I’ve been too quiet about the many hot-shot 18 wheeler WikiRigs I’ve been seeing on the highway. I’m not talking horsepower, though Jotspot and Wikka (or is that Wakka) look like hard driving diesel engines that can turn on a dime. Nah, what I’m jabbering on about are slick operators tricking out their machines and handling them with style. There’s some serious gear-jamming going on out there.
My good buddy D’Arcy Norman has been burning up with white line WikiFever while bird-dogging social software at the University of Calgary. When he heads out on the highway to spread the word, he does it from behind the wheel of his trusty WikiRig — with a heavy load of useful links for educators in tow.
Speaking of WikiRigs for presentations, have you seen the snazzy custom pipes and paint that Alan Levine (who goes by the handle of CogDogBlog on the CB) has put on his machine? He was delivering a load of Ocotillo-style goodness to the smart folk at MIT, and used it to show off his flashy new presentation wiki site. Check out that slick little menu he inserted for navigation between pages — that boy knows what he’s doing under the hood.
Bryan Alexander first hit the road with a weblog posting on polar music, which led to the PolarMusic wiki, which asks: “is there a genre or movement of music by people living around the North Pole, and about that environment? Is there a polar sensibility?” The collection of links is growing fast, and Big Daddy Seb has even set up a Webjay collection. Mercy sakes alive, that’s some good listening when you’re six days on the road and a thousand miles from nowhere!
A little closer to home is the Ancient Spaces project, which was developed by the Faculty of Arts at UBC and is getting some worthy shout-outs in truckstops and garages across this land. Most people get worked up by the high-powered gaming engine that pushes the graphical interface, but this old text-jammer can’t help but eye that wiki space that the students use to post and comment on their work.
More later. In the meantime, and in between time, keep your eyes on the screen, your hands on the keyboard, and the smokies off your tail.
