Cake Decorating Wiki

Baking cakes has always been an important part of our family life. Usually we made a cake every weekend. Back in those days, people would just drop by the house to visit. Usually it involved a slice of cake and a cup of coffee too. From the time that I could reach the counter (even with the help of a stepstool), I was helping to bake cakes. As a little girl, my Grandpa would give us eggs from the farm to bake him a 1234 pound cake. He usually gave me a dollar for baking that cake for him. A dollar was a lot to a little 9-year old girl in those days. Many of my friends did not grow up in the kitchen like me and most did not know how to bake. If you came to my house for the weekend, you'd be in the kitchen and helping (or learning). Many people I know do not know how to bake. The Cake Decorating Wiki was created to be a source for those who want to learn how to bake and for those who want to share hints and tips with others on baking and decorating cakes. It's in it infancy and needs members and writers. CakeShapes Designs has partnered with the wiki to provide links to easy-to-use downloadable cake patterns for cute, fun cut-up cakes. The Noah's Ark Cake pictured here is just one example of a cake pattern available on CakeShapes Designs. If you're interested in cake decorating, join the wiki and offer your advice.

Happy Birthday Wiki!

Today I'm celebrating the birthday of the world's first wiki. On this date in 1995, Ward Cunningham made WikiWikiWeb public. He developed the software and website in 1994 to make the exchange of ideas between programmers easier. He came up with the name after thinking about the Wiki Wiki Shuttle at the Honolulu International Airport. Wiki is a Hawaiian word for fast. His idea was to make the pages quickly editable by users. After the initial idea of "QuickWeb" -- he settled on WikiWikiWeb. Over time, the actual site has become to be known as WardsWiki.

Don't be fooled though. Wikis are not just for geeks. They can be used by practically anyone who can send e-mail. Learn everything about using wikis at Everything Wiki - it's a wiki about wikis.

If you have a favorite wiki, post a comment on this blog. I've been very busy lately and have not been blogging. However, this event has inspired me to start posting some of my favorite wikis here. I'd like to look at your favorites and share them too.

Image credit: www.thecontentwrangler.com

The race is on

In celebration of the Daytona 500, the season opening Nascar race, today I'm featuring the All About Racin' wiki on Wetpaint. It's one online community for Nascar fans. It has 558 members today. When I looked at this site last year, it only had 371 members. The wiki has pages on the history of Nascar, including the champions. It has links to blogs about Nascar racing. It has pages for the current schedule, the teams, and tracks. You'll even find pages on the news about Nascar wives and girlfriends. If you're a fan of Nascar or just curious, drop by this wiki.

The Christmas Wiki

You've likely seen the lovely videos on YouTube that show lighting synchronized to music. Or, maybe you have noticed as you drive around your community some homes where the lights appear to dance to the music. Well, I've found a wiki that may help you also create a dazzling lighting display during the Christmas holidays. Visit the Christmas Wiki for information on where to start, selecting controllers, sequencing lights and music, and much more!

Merry Christmas to you all!


Image credit: www.komar.org

The 2008 Beijing Olympics and wikis

In celebration of the 2008 Olympics in Beijing, I started my search for wikis devoted to the topic. It's a natural tool for those participating and attending the Olympics. It would be great to share information about navigating through the Olympics venues. It would be interesting to see information posted about the competition results, with feedback from attendees or armchair reporters. I found the Olympic wiki on Wikia. It only has 12 articles though. I also found a MediaWiki version of the Olympics wiki . It is much larger, with over 1880 articles. However, it appears that only one update has been made in the last 30 days. That's obviously a sign of a problem -- with currency of information, especially since the 2008 summer Olympics are underway. I also found a Chinese version but really can't tell much about its currency. I found Olympics 2008 Dashboard, a Zoho Wiki that is tracking the medal standings across countries. As you're glued to the TV watching the Olympics this week, why not visit one of these wiki sites and lend a hand? If you know of another wiki site on the 2008 Olympics, post a comment for us.

I love Lucy at the Lucille Ball Wiki

In celebration of Lucille Ball's birthday, today I'm featuring here on the Wiki'd Places blog, The Lucille Ball Wiki on Wikia. It's a small site and just getting started. They are working on 36 articles now on people and shows. If you're a fan of the I Love Lucy show or Lucille Ball, visit the wiki and join its community.

Wikinews, the free online news source

Today while celebrating the anniversary of the launch of MSNBC in 1996, I began to think about wiki sources of online news. The original slogan of MSNBC was "It's time to get connected" and a key feature of wikis is the ability to connect and to collaborate with others. I immediately thought of the Wikinews wiki, whose mission is to present reliable, unbiased, relevant and entertaining news. Wikinews is run by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation, which operates several other multilingual and free-content projects, such as Wikipedia, Wiktionary, Wikiquote, and Wikibooks. If you're interesting in contributing to this online news site, check out its Newsroom page, where it lists articles in development, articles marked ready for publishing, articles in dispute, collaboration requests, recently published articles, and lead articles. Like the traditional network news services and their Internet sites, Wikinews is not above controversy. Recently, some Web articles noted that Wikinews might not be as unbiased as they claim, particularly about news items related to the Wikimedia Foundation. The controversy is discussed on The Register and Slashdot. Regardless, it's interesting to watch the site and how communities are collaborating to report the news around the world.

Image source: Wikimedia Commons