wikipedia
Gadgets
WikiReader Puts Wikipedia In Your Pocket, Forgets We’re In 2009
11:30PM Danny Allen | Three buttons, three million topics: Wikipedia in the palm of your hand. Openmoko’s $US99 WikiReader could be useful for kids (or luddites), but it’s an odd little gizmo in a world of 3G Smartphones. More »
Software
Cyclopedia AR iPhone App Drenches Your World In Wikipedia
8:20AM John Herrman | App concepts don’t get much simpler than this, or much cooler: Cyclopedia takes Wikipedia’s tens of thousands of geotagged entries, and overlays them onto a live, compass-oriented view of your surroundings. More »
Software
The Week In iPhone Apps: FCC Inquiry Edition
9:20AM John Herrman | Let’s take our minds off all this nasty Google Voice business for a minute, and focus on the apps that we do have. Google may not make an appearance this week, but how about Wikipedia? NPR? Simplify? More »
Software
RIP Microsoft Encarta, 1993-2009
1:30AM John Mahoney | Woe: Microsoft has officially pulled the plug on Encarta, a reference work that, for many of us, was probably more formative than anyone would like to admit. More »
Entertainment
If Wikipedia was a Professor, College Would Be Awesome [Citation Needed]
1:03AM Adam Frucci | CollegeHumor, kings of turning internet memes into viral videos, have done it again with Professor Wikipedia. It’s pretty awesome, although I take issue with the notion that nobody wants to know the names of all the makeup artists who worked on the original Star Wars trilogy. I’m pretty sure Jesus Diaz does. Guy is a superfan. [CollegeHumor] More »
Online
3:36PM Nick Broughall | Yep, we’re still hating on the politicians today. This time though, it’s the pollies who not only want their crackers, but want to edit them on Wikipedia as well.
Online Young Journalist of the Year Asher Moses over at SMH (congrats Asher!) tells us that the politicians changing their own entries to remove information that is either incorrect or biased. What’s more, Parliamentary Librarian Roxanne Missingham is emailing MPs instructions on how to do it.
The problem with this is that it contravenes Wikipedia’s conflict of interest guidelines. And while most edits have been done simply to correct factual errors, there are some changes that remove criticisms of the politicians, or remove biographical information, like Alexander Downer’s wealthy family background. More »
Now Australian Politicians Are Editing Their Own Wikipedia Entries
3:36PM Nick Broughall | Yep, we’re still hating on the politicians today. This time though, it’s the pollies who not only want their crackers, but want to edit them on Wikipedia as well.
Online Young Journalist of the Year Asher Moses over at SMH (congrats Asher!) tells us that the politicians changing their own entries to remove information that is either incorrect or biased. What’s more, Parliamentary Librarian Roxanne Missingham is emailing MPs instructions on how to do it.
The problem with this is that it contravenes Wikipedia’s conflict of interest guidelines. And while most edits have been done simply to correct factual errors, there are some changes that remove criticisms of the politicians, or remove biographical information, like Alexander Downer’s wealthy family background. More »
Software
Take a Peek Under the Hood as Firefox Renders Websites Visually
12:54AM Adam Frucci | Judging by the numbers, a good amount of you downloaded Firefox 3 during World Download Day on Tuesday. Curious as to how the HTML rendering engine in Firefox looks rendering your websites? Yeah, you probably weren’t, but now that there are these neat videos of how it works, maybe you are? Above is a visualisation of Gecko processing a Wikipedia page. After the jump, Mozilla.org. Science! More »
Online
12:01PM Nick Broughall | The year after I finished school, it was announced that English students would have the option of studying movies for their HSC in NSW.
I was so pissed off. Not because I though this was a bad idea, but because Star Wars was going to be one of potential “texts”. I would have been looking at straight A’s all the way, and some study that I might actually enjoy.
I’m having a similar moment here now. According to the SMH, as of next year, HSC students will be able to study Wikipedia. It will be one of the possible “texts” in an elective known as “The Global Village”, which studies how global communities interact with eachother.
The aim of the course is not only to study the dynamic nature of the online encyclopedia, but also to give students a greater understanding of the potential for misinformation on the web.
It’s a great step forward in legitimising the online medium as a respectable source of information. The next step, hopefully, will be adding Gizmodo to the curriculum, with lively debates on why we’re fantastic replacing all religious education classes. Well, we can dream, can’t we?
But I wonder how long it will be before the entire course ends up on Wikipedia itself, along with tests and test answers? When that happens, it will be the official point where the argument over Wikipedia’s legitimacy ends.
[SMH]
More »
NSW HSC Students To Study Wikipedia Next Year
12:01PM Nick Broughall | The year after I finished school, it was announced that English students would have the option of studying movies for their HSC in NSW.
I was so pissed off. Not because I though this was a bad idea, but because Star Wars was going to be one of potential “texts”. I would have been looking at straight A’s all the way, and some study that I might actually enjoy.
I’m having a similar moment here now. According to the SMH, as of next year, HSC students will be able to study Wikipedia. It will be one of the possible “texts” in an elective known as “The Global Village”, which studies how global communities interact with eachother.
The aim of the course is not only to study the dynamic nature of the online encyclopedia, but also to give students a greater understanding of the potential for misinformation on the web.
It’s a great step forward in legitimising the online medium as a respectable source of information. The next step, hopefully, will be adding Gizmodo to the curriculum, with lively debates on why we’re fantastic replacing all religious education classes. Well, we can dream, can’t we?
But I wonder how long it will be before the entire course ends up on Wikipedia itself, along with tests and test answers? When that happens, it will be the official point where the argument over Wikipedia’s legitimacy ends.
[SMH]
More »
Gadgets
Offline Wikipedia Psion Mod is HitchHiker’s Guide to the Galaxy V1.0
10:59PM Gizmodo US Edition | Instructables has this neat project which lets you pop an offline version of Wikipedia in your pocket. It’s a relatively cheap and cheerful hack, using a Psion 5mx handheld with a stripped-down Linux OS and complete—if slightly old— static HTML Wiki archive. If you’re not a seasoned Linux expert, don’t panic: apparently it’s relatively easy to do. Personally I’ve always thought of the iPhone as the HitchHiker’s Guide to the Galaxy made real (minus the “hundred tiny flat press buttons”) but this is a much less expensive solution, with a dab of DIY satisfaction built-in. Now I’m just off to look up the recipe for a Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster… [Instructables via BB Gadgets]
Online
