for us all there I think.
Movable Type and WordPress January 25, 2008
Posted by Andy Roberts in : wordpress, tools, Wiki , 8commentsVictor Acquah wrote to me asking about blogging software. I can’t answer his request to recommend a blogging tool which has a robust wiki module incorporated into it. I use a combination of WordPress and MediaWiki but does anyone know of a good “Bliki” combination?
To explain why I migrated my own blog from Movable Type to WordPress a couple of years ago I said that my Movable Type blog was hosted for me by an organisation which now no longer exists, so a move to my own domain was a sensible step to take. At the time, MT was the best blogging software available, but it was overtaken by WordPress several years ago. What is the current situation though?
WordPress is getting ever more popular but there may be signs that the core code is getting slightly over ambitious, with successive new releases breaking established plugins and themes. People are sometimes frightened to upgrade.
And Movable Type 4 has been developed, released as Open Source with maybe some of the fancy features from Vox incorporated, but I don’t have direct experience of that.
If you were a new blogger with no baggage or archive to lug around, starting completely afresh what would be your choice of platform and why?
How to make image links in MediaWiki January 21, 2008
Posted by Andy Roberts in : Enterprise 2.0, mediawiki , 13commentsMediawiki Images
Mediawiki handles uploaded images on pages in a way which is perfectly suitable for a free encyclopaedia. If you click on an image you get taken to special page which tells you more about the image itself. Who uploaded it, where it came from, any revision history and which other pages link to it. But what if you want to use an image just as a graphical link, such as a button or banner that takes you to the page which the image is about? That’s quite a reasonable requirement because it’s how the internet usually works, it’s what what visitors are more likely to expect. Sending them to a dead end meta page full of technical data might not be what you want to do. So this article will show you how to make image links work properly in mediawiki.
Upload a file
For my example I’m going to upload a new image file to UsefulWiki. The file is a logo button for the Better Reading Partners section of the wiki, which I want to feature on the Main Page. Not all installations of mediawiki have enabled the uploading of images, but this one does. You can tell because there’s a link in the left hand side Toolbar: “Upload File” The upload process is straightforward, but it’s worth copying the hint which appears there, as it’s harder to find again later.
To include the image in a page, use a link in the form [[Image:file.jpg]],
[[Image:file.png|alt text]] or [[Media:file.ogg]] for directly linking to the file
I tried something like that in the Sandbox with this result (screenshot):
The orange BRP logo is a bit too large so I can adjust the syntax to ask for it to be rendered only 70 pixels wide.
[[Image:Brp-logo.gif|thumb|Description|70px]]
That’s better, but you see how clicking on the button takes you here? when you might expect to go to the Better Reading Partners page. I’m going to fix that by getting rid of the syntax for direct image linking and using the syntax for building an external link instead, using the full URL of the target page:
[http://usefulwiki.com/page/Better_Reading_Partners description]
then replacing the description with the sytax for rendering an external image directly onto a page - which is just the full url of the hosted image. In this case I can find out the exact location of the image file by right-clicking ( ctrl-click on my Mac ) the image itself and choosing “Copy image location”. That’s then pasted in instead of “description” above to give
[http://usefulwiki.com/page/Better_Reading_Partners http://usefulwiki.com/w/images/thumb/a
/a6/Brp-logo.gif/70px-Brp-logo.gif]
( all on one line, just one space chracter between the two urls )
What’s happening here is that the image is being retrieved and then used just like anchor text for the link, like a hyperlinked description, except that it’s a picture. That works fine in the sandbox, but there’s one more thing I can tweak. The little blue arrow which denotes an external link needs to go, because it’s an internal page which I’m linking to.
I can get rid of it by wrapping the whole piece of code in a little bit of CSS:
<span class=”plainlinks”>…….</span>
so all I have to do is transfer the code over to the UsefulWiki Main Page.
Done. Any questions? Ok….
How else can this technique be applied?
You might use it with externally hosted graphics instead of uploading image files to the same mediawiki.
Problems you may encounter
If your mediawiki does not have direct rendering of image files enabled, it won’t work. So in LocalSettings.php, set $wgAllowExternalImages = true;
more in comments….
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TeachMeet08 at BETT January 12, 2008
Posted by Andy Roberts in : edublog, web2.0, Wiki , 2commentsI never went to the BETT education exhibition at Olympia when I worked in institutionalised education but I went yesterday. The main reason was to attend TeachMeet08 where lots of interesting people would be gathering and presenting, including some old colleagues, people only known online through various networks, and Linda’s twitter friends from the scottish edubloggers. I was asked to video Drew’s presentation including the use of a Mobius strip so here it is.
There’s also a recording of the Flashmeeting which can be replayed
BETT itself was pretty dire, with all the usual vendors trying to flog their old technology, unlikely promises and crap content to the people who get to spend money in the education sector.
Social media and musicians wiki December 6, 2007
Posted by Andy Roberts in : Music, Wiki , add a commentIs there a connection between those who like social media and music?
http://socialmediamusicians.wikispaces.com/
wikihow : How to install wikihow mediawiki software November 13, 2007
Posted by Andy Roberts in : wikihow software, mediawiki, Wiki , 14comments
I tried installing the wikihow version of mediawiki software because it’s admired, and I need to know how it does some things. The nice people at wikihow have included what claims to be a compete bundle of all the skin modifications and extensions used by wikihow software in one big compressed file called
wikihow-source-code.tar.gz
So I uploaded the above file, extracted all the contents and ran through the usual mediawiki ‘one click’ install procedure - creating the MySQL database and user manually, editing adminsettings.sample, running the install script from the browser and then moving localsettings.php up to the parent directory. It told me it had installed mediawiki software successfully, but at the next step throws out a fatal error message that Article.php is failing to call PatrolHelper.php
PatrolHelper.php appears to be missing.
I tried commenting out the broken call but that caused more errors from lines depending on class variables having been initialised by said missing subroutine.
Any suggestions for getting the wikihow software working?
A useful wiki for sharing education resources October 27, 2007
Posted by Andy Roberts in : edublog, Wiki , add a comment
Announcing Usefulwiki.com - a useful wiki site for sharing educational resources and exploring the use of internet communications for informal learning in educational settings. The site began life as a partnership effort between myself Andy Roberts and Linda Hartley earlier this year, and now it’s beginning to pick up a bit of attention, so we feel it’s the right time to gently launch it into the wider world. Of course there are already some sites providing educational resources of sorts, some by subscription, some pay per download and some for free. Some even ask for submissions but Usefulwiki is the only one which encourages the education sector to submit resources for immediate publication and peer review, without having to wait for some IT, sales or Town Hall person to get around to updating the website.
It’s a wiki, just like wikipedia but it’s not an encyclopedia. It’s for putting online and organising educational resources, links, plans, pictures, video, writing, pdfs - anything that might be useful to others in education. For teachers, teacher trainers, teaching assistants, learning mentors, parents, school students, ed psychs, sencos - anybody involved in the process of teaching and learning somewhere.
Why would anybody want to give away their hard gathered resources? Well we know there are some who prefer to hoard their knowledge and keep it to themselves, but there are also certainly many others who see nothing but benefits all round to putting digital materials together, available to everyone, for the betterment of education practice worldwide. Thousands of people collaborate to put important information as well as trivia onto the wikipedia, so why not spread the collaboration ethic to the world of learning as well. Those who share will also learn better how to collaborate online, which will stand them in good stead for the emerging world of e-learning which is where a lot of people think the future lies.
So what’s on the Usefulwiki so far?
- Better Reading Partners - A 10 week intervention programme to improve reading using real books.
- Project Based Learning - Articles, examples, resources and links for project based learning.
- Teaching Assistants - Resources, links and advice, also teaching materials for NCFE level 2
- Autism - advice re SEN policy plus external links
- Practical literacy ideas - A selection of practical ideas collected and evaluated.
- Primary ICT
- Recommended software for education
- Primary Modern Foreign Languages
It’s also the home of the award winning classroom displays blog and is definitely in it for the long term.
So if you are, or know somebody who is involved in schools, or cares about education then please point them at the usefulwiki.com, where they can make a good mark from the beginning, and don’t forget to bookmark the site, and maybe stumble, digg, del.icio.us, magnolia it etcetera along with this announcement if you think it’s worth it. Thankyou.
Stardust Memories October 4, 2007
Posted by Andy Roberts in : wikiwed, London , 2commentsStardust memories is the name of a 1980 Woody Allen film which I had forgotten all about, but the name kept occurring to me on a subconscious level as an echo to seeing the posters for “Stardust“.
Warning: This is a rambling account of my activities yesterday, with no particular purpose other than to blog for the sake of recording events and thoughts. I spent most of yesterday in central London starting out with a Creative Coffee Club meeting at Foyle’s bookshop, which was a drift in and out kind of gathering where I met several people for the first time including Toby Moores, Sue Thomas and Karyn Romesys. We discussed the nature of creativity, the role of peer group meeting venues for random philosophical discourse during periods of historical change, online community and social networks, use of real names, intellectual property and the ownership by celebrities both dead and alive of their own image amongst other things. I’ll go again.
The afternoon I had designated for photography, with a mission to capture buildings and phenomena of the West End for a future website. A pleasant little task I imagined, strolling about taking pictures but it turned out to be much harder work than I thought. By “hard work” I just mean physically active, akin to walking up and down stairs within an old school building or supporting a roomful of people seated with technology. You can get a strange feeling at the end of the day called “tired” which doesn’t happen in quite the same way on the internet.
Back to the old London buildings. Most places need to be photographed from the other side of the street or even further back if possible. This means a lot of walking back and fore, crossing busy roads, trying various angles and waiting for gaps in the traffic, both motorised and pedestrian. I took more than a few shots of a glorious facade obscured by double decker bus until I had practiced the art of keeping both eyes open while looking through the viewfinder.
Talking of viewfinders, I’ve been looking for a replacement compact camera, the type that fits easily in a shirt pocket, and I get the impression that many of them these days don’t have a viewfinder, only the LCD screen. That’s no use to me. I can’t make out the details of an image on such screens in daylight let alone sunshine, and anyway, I like to feel the camera up against my nose, not suspended in mid air.
In another capacity I took the opportunity to look in on The Harp and was pleased to see Ross-On-Wye perry being stocked.
In Leicester Square, there were crowd barriers being erected between the theatre tickets booth and the Odeon cinema.
People were assembling, hanging about by the barriers and looking in, giving the appearance of spectators watching three Westminster Council road sweepers tidying up the ground. Some had large cameras and big bags so then it dawned that they must be papparazi waiting for an event. A glance around confirmed loads of posters for “Stardust” a new film which I surmised must be having a premiere in Leicester Square. That’s where they have them. Probably they were staking claims on the best vantage points from which to get a shot of Robert DeNiro a few hours later, as he steps from a taxi into the Odeon.
Maybe he was due to grant a TV interview outside, amongst the little tropical islands which lined a green carpet walkway, as a kind of temporary film set, leading nowhere. The most serious papparazi had bagged the line immediately outside the cinema and brought those little lightweight stepladders with them, in order to be three feet taller than everybody else, except when they all have them.
After traipsing around The West end for hours I was in need of a sit down and was lucky enough to find a seat upstairs in The Cove, above the pasty shop in Covent Garden, with half a pint of lovely Cornish Knocker, brewed in Newham, Truro. The pub above the pasty shop can get very busy at weekends but at 4.00pm on a weekday it was quiet and restful, so that was another thing I could appreciate about my new flexible lifestyle 
At six O’clock it was time to make my way to Baker Street for London Wiki Wednesday. This month’s host was ?WhatIf! an innovation company, with a bright and youthful atmosphere compared with some of the corporate hosts we are more used to. The hosts made a presentation using card storyboards rather than powerpoint live slides, and asked for suggestions about the usual issue - how to improve take-up and participation. Discussion this month took a turn more towards Wikipedia, with it’s growing control culture and victims. “It’s getting more nasty” said Gordon. Another told of how he fought Wikipedia and won, and an update on yellowikis - since “Yell Ltd” owns the colour yellow the wiki can be accessed from anywhere in the world except the UK, apparently. I’m not sure how that works, doesn’t it make our internet a bit like China? And they’re moving to Wikia.
I transferred 197 pictures from my camera when I got home and began processing some but it was too much to get through in one batch late at night, so will have to be interweaved with other tasks as the week continues. Looking up the news, I find out that DeNiro wasn’t there. They must have been waiting for Michelle Pfeiffer, Sienna Miller and Charlie Cox, the other stars of Stardust. The BBC couldn’t have been there either, otherwise surely they would have noticed that the red carpet was a green one.
Give this man a job building a wiki September 29, 2007
Posted by Andy Roberts in : Microjobs, tools, Wiki , 9commentsI wouldn’t mind a job myself facilitating wikis for communities of practice but this is about building a new piece of wiki software, a platform if you like, and Tom knows what exactly what he wants to make:
what I really want to do is create a fork or version of MediaWiki that has all the features I’ve blogged about previously. Yes I want WYSIWYG but I want it to integrate with the wiki when it comes to making links. I want to be be able to create (orphan) pages without creating a WikiWord, saving, clicking to create the page. I want a great design(s). I want a beautifully clean syntax that I never actually use. I want a GUI editor that can interface via XML RPC. I want a super simple installation that asks me what sort of wiki this is to be, personal, shared. I want this wiki also to be a blog (or bliki). I want another million small improvements I’ve developed to do with information design, usability and IA.
In short I want to make MediaWiki for the masses and I want someone else to pay me to make it and give it away for free.
I think it would be great if somebody is willing to put up a bounty for Tom Smith to build the wiki software he’s been imagining for years. It only needs one viable project to make it worthwhile, and then after that it would be open and available for improvement and implementation on any number of others. One possible implementation could be an open community for microjobs exchange.
wiki spam goes human powered August 22, 2007
Posted by Andy Roberts in : Wiki , add a commentWiki spambot fighting is an occupational hazard, but not something that bothers me too much these days. I try not to over react and avoid locking down pages as much as possible. There’s no need to make a whole wiki login-to-edit or install annoying captchas and so on. My approach is usually based on banning keywords in the type of sites spammers are promoting. So if you tried to add text and links with references to viagra or lotto onto the cider wiki for example, you’ll find that the page doesn’t get saved. The only downside is that the cider makers might want just possibly want to write something about viagra and lotto on the cider wiki . In a broad topic based wiki such as wikipedia, that would not be the solution.
Now via Facebook, Colin Donald of Futurescape has told me of a new scourge - human powered wiki spammers.
Internet Futures: Chinese human-powered spam
Automated responses won’t work nearly as easily when there’s a real intelligence on the spamming side, rather than a bot. Yet the cost of using people to defend against this on the receiving end would very quickly be disproportionate.
I suppose it’s all part of the co-evolution of a predator / prey ecology but unfortunately it seem to be one in which if there is any weakness on behalf of the wiki techologist, then the predator, against advice from the lessons of population simulation software, is all to often willing to kill the prey it depends upon.
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