If we were Jimmy Wales, we'd have bought a bullet proof vest long ago. Google has just set Jimmy up the bomb; Announcing 'Knol', a human powered index of knowledge which seeks to rival Wikipedia in accountability, and thus accuracy.
Knol will focus on credit for authors who "own" pages within the system. Write a bad page, lose your reputation. Write a better page than one which currently exists, and knock it out of the top spot. It's free market dynamics and modern credit reporting all rolled into one and applied to encyclopedia style information. Google, for it's part, seemingly intends to be hands off in the management of Knol, foregoing any oversight structure similar to that in place at Wikipedia or Mahalo.
While we find this all super interesting, we're going to stop short of prognosticating about the death of Wikipedia. Other industry pundits are calling it "a game changer" and "huge"; We've decided to wait until Monday to predict Wikipedia's imminent death. It's called journalism, look it up.
Oddly enough, there is no current Wikipedia entry for "Knol". Maybe we should pitch in and create one?
WikiMindMap takes a pleasant visual approach to the text heavy Wikipedia, showcasing additional relevant content that you may have never searched for.
If you've been getting tired of entering a search term in for Wikipedia and feel like there might be additional information that you are missing out on, WikiMindMap will change that. This tool can help users browse Wiki content quickly and efficiently, giving a clean structured understandable overview of the search topic.
Start by specifying the version of Wiki, and then enter your topic. You will be presented with a 'mind map' of the topic that branches out each realm of the instance, clickable through to the Wikipedia entry. For instance, a search on 'California' returned some higher marked pages, along with breakdowns for additional sections such as history, economy, cities, towns, newspaper, and geography. This is extremely relevant when searching for such a broad term.
Getting around Wikipedia could take shorter than you have been previously use to. For instance, do you know about the keyboard shortcuts?
Keyboard shortcuts aren't a well known feature for users of the popular online encyclopedia, but they do exist. I recently came across a post by Steve Rubel reminding me of this fact.
These keyboard shortcuts work with any browser, and on both PC and Mac platforms, and don't need to install any special Greasemonkey script, and will surely speed up your time when searching for useful content.
Depending on which browser you are in you will have to use hold down this combination of keys, then hit your access key:
Mozilla Firefox 1.5: hold Alt, press access key
Mozilla Firefox 2: hold Alt-Shift, press access key
Internet Explorer: hold Alt, press access key, and then press Enter
Opera: press Shift-Esc, then press access key
Mac OS: Control and a key
Check out a cheat sheet for the key shortcuts after the jump:
After years of successful topics and entries that everyone has had the ability to contribe to, the online free encyclopedia is finally going offline.
Ok, so it's not going offline in the traditional sense of shutting down, Wikipedia has created a DVD version of Wikipedia, with close to 2,000 hand picked articles from a group of academics and Wikipedia staff.
The CD is selling for $13.99, which seems like a rather high price for something that can be accessed for free online. But hey, if you don't have internet access this is the next best option. The Wikipedia Foundation DVD is first available in English format, with a French format as well as other launguages in development.
Encyclopodia
is software that will load Wikipedia in its entirety onto your iPod. Really. It works with a special version of
iPodLinux but has a clever dual-booting system so that you don't have to get rid of your shiny Apple interface for
listening to music. You can enter text for searches using the clickwheel—not the most efficient, for sure, but
what did you expect?—and navigate wiki links the same way. Amazingly, the entire English Wikipedia (German and
Italian are available as well) fits in under 800MB, which seems like more than a fair trade to have that much
information at your fingertips. Cool.
WikiMindMap
Encyclopodia
