Items tagged with wiki
Isn't it ironic? Or maybe that's not even the best term to use here. Isn't it...weird? Wikipedia has quickly become the go-to place for knowledge on the Internet, and while it cannot always be trusted completely, it's usually a great place to start searching for information on pretty much any topic you can think of. It's certainly better than the paper-based encyclopedias of old, which is what makes this whole situation so strange. We've always heard that history repeated itself, but it literally is with this bit of news... Wikipedia is now offering books, as in paper books. There's no mistake or typographical error here. PediaPress is the official print-on-demand partner of Wikipedia,...
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Wikipedia. What would you ever do without it? It really makes you wonder how difficult homework is these days given that nearly every subject on the planet is covered in one form or another on the know-it-all website. Of course, that "easy homework" is really only easy if the information that one finds is accurate, and that's why the site's founders are cracking down on misinformation in hopes of making the pages we frequent so often more trustworthy. In an effort to curb the rampant posting of bad information, the company is hoping to impose new restrictions on article editing, a move that will certainly anger those who favor a more hands-off approach yet please those who want a little more...
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Much to the chagrin of teachers and librarians, Wikipedia has become a primary source of research and information for many seeking answers to questions with just a few quick key presses and mouse clicks. Since its debut in 2001, Wikipedia has outgrown other objective informational sites, such as About.com and Encyclopedia Britannica Online Encyclopedia.Now Internet bellwether, Google, is looking to compete with Wikipedia for the hearts and minds of online information seekers with its new product, Knol. Google defines a Knol as "a unit of knowledge" and "Knols are authoritative articles about specific topics, written by people who know about those subjects." Curiously, we could find no reference...
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In the super-fast world of the Internet, if a story breaks, you can expect the Wikipedia entry for that subject to be updated faster than you can blink. In the case of Tim Russert's sad death on June 13th, NBC contacted other networks and media outlets in an attempt to hold back the news long enough to notify his family vacationing in Italy. Before they knew it, however, it was already updated on Wikipedia.On Wikipedia, Mr. Russert’s page was updated at 3:01 p.m. — adding the date of death and turning present-tense verbs into the past tense almost 40 minutes before the NBC announcement. The entry was particularly influential since many journalists had heard of Mr. Russert’s becoming stricken,...
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What won't Google do with their maps?If you go to Google Maps, you’ll notice there is now a “”More” button right next to “Street View”" and “Traffic.” If you click on it after getting a map, you will be given the options to tick “Photos” or “Wikipedia.” Ticking the first option populates teh map with geo-tagged photos provided by Panoramio. Ticking the second gives you geo-coded Wikipedia articles. For instance, I found entries on a New York City map for the Chrysler Building, Grand Central Station, the New York Yacht Club, and other landmarks.Suggestion for more items Google can add to "More?" Readers?...
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Last week the injunction which forced Wikileaks "off the air" was dismissed. In the wake of this, the bank that first brought legal action against Wikileaks has given up - for now.Bank Julius Baer filed a brief note with a court in San Francisco Wednesday saying it would voluntarily dismiss its own case, while reserving the right to file it again in the future or pursue it "in an alternate court, jurisdiction, or venue."BJB's sudden move comes a few days after U.S. District Judge Jeffrey White reversed his earlier ruling (which pulled the plug on the Wikileaks.org domain) and said he was skeptical of the bank's ability to win the suit."This dismissal comes in the wake of our private...
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Jimmy Wales has broken a lot of ground in his day. The founder of Wikipedia has turned the online collaborative encyclopedia into a household word. Wales was contacted by Canadian political commentator Rachel Marsden about defacement of her Wikipedia page, and apparently one thing led to another. In another first, he's announced the breakup of his very short relationship with the Fox News commentator--in an entry on Wikipedia.In the statement, Wales claims his involvement with Marsden's Wikipedia profile was "completely routine." He also claims to have met Marsden for the first time last month. Shortly before their meeting, Wales reportedly sent this note to a list of Wikipedia operators: ...
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Wikileaks was started with the intention of allowing whistleblowers to anonymously release government and corporate documents, "an uncensorable version of Wikipedia for untraceable mass document leaking and analysis. " Of course, that only works if the site is reachable.A federal judge in San Francisco has shut down a Web site that posted more than a million government and corporate documents from whistleblowers and others alleging criminal acts worldwide.A permanent injunction was issued Friday by U.S. District Judge Jeffrey White. It was sought by the Swiss banking group Julius Baer after internal documents were posted to Wikileaks.org claiming to show the bank was connected to money laundering...
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Too bad it's today, January 15th. Today being the day of Steve Jobs' keynote at Macworld, this is going to get missed by many. But not by us: Happy Seventh Birthday Wikipedia (all right, we'll admit it: they emailed us about it).Yes, Wikipedia was founded on January 15th, 2001. There's not much to add, except that despite Jimmy Wales' warnings, many people use it as a research tool for papers, and many more use it as a casual research tool.Don't forget they could still use donations. And also, let's not forget - today is MLK's birthday as well....
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I'm a big fan of Wikipedia. It's easy to find foolish or inaccurate things on it of course, but on the whole it's a fantastic and useful utility. If you do a lot of websearches on Google, you'll notice that Wikipedia has become a sort of default top of the page result for a lot of queries. That might be set for a big change, now that Google itself appears to be gearing up to have a Wikipedia of their own. Earlier this week, we started inviting a selected group of people to try a new, free tool that we are calling "knol", which stands for a unit of knowledge. Our goal is to encourage people who know a particular subject to write an authoritative article about it. The tool is still in development...
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To be quite honest, it's Wikipedia's two millionth English article, and it happend on Sunday. Wikipedia, the sixth most visited network of Web sites worldwide behind commercial operators Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, Time Warner and eBay, is available in 250 languages. Combined, Wikipedia has published more than eight million articles. On September 10, an article on "El Hormiguero," a popular Spanish TV show, was created by Wikipedia contributor Zzxc to become the 2 millionth article in the English Wikipedia. The article is at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Hormiguero/ Although Reuters says El Hormiguero was the 2,000,000th article, Wikipedia is...
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The Wikipedia entry for Microsoft's upcoming Halo 3 has been edited by none other than somebody in the Liverpool offices of Sony Computer Entertainment Studios Europe.Without further ado, here is the edit: “The original entry stated: 'Halo 3, the third game in the best-selling Xbox game franchise Halo, is a highly anticipated first-person shooter video game under development by Bungie Studios for the Xbox 360 and is expected to "set a new high water mark" for next-generation games.'However, a sentence had been added which reads: 'Although it won't look any better than Halo 2.'Although the edit is time-stamped at 25 April 2007 15:12, just 39 minutes after the original entry was made, it has...
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Recently we told you about the Wikiscanner, and how it had uncovered several suspicious additions and edits by several businesses and government bodies.The scanner has now uncovered a few other organizations abusing the online encyclopedia: “Virgil Griffith's "Wikiscanner" points to Central Intelligence Agency computers as the sources of nearly 300 edits to subjects including Iran's president, the Argentine navy, and China's nuclear arsenal.A CIA computer was the source of a whiny "Wahhhhh" inserted in a paragraph about Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's plans for the office.” In addition to the CIA, the Vatican has also been fingered in the removal of information that linked Sinn Fein...
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While some Wikipedia entries or edits can prove to be humorous, or spark rumors that keep us all amused, it could actually be more interesting to see who is doing the editing & the occasional deleting.What the world (wide web) needs is a method to determine if corporations and government bodies are intentionally trying to use Wikipedia to misinform people, or if most of the edits are from college students looking for a quick giggle. Apparently such a tool already exists (who knew?), and it's called the Wikipedia Scanner: “Wikipedia Scanner -- the brainchild of Cal Tech computation and neural-systems graduate student Virgil Griffith -- offers users a searchable database that ties millions...
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Wikipedia co-founder, Jimmy Wales, has plans for an open source search engine that he believes will rise up to challenge Google. Considering the dominance Google has in the online search field, it seems like Mr. Wales is taking on a monumental task. “Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales said on Friday he is putting the building blocks in place for a community-developed Web search service that would rival search engines such as Google or Yahoo.Wales told a conference of software developers in Portland, Oregon, that his commercial start-up, Wikia, has acquired Grub, a pioneering Web crawler that will enable Wikia's forthcoming search service to scour the Web to index relevant sites.” There’s no word...
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An interesting twist to the Benoit family tragedy has surfaced: apparently the Wikipedia entry for Chris Benoit was changed, noting the death of his wife for his failure to appear at an event, 13-14 hours before the bodies of the family were discovered in their home in Georgia by local authorities. Police claim to have the individual allegedly responsible for the entry in custody, as well as the computer that the entry was said to have been made on, but they won't make his/her identity known to the public until later this week. As always, until an official announcement is made, take all rumors with a grain of salt. How did the police track the alleged poster, especially so quickly? Here's a...
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Wikipedia is a great source of information, few would argue against that. The accuracy of the information is a whole different matter though, and it's a problem that's starting to trouble some teachers. The ability for anyone to edit almost any article is a double-edged sword for Wikipedia. It allows for massive amounts of information to be entered into the site, information that can be updated anytime. However it has led to a host of problems ranging from inaccurate information, to article vandalism. So while it may be tempting to use Wikipedia as a source for information, it's not the best idea to have it as your only source. The ban at Middlebury College "is a great idea," said...
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Jimmy Wales, founder of the immensely popular Wikipedia, has decided to build a rival search engine to compete with Google. He calls his new search engine Wikiasari. Like Wikipedia, the new search engine will rely on the support of a volunteer community of users. The idea is that Web surfers and programmers will be able to bring their collective intelligence to bear, to fine-tune search results and make the experience more effective for everyone. "If you search in Google, a lot of the results are very, very good and a lot of the results are very, very bad," says Wales. What that shows, Wales says, is that mathematical formulas alone do not produce...
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Tech Power Up has announced the Tech Power Up Reference Wiki. The wiki, like wikipedia, allows users to contribute original content on a number of technical categories. Categories include Guides General Computing Processors Video Cards Cooling Memory Motherboards Storage Networking Software Companies Cases & Modding Along with the wiki, they are sponsoring a $400 contest for contributors. We have recently launched our Reference Wiki, which we hope will act as useful knowledge base for computer related topics. Following the Wiki concept, everybody can edit and add content, even without registering. From all registered users who contributed to the Wiki, we will pick five every month, who will...
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Almost anyone who's ever spent a few minutes with Wikipedia can start appreciate the vast wealth of knowledge the site has to offer. Though the free encyclopedia is open to a whole host of problems, such as inaccurate information, questionable sources, and vandalism, its popularity continues to grow. Even with all the site's problems, the information on most articles is fairly accurate, as there are many respectable users who have taken up the job of keeping the service clean, and the information inside accurate. Is it better than Britannica though? This issue has been brought up before, and the argument probably won't be laid to rest for some time, if ever. The two main...
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Not as accurate, but certainly close, as Nature writes. The growing online phenomenon that is Wikipedia has nearly 4 million entries, with information on everything from world leaders to Pokemon. The site isn't without problems though, as anyone can edit entries, which has lead to some recent problems with the site's credibility. Still, the collection of information Wikipedia has to offer, and the lack of a price tag for the service, has made it a favorite research spot for millions of curios people. "The exercise revealed numerous errors in both encyclopaedias, but among 42 entries tested, the difference in accuracy was not particularly great:...
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