The Computer Zone

For the past few years wiki’s have been gaining popularity. The best known wiki is of course Wikipedia, but Wiki’s have become so popular that you’ll now see them on a number of different websites including educational sites, well known media sites and even corporate websites.

For those who don’t know what a Wiki is here’s a brief description :

A wiki is software that allows users to create, edit, and link web pages easily. Wikis are often used to create collaborativewebsites and to power community websites.

One of the best websites for starting your very own wiki is Wetpaint.com. Wetpaint is a free online wiki service that lets anyone create a wiki in three easy steps. The service features many of the same features that are found on message boards, social networks, and blogs. They even offer a full users guide to help you along the process. The great thing about the service is the fact that it is totally free and very easy to use.

Before looking at Wetpaint.com I hadn’t had much experience with wiki’s. I knew what they were and the general layout / design of them but I didn’t really know how they worked. After messing around the website (and it’s very well laid out), I had a plethora of knowledge and was able to go out and build my very own wiki in a matter of minutes.

The sign-up process couldn’t be easier. You first click on a big green button called “Go”. You then enter in your wiki’s name, url, a basic description of the wiki and then who has permission to edit it. In the second step you pick the design that you want, there are a tonne to choose from so you shouldn’t have a problem finding a design that you like. In the final step you create your actual account with the basics (username, password, etc…) and then you’re done. Thats it, you’ve setup your first wetpaint wiki. It literally took me 2 minutes to do the entire process.

The wiki looks like your normal wiki and the you have the ability to change everything. Wetpaint.com offers the easiest way to get your personal (or business) wiki up and going and it’s totally free. I can’t think of a reason not to head over and sign-up even if it’s just to try the service out. I fully recommend Wetpaint.com for all of your wiki needs.

Have you got a costume for Halloween yet? With it being only four days away many people are scrambling around for a costume to wear, but as the days get fewer the number of good costumes available shrinks. Here are a few geeky ideas for Halloween costumes:

1. You and your family could dress up as the entire iPod family.
2. Get rid of all of the ghosts in the neighbourhood in your dog up as Darth Vader or as Yoda.
3. Why not be the favourite geek toy, a Rubik’s Cube.
4. For all those programmers out there you could be the most used character: the semicolon.
5. To make sure people aren’t drinking at the Halloween party you could be a Breathalyzer.
6. For all those Home Star Runner fans you could be Strongbad.
7. If you’re a fan of digg you could be a digg counter.
8. With the craze of the Transformers, you could dress up as your favourite Transformer.
9. Why not be a graphing calculator.
10. Last but not least, you could dress up as a nerd.

Whatever you dress up as this Halloween, have a great time and be safe.

BREAKING NEWS!!! Google is currently updating PageRank’s (PR) around the world. After last weeks penalty PR updates it seems that Google is finally updating the PageRanks for everyones sites (and not in a negative way). Recently I’ve seen an increase in my tutorial site Easy C Tutorials (it went from unranked to PR 3), Sanctified Studios (went from a PR 0 to a PR 5) as well as a few other sites.

So what were these penalties?
After last weeks penalties to a few high profile websites, the blogosphere was up in arms against Google. There were people saying that the PR was now a joke after Google issued these penalties. Now before I start talking about the newest update I’ll explain what the penalties were for. It seems that Google has started a war against selling advertising links on your site. A number of high profile sites had their PR dropped, some by as high as 4 points.

These penalties now make it a harder choice for some websites whether or not to sell advertising. In one hand it can bring in precious income for your website (sometimes your only income). On the other hand Google will now penalize your website by dropping your PR.

Google’s newest update
Google’s last PR update was last April (almost 6 months ago). Considering the average update time was 3-4 months this extra wait had a lot of people worried. People were wondering whether Google was still going to use their PR algorithm or if they were switching to something new to calculate a websites authority.

This this recent update (both up and down) it shows people that Google is still going to use their PR algorithm. For some who are advertising this is bad news because their PR is going down. For those who don’t use advertising (or at least not in an obvious way) this can be a good thing.

Thoughts on the matter
Personally this update in the PageRank is a great thing for me. One of my sites has seen an update, however The Computer Zone is still too new for an update. I’m hoping in the future that updates will come a little more quickly in the future

So, it’s Saturday morning and I was searching around the Internet when I came across this geek test. I though I’d try it out and see how much of a geek I actually am. The test is fairly long but I did alright. A couple questions were really funny. Here are my results

Apparently I’m a Computer God

Every day millions of people around the world boot up their computers, log into Windows, OS X, or a number of Linux distributions and fire up their favourite Web Browser. They go on the Internet to read the news, visit their favourite blogs or play games. I personally use the Internet to voice my opinions through this blog.

I’m interested in the length of time people use the Internet. I know I use it way too much (at least 5 hours everyday) and I’m definitely not your average user so I was wondering how often do you go on the internet?

Also on an unrelated topic I’m using the Democracy poll which provides a great looking poll with a lot of functionality. If you need to run any polls on your site I would use this plugin.