Wikipedia is definitely one of the sites I access the most, and most of the time it is just to quickly look up something I know they'll have on there. If I'm reading an article on another site I hate having to open a new tab just to search for something on Wikipedia, and that is where the Wikipedia Companion for Google Chrome comes in.
One of the things Microsoft added to Windows 7 is Search Connectors, which gives users the ability to search sites and view the results directly in Windows Explorer. It probably isn't something that everyone will use, but I can see it being useful in certain scenarios.
When you're reading an article on Wikipedia it can be annoying when you feel the need to continuously click the links that are referenced just to see what that word means or how it is relevant to what you're reading. For example, what if you wanted to find out the name of the actor that plays Sheldon Cooper in The Big Bang Theory sitcom.
Welcome to the WrapUp by CyberNet. This is a collection of news stories, downloads, and tips that we have collected over the last few days, but never got around to writing about.
Every now and again I use StumbleUpon to see what kind of unique sites I can find, and last week I found a rather nifty one called Keyboardr. It's a search engine that distinguishes itself by not actually having (or needing) a search button. Results are show to you in real-time as you type.
According to Alexa Wikipedia is the 7th most visited site in the world only to follow behind companies like Google and Yahoo. Seeing that they receive millions of visitors each day it should come as no surprise that people would use the tools at hand to make their own customized layouts and designs for the site.
Ever since Apple's App Store launched, we have been waiting for a free app to view Wikipedia articles. Up until today, the only Wikipedia application for the iPhone that we knew of was called iWik, but you had to pay for it. Today Wikipanion launches, it's nearly perfect, and it's free.
It looks as though Mahalo is opening up a bit more and taking advantage of all of the knowledge and writing talent that is out there. A recent change now allows all registered users to contribute to the site by creating and editing pages. Previously, only chosen, paid editors were given the right to do this.
It's crazy to think about how unpopular encyclopedias have become thanks to the various references found online, and the same thing is happening to dictionaries. These days word processors (and other apps) are integrating dictionaries so that they are even more useful to the end user.
Back when Wikipedia first launched (formally) on January 15, 2001, it grew faster than anyone even imagined. By the end of the first year, people around the world had contributed to over 20,000 articles that were written in 18 different languages. Both the number of articles and the number of languages were impressive.
Good thing they make those belated birthday cards for people like us who on occasion, forget to celebrate a birthday the actual date! Yesterday was a big day for Wikipedia, it was the day that they turned 7 years old.
Each year, popular dictionary Merriam-Webster names a word of the year with the help of the visitors to their website. They're given a list of words that were submitted by users and then asked to vote on which word they feel should be the #1 word of the year. The big winner this year is the word "w00t" - an interjection used to "express joy." While some of you may use this word and have heard others use it before, the main crowd of people that use it regularly are some of the hardcore online game enthusiasts.
Have you ever wondered what software powers sites like YouTube, Flickr, and MySpace? Wonder no more because Pingdom has the scoop! The results are located in the table above, and as you can see Linux, Apache, and MySQL are among the most popular tools. In the end this is how the stats play out:
Has Wikipedia peaked? Was it just a fad? These are questions that people are asking today after an independent analysis found that activity over at the popular online encyclopedia has been declining. More specifically, editing has been down 20% while new account creation is down 30%.
It has been a pretty big week in terms of milestones. It's not all that often that sites and applications are able to boast their millionth milestones, and so I thought it would be fun to point out all of the things that have happened in the last 7 days:
Have you ever visited Google Trends before? I do on occasion because sometimes it's interesting to see what people are searching for. Much like Google Trends, a new Wikipedia data mining service called Wikirage tells you what the hot topics are on Wikipedia.
One of Wikipedia’s greatest strengths and weaknesses is that just about anybody is able to contribute and edit the content.
Both Yahoo and Google in the past have decided it was best to censor their search results to appease the demands of China. Yes, they were put in a tough spot: either they had to limit the information available to Chinese Internet users, or they didn’t which meant they would be banned all together.
When I was a student, had I written research papers and cited Wikipedia as a source, my professors would have laughed.
Wikipedia has turned into a massive web-based free encyclopedia filled with never-ending content in over 200 different languages. Millions of people turn to Wikipedia on a regular basis to perform searches, including myself. I’m sure many of you use it regularly as well, but have you ever wondered what other people are searching for?
