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what is cooldazeBelow is a brief introduction to cooldaze. If you have a general question or suggestion about the site or would like to contact someone directly, try the Q&A page. For help with the interface and for instructions on formatting, click on cooldaze FAQs or "help" in the header above. What's with the name?When this sort of website was first used here at Georgia Tech, it was called CoOL Studio, which stood for Collaborative On-Line Studio. In its second instantiation the "Studio" part was dropped (although it's still used in studio) and the site was simply called 2COOL. The third version was called tresCool (for "3Cool" or "very Cool," depending on which side of the Pyrenees you're on). The fourth version was called COOLcat, four very cool cats/quatres; taking liberty with the pronunciation of 'quatres', french for "four". The fifth iteration shifted its punning from language to anatomy. So we had COOLhand. Last year what followed the icy-blue cool of paul newman (aka cool hand luke) was a very cut sixpac, coolpac. And this year, with a nod to your first year of 24/7 school days. . .What's the point of cooldaze?The main point is to help you think about design and construction in a collaborative fashion. The site is yours to do whatever you want with. Of course, we've set up a bunch of pages to help direct your online activities, but this is just to keep from being overwhelmed by sheer anarchy. If you feel like adding a new feature, creating a new page or starting a new discussion, please go right ahead. And if you have suggestions for how the site is being directed, feel free to send an email or post a message on the site (for more, check out the page).The site is here for you to use however you see fit. If you want to start new discussions or post material that doesn't seem to fit the current structure, feel free to create a new page linked in to one that already exists. Don't worry about screwing things up too badly – cooldaze tracks everything that goes on, and it's easy to back the system up to recover stuff. You can even do it yourself by clicking on "history" in the header above. For longer posts, it's probably not a bad idea to write them in a word processor running alongside your web browser. When you're ready, you can cut and paste the material into an edit window on cooldaze and also keep a copy saved on a local hard drive for backup. Let us know if you have any problems. How do I use it?The feature that separates this web sites from most others is that anyone can edit any (well, almost any) page from a standard web browser. Just click on the "edit" button in the header above (if it's grayed out, that means you are looking at one of the rare "locked" pages). To edit content, simply start typing (or cut and paste from a word processor). You can even upload and show images if you want. In addition to these basic features, there are many other widgets and techniques you can use to help manage your online activities. Click on "help" in the header above for more detail on formatting, creating new pages, setting up an email pager and other neat things.What's the Soapbox?The Soapbox, along with the Hotspots, should appear in the header at the top of almost every page. You can edit the message that appears in the Soapbox simply by editing the Soapbox page (you can get there by clicking on this hyperlink or, more easily, just by clicking on "soapbox" in the header). When you are in edit mode, go to the bottom, add a horizontal line (by typing an underscore character, "_") followed by whatever you want to appear. Use it to make announcements or just to broadcast an interesting quote or observation.EtiquetteThe official etiquette & guidelines statement is now available.Links to this Page
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