Tuesday, July 01, 2008
Reading Wikipedia on a Mobile phone
If you've got internet access on your cellphone, head to en.wap.wikipedia.org.
If you'd prefer to download all of Wikipedia at once. Pocket Wikipedia is "the widest array of material you can fit into 175 MB", packaged up for Windows Mobile (and Linux). "The articles are hand-picked...and the interface is condensed to offer quick searching and indexing on mobile devices."
You can also download "enyclopedia", which is like "Pocket" but several times as large. Handbag Wikipedia, if you will.
But geopedia is by far the coolest option. It actually sniffs out your iPhone's physical location and displays wikipedia articles related to stuff nearby. (I don't know if it works on the newest iPhones.)
(And there are more options.)
Monday, June 30, 2008
Sunday, June 29, 2008
1966 Soviet postage stamp commemorating "ten years of antarctic exploration":
There were all sorts of little competitive space-race style projects.
The Kola Superdeep Borehole (KSDB) was the result of a scientific drilling project of the former USSR. The project attempted to drill as deep as possible into the Earth's crust.
Wednesday, June 25, 2008
The Westinghouse Time Capsules were created for 1939 & 1964 World's Fairs. Both are buried 50 feet below New York's Flushing Meadows Park, the site of both world's fairs, the 1965 capsule 10 feet north of the 1938 one.
Both are to be opened at the same time in 6939 AD, five thousand years after the first capsule was sealed. Check out the messages from Einstein et al.
Monday, June 23, 2008
The Pornocracy or Rule of the Harlots was a period in the history of the Papacy during the first half of the tenth century.
Warning: not wikipedia-related.
My band (The Afternoon Round) is playing the crossroads festival in ypsilanti this friday (2 p.m.). If you're in the area, you should come see us.
[埋込みオブジェクト:http://www.youtube.com/v/Y67Wco4vE7A&hl=en]
Friday, June 20, 2008
Thursday, June 19, 2008
Dion McGregor (1922–1994) was a New York City-born songwriter, whose main claim to fame is that he was a voluble dreamer, or somniloquist.
Escaping the tech ghetto
More about the foundation's experiment in turning middle-aged and elderly people into wikipedians.
Even if some of us were long-time Wikipedia contributors we learned a lot about Wikipedia within the first week:
- the longer Wikipedians contribute to Wikipedia the more they forget that Wikipedia is a very complex system. Newcomers are overwhelmed by this complexity and often don't know where to start.
- Wikipedia's help pages are confusing. The printed brochure "Das kleine Wikipedia-Einmaleins" we distributed at the opening (see the picture on the right hand; click on the picture to download the PDF) was much more useful as older people prefer printed material to online material.
Sunday, June 15, 2008
An older generation of Wikipedians?
The foundation is starting a program to turn senior citizens into "trainers" who will be able to run their own Wikipedia workshops.
The course will last six weeks. During the first weeks the participants will learn the basics of how to edit Wikipedia articles. In a second phase the participants will collaboratively develop a concept for Wikipedia courses for senior citizens. Subsequently, the participants should be able to act as Wikipedia evangelists and motivate other people of their age to contribute to Wikipedia.This is a great idea; it's easy to forget how big the gap is between techies and the general public (McCain doesn't know how to use a computer, for example; Peter Jennings submitted his stories on a typewriter until the day he died).
I just hope Wikipedia itself will be welcoming when the seniors actually hit the water. Has anyone tried showing Wikipedia to people over 60? How did they react?
Saturday, June 14, 2008
The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is an area of marine debris in the central North Pacific Ocean. Size estimates vary from an area equivalent to the state of Texas to double that of the continental United States.
Thursday, June 12, 2008
Good god, people.
Okay, here's what happened: Someone tried to start a discussion about "all the good things Wikipedia has done for you. Think of all the good times you have had on Wikipedia. Share with us the best memory you have from Wikipedia. Don't be shy!"
It lasted a couple hours before it was deleted for violating the what wikipedia is not ruleset.
Honest to god, fun is what makes the encyclopedia tick. If you're trying to turn contributors into automations, you're cutting wikipedia's feet from under it.
via danny
Tuesday, June 10, 2008
Brilliant article about how the internet changes us (ignore the silly title).
Sunday, June 08, 2008
Powerset is (削除) another wikipedia-specific search engine (削除ここまで) an alternate interface for viewing and searching wikipedia (and for filtering it in rudimentary ways). Mea culpa.
Great article about Jimmy Wales in the Economist. (Wales co-founded Wikipedia.)
“I think that reality exists and that it’s knowable,” he says, adding that Wikipedia aims not for truth with a capital T but for consensus. “You go meta,” he says, meaning “beyond” the disputes and to the underlying facts. For instance, when deciding how to describe abortion, “I may not agree that it’s a sin, but I can certainly agree that the pope thinks it’s a sin.” Despite their disagreements, people on both sides of a debate can in many cases reach a consensus on the nature of their dispute, at least. Through this process, says Mr Wales, Wikipedia articles eventually reach a fairly steady state called the “neutral point of view”, or NPOV.
“Wikipedia resolves the postmodern dilemma of truth by ultimately relying on process,” says Gene Koo of Harvard Law School’s Berkman Centre for Internet and Society. “Its process is both open and transparent. The levers of power are not destroyed—Foucault taught us that this is impossible—but simply visible.” To which Mr Wales responds, more simply, that NPOV is a way of saying: “Thanks, but, um, please let’s get back to work.”