I love it when someone points out a way to use a particular tool in ways that are fresh. One such tool is the WordPress blog, which someone has figured out can do more than just be a blog. I recently pointed out that I follow novelist David Hewson, and that he is now happily working on a netbook. David is not reluctant to try out new technologies, as witnessed by his great idea to use WordPress as a work tool.
WordPress is a blog host / editor at the core, but David got a unique idea to use it in a whole new way that I believe has tremendous potential. He wanted to have an online book diary, someplace that he can chronicle his research and work on each novel as he is writing it. He wanted a familiar tool that would work with any computer he might be using at the time, and he wanted it to be private.
It would never have occurred to me to create a private WordPress blog for such a use, but David thinks outside the box. He has detailed his process for creating and using his book diary blog, and it sounds like a really killer tool (pun intended). He is refining it as he goes and sharing that process, too. He’s going to think I am stalking him, but the truth is he has great ideas and shares them freely.
What makes this work is the ability to access the “blog” either as a privately published web page, or through the WordPress editor. This opens up multiple scenarios for interacting with the “diary”, and I can see a lot of fabulous uses for this. Imagine using this method to create such an internal blog for a major project.
You could use this as a central repository for everything about a project, of any type. You could enter, or copy/ paste information you want to save with the project. You can add links to other information, save images for later reference. All of this can be done in a totally private way, accessible to your eyes only.
You could create a private blog and add your team members as authors, and have an instant collaboration tool. Everyone can refer to the information at hand, and add anything of value to the project.
Using a WordPress private blog as a diary or project center gains a lot of usefulness through mobile applications that exist for interacting with them. There are WordPress apps for the iPhone, BlackBerry and just about every mobile phone out there. The information is thus always at hand. I can see lots of uses for a private blog.

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