Web Tools Glossary
These are some commonly used internet tools for information sharing and collaborative working. All have FLOSS versions, and many are used to help open source projects organise and share information.
There are a growing number of collectives around the world who, on a small scale, provide these tools for free or cost-basis to activist and campaigning groups. Usually such groups use FLOSS, and are often active developers. You can research local groups and try to get involved, or if you have access to a server, download the software and see if you can customise it to your needs. If you create an addition or fix you think other people might find useful, send it back to the developers and maybe your change will be included in the next software release!
Use www.sourceforge.net to find out about all kinds of FLOSS projects. Only a few are mentioned below.
Otherwise many of these services are available for free through services such as Yahoo Groups. All of these commercial services will carry advertising: some will be running using FLOSS too. As a user, you are unlikely to be able to tell.
blog
Short for web-log. These are website journals, diaries or collections of writings; usually authored by a single person. Blog software allows people to run a constantly updated website without having to learn any specialist web-authoring skills. Most blogs are hosted on commercially run sites that host thousands of blogs, such as blogger.com or livejournal.com. If you sign up to one of these you do not need your own domain name or hosting service. Now even AOL supplies blogs to its members. Blogging has opened up web-publishing to everybody, and many blogs now network with each other via automated exchanges of information about their content using "metadata" formats such as RSS and RDF.
Free software you can run on your own server ranges from the simple to the very complex:
Content Management Systems (CMS)
The term Content Management System covers a multitude of programmes that provide frameworks in which content (texts usually, or in some cases other formats such as images or sounds) can be uploaded from the web, and then appears automatically on a website. In other words they "manage" the uploading, storage and presentation of large amounts of different content. Usually archives are placed in a database so they are searchable and users can choose to view the content in ways that meet their requirements. CMS's are often used as the basis of news services (such as indymedia), and repositories of technical information.
Free software you can run on your own server:
discussion board
Also called bulletin boards. These are mechanisms that facilitate written discussions on the web. Their characteristic is that they show the development of arguments or "threads" of discussions and topics. They are often very easy to use with few barriers to begin participation.
Free software you can run on your own server:
calendar
Diaries and calendars for an individual or group, that are on the web for everyone to see and your colleagues to modify, can be of real help to a collective or project team.
Free software you can run on your own server:
mailing list
On a mailing list, one message gets sent by e-mail to all subscribers of a list. It is an essential tool for organising and sharing information for those who are online. Most systems keep an archive that can be viewed by date or subject "thread", and which are searched by engines such as google so that information can be retrieved. Many mailing lists have been going for many years, such as the "nettime" list (http://www.nettime.org), for discussions on net culture. Equally however, small lists of just a few people are very effective for practical tasks or sharing technical know-how.
Free software you can run on your own server:
wiki
Wikis are tools for creating, editing, formatting and retrieving documents all from the web with no need to use specialist authoring tools or "ftp" upload. Wikis are best for creating "collaborative" documents, that is, a document that has been edited by and contains the input of many people. The wiki will store a log of the changes and differences, but will always show you the most recent version. The RAM "survival kit" workshop and publication team has used a wiki to create and edit the texts, and also to easily share up-to-date information with its partners (see http://map.southspace.net).
Free software you can run on your own server:
LH