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Filed under: Business, Fun, Internet, Kids, Utilities, Web services, Search

Visualizing Wikipedia with WikiMindMap

visualizing wikipedia with wikimindmapWikiMindMap 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.

Filed under: Internet, Google

Friendly reminder from Google: we don't want to be just anyone's verb

Friendly reminder from Google: we don't want to be just anyone's verbThis summer, Google was both blessed and cursed with becoming a verb in the Oxford and Merriam-Webster english dictionaries. When it happened, Google thumped the trademark drum pretty hard, reminding people that "Sure, I'll google that" is fine when in reference to using their search engine, while "Oh! I googled that on Yahoo! and couldn't believe what I found!" will land you on their naughty list.

Interestingly, the search company just reviewed these intended uses of their name and trademark on their blog, reminding us which scenarios turn their lawyers' frowns upside down. While a lot of this might seem like the company is splitting hairs - after all, everyone in this day and age knows who Google is, right? - the original CNET article I linked contains trademark horror stories from the likes of Aspirin, Xerox and even more recently: Rollerblade. All suffered trademark woes because their names became common verbs that referred to their particular industries, instead of their specific products.

Could Google go the way of kleenex? Time will only tell, but let's hope not. The company has done a lot for search and the internets as we know them, and I would hate to see their contribution reduced to a lowercase 'g.'

Featured Time Waster

Graveyard Shift - zombie-busting Time Waster

With Halloween fast approaching, it's a great time to get in some practice defending your territory against zombies. In Graveyard Shift, you take aim at zombies and other creepy-crawlies, blasting them into splatters of cartoony green guts. It's a casual first-person shooter, and it's very easy to get the hang of - use the mouse to aim, click to fire. Graveyard Shift has at least 15 levels, and it might even have some secret stages I haven't unlocked yet. They key to getting good at Graveyard Shift is learning to use ...

View more Time Wasters

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