I just learned a couple days ago that Wikia is launching Openserving, which will freely host wikis and will allow each wiki owner to keep 100% of advertising revenue. These freely hosted wikis will not be plain vanilla MediaWiki wikis. They will be wikis that have been souped up to incorporate elements of social web communities like Digg. An example of what I’m talking about can be viewed at the ArmchairGM website. Wikia, which is a for-profit organization started by the Wikipedia founders, has purchased ArmchairGM for $2 million in cach and Wikia stock.

Could the Living Philosophy Wiki Find a Better Home in the Openserving Community?

As soon as I learned about Openserving, my first thought was that the Openserving community may be a more appropriate location for the Living Philosophy Wiki. I had several reasons in mind.

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Read the rest of My Philosophy Wiki and Openserving (590 words)

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Read the rest of Rounded Sassy MediaWiki Skin Available for Download (213 words)

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To use it, just unzip it and upload it into your MediaWiki installation’s skins directory. The path to the stylesheet is relative: skins/roundedblue/main.css. Change the path if for some reason the stylesheet is not being applied. You’ll find the path in the roundedblue.php file, in the HTML head section, right underneath the title tag.

The Photoshop images that are used for the header background image, the rounded corner content boxes, etc. are available at itcouldbethisone.com for download.

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Read the rest of New Rounded Blue Edition MediaWiki Skin Available for Download (348 words)

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The First Stumbling Block - A Broken Stylesheet Link

I had started to create a custom skin several times in the past, using the instructions that can be found on the Jnana Base wiki, only to encounter a problem after Step 8. That is, I would make a copy of the default monobook skin and rename it. I would change “monobook” to my own skin name, everywhere the word “monobook” appeared within my own skin php file. I would upload my new skin and set my personal preference to use this skin. Voila, I would excitedly preview my work only to see completely unstyled HTML, all laid out in one single column, in Times New Roman, with huge H1 headings and the whole bit. It turned out that the link to the stylesheet was broken.

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Read the rest of More Than One Way to Skin a Wiki (445 words)

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The Fabber, a Fabulous 3D Printer You Can Make At Home

One of the most exciting inventions I have ever encountered is the Fabber. The Fabber is a 3D printer that people can make themselves, using open source instructions and readily available materials. It can be used for rapid prototyping. Theoretically, anything that you can design in 3D modeling software, you can print using the Fabber. Think of your 3D object as being cut into hundreds of tiny slices. Each slice is printed out in 2D on top of the previous slice. That is sort of how the Fabber works. The big breakthrough is that the Fabber is in reach of the budget of garage inventors, unlike commerically sold 3D printers.

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Read the rest of Cool Open-Source Hardware and Machines (612 words)

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