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DailyLit, which offers entire books over e-mail and RSS in daily serialized chunks every day, is now offering information from Wikipedia on various topics.

(Credit: DailyLit)

The free service would be perfect for people who are short on time and don't mind digesting literature and information in 5 minutes at a time on their handheld.

The Wikipedia-based topics DailyLit is creating "tours" of major world religions (22 installments--compared with the 260 installments for Moby Dick), "Wine 101," presidents of the United States, "Best Picture" Oscar winners, famous poets, famous women in history, Greek mythology, famous inventors, and wonders of the world.

Each installment has a brief intro to a subcategory, such as Buddhism in the religions tour, and a link to the relevant Wikipedia page. Wikipedia's content is available for such repurposing under the Creative Commons license.

John Hanke, head of Google Maps and Google Earth, speaks at the Where 2.0 conference in Burlingame, Calif.

(Credit: Stephen Shankland/CNET Networks)

BURLINGAME, Calif.--Google added a new element to its search interface that will let others' Web sites use geographically linked information.

The company has opened up outside access to its Geo Search API (application programming interface), said John Hanke, head of Google Earth and Google Maps, at the Where 2.0 conference here Tuesday. That means other Web sites incorporating Google Maps will be able to find geographic features that are in Google's database but that previously were visible only through Google's own map site.

Google previously shared only some geographic data through its search API: businesses within a search of a local area. With the search API now producing broader results, a Web site could show not just the Marriott hotel near San Francisco International Airport but also nearby jogging trails, Hanke said.

"The API guys are on a more even footing with Google" when it comes to building a mashup that combines Google Maps with a third-party site via the interface, Hanke said in an interview after a speech.

Separately, Google added a new feature to Google Maps that can show the presence of geotagged information stored in the Wikipedia collaborative online encyclopedia. The map shows a "W" link for entries associated with a specific location, as the Google Maps Mania observed Tuesday.

Google Maps now shows Wikipedia entries.

(Credit: Google)

William Chang, chief scientist leading Chinese search engine Baidu, said it's natural for Chinese to use Baidupedia (Baidu Baike) rather than the foreign Wikipedia.

"There's, in fact, no reason for China to use Wikipedia, a service based 'out there,'" Chang said at the WWW2008 conference in Beijing on Tuesday. "It's very natural for China to make its own products."

I agree that there's not always a reason for people to use global services, especially when what they deal with is primarily domestic. But with the wiki world, I think the value of cross-border, multilingual conversation is astonishingly high.

Especially as autotranslation gets better, the benefit of not having populations nationally siloed comes into focus. If we can both read and contribute knowledge to something that primarily exists in a language I don't know, then we really can share knowledge.

Until that utopian vision comes true, though, it very well may be that Wikipedia isn't yet built ideally for Chinese users. Perhaps Baidu is doing a better job for people in this country. But I hope we can all get to conversing across this divide.

For now, it's more or less moot. As I reported before, despite the fact that Wikipedia in English is now available from China, the Chinese-language version is still blocked.

Other posts from WWW2008 are here, and I'm twittering here.

Before Wikipedia, there was Britannica.

Really, young whippersnappers, having an organized stack of the neatly bound heavy encyclopedia volumes on library shelves was a status-making must in many U.S. households as recently as the 1990s.

With the invention of the CD-ROM came Encarta, owned by Microsoft, which enabled easy cutting and pasting of encyclopedia content for students focused on speed and ease of research. It became a quick hit in school libraries yet the enemy of many teachers, who now had to add to their curriculum a lesson on the evils of cut-and-paste research, er, plagiarism.

The popularity of free, anyone-can-edit Wikipedia has made academia's battle against encyclopedia referencing--and the publishing industry's efforts to sell reference material--tougher than ever. Encyclopaedia Britannica, which has embraced e-mail marketing to keep its hardback business in, well, business (I've received several promotional messages in the past few months), is now making Web moves to take back its authoritative presence in the industry.

The publisher's Britannica WebShare initiative, launched April 13 with Twitter streaming of a daily topic, announced on Friday a service called Britannica Widgets, with which bloggers can "post an entire cluster of related Encyclopaedia Britannica articles" for free.

Britannica also is offering "people who publish with some regularity on the Internet, be they bloggers, Webmasters, or writers," free access to Britannica's online content, with registration.

To use the widgets, anyone can now "copy and paste the several lines of code associated with each widget as HTML into the appropriate place on your site," according to a Britannica WebShare post. "Any readers who click on a link will get the entire Britannica article on the subject, even if access to the article normally requires a subscription. Really. Try it."

Currently posted Britannica widgets, such as the one here of the domestic cat, include colorful entries ranging from lizards to Nobel Prizes. Many more are expected in the coming weeks.

This blog is often faced with the question of whether to post methods of accessing sites that are inaccessible from China because of government controls. I want to turn the question to readers, who I hope will have some opinions. Help me decide whether to reinstate a workaround for Chinese Wikipedia.

The argument for posting: I tend to believe it would be selfish to keep circumvention methods to myself when others who are less habitually engaged with technology news would also appreciate a way around the blocks. For instance, before the BBC News site was unblocked, I posted information on a URL that would let users through because of a quirk in the addressing on the BBC site--namely, the newsvote.bbc.co.uk mirror of news.bbc.co.uk was not blocked. I believed readers of Sinobyte would like to be able to use BBC News, and I got positive feedback in private.

The argument against posting: People who argue against posting workarounds hold that publicizing circumvention increases the likelihood of detection, and following that, more thorough blocks. It's a simple and persuasive point. If the authorities responsible for implementing blocks want something inaccessible, they might keep track of how people are beating their blocks and try to fight back.

Dealing with disagreements: Back when I posted the BBC URL, someone dashed off a comment criticizing my journalistic responsibility. I disagreed on that point and responded as follows: "I appreciate your concern, but in my experience merely posting something like this doesn't get a block in place. Moreover, on the journalistic responsibility point, this post doesn't put anyone in jeopardy, and most Internet users around here know how to get to what they need anyway. Guides on higher-profile sites than mine telling users how to access censored sites haven't led to simple blocks of several proxies. I think this URL an easy and valuable thing for some readers, and I know I'd appreciate seeing it in my RSS."

Indeed, especially on the journalistic ethics argument, I feel a particularly strong inclination to post the information. I was educated (or was it indoctrinated?) in a particular U.S. sense of proper press behavior. The main document of journalistic ethics in the United States is the Society of Professional Journalists' Code of Ethics. It's a long list of "don'ts" phrased as "dos." In my reading, the code gives arguments both for and against posting.

• For: under the heading "Seek Truth and Report it," the code asks us to:
  -- Support the open exchange of views, even views they find repugnant.
  --Give voice to the voiceless; official and unofficial sources of information can be equally valid.
• Against: meanwhile, under "Minimize Harm," we see:
  --Show compassion for those who may be affected adversely by news coverage. Use special sensitivity when dealing with children and inexperienced sources or subjects.
  --Recognize that gathering and reporting information may cause harm or discomfort. Pursuit of the news is not a license for arrogance.

SPJ's code is by no means my personal code, but it is a useful starting point from a perspective of professionalism. In essence, this 20th century formulation of journalistic ethics asks us to weigh the value of free information with any harm that information may have.

My argument for posting: As I've mentioned above, I tend to lean toward publishing workarounds. It's not only because I tend to believe making this information more widespread is good for free information; it's because I see the potential harm as minimal. In the BBC example, far from causing an overall block, having the workaround posted happened to precede the full unblocking of BBC News' English site (and in one city, the Chinese version). Likewise, with the recent question of whether to keep the Wikipedia workaround online, this comes at a time when the English version is already available and the Chinese one still subject to a block. Celebrate as I may that I can read two major sites without a proxy, the censorship (the "harm," if you like) is still in place for Chinese users unable to read English well.

The Internet blocking regime in China, in my experience, is full of holes. It's popular to speculate that authorities know they cannot affect a total block but are working instead to deter users not committed to accessing restricted information and perhaps to encourage self-censorship. Especially in English, vocal critics of internet censorship remain unblocked. Rebecca MacKinnon, a former reporter who teaches at Hong Kong University, blogs vocally about freedom issues. Ted Chien, who asked me to take down the URL, a decision I'm taking under consideration now, blogs about some of the same issues in English and Chinese on Blogspot, which is now unblocked.

Even before a recent opening that may be connected to the Olympics in August, government blocks were far from complete. Determined individuals can get through the blocks, and the government does little to eliminate proxies, even as it blocks a large amount of information through site-wide blocks or keyword filtering. And when one workaround fails, another inevitably arises. Though I haven't actually had any of my several free proxies blocked while working from Beijing over the last nine months or so, friends who have seen theirs go have simply switched. My ultimate question, then, is what's the value of a workaround if we don't tell people about it?

I'd love to hear from others on this issue. Please comment here or e-mail me directly at sinobyte /[at]/ gwbstr.com.

I just got done mentioning how hard it is for me to fully participate in Wikipedia from China. But English-language Wikipedia is suddenly accessible tonight from Beijing.

Obviously, Chinese officials read this blog and care very much about my opinions. (Blogspot's available too, but I didn' t ask for that. So whatever.)

I can't say I discovered this on my own. Danwei's "Net Nanny" post tipped me off.

I can confirm that both Wikipedia and Blogspot work from my connection and that this will make my life easier.

But as Danwei, the Chinese media and culture site, reports, Wikipedia's Chinese-language site is still blocked. Thus unfortunately, the argument that I made previously--that Wikipedia still lacks very important participation from this part of the world--will continue to stand.

The iconic Olympic sites in Beijing

(Credit: Graham Webster)

An Associated Press article coinciding with the change notes that Olympic officials are grappling with how to keep up appearances with foreigners as they arrive in Beijing. The usual estimate is that 500,000 people will come for the games. In the article, an official was quoted as saying he hoped the Internet would be open for media during the games:

Kevan Gosper, vice chairman of the IOC coordinating commission, said blocking the Internet during the games "would reflect very poorly" on the host nation.

"Even this morning we discussed and insisted again," Gosper said. "Our concern is that the press is able to operate as it has at previous games--at games time."

Gosper said the Chinese had an obligation under the so-called "host city agreement" to open Internet access to 30,000 accredited and non-accredited journalists expected to attend.

"There was some criticism that the Internet closed down during events relating to Tibet in previous weeks, but this is not games time," Gosper said.

Danwei calls this an "explanation," but I think it's more ambiguous. This change is similar to the unblocking of the English BBC News site in recent days: the Chinese counterpart is still blocked. The strategy of allowing open access in English and other non-Chinese languages while restricting Chinese-language sites feels like a P.R. move. Journalists from other countries will stop complaining so much about not being able to screw around online and comment on their friends' blogs, and the Chinese authorities still get to control content for the majority of Chinese Net users.

The two changes may also reflect a technical similarity, and possibly new infrastructure. The Chinese and English Wikipedia sites are differentiated using subdomains: cn.wikipedia.org vs. en.wikipedia.org. Similarly, the URLs for English and Chinese news on BBC are easily differentiable. This may mean a shift from IP filtering to URL filtering. Either way, offending requests still appear to be met with "connection resets."

That's right, Wikipedia now has 10 million articles. But participation in this global brain-share is restricted in China.

Wikipedia being blocked is news to no one in China, but there's a bit of a catch-22 even for those who use proxies to get around the restrictions: many proxy URLs and anonymizers are banned from editing Wikipedia to reduce vandalism.

When I want to see an article on Wikipedia, I pop it into the Anonymouse Web site, and the content comes right up. But if I see a mistake in an article, I'm unable to make my contribution.

Vandalism on Wikipedia is a serious issue. People turn entire pages into insults directed at their subject. Others insert more insidious misinformation that's hard to detect. The community is generally very good at catching these things, but banning open proxies was seen as a good way to reduce the number of people doing these things with impunity. If you don't want your own IP to get banned for vandalism, maybe you'd use a service that hid your identity.

Tor is perhaps the best known relatively robust anonymizing tool online. The Global Voices Online project promotes it in its guide to anonymous blogging. (It's in English, but not blocked in China.) But Tor nodes, too, are usually blocked for editing.

This means that people in China would have to display exceptional ingenuity to participate in the great compilation of information going on at Wikipedia. Some time ago, I wrote a review of now-Harvard Law School Professor Cass Sunstein's book Infotopia. Sunstein focuses his book on the great potential, and potentially great downfalls, of online information gathering by massive communities.

To his reservations, I add one. By no means am I the first to point this out, but when Wikipedia excludes most Internet users from the most populous country on Earth, it's got a long way to go before its relative robustness in English is matched in Chinese. Of course, the billions of individuals not online around the world are also missing their say.

Here's to 10 million nodes in this emerging body of knowledge, but idealists should be careful to note the limits of the project. I just hope the franchise extends more and more. If nothing else, I have a lot to learn from people who aren't yet participating.

In roughly the last nine months, Wikipedia's co-founder Jimmy Wales has expensed a total of $1,100 in travel-related costs to the nonprofit that runs the free online encyclopedia.

That's according to Sue Gardner, executive director of the Wikimedia Foundation, who came to the defense of Wales in interviews Thursday with CNET TV and CNET News.com. She said that recent allegations that Wales misused foundation funds were started by a "disgruntled former employee" who's spread unsubstantiated rumors on his blog.

"I find it distressing," Gardner said. "(Wales) has done nothing but be modest, frugal, and do what's best for the organization."

Gardner's comments contribute to an ongoing tit-for-tat between Wales, Wikimedia executives, and former Wikipedia employee Danny Wool, who kicked off concerns about Wales on his blog All's Wool That Ends Wool. He suggested that his former co-worker had used the foundation as a personal "piggy bank," having expensed pricey wines, massages, and dinners. The expenses, he said, contributed to the foundation eventually taking away his credit card in 2006.

Wales and executives from the foundation have said that there has been no wrongdoing regarding his expenses. And Gardner, who joined Wikimedia in June, added to that sentiment.

She said that Wales expensed $1,100 for December travel to New York City, a trip Gardner asked him to take for a Wikipedia promotional event. But as a rule, she said, Wales errs on the side of paying his own bills related to promotions for Wikipedia rather than the reverse. She said that he typically does work for the foundation pro bono, and draws an income from his own for-profit company, Wikia.

"Jimmy has never used Wikimedia to subsidize his personal expenses," said Gardner, former senior director of the Canadian Broadcasting Corp.

Wales has also come under fire recently for allegedly tampering with Wikipedia entries on behalf of an ex-girlfriend, Rachel Marsden, a former commentator for Fox News. People have claimed that Wales broke Wikipedia's conflict of interest rules by trying to influence the site's editing process when it came to her entry.

But Gardner said that Wales acted appropriately in his dealings with Wikipedia related to Marsden. When he and Marsden formed a relationship, Wales recused himself from any influence in the editing of her entry, she said. Gardner added that Wales does not influence any Wikipedia entries that involve personal relationships.

For her part, Gardner said she is trying to expand the influence of Wikimedia and Wikipedia. In December, she helped relocate the foundation from Florida to San Francisco; and the nonprofit has been hiring new staff to beef up operations. It now has a staff of 12.

One of her big goals for the foundation is to help bring Wikipedia to a much wider audience. The nonprofit wants to develop Wikipedia books, videos, and USB sticks, for people who have a computer but are without the Internet.

"We want to disseminate Wikipedia to people off the Internet," she said.

In the next several months Wikipedians, or the authors of the content found on Wikipedia will be the subject of a worldwide survey to find out about people's posting habits on the immensely popular online encyclopedia.

The Wikimedia foundation, which operates Wikipedia is employing Netherlands-based UNU-MERIT to conduct the research that aims to figure out not only who Wikipedians are, but how much they're contributing to the site. The survey is also designed to find out why people are coming to Wikipedia, and the identify the types of users who go from casual browsers to site contributors.

User identity goes farther than just browsing habits, though. The survey's creators are trying to unearth the real identities of Wikipedia authors, something that Wikipedia alternative Citizendium has already solved by requiring its users to use their real names as part of the editing process. In the past, user anonymity has been one of the key points of contention regarding responsibly and the efficacy of rule enforcement in Wikipedia's user community.

A portion of the survey results are to be released at this year's Wikimania, which takes place in late July, with a more conclusive report later this year.