How does a blog differ from a wiki?

The difference between a weblog and a wiki is rather simple. A wiki is a type of website that allows users to easily add, remove, or otherwise edit and change most available content, sometimes without the need for registration. A weblog is a type of website where entries are made (such as in a journal or diary), displayed in a reverse chronological order. (Wiki Site) (Blog Site)

Purpose of a Blog

Blogs often provide commentary or news on a particular subject, such as food, politics, or local news; some function as more personal online diaries. A typical blog combines text, images, and links to other blogs, web pages, and other media related to its topic. Most blogs are primarily textual although many focus on photographs, videos or audio. The word blog can also be used as a verb, meaning adding an entry to a blog. (Blog Site)

Purpose of a Wiki

This ease of interaction and operation makes a wiki an effective tool for collaborative writing. The term wiki can also refer to the collaborative software itself (wiki engine) that facilitates the operation of such a website (see wiki software), or to certain specific wiki sites, including the computer science site (and original wiki), WikiWikiWeb, and the online encyclopedias such as Wikipedia. (Wiki Site)

The History of Blogs

The modern blog evolved from the online diary where people would keep a running account of their personal lives. Most such writers called themselves diarists, journalists, or journalers. A few called themselves escribitionists. The Open Pages webring included members of the online-journal community. Justin Hall, who began eleven years of personal blogging in 1994 while a student at Swarthmore College, is generally recognized as one of the earliest bloggers. (Blog Site)

Other forms of journals kept online also existed. A notable example was game programmer John Carmack's widely read journal, published via the finger protocol. Websites, including both corporate sites and personal homepages, had and still often have "What's New" or "News" sections, often on the index page and sorted by date. One noteworthy early precursor to a blog was the tongue-in-cheek personal website that was frequently updated by Usenet legend Kibo. (Blog Site)

The History of Wikis

The first wiki, WikiWikiWeb (http://c2.com/cgi/wiki), is named after the "Wiki Wiki" line of "Chance RT-52 shuttle buses" in Honolulu International Airport, Hawaii by Ward Cunningham. Cunningham named WikiWikiWeb that way because he remembered a Honolulu International Airport counter employee telling him to take the so-called "Wiki Wiki" Chance RT-52 shuttle bus line that runs between the airport's terminals. According to Cunningham, "I chose wiki-wiki as an alliterative substitute for 'quick' and thereby avoided naming this stuff quick-web." "Wiki Wiki" is a reduplication of "wiki", a Hawaiian-language word for fast. The word wiki is a shorter form of wiki wiki (weekie, weekie). The word is sometimes interpreted as the backronym for "What I know is", which describes the knowledge contribution, storage and exchange function. (Wiki Site)

Key Characteristics of Wikis

A wiki enables documents to be written collectively in a extremely simple markup language using a web browser. A single page in a wiki is referred to as a "wiki page", while the entire body of pages, which are usually highly interconnected via hyperlinks, is "the wiki"; in effect, a wiki is actually a very simple, easy-to-use user-maintained database for searching or even creating information. (Wiki Site)

A defining characteristic of wiki technology is the ease with which pages can be created and updated. Generally, there is no review before modifications are accepted. Most wikis are open to the general public without the need to register any user account. Sometimes session log-in is requested to acquire a "wiki-signature" cookie for autosigning edits. More private wiki servers require user authentication. Many edits, however, can be made in real-time, and appear almost instantaneously online. This can often lead to abuse of the system. (Wiki Site)

How blogs are made

A variety of different systems are used to create and maintain blogs. Dedicated web applications can eliminate the need for bloggers to manage this software. With web interfaces, these systems allow travelers to blog from anywhere on the Internet, and allow users to create blogs without having to maintain their own server. Such systems allow users to work with tools such as Ecto, Elicit and w.bloggar which allow users to maintain their Web-hosted blog without the need to be online while composing or editing posts. Blog creation tools and blog hosting are also provided by some Web hosting companies (Tripod), Internet service providers (America Online), online publications (Salon.com) and internet portals (Yahoo! 360° or Google). Some advanced users have developed custom blogging systems from scratch using server-side software, and often implement membership management and password protected areas. Others have created a mix of a blog and wiki, called a bliki. (Blog Site)

Recipe of a blog entry

A blog entry typically consists of the following:

Title, the main title, or headline, of the post.
Body, main content of the post.
Permalink, the URL of the full, individual article.
Post Date, date and time the post was published.

A blog entry optionally includes the following:

Comments
Categories (or tags) - subjects that the entry discusses
Trackback and or pingback - links to other sites that refer to the entry

(Blog Site)

Linking and Creating pages of Wiki

Wikis are a true hypertext medium, with non-linear navigational structures. Each page typically contains a large number of links to other pages. Hierarchical navigation pages often exist in larger wikis, often a consequence of the original page creation process, but they do not have to be used. Links are created using a specific syntax, the so-called "link pattern". (Wiki Site)

Originally, most wikis used CamelCase when naming program identifiers, produced by capitalizing words in a phrase and removing the spaces between them (the word "CamelCase" is itself an example of CamelCase). While CamelCase makes linking very easy, it also leads to links which are written in a form that deviates from the standard spelling. CamelCase-based wikis are instantly recognizable because they have many links with names such as "TableOfContents" and "BeginnerQuestions". Note that it is possible for a wiki to render the visible anchor for such links "pretty" by reinserting spaces, and possibly also reverting to lower case. However, this reprocessing of the link to improve the readability of the anchor is limited by the loss of capitalization information caused by CamelCase. For example, "RichardWagner" should be rendered as "Richard Wagner", whereas "PopularMusic" should be rendered as "popular music". There is no easy way to determine which capital letters should remain capitalized. (Wiki Site)

Links

Works Cited

Cunningham, Ward and Leuf, Bo (2001): The Wiki Way. Quick Collaboration on the Web. Addison-Wesley, ISBN 0-201-71499-X
Perrone, Jane, "What is a weblog?", Guardian Unlimted, 2004-05-20. Retrieved on 2006-06-25.