Woyano, a techies perspective

Overview

As CTO and one of the founding members of Woyano I wanted to write a little bit about what it's all about, and why it's useful for a techie (well, for this one at least).

The main thing about me is that I'm lazy, and I want my life to be as easy as possible. I want to be able to do all my stuff in one place. I want convergence - not specialisation.

The features so far...

So with that in mind here's a list of Woyano features thus far:

• It's somewhere I can quickly publish and share my stuff:

• A quick note of how to re-start apache on unix
• A map of how to get to my place
• A cheat sheet for how to set up my dev. environment
• Code snippets

• I can distribute fool proof links to my stuff. For example:

• http://woyano.com/jv/apache-hints
• http://woyano.com/jv/my-map
• http://woyano.com/jv/cheat-sheet
• http://woyano.com/jv/php-snippet

• I can effortlessly distribute my PHP freeware, without having to worry about server or CMS administration.

• Distribute binary zip files
• Quickly enter/edit help documentation
• Users can ask/answer questions and support each other
• Fast and powerful search built in
• I don't have to administer a CMS (such as Drupal)
• Nice links such as woyano.com/jv/ezsql
• No hosting fees (100% Free)

• I can arrange content on my Woyano page (http://woyano.com/jv) in any way that I like. This allows me to editorialy highlight important stuff such as help and software updates to my freeware users.

• I can make content private so that only my friends can see it. This also works on "my Woyano" page. It's useful for distributing personal stuff such as "Party invite details" and the like.
  

• One thing that's a biggy for me is I can enter any type of content item (not just a blog) from one place - (I like it cos Im lazy). I can write a review, upload an image, add a code snippet etc.

• Another great feature is that I can make use of images, templates and content that other people have entered.
  
  I just go into the add content form, click quick insert, and hey presto templates, images, and links as fast as I can search them. One click and they're in my content (which is tinymce wisywig BTW).
  

• I can even earn money for me or charity!
  
  My feeling on this is that I post all this content one way or another - but in the past it's been on disparate sites - here I can post it all in one place and as a by product it can earn me a couple of quid, so why not!
  

But wait, there's more!

But, perhaps even more importantly, Woyano is a system designed to host many microcosms within it's macrocosm... so presumably over time there may be other specialists (like myself) who find it useful to use Woyano to distribute their stuff too.

I hope so, because then we all get super fast access to each others short and pithy code snippets and helpful hints.

For example, on Google I often find myself doing a search such as:

"recursive grep unix"

Typically I find myself having to browse through a few links and wading through some hefty text to find exactly what I'm looking for. It's a bit of a pain, considering that I just want to copy and paste the command within a few seconds. Wouldn't it be nice if someone made a page which had absolutely nothing on it except what I was looking for.

After all, all I need to see is:

find . -name '*.txt' -exec grep 'nslookup' {} ; -print

So why should there be anything else on the page?

Woyano makes it possible for anyone to enter that kind of useful byte size information to benefit the community at large.

It doesn't have to be techie short info tho... it can be anything. For example:

What is Princes real name?
Roger Nelson.

That's all you need to put, and it can help someone (and earn you money!).

Of course Woyano is also useful to help build communities, and whole raft of other stuff, but I have been rambling a bit, so I better wrap up.

Conclusion

Woyano is useful for me on a personal level because it's an easy way for me to publish what I know. It's useful on a community level because I can easily search for useful synthesised content.

And, as a by product of the rating and tab system, it's also a nice way to spend time browsing for new and interesting stuff :)