wikipedia

Report: Wikipedia losing volunteers

Wikipedia's exponential growth over this decade is due to the efforts of the millions of volunteers who write, edit, and check its entries. But could that volunteer effort now be in danger?

Volunteers have increasingly been quitting Wikipedia en masse for a variety of potential reasons, according to Monday's Wall Street Journal.

More than 49,000 editors left Wikipedia's English-language edition during the first three months of 2009, compared with only 4,900 for the same quarter a year earlier, according to the Journal, quoting Spanish researcher Felipe Ortega, who analyzes Wikipedia's online data. Though the … Read more

Medpedia to best the more democratic Wikipedia?

Medpedia, a collaborative project for medical information launched in February, is getting beyond the medical-data basics as it adds answers, alerts, and analysis.

Founded on the noble and semipractical system of providing free online medical information generated for and by physicians, journals, schools, patients, and more, Medpedia's three stated goals are to be collaborative, interdisciplinary, and transparent. The idea is to maximize knowledge and minimize the kind of screwing around that continually threatens the efficacy of other wiki-based projects. Of course, the extent to which this is successful hinges on the quality, integrity, and transparency of the editors.

While … Read more

Convicted murderer sues Wikipedia under privacy law

Here's the story. Or at least most of it.

Some 19 years ago, a man in Germany, together with his half brother, reportedly murdered an actor named Walter Sedlmayr. The man was convicted and served 15 years in jail.

Now he is free. And, according to Wired, he has exercised that freedom by instructing lawyers, the elegantly named firm of Stopp and Stopp, to sue Wikipedia.

The lawsuit claims that German privacy law, designed to help criminals re-integrate into society, prevents the man being named in association with Walter Sedlmayr's murder.

Wired quotes Jennifer Granick from the Electronic … Read more

Jimmy Wales on what's next for Wikipedia

In an exclusive interview, Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales talks to Silicon.com's Natasha Lomas about what's next for Wikipedia and why the site needs geeks of all kinds.

If you've ever written something about Jimmy Wales and posted it online, chances are he's read it. He mentions a Twitter post I made, prior to our interview, asking whether people think he's a hero or villain.

With my tweet I'd been hoping to get a feel for opinion on the Wikipedia, Wikimedia and Wikia founder. Which is he then, I ask? Hero or villain?

"… Read more

The Gizmo Report: WikiReader--simple, singular

It's been years since the concept of a digital convergence was seriously debated. Today, it's rare to see a single-function electronic device.

Digital still cameras can record video, and camcorders can take still photos. Even cheap cell phones include cameras. There are Web browsers in cell phones, cameras, televisions, and digital picture frames. In fact, it seems like it's only a matter of time before everything with a battery or power cord will be connected to the Internet.

So it's a little startling to see a new gizmo that does nothing but display text, especially when … Read more

Google refines Custom Search, delivers Wikipedia skin

To commemorate last week's third anniversary of the launch of Google's Custom Search tool, the search giant has announced a slate of updates to its customizable search service.

Design options To kick things off, Google announced the release of six new themes for Google Custom Search. All six themes can be customized by changing "fonts, colors, backgrounds, promotion settings, as well as interactive features such as tabbing and mouseovers," the company said. Users can also decide where the search box and results should be placed (in a contiguous layout or in two columns). All the themes … Read more

Taking a look at Nook

I'm very impressed by the Nook, Barnes & Noble's new e-book reader. It's clear B&N has studied Sony's Reader and Amazon's Kindle very carefully.

The Nook has almost all of the major features of both product lines, plus a few more, with few competitive disadvantages. B&N has also followed Amazon's lead on support services. The Nook has a very good online e-book store as well as applications to support e-book reading on Macs, Windows machines, and smartphones.

The Nook doesn't ship until the end of November, but here's what I found most significant from the announcement and the pages at nook.com:

Industrial design I think the Nook is attractive and well-designed. It looks better than the Kindle 2, but not as good as Sony's Reader Touch Edition, which offers a larger screen in a smaller form factor. Also, Sony's forthcoming Reader Daily Edition is only slightly larger than the Nook, but offers a much larger screen.

Secondary color display This feature surprised me. It seems expensive and insufficiently functional for what must be a significant added cost. The low resolution of this display (480 x 144, according to a CNET blog post) means it won't be useful for much beyond the basic user-interface features B&N has already described: book covers, menus, and a keyboard for note-taking. (Although I should note for the record that while B&N says "Its full-color touchscreen encourages you to bookmark, add notes, and highlight passages," I haven't found a photo on the company Web site depicting the virtual keyboard shown in some of the pre-release images. Perhaps that's one of the features still under development.)

By comparison, the secondary color screen built into the Alex e-book reader from Spring Design, shown in another recent CNET story, is large enough to be useful. Unfortunately, it's also large enough to be very much in the way, leading to an awkward device. Spring Design and B&N need to make up their minds-- are they making e-book readers or something else?… Read more

WikiReader scratches sudden Wikipedia urges

Now, this is rather odd. Taiwan-based OpenMoko is out with WikiReader, a palm-size, touch-screen device that lets you tote 3 million text-only Wikipedia articles around offline. Given that we're in the smartphone age, we're not quite sure who would jump for this thing.

Then again, there may be people with so-called dumb phones (or no phones at all) who get frequent, sudden urges to look up the Battle of Verdun or the history of the kilt while out and about.

We also tend to agree with Thomas Meyerhoffer, a former Apple designer known for his unique surfboards. He … Read more

BOL 1053: Stay healthy, stay fat

Sure Apple has made their September 9 announcement official, and yeah Disney is buying Marvel and will soon own Spider-man. But we're most concerned about RIBA the robot bear who's coming to get our unhealthy thin humans. Protect yourself! Keep out of beds and wheelchairs and for heaven's sake stay over 135 pounds!

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Disney buys Spider-Man and friends http://paidcontent.org/article/419-spider-man-meets-mickey-mouse-disney-buying-marvel-for-4-billion-in-sto/

Utah Law Punishes Texters As Much As Drunks In Driving Fatalities http://yro.slashdot.org/story/09/08/29/1224250/Utah-Law-Punishes-Texters-As-Much-As-Drunks-In-Driving-Fatalities… Read more