What Tools Exist for User Published Content?

wbav asks: "Recently there's been a trend to user published content. A couple of examples of this trend include Wikis, Podcasting, Blogs, and the resulting RSS Feeds. Last night I was asked if any other similar technologies exist. As I did not have a good response, that is my question to the slashdot community. Are there any other similar technologies which deal with user publishing that I have not mentioned?"

Comments

Look to games

[MachDelta]

There's a ton of "user published content" action in the field of PC gaming. Pick just about any recent PC title on the planet, and chances are very good that someone has hacked/modified it and released their findings. Tons of companies nowadays (esp. developers of FPS games) wholeheartedly encourage modding games, releasing docs, developer tools, providing support, and even holding prize contests to encourage the practice.

Why? Because everyone wins. Its a symbiotic relationship. Mods provide extra content for an already published title, increasing its popularity, longevity, and sales (Half-Life 1, anyone?). The community feeds itself as well as the existing game. And the cherry on top is that plenty of dev studios are recruiting the cream of the mod-scene crop to bolster their own ranks. End result is better games for everyone. :)

IP TV?

[wayne606]

Are "ordinary people" creating video content yet? Or are production and bandwidth issues still too challenging?

The thing about all the technologies you mentioned is that they're all slight tweaks of stuff that's been around for 10 years (web sites, mp3 files) and who knows why that specific tweak was all it took for the technology to take off in some new direction? I guess there's a certain "friction" value that you need to get below for something to reach critical mass.

The problem with asking the question "what's the next big thing" in any field (such as home-grown content creation and distribution technology) is that the answer is usually "something nobody has thought of before now"...

This has got to be the most inane topic I have see

[DigitalReverend]

It's amazing, grandma johnson down the street can design her own webpages and yet this question gets deemed worthy enough for ask slashdot, where as a question I have asked a couple times about a way to tie SSHD into an sql database for user authentication for a running a "shell" instead of having to give 10,000 people user accounts on a machine gets constantly rejected.

It used to be that one would read slashdot for iformation from highly intelligent peers, anymore tho it feel like I should be taking off my shoes and socks as if I am going for a drive through Alabama instead.

A list of tools for publishing.... for cryin out loud, what's next? "What tools are available that sits high up off the floor, maybe has wheels and I can place my butt on it while using the computer?