I just can’t stop. 1. Induction materials We’ve got one wiki page called “NewDeveloperInduction”, and on the day a new hire starts, they quickly learn that that page contains — or links to — all the basic information they’re going to need to know in their first week or two. We also have a policy that it’s the responsibility of any new person still on their probation (i.e first 3 months) to keep the induction pages up to date. 2. Orientation I mean this in Continue reading → In followup to Lifehack‘s 5 uses for a wiki at work, via Social Media in Australia, here are another five: 1. Technical documentation Funny this wasn’t in the original five, but perhaps it’s just too obvious. Most places I’ve worked, the wiki’s been installed by the techies and has taken off in that group first. Invariably, we’ve used it to document our systems — usually at a high level, and as an addition to the low-level comments scattered through the code. The wiki at my Continue reading → OK, you’re up and running with your WordPress installation, and really you could leave it at that if you wanted to. But why limit yourself? One of the coolest things about WordPress, as compared to just about any other blogging platform or CMS, is the wealth of plugins available for extending or customising your site. I’m going to cover a handful that I think you’ll find particularly useful, but if you want more, just google “wordpress plugins” sometime and make sure you have plenty of Continue reading → I have to admit, I meant to include this in the previous article and I somehow forgot. So I just want to quickly touch on static pages, and why you might want them. Static pages in WordPress When you go to write a post, you might have noticed a submenu option called “Write Page”. You might also have noticed a sidebar widget called “Pages”. This is all about webpages that you manage through WordPress, but which aren’t part of the ongoing stream of your blog. Continue reading → Via Google Operating System, this news from MediaPost: >EMI HAS JOINED THE OTHER three major record labels in distributing music videos on YouTube, the companies announced today. In addition to making available clips from acts like Coldplay and Norah Jones, EMI and YouTube plan to develop a system that provides for **consumer-created content** that uses EMI music and video. (emphasis mine) Anyone realise what that means? EMI and YouTube are recognising the legitimacy of fan-created videos using copyrighted music. For a long time, the creators Continue reading → In the previous article I showed you how to set up WordPress to create an archive for your fanfic/art/vids. In this article I’ll be talking about some of the next steps you can take in customising your setup. Make it look better The default theme that comes with WordPress is — well, it’s not too awful, but it’s probably not what you want. Luckily WordPress comes installed with a bunch of themes. Later, we’ll be talking about installing third-party themes or customising your own themes, Continue reading → This is part of a series on how you can easily create a fannish archive website using WordPress. The introductory article talks about why you might want to do that, so now it’s time to get down to the nitty-gritty. Get yourself some hosting 1. Sign up for Dreamhost or some similar hosting provider. Dreamhost will cost you less than $10/month ($7.95 if you pay in advance) and you can share that between as many people as you want. (Disclaimer) 2. Register a domain name. Continue reading → This is an introduction to a series of forthcoming articles. I figured that some people are going to want to know the background, and it might just help to have a quick roundup of reasons why you might want to do this. First of all, let me just say that I’m addressing these articles to the section of LiveJournal users who refer to themselves (ourselves!) as “fandom”, and most specifically to fanfic authors and other producers of fanworks including art and videos. If you’re a Continue reading → Via Cesperanza, who writes: >I feel like we’re the bookend generation, where things that got made there (mass media, intellectual property, industrialization, “the invention of tradition”) get unmade or remade here; and here we go, this is the 19th century enclosure acts all over again, except this time, the fields are virtual. The article she’s pointing to is Element’s post on User Generated Content and Ownership: the User as Citizen, and wow, I want this to be picked up outside LiveJournal. She proposes: >Any business Continue reading → During WW2, my grandpa worked with a mob called FELO (Far East Liaison Office) who were responsible for airdropping hundreds of thousands of propaganda pamphlets over New Guinea. I’ve just scanned and uploaded a set of them, including a bunch of pamphlets in Japanese and a recruiting poster for FELO. Don’t miss the Japanese dollar note. (Read Cryptonomicon? Just like that.)