If you don’t know wikis, it might be a good time for you to get familiar as wikis have not been fully utilized as blogs have been. (Before you know it, the world will become a “wiki wiki” world…)

As a wiki fanatic myself as I have built the world’s first-ever MediaWiki based social networking site, I am a collector of any new books related with wikis in general.

One of the books that I haven’t gotten a hold of was, wikipatterns by Stewart Mader, creator of wikipatterns.com. I am a big fan of anyone who’s creating new sites with wikis so…

What intrigued me about his creation Wikipatterns.com, is the idea itself, not really the software built on it. I am still dumbfounded about what wikipatterns exactly is but Stewart was nice enough to explain it to me in plain English at Web2.0 Expo today:

Click Here to View in Full Screen Mode

(Thanks Stewart, and thank you for the book! I love wiki books, make sure to check out my wiki creation too, SiteHoppin.com!)

Stewart also runs Grow Your Wiki blog, check it out as it has lots of interesting stuff for all you wiki lovers.

I will probably do another write-up after I finish the book so hold on while I get all that wiki stuff in my head and spit it back out to you readers in plain English.

Wikipatterns, btw, is based on Wiki software by Atlassian, a company who specialized in Enterprise Wikis.

We will have a short video re-cap by Atlassian’s president, Jeffrey Walker in a little bit, explaining further the advantages of using wikis to replace e-mails and documents.

What do you think, will Wikis be the future of mass collaboration? (If it isn’t already?)

Lol… here’s some cool spud gun to cool you down while I review lots of Web 2.0 stuff…

This Stinger Spud Gun shoots 10 inch PVC missiles! There are no details on the build but by looking at it I would guess that the red button that is used to ignite the gun is a BBQ igniter. The rest of the gun appears to be the standard spud gun that has been dressed up with the black holder and scope. Have a look at the video, looks like it works very well!

via HackedGadgets

My friend Greg, over at GetUSB.info, runs a great USB gadget blog. I do admit to helping his blog grow initially, but now I am going to help him even more with his new FilterMyRss.com.

Basically, FilterMyRss.com is a web-based RSS filtering tool.

Here’s how you use it:

1. You can feed FilterMyRss.com your feed url. (for zedomax.com it’s http://zedomax.com/blog/feed)

2. You enter keywords you want to filter. (In this example, I only want feeds that contain the word, “technology” in the title, description, and category)

3. Use the filtered RSS feed any way you want it.

You get a nice URL you can use. In this example, I can use this RSS Feed for rest of my life to filter “technology” from all my posts:

http://www.filtermyrss.com/?URL=http://zedomax.com/blog/rss&KEYWORDS=technology&c1=checked&c2=checked&c3=checked

How can this RSS technology help you?

Well, basically, you can now simply filter out the only relevant posts you want from a site.

For example, let’s say I want to check out JohnChow’s feeds through my Google RSS reader. But I only want to be notified of posts related with “money making”. Then I can feed John’s RSS into FilterMyRss and then grab the URL to my Google RSS reader.

Sounds confusing?

Well, it’s really like another layer on your RSS so you only see the posts related with your desired keywords.

Great stuff Greg, keep ‘em comin’! (Hey, how about you get those Beer Widgets up now? Lol…)

via GetUSB.info

HeeKyong Yoon from SpringNote.com, was nice enough to chat with me on their cool “wiki” product, SpringNote:

Click Here to View in Full Screen Mode

FYI, SpringNote.com is a subsidiary of NcSoft.com, the creators of legendary online game, Lineage.

Well, I tried out SpringNote, here’s a screenshot:

It’s very simple to use, just like a real notebook except you have unlimited number of pages plus you get bunch of already-made templates like Bookshelf, Monthly Plan, Recipe, and etc…etc…

What I found most interesting was that it is a “wiki” site but you don’t need to know any wiki markup language and start editing your online notes right away. You also have the option to share your notes or keep them private.

As far as technology goes, I love the fact that SpringNote has incorporated a LOT of AJAX. (probably mostly AJAX)

I might start using it more real soon. The only downside I saw was that SpringNote’s servers are hosted in Korea. Although the site does fairly fast, I measured, 168ms ping times from my PC in San Francisco.

FYI, Zedomax.com get 41ms ping times, 4 times faster as servers are hosted in San Diego, California.

Although they could keep running servers from Korea, I think they can grab much larger audience in the U.S. by simply serving their pages from servers in the U.S. (Besides, it’s probably much cheaper to host it here.)

Other than that, I find SpringNote as the next generation online note web app. I will have to dump my MS Outlook all together and start using SpringNotes, way simpler and easier for mass collaboration.

Adobe Flex, will it be the next generation technology for Web 3.0? It’s hard to tell at this point as SEO (Search Engine Optimization) for flash or flex has not proven to be great. Although you could make an opinion that flash or flex can be embedded in an HTML page, that’s still no where close to RSS and tags that blogs offer.

Today, I met when Steven (Stephen) Harris from WebSpiders.com, a Global IT Outsourcing company that specializes in development of Adobe Flex and AJAX web applications.

Steven was nice enough to show me a demo of how Flex will change how people shop online:

Click Here to View in Full Screen Mode

P.S. Excel Man was also spotted over at Expressocorp.com’s booth. (Now I think of it, there’s a guy inside it. Tomorrow, I will punch the Excel Man and see if I can get a reaction.)

What do you think of Adobe Flex?

I was taking a smoke break in front of Web2.0 Expo and saw these people marching with funky white wigs on. Well, at first I thought they were protesting but one of the protestors did reach out and speak to me about what’s behind their “guerilla campaign” as seen in the video below.

I also scored close beta invitations to SpinScape.com.
If you want the invite code for the private beta, simply watch the video here:

Click Here to View in Full Screen Mode

So, I decided to try out what this “protest” was all about by logging into their website with my “private beta” invitation that you can only get from Web2.0 Expo.

First I logged in and got a blank screen with bunch of tools such as “File”, “Node”, etc…etc…

I started clicking on “Node” and making bunch of “Nodes” like this:

If you double-click on any of the nodes, you can edit the node, enter information, hyperlinks, just like a Word editor.

Now, they had a export to PDF feature, so I figured what the heck, might as well find out what my “Nodes” look like in a PDF file.

As you can see below, SpinScape is something so new, I can’t even tell you what it is except that it allows you to write documents in a completely a new way. They even have options to add Google widgets and all sorts of other stuff you can do like “import” Excel files as “Nodes”, so you can see how all that data connects to each other. Not only that, this new type of “digital collaboration” tool allows multi-users to edit the “Nodes”, sorta like a Wiki morphed with some fancy Adobe Flex technology. It seems like a lot of companies are starting to use the Flex technology. Now, if you can incorporate a good way to get SEO with Flex, that’d be the killer Web 3.0 app we will be talking about over the next decade. (Mind you, Flex IS faster than AJAX. AJAX is better in terms of SEO though…)

Well, as far as I can tell, SpinScape.com’s guerilla marketing/protesting outside the Web 2.0 Expo is certainly working well. You should try it as the site has just launched. (Use the invite code shown in the video above!)

I might go back tomorrow to capture some more of what’s coming up in “Web 2.0″ companies. The greatest part about Web 2.0 Expo is that a lot of companies are using the event to launch their new products, such as SpinScape.com or TellMe launching their new Blackberry service.

Heck, we might even turn this blog into a big review site for what’s up and coming with Web2.0 and beyond. (Yeah, let me do that now…)

Well, if you try SpinScape, let me know what you think and leave a comment.

Hi All,

It’s Web 2.0 Expo 2008 this week so I headed over to Moscone Center in downtown San Francisco.  Luckily, I was able to grab a free Press pass from Natalia Wodeck from TechWeb.com. (Thank you Natalia, very appreciated!)

First company we will be covering at Web 2.0 Expo 2008 is TellMe.com, a subsidiary of Microsoft that develops voice-activated mobile apps for cellphones.

TellMe has just launched their voice activated service for Blackberries, including Blackberry 8830, which I use personally.

Anyways, TellMe has basically extended the basic “voice-activated” functionality of the Blackberry to connect to Live search and also use the GPS service to pinpoint directions to your desired location whether that’s a mexican restaurant, club, or a bar.

I’d say kudos for this type of technology as it’s much better than calling an 800 number. (I am referring to Google’s 411 service.)

Although not a too big fan of the parent company, Microsoft, I am surprised that TellMe is available first on Blackberries and they are “still” working on TellMe service for Microsoft’s Mobile powered cellphones. (Kudos for that!  They actually care about users more than monopolizing mobile OSes.)

You can find a list of supported devices here.

If you are on your mobile phone, go to http://m.tellme.com on your phone’s browser and download TellMe.

It looks like Microsoft is trying to kill two birds with one stone, targeting Google’s 411 service and GoogleMaps with this TellMe aquisition. Well, I am not biased at all so let the best be the winner here!

Here’s a video-recap of the TellMe service working on a Blackberry 8830:

Click Here to View in Full Screen Mode

Which one would you rather use? Google 411 or TellMe?

Hi All,

I might be heading over to Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco tomorrow to take some random videos again like AdTech 2008 but I just wanted to let you guys know on the biggest contest of the year before I leave you.

We are giving out 200 One Buck Wiki pages and 50 Beer Stocks, each worth $4,000 and $1000, total of $5000 worth of internet real estate and web traffic.

To enter, you need to enter the following contests:

(You will get 10 entries for entering the following contests)

Hochstadt.com Party Contest!

Ultimate Traffic Contest 5000 ECs and 50,000 BCs, and 10 Beer Stocks over at JoshWhitford.com

SiteHoppin Giveaway at Blogtomic.com

UPDATE: You can now enter John Chow’s 10,000 EC giveaway by blog posting about it and get additional 10 entries.

Here’s one more way to get your entries in:

Subscribe to Zedomax.com via E-mail and get another 5 entries.

Blog Post about this post gets you another 20 entries.

Here are the breakout of prizes.

1st Place - 25 Beer Stocks + 100 OBW pages

2nd Place - 10 Beer Stocks + 50 OBW pages

3rd Place - 5 Beer Stocks + 25 OBW pages

4th place - 3 Beer Stocks + 15 OBW pages.

5th place - 2 Beer Stocks + 10 OBW pages.

Remember, all winners will be verified with the other contest owners to see if you did actually enter their contests so make sure to enter to win!

The winner will be announced 1 week from today, so 30th, the end of this month at around 9PM.

You can leave a comment after you enter all the contests listed above to enter “this” contest.

Hi All,

I must have had my watch set to a day earlier, Earth Day was yesterday but I figured 1 day late is never too late for eco-friendly gadgets.

So here’s a round-up of various different eco-friendly and green gadgets you can buy to save the world:

Solar Alarm Clock - Great stuff, they should make all alarm clocks with a solar panel. How hard is that? Probab