What *is* the difference between a wiki and drupal? Fortunately, D’Arcy Norman has already explored this topic in as much technical detail as is necessary. The truth is that the issue is control. A wiki requires a certain degree of loss of control, whereas with a CMS like drupal, there is a much less open nature to the processes available to the casual user. But I don’t think open-ness is necessarily a required characteristic of a wiki; services such as pbwiki allow wikis to be both private and public. If you were creating a specific project with a specific group, such as a group project in a class, it would be inappropriate to use a completely open-to-the-world wiki for the endeavor.
The most salient characteristic in my estimation is the extremely easy way one can create hyperlinks and format text in wikis. At the same time, as D’Arcy points out, creating a hierarchical navigation is a pain. Mediawiki can create one at the top of the page automatically as a table of contents, but I hate this feature from a usability standpoint. Basically, there is a reason we don’t use anchors heavily in websites, why bring this back with wikis?

What specific task or project would creating a wiki be a logical choice for?

Maybe I shouldn’t admit this, but until just now, I didn’t realize that you could import Google Scholar references right into Endnote. A friend was exalting the glories of RefWorks because of its interoperability with Google Scholar, and since he said, and I quote, “RefWorks sh*ts all over Endnote.” In addition to immediately reverting to defensiveness about my tool of choice, I took this to mean that Endnote did not have the same capability. You can see why I might have leaped to that conclusion. And for the record, RefWorks could be a good tool for someone who prefers to keep their database online, which I don’t.
As my use of Google Scholar has increase, my curiosity about whether or not there was a filter available to import to Endnote has too. And in fact, there is no filter, there is a simple change in setting to see that preference, which a university in New Zealand tipped me off as to how to go about modifying this.

To summarize, you simply go to “Scholar preferences” in Google Scholar, and set the “Show link to Import Citations” to the bibliographic manager tool of choice. Voilá, a link appears next to each of the records generated by Google Scholar.

now what are the possibilities?

On one of the listserves that comes through my email, someone asked about social bookmarking software that can be installed on your own server. Of course, with del.icio.us, you are stuck with their servers, which is great for two reasons: 1) I do not have to worry about doing something to the server and losing the bookmarks and 2) it allows for a large community of bookmarking. However, this could turn out unfavorably because I then do have to worry about the del.icio.us server being down or getting messed up.

Another listserve member recommended scuttle, which has a site where you can sign up for an account in a similar fashion to del.icio.us (although it took a little while for the confirmation email to come through). Because it is open source, you can also download the installation files, which I have not tried yet.

There are some noticeable difference between the functionality of scuttle and del.cio.us. Scuttle doesn’t list all the tags along the side, which is not necessarily a bad thing, as my list is a little unmanageably and overwhelmingly long and instead offers a bookmark search at the top. It relies on a tag cloud along the side to identify the most popular tags. It limits the number of bookmarks on the page to about ten, as opposed to del.icio.us, where I can choose whether I want to see 10, 25, 50, or 100 at once. These are all cosmetic issues, really, but they do affect usability. Importing del.icio.us bookmarks into scuttle was ridiculously easy. I’m not sure how it works the other way around, but it should be fairly easy given that they are using the same API.
Overall the major disadvantage that I see to scuttle use on the scuttle server is that it does not have the networking functionality that del.icio.us has. I have gotten used to adding people to my “network” on del.icio.us and sending them links there (I wish there were a search feature to find users on del.icio.us!!!).

Of course, with a little research, I can see the scuttle/del.icio.us issue isn’t new and that the others have already thought of ways to cross-use the two services to as to leverage the advantage of the fact that scuttle and del.icio.us are so compatible, including creating code to sync the two and creating code for cross-posting (although both of these posts are a little out of date and thus are work done on earlier versions of scuttle).

This post can be subtitled: Myspace vs Facebook. I know I’ve probably complained about it before, but it begs repeating over and over and over and over. Myspace is an incredibly clever social networking tool, and the most heinous excuse for bad, bad, bad, unforgivably bad webdesign. EVERY principle of usability can and/or is VIOLATED within the myspace realm!

We have:

• cluttered layout
• distracting background images and unreadable color combinations
  
• loud music starting up upon page opening
• layout that encourages people to post results of personality quizzes
• unreadable blog format

Actually any of that list could pretty much apply to any of the spaces on myspace, not just the ones I have linked. I really wasn’t trying to pick on any one “space” and in fact there are some clean templates out there, and some cool friends to be had. It’s not really user’s faults though. The point is that Myspace as a phenomena is a slap in the face to effective message design and graphic design principles, and it has been purposefully created in this manner.

I never thought I’d even go here, but Facebook, as a comparable social networking site has a much better design model and interface. Admittedly, I don’t think you can customize your profile graphically beyond photos AND THAT’S A GOOD THING! It allows a far greater level of privacy, customizable by the user. Also, the ways in which you can begin to link to others via groups is much more dynamic than Myspace allows because as soon as you start listing schools and graduation years, you can click on those links to find others in your network with the same affiliations.