This was another WikiSym 2006 demo site … AboutUs.org. It is a wiki of web sites, a possible future option to Google et al as a starting point in searches.
AboutUs is a “fully editable” web site pre-populated with information about other sites. A computer goes around scraping WhoIs information to create a page. That prompts the actual users and owners of the site to want to go use it and make it better. They have quite a bit on there already (not makice.net or blogschmog.com – yet – but they did have 3rdparty.org)
Very cool use of a wiki, though. I think the potential for this tool is outstanding.
The scraper needs some fine tuning, apparently. The text for 3rd Party actually came from AboutPolitics.com and began:
And so… this is farewell for our daily updates of the site. We’ve had a good run here, but interest, both by visitors and ourselves, has diminished in this format, and it is time. Hard to believe that I won’t be updating this site – it has been almost nine years since we acquired this place. Thanks for your time and interest, and whatever else you do, please remain interested in politics and government. Again, thanks.
Needless to say, I’ll need to edit that. Soon.
I added blogSchmog.com to the site using a nice little tool in the sidebar. Just add the domain, and it creates a page. The “scraper,” though, is far from perfect. It grabbed links from the front page of the blog, so I’m now connected to the Radisson in Odense, among other things, because that content happened to be in a recent post. The description is also culled from my sidebar shout-box, rather than an page.
