wikipedia

Wikipedia readies for first major UI overhaul

Since its earliest days in 2001, Wikipedia's fundamental user experience has gone through a series of small, iterative changes, but the site has never had a significant overhaul. That's about to change.

Now the Wikimedia Foundation, the nonprofit that operates Wikipedia, announced that it would soon be pushing through some major changes to the look and feel of the popular user-created encyclopedia, the first time that it has proactively done such a thing.

"We are changing our default look to a new theme we call 'Vector' which makes essential functions easier to find," the Wikimedia Foundation … Read more

Google donates $2 million to Wikimedia

Google has made a $2 million donation to the Wikimedia Foundation, the group behind the widely used Wikipedia reference site.

Jimmy Wales, a member of the board who helped create Wikipedia, announced the donation in a tweet on Tuesday. He said a formal announcement would come Wednesday.

Google and Wikimedia did indeed make a formal announcement of the grant, saying the funds will support technical infrastructure to support growing traffic and to help make Wikipedia "easier to use and more accessible."

"Wikipedia is one of the greatest triumphs of the Internet. This vast repository of community-generated content … Read more

The fuel for information glutton

Wikipedia is a free online encyclopedia. Instead of being authored by a select group of editors, Wikipedia can be edited by anyone anywhere, and at any time. Wikipedia is available in a large number of languages and has entries about nearly everything. It's become so well-known, people consider it an adjunct to Google as a place to find out more about almost any subject.

Each Wikipedia entry gets its own article as well as a built-in discussion in which users can talk about things they want to add or request changes from frequent contributors. There's also a history … Read more

Season premiere floods 'Lost' fan wiki

Unless you've been hiding under a rock, you probably know that the final season of sci-fi-action-adventure-drama series "Lost" premiered on Tuesday--so what happened over at one of its most popular fan sites? CNET hit up the team behind Wikia, which hosts and operates "Lost" fan encyclopedia Lostpedia, for some details on exactly what their traffic was like right after the two-hour episode aired.

In short: It wasn't the site's biggest night, but it was still impressive.

Sixty new pages were added to the wiki in the wake of the finale, additions that night … Read more

Wikimedia hires open-source veteran as CTO

The Wikimedia Foundation, publisher of Wikipedia and other online sites, has hired open-source veteran Danese Cooper as chief technology officer.

Cooper "will be responsible for developing and executing Wikimedia's technical strategy and leading its technology team. This includes ensuring the Wikimedia sites, including Wikipedia, operate smoothly as readership continues to grow, as well as driving the continuing innovation of Wikimedia's software platform to service Wikimedia readers and editors," the foundation said in a statement.

Cooper's open-source work took her to Sun Microsystems from 1999 to 2005, then to Intel until 2009, and most recently to REvolution Computing. … Read more

Dive into your wiki history

Wikipedia Diver may be one of the most interesting, albeit niche-based, Web history tracking and organizing tools. This Firefox add-on gives you a visual history of everywhere you've been on Wikipedia, and organizes it down to the day, order, and session in which you visited the sites, making it easy to revisit old entries.

Each visited page is presented as a small red globe that you can click on to advance the timeline. There's also a source list of every site you visited, that will take you right to the page. Like some other Web history trackers, Wikipedia … Read more

Wikipedia express

Quickpedia isn't the only free Android app to access Wikipedia, but its extras make it our favorite. If you're patient, Quickpedia will search for common entries as you type, which saves you some effort. As it pulls in content, it will also import the photos and table of contents of your Wikipedia article. Quickpedia handles space well by collapsing the different chapters so you don't have to scroll through the entire thing. Quickpedia displays articles on featured and popular content, news stories, and entries for noteworthy places nearby. Handily, you can e-mail an article to yourself or … Read more

Buzz Out Loud Podcast 1119: Do we want Google knowing every site we visit?

Google is offering a public DNS service (DNS is the address book for Internet domains) that will resolve the domain names you type into a Web browser to servers you want to visit. But that could really give Google a complete picture of who you are. Do you want that? We also chat about the World Cup coming in 3D and the effects of BitLocker encryption being broken.

Subscribe with iTunes (audio) Subscribe with iTunes (video) Subscribe with RSS (audio) Subscribe with RSS (video) EPISODE 1119

Google Public DNS service not ideal for everyone http://arstechnica.com/security/news/2009/12/google-public-dns-service-not-ideal-for-everyone.ars … Read more

Buzz Out Loud Podcast 1115: Droid does porn

One thing Droid users can lord over iPhone fanatics is the new porn app. Yes, with no Apple adult minding its app catalog, Android users can go adult. We also debate the reality of Cyber Monday and congratulate Twitter on being word of the year. Plus, we know you're all wishing for Macs for Christmas, but you're going to get a Netbook. Amazon doesn't lie.

Subscribe with iTunes (audio) Subscribe with iTunes (video) Subscribe with RSS (audio) Subscribe with RSS (video) EPISODE 1115

Black Friday boasts $595 million in U.S. online holiday spending, up 11 percent … Read more

Buzz Out Loud Podcast 1113: There's no Moore's law for chemistry

New Netbook chips promise to increase battery life, which sends Molly into a tizzy about battery life. But battery life does not keep pace with chip law, as Rafe states so well. Also the phone ad wars heat...er...lukewarm up, with some arguably limp responses from Apple. And Opera cooperates with China, sort of.

Subscribe with iTunes (audio) Subscribe with iTunes (video) Subscribe with RSS (audio) Subscribe with RSS (video) EPISODE 1113

New Apple ads to Verizon: Can Droid do this? http://news.cnet.com/8301-1035_3-10403954-94.html

Google pacts with TiVo for TV ad data http://www.reuters.com/article/industryNews/idUSTRE5AN2C020091124… Read more