It has been said that Wikipedia is the sum of all world knowledge. But sometimes, when using Wikipedia, it’s easy to get lost with all the in-links of the site. There are links which are sometimes distracting and will lead you away from the original information that you are looking for. With all information available to us in WikiPedia, it often takes a lot of time to browse around and read all the stuff for a particular topic. People on the go who do not have the luxury of time to go back and search again will have a hard time in finding what they are looking for especially when they are on the road and offline.

There is a web service called WikiSlice, a web app made by Webaroo which allows you to download a chunk of WikiPedia for you to browse offline. WikiSlice is a WikiPedia search engine which you can use to search a topic you want to download. Once you found what you are looking for, WikiSlice will let you download all the Wiki content related to that topic including subtopics. A list of related Wiki slices is also available for you to browse and download if you choose to do so.

You can browse the content through a desktop application called Webaroo. WikiSlice will detect if you do not have Webaroo installed in your computer. You can immediately download the software when you decided to download a Wikipedia topic.

Since Webaroo has a mobile version, I’m not sure if it will support the sliced Wikipedia content. It would be great if you can read the Wiki Slice in you mobile phones or iPhone. Remember the guy who downloaded all WikiPedia content in his iPhone? He uses the iPhone’s Safari browser to browse WikiPedia locally in his iPhone. It would be great if we can also do this using Webaroo mobile.

Anyway, this is a great tool if you want to read a WikiPedia topic when you are mobile and offline. You can take the content with you while on the road and do not have internet access. It’s also a great way for excluding a topic from all the other content in Wikipedia for research purposes.

We all know that you can easily create your own Reddit site using the “Create Your Own Reddit” feature. Mixx also launched a similar feature where users can create their own Mixx site. You can easily create your very own social news voting sites in the mentioned services without any technical knowledge whatsoever. A slight customization on both services is allowed which lets you enhance them with a bit of personal touch in your created social news site.

There is a new Company called Slinkset which lets you do the same plus a bit more. In Slinkset, you can place Widgets, Ads, and basically anything you can place in an HTML file on the sidebar. You can also customize the sidebar dimensions to fit your desired size for whatever you’re going to put in it. You can also place a custom domain name. Just create a subdomain from your original domain (news.yourdomain.com), add a CNAME record to your DNS provider and alias it to slinkset.com. The process is similar to aliasing a domain name in blogspot (blogger). This will allow you to brand your social news site and basically monetize it the way you want to, unlike in Mixx which only gives you one Adsense unit with shared revenues.

You can also auto-publish blogposts in your Slinkset account. Just subscribe to RSS feeds in your Slinkset account and each time a post is published, it will automatically be added to your created voting site. This means that you can turn any Slinkset account into a personal Reddit style RSS reader. When it comes to customization, you can only place a logo and edit the color schemes in your Slinkset site. The site is however still new and maybe we can see some improvements when it comes to customizing your page and adding widgets. A Blogger style in adding a CSS themes and drag and drop widgets would be cool.

The service is basically easy to use and no special coding is required. If you want to create your own social voting site under your own domain/subdomain, Slinkset is a great place to start.

Check out the sample I made. You can subscribe and make submissions too if you like.

…continued.

This is the continuation of the post for Blog Editor Alternatives. Here is the second part.

ScribeFire

ScribeFire is a very cool Firefox Extension that really brings blogging to a whole new level. It enables users to easily drag and drop formatted text from the Web into their blog(s), post entries, take notes, and optimize their ad inventory, directly through the Firefox browser.

This is a great Firefox Add-on for bloggers. You can easily make posts to your blog by clicking the SribeFire button on the bottom of your Firefox browser. It will allow easier blogging as you do not have to login to your blog’s dashboard to start writing and posting. You can also edit previous blog entries easily. You can modify time-stamps, add Technorati tags, place trackback URL’s and pings.

You can choose to open ScribeFire in split screen mode, in a new window or a new tab. The application also allows you to easily share pages to social networking sites such as Digg, Furl, Mahalo, reddit, Facebook and a few more.

ScribeFire allows you to:

• Categorize and tag your blog posts
• Upload images
• Set timestamps
• Save works-in-progress as notes
• Post an entry as a draft
• Share your posts on social websites
• Upload files via FTP

You can also make money with ScribeFire by registering to ScribeFire Ads. Although this service is still in private beta, it promises easy “point and click” functionality in placing banner ads to blogs and have access to a dashboard to track your site’s earnings with no minimum payouts. This means that you can cash in every month no matter how much you make with your ads. Neat!

If you are blogger who finds it hard using your current blog post editor or someone who wants to try out something new, ScribFire is a “must try” Firefox Add-on. It’s also great for managing multiple blog accounts especially multiple Blogspot (blogger) accounts.

There are quite a few services out there offering alternatives to our existing blog editors. Some you can do offline by using a desktop application and some you can do online through web services and browser plugins. I found two great blog editor alternatives that you can use for easier blogging and post management. Here’s the first one.

WriteToMyBlog

WriteToMyBlog is a free web based Blog client. It has an advanced word processor that allows you to Post Entries to your Blog remotely. The service is completely free with no membership required. It allows you to post entries to multiple blogs, view and edit recent Posts and it works with all major Blog platforms.

Some Features of WriteToMyBlog Include:

• Web based (online) Blog Client.
• Advanced word processor.
• No membership required. Completely free, no strings attached.
• Works with all major Blog programs and protocols.
• Can insert tables into your Posts.
• Can style and control text within your Posts.
• Can insert and wrap images into your Posts.
• Can insert layers and CSS within your Posts.
• Multi language Ajax spell checker.
• Include tags (Technorati) with your Posts.
• Can setup and Post to multiple Blog accounts.
• Can view, preview, edit (right from within WriteToMyBlog) and delete Posts.
• WriteToMyBlog does not view or store any of your posts or Blog account details; it simple acts as an interface gateway between you and your Blog program.

For Blogspot (Blogger) users: You can easily grant access to WriteToMyBlog in your Blogspot account to allow it to make posts for you. If you are using the classic Blogger version, you will have to enter your blogger username and password in order to use the service. Typepad and Wordpress.com users also needs to perform these tasks.

Hosted Wordpress users: You need to provide WriteToMyBlog with your username and password and a link to your account access URL. (e.g http://YOURBLOG/PATH/TO/xmlrpc.php). You can also use this procedure for Movable Type, DotClear, MetaWeblog API and Atom API.

I would suggest though that you do not give out your administrative password for hosted Wordpress and other blog platforms. Instead create another user with a limited access to your blog. Placing the administrative password will put your blog at risk. I am not questioning WritToMyBlog’s security but it is better to be safe than hacked.

(To be continued…)

We recently featured Templates.com here at Orangeinks. It’s a credit based web marketplace for buying and selling web templates and digital art. Since the service is quite new, they are currently looking for a slogan that they can use for the company. In order to accomplish this, they are holding a contest for the best slogan that fits Templates.com. The contest is for everybody, so feel free to share your ideas and give it a shot.

Contest Details:

All you have to do is visit their site Templates.com and browse around. Think of a slogan that best fits the company. Head over to Templates.com blog and post your created slogan in their contest post. The contest starts on July 15th 2008 (Now), and the results will be announced at the beginning of August. Each participant of this contest who has an account on Templates.com will get 4 credits, so everyone will win!

Tip: If you do not have an account in Templates.com, you can register first before entering the contest. This way you can benefit from the free credits for Templates.com users who joined the contest.

Prizes:

1st place: $100 in cash
2nd place: 100 credits from Templates.com which can be used to purchase their products
3rd place: 50 credits from Templates.com which can be used to purchase their products

Note: Just to make it clear, the 2nd and 3rd prize can not be converted to cash. It can only be used to purchase Templates.com products.

Goodluck!

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