For quite a few years now I have headed up our IT Department here at Foreclosurepedia. In reality I am the proverbial Ghost in the Machine for want of better words. What a lot of folks don’t know is that our software; in reality most of the software used in the 21st Century by both Corporate America and both Small Businesses and Individuals alike traces their roots to Open Source.
Initially, we set up our architecture based upon MediaWiki which is probably best known for its use as the platform of Wikipedia. There were many reasons for this; however, primarily the fact that it was a pretty mature platform and we were accustomed to Linux based coding. During this time, though, we had been working a bit with TikiWiki. We were working on a different Project at that time and even sent a representative up to TikiFest in the 3.x days.
Our main qualms with MediaWiki were that there really wasn’t any way to effectively implement selective security mechanisms. Granted, CIA uses MediaWiki for their Intellipedia, they obviously have unlimited resources and have rewritten the code extensively.
TikiWiki is one of those platforms that is a silent giant. Marc LaPorte, a Project Administrator over at TikiWiki, has always been somewhat sympathetic to our desire to harness the raw power of semantic mapping data. We have felt, for years, that TikiWiki had the potential to stream data in a meaningful way to users whom were not at the Enterprise level, but had the need to articulate such accordingly. In a nutshell,
…just because we are a small business this should not preclude are ability to harness datasets to both drive and evaluate data… .
We are pleased that Mr. LaPorte is going to share a bit of his valuable time with us to discuss TikiWiki this coming week. We are hopeful that this discussion will allow for two things to occur:
- The migration of Foreclosurepedia to a fully functional CMS; and
- The introduction of TikiWiki to both the US Government, their providers and our subcontractors
We will keep everyone updated on this as we go forward. Most of you know that we are pretty ground breaking in charting the course in Property Preservation. We started by creating the Foreclosurepedia YouTube Channel which allows for all of the industry’s information to be available for free! We then decided to create the Secure Wiki which began to compile specific industry information for free! We filed the provisional patent on the world’s first one piece winterization tool which will sell for under three (03) dollars (now a contractor can stay in the game instead of paying the $60 that the robber-barrens charge). Finally, we have decided it is time for us to take the lead in developing and marketing the logical game changer: Information Technology (IT).
IT, to date, has only been accessible to the Big Boys as they have had deep pockets. Their proprietary models, bound to M*crosoft, has kept the average Contractor out of the game. We feel that by taking the lead on this, coupled with the boots-on-the-ground grassroots organization of Contractors, Foreclosurepedia will, once again, break the mold!
