Knowledge-Sharing Websites, Photo-Sharing Websites, Virtual Worlds, Wikis, and more

Knowledge Sharing Websites

This page features knowledge-sharing and content-sharing websites, photo sharing sites, virtual worlds, wikis, content management services, and other web 2.0 sites.

Please note that this is a work in progress. If you'd like to nominate a site for this page, email John Kremer. I know that I have missed some sites I truly would like to add to this list. Your site might be one of those. Thanks for your support. — John Kremer, author of 1001 Ways to Market Your Books

Knowledge Sharing Websites

The following are some of the websites where you can share your knowledge with others. All of these sites are free for you to add content.

About.com: http://www.about.com — Owned by the New York Times.

Askville: http://www.askville.com — An Amazon website that allows users to post questions and get answers from real people.

Blurt It: http://www.blurtit.com — A Q&A website where you can contribute answers and gain points as a Blurter.

Change This: http://www.changethis.com — Write a manifesto and share it here. Lots of great stuff here already.

Citizendium.org: http://www.citizendium.org — Mixes established experts with other contributors to create an online encyclopedia.

The Ever Project: http://www.squidoo.com/ever/hq — This project allows you to create your best ever collection on any subject. You could do the best craft books ever, best dogs ever, best authors ever. Or funniest, craziest, worst, smartest, prettiest, zaniest, finest, etc. First come, first served. Check out the sample I created focused on the best quotations ever: http://best.quotes.ever.com.

Free IQ: http://www.freeiq.com — Motto: The marketplace for ideas, where the best knowledge, ideas, and information rise to the top. You can upload free reports, books, audio, and video as well as items for sale, all searchable via tags.

FreeWebs: http://www.freewebs.com — A site where you can create small websites with sharing photos and videos, publish articles, and more.

Google Notebook: http://www.google.com — Make notes as you surf and post notes and then share with others.

Helium: http://www.helium.com — Features 300,000 articles on 44,000 subjects and 12 million page views per month. Users contribute articles and then rate each other's articles on a random basis (so users can't game the system). Via this website, you can get paid to share your knowledge. If you are looking for people to write articles for your website or a book, check out the Helium Marketplace.

How to Do Things: http://www.howtodothings.com — This site features how-to articles written by their registered contributors. They are actively looking for more contributors. You can register and contribute easily. They share 50% of the Google AdSense advertising revenues your articles earn with you. To find how more go to: http://www.howtodothings.com/ start.htm?cid=writing. Liz Smith is their editor-in-chief: liz@howtodothings.com.

HubPages: http://www.hubpages.com/_bookexpert — A place to post content and have it read by others. Including articles, poems, reports, etc. HubPages gives you 60% of all the revenues you generate from having people read your articles. You can also create sidebars to feature photos or sales info. Allows you to build a flagship page on a subject. Such a page requires at least 1,500 words, 3 or more videos, some photos, 10 or more helpful links to other sources (with your description why the link is valuable), an RSS feed or news capsule, and lots of tags. For more on creating a flagship page, see http://www.hubpages.com/help/flagship _hubs_more. Also, you can check the following page to see what sort of pages people would like to see: http://www.hubpages.com/requests/latest.

Check out my hubs at: http://www.hubpages.com/hub/Self-Publishing-Hall-of-Fame and http://www.hubpages.com/hub/Self-Publishing-Hall-of-Fame-Bs

John Kremer's Hub profile: http://www.hubpages.com/profile/johnkremer

To become one of my Hub fans, click here: http://www.hub pages.com/_bookexpert/fans/add/johnkremer?e-fanself

Scribd: http://www.scribd.com — Upload documents (Word, PDF, rich text, plain text, images, Excel, Xls), publish to a worldwide audience, get feedback, and embed your documents on the web. A powerful social networking tool, but they now discourage web links inside the documents. Check out one of my entries there: http://www.scribd.com/doc/1057545/When-in-Doubt-A-Quotable-Book.

Shvoong: http://www.shvoong.com — Post abstracts or summaries of any published book or academic article. You'll earn royalties according to how popular and recognized your summaries become. 150,000 members.

SquidKnol: http://www.squidoo.com/squidknol/hq — An easier way to make Squidoo (see below) entries, especially designed for scholars.

Squidoo: http://www.squidoo.com — A site that allows you to add all sorts of pages (lenses) on any subject. High rankings for pages. Contribute at least one page here on your expertise.

Triond: http://www.triond.com — A site that allows you to create content and publish it — and get paid for the content via monthly royalties depending on the number of people who view your pages.

WikiHow: http://www.wikihow.com — WikiHow is a collaborative writing project to build the world's largest, highest quality how-to manual. Motto: The how-to manual that you can edit.

Wikipedia: http://www.wikipedia.org — A user-generated encyclopedia of human knowledge. Very strict guidelines on adding content. Not as flexible as the others listed above. 50,000 active contributors. 6 billion pageviews per month; 46.8 million visitors per month. Wikipedia in English.

Wired How To Wiki: http://howto.wired.com — A collaborative wiki site dedicated to the do-it-yourself culture. It features all kinds of projects, hacks, tricks, and tips on how to live, work, and play better. You must join to contribute, but this is new and wide open for professional content.

Yahoo Answers: http://answers.yahoo.com — A question and answer exchange where the world gathers to share what they know...and make each other's day. People can ask questions on any topic, and help others out by answering their questions.

ZCubes: http://www.zcubes.com — A website where you can browse, search, edit, paint, draw, hand-write, watch, listen, publish, type, print, network, teach, and learn. They call it web 3.0. Not sure.

Zimbio: http://www.zimbio.com — Encourages users to create wikizines (interactive magazine articles) on any subject: “If you want to learn more about a topic that isn't yet covered on Zimbio, or if you'd like to share your opinions and perspective about it, you can create a new wikizine focused on that topic. You'll be given a browser button to help you save and organize content from across the web, you can syndicate articles from your personal blog, and you'll also solicit suggestions and help from the Zimbio community. It takes only one simple step to create a wikizine.”

Zimbio also makes it easy to promote your blog: “Add your blog URL to your profile so you can import your articles and post them to any wikizine. Each post will include a link back to your site. Even better, select Promote My Blog and we'll automatically post your articles to related wikizines.”

Photo-Sharing Websites

You can use photo-sharing websites as just on additional avenue for getting exposure for your books, business, website, or authors. To draw attention to your photos and make them easy to locate, you can use tags and descriptions.

BlueString: http://www.bluestring.com — Upload and share photos, videos, and music from your PC. Just drag and drop to share. With StringIt, you can share your creative collections (for example, from a wedding or other event) and then invite family and friends to add their own photos, videos, or music to add to the story. A service of AOL.

Flickr: http://www.flickr.com — Serves up to a billion photos a day. You an upload photos, organize them into albums, share them with others, and search for related photos. Owned by Yahoo. You can find thousands of photos that owners have made available for anyone to use, even for commercial reasons.

Fotolog: http://www.fotolog.com — A blogging and photo-sharing site that encourages you to select the photos you post.

Kodak Easy Share Gallery: http://kodakgallery.com — A site for uploading and sharing photos along with a strong encouragement to buy prints or other photo-related products like cards, calendars, etc.

PhotoBucket: http://www.photobucket.com — Has 40 million users who upload more than 7 million photos per day. Owned by MySpace, this site had 15 million unique visitors in March 2007. Also allows video sharing.

Photoscape: http://www.pcworld.com/downloads/file/fid,65533-page,1-c,imageeditors/description.html — A downloadable PC software that offers a file viewer, slide-show creator, batch editor, and screen-capture program.

Phrasr: http://www.pimpampum.net/phrasr — When you type in a phrase, this website grabs photos from Flickr that match your phrase and then builds a web page or photo gallery based on it.

Picnik: http://www.picnik.com — Allows you to upload photos and then edit them. Also lets you crop, sharpen, adjust exposure, adjust color, add effects, etc.

Shutterfly: http://www.shutterfly.com — A site for uploading and sharing photos along with a strong encouragement to buy prints or other photo-related products like cards, calendars, etc. Also allows you to create photo books. Unlimited photo storage.

Slideroll: http://www.slideroll.com — Allows you to create a photo slideshow and then publish the show on the Internet via MySpace, YouTube, or your own website. Or email them to friends. Their Slideroll Video Creator, which you can download, allows you to turn your Flash slideshows into MPEG video with MP3 soundtracks. Requires Windows 98 or higher.

SlideShare: http://www.slideshare.com — Allows you to create slide shows out of photos or PowerPoint presentations and share them with the world. People can then comment on your slideshows, PowerPoint presentations, etc.

SmugMug: http://www.smugmug.com — Allows unlimited photos, no ads or spam. Also allows you to reproduce your photos as prints, coffee mugs, cloth bags, photo books, playing cards, art canvas, coasters, puzzles, and much more.

WebShots: http://www.webshots.com — Photo-sharing website.

Video-Sharing Websites

You can use video-sharing websites as just on additional avenue for getting exposure for your books, business, website, or authors. To draw attention to your book videos and make them easy to locate, you can use tags and descriptions. 134 million Americans viewed videos in July 2007 (comScore Video Metrix), spending an average of 3 hours viewing videos online.

Since there are so many of these sites now, I've created an entire page listing video-sharing websites: http://www.bookmarket.com/videosharing.htm.

Virtual Worlds

MetaPlace: http://www.metaplace.com — “We have a vision: To let you build anything, and play everything, from anywhere. Eventually, anyway.” Also: “A virtual world is simply a place where multiple users can interact with one another or with objects built for that world. Metaplace is designed to allow users to host these places on the Web the way they might host embedded video, and to build them the way they might build other content on the Web.”

MTV Virtual Worlds: http://www.vmtv.com — Virtual worlds featuring The Virtual Hills, Virtual Backstage Pass, The Real World, Virtual Pimp My Ride, Virtual Skate Park, Virtual Laguna Beach, Virtual Gauntlet, Lower East Side, and Virtual America's Best Dance Crew.

NeoPets: http://www.neopets.com — User avatars can interact with virtual pets. An MTV virtual world.

Second Life: http://www.secondlife.com — The top virtual world on the Internet. Motto: Your world. Your imagination. Second Life, like any virtual world, is an online 3D virtual world imagined and created by its residents (users).

Wikis and Wiki Systems

You can use wikis to create user-generated website content or cooperative creations. You can even use a wiki to work on a book with other people, writing and editing it.

Confluence: http://www.atlassian.com/software/confluence/hosted.jsp — Hosted and installed versions of an enterprise wiki. Costs: Hosted wikis for $490 on up, depending on number of users.

DokuWiki: http://www.splitbrain.org/dokuwiki — An open-source wiki.

MediaWiki: http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki.

Parentpedia: http://family.go.com/parentpedia — The encyclopedia for parents hosted by Disney Family. Allows members to add new articles to the encyclopedia.

PB Wiki: http://www.pbwiki.com.

PmWiki: http://www.pmwiki.org — An open-source wiki.

QwikiWiki: http://www.qwikiwiki.com — An open-source wiki.

Social Text: http://www.socialtext.com.

Suite Two: http://www.spikesource.com — A blogging and wiki platform for corporations.

Twiki.org: http://www.twiki.org.

WetPaint: http://www.wetpaint.com — Offers free click-and-type wikis you can share with like-minded people.

Wikepage: http://www.wikepage.org — An open-source wiki.

Wiki Spaces: http://www.wikispaces.com.

WikiEducator: http://www.wikieducator.org — WikiEducator is an educational wiki hosted by the Commonwealth of Learning.

WikkaWiki: http://www.wikkawiki.org — An open-source wiki.

Zoho: http://www.zoho.com — Includes a wiki, database, notebook, word processor, spreadsheet, presentation software, and more. Most are currently free.

Content Management Systems

Akamai: http://www.akamai.com — It's StreamOS content management system is designed specifically for video. Akamai powers many online sales sites.

Central Point Online Portal/Publishing Solutions: http://www.oxcyon.com/ME2/Default.asp — A content management system designed especially for magazines, newspapers, and broadcast media but also used by some book publishers.

CMS Infusion: http://www.marketingmainevent3.com/rep/johnkremer —
A content management system that can be used to build almost any kind of website you want to create and put it on automatic.

Coghead: http://www.coghead.com — Allows you to create, use, and share web applications such as event management, project management, lead management, or other tools. Cost: $49/month for 5 users. Their soon-to-come Coglet service would allow unlimited users.

Drupal: http://www.drupal.org — A free open-source content management system supporting a variety of websites including blogs, forums, collaborative authoring environments, podcasts, polls, photo galleries, and social networks.

Joomla: http://www.joomla.org — A free open source content management system for building websites with blogs, calendars, chat, forms, email, banner advertising systems, subscription services, and more. They recently released a new version of the program.

Light CMS: http://www.speaklight.com — A content management system for web designers. From $19 per month for 10 pages to $99 per month for unlimited pages. Features stats, blogs, podcasts, event calendars, form builder, and more.

MemberGate: http://www.membergate.com — A fully automatic subscription website manager. They power websites for General Motors as well as niche market publishers such as Sports Specific, etc. They install and set up the MemberGate software on your site for you, test it to make sure it works fully, and then walk you through all the features so you know how to use the service. The software includes content publisher, subscription manager, shopping cart, affiliate program, surveys, calendars, discussion groups, search engine optimization, automatic recurring billing, RSS feed aggregator, site wide search, audio and video podcast system, blogs, and much more. Start-up costs: $3,995 to Unlimited for $29,995.

Memberscript: http://www.memberscript.com — Offers a content management system ($59.95/month) as well as a membership website system ($99.95/month).

MemberSpeed: http://www.memberspeed.com/rep/johnkremer.html — Membership site software or hosting solutions that provides you incredible flexibility in designing and managing a membership site, including autoresponders, audio/video streaming, affiliate management, and much more. With the hosting solution, they do much of the work for you. If you pay the one-time fee, you'll have to do much of the technical downloading and setting up the behind-the-scenes stuff. Starts at $57/month on up to a one-time fee of up to several thousand dollars.

Red Dot: http://www.reddot.com — RedDot Solutions, One Battery Park Plaza, New York NY 10004; 212-425-3988; 866-REDDOTS; Fax: 212-425-3907. Email: sales@reddot.com. Motto: Enterprise content management made simple. Clients include the American Dietetic Association, Alberta Motor Association, and Atlanta Regional Commission.

Stone Soup: http://babble.com/content/aboutus/software — Powers the Babble.com parenting website and Nerve magazine website. Developed in house, they are now making available to others.

Vignette: http://www.vignette.com — Vignette Corporation, 1301 S MoPac Expressway #100, Austin TX 78746; 888-608-9900; Fax: 512-741-1403. Email: usinfo@vignette.com. Provides blogging and other social networking tools for companies such as Martha Stewart Living, The Sun, NASA, and British Sky Broadcasting.

WordPress: http://www.wordpress.com — A good many authors are now using the WordPress blogging platform to manage their entire website. I've seen some wonderful designs using WordPress.

For an article about how to use WordPress as a CMS, see: http://www.sachistudio.com/pdfs/wp-bookauthors.pdf.

WS Craft: http://www.wscraft.com — Atom Ltd., 10 Menahem Plaut Street, Science Industry Park, Rehovot 76706 Israel; 972 8 947 1171; Fax: 972 8 931 9357. A fully functional CMS that supports virtually any marketing initiative and turn your Website into a cost-effective tool for growing your business. Cost: $580 to $700 for a license.

For more open source content management systems or software, see http://www.opensourcecms.com.

Outsourcing Networks

Elance: http://www.elance.com — Provides access to freelancers around the world who will bid on your next project: writing, graphic design, software, video, audio, logs, website design, etc. Of course, you can also bid on project that you complete for others as well.

Rent-a-Coder: http://rentacoder.com — An outsourcing network for developing software, writing Javascript, designing websites, creating widgets, etc. Probably the best place to find a freelancer to write short little software programs to carry out things you need done in the real world or online.

Blogging Sites: http://www.bookmarket.com/blogging.htm

Blog Tours and Virtual Author Tours: http://www.bookmarket.com/booktour.htm

Social Networking Websites: http://www.bookmarket.com/socialnetworks.htm

Widget Services: http://www.bookmarket.com/widgets.htm

Open Horizons, P O Box 2887, Taos NM 87571