wikis

As the name might suggest, WikiHow is a wiki how-to guide, which is a populated by users of the site and powered by MediaWiki. It's essentially an extension of eHow, which itself has tutorials on a variety of subjects (and--actually--eHow has a lot more of them). As with any how-to, writers put together steps, tips, and warnings on any topic, and--in this case--other users can make additions or edits to those articles.

Like other wikis, wikiHow will let you search for articles, edit articles, and add your own articles. The site is very straight-forward and simple to navigate. You … Read more

Unless you've been hiding under a rock, you probably know that the final season of sci-fi-action-adventure-drama series "Lost" premiered on Tuesday--so what happened over at one of its most popular fan sites? CNET hit up the team behind Wikia, which hosts and operates "Lost" fan encyclopedia Lostpedia, for some details on exactly what their traffic was like right after the two-hour episode aired.

In short: It wasn't the site's biggest night, but it was still impressive.

Sixty new pages were added to the wiki in the wake of the finale, additions that night … Read more

As the World Trade Center and Pentagon were ablaze on September 11, 2001, the U.S. Secret Service's presidential protective detail was informed that a "Korean airliner has been hijacked" en route to San Francisco, prompting already-skittish agents to worry about another wave of terrorist attacks.

That morning and afternoon, Secret Service agents assigned to protect the president and his family found their pagers constantly buzzing with alerts both true and false. There was a false alarm about a car bomb in downtown Washington, D.C., a report of "two Arab males detained" after asking … Read more

It's been years since the concept of a digital convergence was seriously debated. Today, it's rare to see a single-function electronic device.

Digital still cameras can record video, and camcorders can take still photos. Even cheap cell phones include cameras. There are Web browsers in cell phones, cameras, televisions, and digital picture frames. In fact, it seems like it's only a matter of time before everything with a battery or power cord will be connected to the Internet.

So it's a little startling to see a new gizmo that does nothing but display text, especially when … Read more

Now, this is rather odd. Taiwan-based OpenMoko is out with WikiReader, a palm-size, touch-screen device that lets you tote 3 million text-only Wikipedia articles around offline. Given that we're in the smartphone age, we're not quite sure who would jump for this thing.

Then again, there may be people with so-called dumb phones (or no phones at all) who get frequent, sudden urges to look up the Battle of Verdun or the history of the kilt while out and about.

We also tend to agree with Thomas Meyerhoffer, a former Apple designer known for his unique surfboards. He … Read more

Headphone lovers of the world unite! We now have our own wiki, Wikiphonia.

Headphones are hugely popular now, but they were around long before "i" and "Pod" ever got together. The history is long and deep, and Wikiphonia is a fantastic resource for anyone who wants to know more about headphone technology and related information.

Headphone geeks are a breed apart from audiophiles as I know them, but they're an even more intense bunch. One of the great things about headphonia is you can get in pretty deep without a big investment. Hard-core types like to build their own headphone amplifiers.

Wikiphonia has an entry that covers 1970s era USSR copies of Western headphone technologies and designs, "The copying was done out in the open, probably and correctly, they figured no one would start a conflict with a superpower over a few headphone patents."

For me, it all started with Sennheiser's HD 414. Its bright yellow earpads were super cool, and the sound was awesome. Back in the early 1970s it was a really big deal, a giant leap better than anything I'd ever heard. You can read all about it on Wikiphonia.… Read more

The Web is arguably the best way to get your burning questions answered quickly. But finding online resources beyond search sites such as Google and Bing that will help you do that can be difficult.

Which services can you trust? Which will get you the best information? I've sifted through several question-and-answer Web sites, trying to find the most reliable services. Let's take a look.

Ask Me Help Desk Ask Me Help Desk has an extremely active community that seems constantly willing to answer your questions.

When you get to Ask Me Help Desk, you'll need to first click on the category that best matches your query. So if you want to ask a question about business or technology, you'll have to click on either option. From there, you can ask any question that might be related to a particular topic on the site.

Since the site's community is so active, it's likely that you'll find a question that someone has already posed that's either exactly the same as yours or quite close. If you still want to ask your question, you can, but I found in my queries that finding the right answer was made easy by quickly searching the site.

I asked several questions to see how the site performed on different topics. I asked how many dog breeds there were (about 400, according to the top answer), looked to see if anyone knew what HTTP stood for (Hypertext Transfer Protocol), and more. In almost every case, except for a medical question for which I'm still awaiting an answer, the question was already asked, and the answer was available on the site.

Ask Me Help Desk is a great service that will let you access answers for free. I just wish registration wasn't required to ask a question.

Askville Amazon's Askville is another take on the many question-and-answer sites on the Web. But unlike most of the other services, which allow you only to ask a question, Askville, which is free to use, will let you input details about your question to get a more desired response.

I found that when I used the detail option in my queries, I received the best response. I was able to ask the community a better question. For example, instead of asking how many dog breeds there were, I used the detail option to also ask Askville users how many terrier breeds are currently recognized by the American Kennel Club. It worked: there are 27 terrier breeds recognized by the AKC.

Askville's biggest issue is its design. It doesn't have a simple, easily navigable menu system like many of its competitors. Unfortunately, the site's front page is dominated by an enormous logo, a huge search box, and random questions that most people probably won't care about. A sleeker navigation pane would have been preferable. Besides that, I like Askville. The answers I got were generally informative. And thanks to such a large community, many of the questions you might ask are already on the site.… Read more

We'd never award it prizes for looks or design, but like all the software in the TuneWiki family, this streaming app's capability to spool lyrics in time with the music makes it an application well worth your attention.

TuneWiki begins with an online database where community users upload song lyrics, Wikipedia-style. When you use TuneWiki as a media player, it hooks into this database to stream lyrics in time with the music. There are occasionally mistakes, and songs without lyrics, both of which are a function of the underlying community Wiki and not the application itself.

But the … Read more

TuneWiki is one of the most ambitious social music projects we've seen. It is part licensed lyrics spooler for your own songs and for streaming YouTube videos, and part network--you can see where else in the world other TuneWiki users are playing your track. What began as an Android app created for Google's Android Developer Challenge (and finished as one of 10 winners) grew into a Web site and is, as of Monday, a Windows Media Player plug-in.

TuneWiki for Windows Media Player has a few flubs and flaws, but on average, the lyrics and music maps add … Read more