Note Studio

Guide to Personal Wikis

What is a wiki?

A wiki is a simple system for creating and modifying a web of pages. Whilst similar to a website, it is more powerful because of 2 things:

1. You can change the content of any page straight away, simply by clicking a button.
2. You can create links and new pages much easier than you can with a standard website.

To create a link, you just type special text onto the page when you are editing it. In our wiki based program Note Studio you create a link by putting text inside square brackets. If you were to type:

5 April 2001: Arranged a meeting with Greg about the [Alpha Project]

into a page, then a link to the "Alpha Project" would be created. By clicking this link you would go to the "Alpha Project" page, and you could then edit that page if you wanted.

Other wiki programs use different schemes for creating links, such as a systems based on a special combination of capital letters.

What are wikis used for?

Because it allows you to set up a web of pages exactly how you want, a wiki can be used for almost anything you can think of!

The free-form nature of a wiki doesn't impose any structure on you, so it really is suitable for anything. If you can think of it, you can put it into a wiki!

Some of the things wikis are being used for include:

• Running projects
• Documenting systems (Often a company will have a company wide wiki which has all the documents, reports etc)
• Online reviews
• Discussion groups

And then there is also what you can do with a personal wiki...

What is a personal wiki?

The original wiki systems were on the internet, and set up in a way that allowed anyone to alter any page they wanted. This is a powerful system, as it allows people to collaborate and work togther on making a really useful web of pages. Prehaps one of the most interesting examples of a network based wiki is the Wiki Encyclopedia, which has a lot of people all colloborating to make an online encyclopedia.

As powerful as shared wikis are, there is also a lot of benefit in having a personal wiki. Often you don't want people modifying (or even seeing) your data, and this is when a personal wiki comes in handy. A personal wiki is just like a shared wiki, but only you can access and change your data. Personal wikis are usually based on a PC, and good ones often allow you to view (and edit) your data on other devices as well, such as Palm Pilots.

How could I use a personal wiki?

Because of their flexibility, people are using wikis for lots of different things.

Some of these things include:

• to-do lists
• conversation logs
• record keeping
• mindmapping
• diaries
• meeting notes
• research notes
• project planning
• planning and writing novels
• storing passwords (Some wikis, such as our Note Studio program allow you to encrypt pages)
• keeping addresses and contact information
• brainstorming

Imagine all of this data, in one easy to use sytem, all easily changed with a click of a button, all easily searched in a few seconds, and all interlinked in the way that you set up.

Where to from here?

By now I hope you will agree that wikis are an interesting concept, and that it may be worth your time to have a quick look.

I invite you to try the free Note Studio demo, and discover for yourself how simple yet powerful a wiki can be. Or if you want to learn more about wikis, or have some questions, try visiting our Note Studio forums

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Dan Fletcher (dan@dogmelon.com.au) 18/May/2004