|
Home > News > Tags > Wikipedia
|
|
30
More: next 50 >>
There's been a lot of talk about Wikipedia's apparent decline in edits and editors. The narrative is that new users are finding it harder and harder to start contributing, leading to a reduction in the number of people actively adding to the site. There have been some studies, but most data is anecdotal. O... |
13 May 2013
09:30 GMT |
 |
|
Wikipedia has been working on getting users and editors to engage more with the site. It's been doing this with the introduction of a few new mobile apps, but also with ways of keeping track of activity on the main site.
Now, it's introducing a new Notifications system for the English Wikipedia. These noti... |
3 May 2013
05:58 GMT |
|
|
The Wikimedia Foundation has been working on making Wikipedia and all of the other sites it manages mobile. That's true for any large web organization these days.
There already are Wikipedia apps and even a few specialized apps like the one for the Wiki Loves Monuments projects.
But now there's a de... |
30 April 2013
02:51 GMT |
|
|
Wikimedia Foundation, the organization that runs Wikipedia, also manages several other less known but equally important sites and projects. The only new one since 2006, Wikidata promises to be a very important one.
As the name suggests, Wikidata aims to be a repository for data, structured and easily accessible, use... |
26 April 2013
09:41 GMT |
|
|
The Wikimedia Foundation has announced that the English and German Wikipedia as well as Wikidata have migrated to MariaDB 5.5 as their main data base. Wikimedia has been running the Facebook fork of the older MySQL 5.1, but the improvements in the newer MariaDB 5.5/Oracle MySQL 5.5 were hard to pass. The decision ... |
23 April 2013
04:30 GMT |
|
|
Wikipedia and a few other websites that are owned by the Wikimedia Foundation have over 500 million unique monthly visitors. The list of websites includes Wikibooks, Wikidata and Wikimedia Commons. According to comScore Media Metrix, the number of unique visitors across these sites increased to 517 million last mont... |
19 April 2013
09:34 GMT |
|
|
On April 9, Redmond-based software giant Microsoft announced the winner of its Windows Phone Next App Star competition that kicked off last year, and that saw 9,137 entries from 79 markets. Several weeks ago, the company brought the competition to Facebook, offering users the possibility to vote for their favorite ... |
10 April 2013
07:01 GMT |
|
|
Wikipedia fans who have the official app installed on their iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad, may want to pay some attention to the latest version rolled out by the Wikimedia Foundation.
If you live somewhere outside an English-speaking country and rely on the Wikipedia iOS application for work, school projects, and any ... |
8 April 2013
18:31 GMT |
|
|
Some people, groups, companies and governments, can't come to terms with a medium where information is mostly out of their controls.
Some countries have countered that with wide and institutionalized censorship, the Great Firewall of China for example, some industries try to take back control through a combina... |
8 April 2013
05:13 GMT |
|
|
It is hard to imagine a web and a world where there is no Wikipedia. But the site is just a decade old and, even a few years ago, there were plenty of people doubting it. There are people doubting it today, but it is harder to deny its impact and its importance.
It's also on solid ground, while there is a worr... |
28 March 2013
10:54 GMT |
|
|
A few days ago we showed you "Lemme Tweet That for You" a single-purpose site which made it easy and fun to fake tweets. If you're looking for a more legitimate fake site, then "I am on Wikipedia" is for you.
The name doesn't leave much to the imagination, the site enables you to generate a fake Wikipedia ... |
25 March 2013
15:11 GMT |
|
|
One of the big tasks Google is taking on recently, though it's hardly the only one, is making sense of the world, or at least the web, beyond understanding queries.For search to evolve it needs to understand context and meaning, but that is much harder than matching a piece of text with an URL.The Knowledge Grap... |
9 March 2013
12:01 GMT |
|
|
Wikipedia became the powerhouse it is today by enabling anyone to contribute and making it easy for them to do so. Key to this, in 2001 when Wikipedia was launched, was the wiki markup used to write or edit articles. It made it possible for people with no knowledge of HTML to create web pages with relative ease. Th... |
4 March 2013
15:11 GMT |
|
|
The world is going mobile and Wikipedia is doing the same. Wikimedia Foundation, the organization behind the site, has been working on several mobile tools, including the Wikipedia mobile app. This is Wikipedia though, so the mobile site is not neglected, in fact, the site gets new features first. Wikipedia is more ... |
14 February 2013
05:24 GMT |
|
|
The planets and moons in our solar system all get names, even most comets do, but smaller bodies such as asteroids rarely get the honor. Still, one asteroid in the main asteroid belt recently got christened with a rather peculiar name: Wikipedia. The asteroid got the name in honor of the site's contributions to... |
6 February 2013
15:11 GMT |
|
|
Wikipedia Zero aims to bring the site and all of its knowledge to everyone on the planet for free or as free as it can be. What this means is waiving data traffic costs, but to do this, Wikipedia needs to cooperate with carriers around the world.
For the past few years, it's been doing just that and Wikipedia ... |
25 January 2013
09:11 GMT |
|
|
If you’re having problems with your Wikipedia Mobile installation on your iPhone or iPad, the Wikimedia Foundation says you should look into this new update.
Wikipedia Mobile users have reported some issues with the app on the newest version of Apple’s mobile operating system, iOS 6. Apparently the app d... |
23 January 2013
20:41 GMT |
|
|
Wikipedia is one of the largest websites in the world. While it's not a terribly complex site, in a world where websites are more like apps than like documents, Wikipedia stays true to the initial goal of the web, to make information publicly available and it does this with simple pages, text, images and other m... |
21 January 2013
05:38 GMT |
|
|
Wikivoyage, Wikimedia's latest project is now officially launched. The site has been around for a while in its current iteration, but it's been labeled as a beta. The site, in name, has been around for longer.
But the new Wikivoyage combines the old site with Wikitravel, a completely unrelated site, despit... |
16 January 2013
03:36 GMT |
|
|
Wikimedia Foundation, the organization behind Wikipedia, hasn't ventured that far out from its core product, Wikipedia of course. There's the Wikimedia Commons and the Wiktionary, but Wikipedia still takes the center stage.
That's probably not going to change any time soon, but the group is looking a... |
11 January 2013
10:11 GMT |
|
|
Wikipedia isn't a reliable source of information. Nothing out there is 100 percent reliable, but the nature of Wikipedia, the fact that anyone can add or modify info, means that it's particularly prone to errors, intentional or not. But the nature of Wikipedia is what makes it more accurate in some ways t... |
7 January 2013
08:35 GMT |
|
|
With Wikipedia securing its funding for the next year in just nine days, you can rest assured that it will continue to help the people of the world find out all there is to know about Facebook, One Direction or Fifty Shades of Grey. While Wikipedia may aim to be the sum of all human knowledge, most humans are inter... |
28 December 2012
16:31 GMT |
|
|
Wikipedia, one of the largest and most visited sites on the web, relies exclusively on donations to survive. It does more than survive though, it actually does really well for a non-profit site. Each year, sometime in late fall, Wikipedia runs a campaign to round up donations.
This year's campaign was the most... |
28 December 2012
04:35 GMT |
|
|
Wikipedia is one of the most popular websites in the world, the fifth most popular by some counts.
Yet it's one of the very few top sites that isn't a company and is not motivated by profit. Instead, Wikipedia aims to make knowledge as widely available as possible. Granted, it needs money too, but it rais... |
20 December 2012
17:31 GMT |
|
|
Rumor has it that, in the aftermath of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig explosion, BP executive David Rainey used Wikipedia as a “realiable” source of information, meaning that he turned to this online encyclopedia in order to “estimate” the size of the spill.
Needless to say, it would have pro... |
17 November 2012
03:30 GMT |
|
|
Wikipedia has been working on democratizing video for a long time now. It's been meaning to make video as big a part of Wikipedia as text and photos for five years or more, but it may only now be able to actually do it.
It is now rolling out a new HTML5 video player and editor that should make it easier for peo... |
8 November 2012
14:11 GMT |
|
|
It's that time of the year again. Yes, the time when you get to see Jimmy Wales' mug plastered all over Wikipedia for a couple of months. It's not all that you're going to see, this year Wikipedia has an especially subtle blue banner waiting for you as well. While the 2012 fundraising campaign i... |
7 November 2012
14:11 GMT |
|
|
If Wikipedia isn’t exactly your cup of tea and you’re looking for a more unique experience when trying to find info on a specific topic, you should really give a shot to Encyclopaedia Britannica.
The award-winning product is now available in the Windows Store and can be used not only on a desktop Windows... |
5 November 2012
09:44 GMT |
|
|
Wikipedia started out as an encyclopedia, but it was never a direct replacement or equivalent, now even more so. That's because a page on Wikipedia can be created and published in minutes, this immediateness means hot topics can be covered as they happen.
This happens quite regularly and it did with Hurricane S... |
5 November 2012
05:55 GMT |
|
|
Wikipedia Zero is a program to bring the site to as many people as possible for free. The idea is to enable access via mobile devices to a striped down version of the already stripped down Wikipedia, for free, with no data charges. This should make it possible for more people to use the site, some that may not have... |
30 October 2012
08:11 GMT |
|
|
Windows 8 is out this week, though you may not have noticed with all the Apple news/worship that's been going around. But Windows 8 is here and that means one thing, apps. Not "apps" like we've had on windows for the past two decades or so, but the new type of "Apple apps" from an "app store." Thankfully... |
27 October 2012
04:11 GMT |
|
|
Wikimedia, the foundation behind the popular Wikipedia, is finally admitting that it has a problem attracting new editors and retaining old ones. This is not an old problem, obviously, and it hasn't exactly been denying it so far, but Wikimedia is now trying to do something concrete about it.
The first step to ... |
25 October 2012
10:32 GMT |
|
|
Wikipedia's mobile website is getting an update, one that regular mobile users may be familiar with. The new features and changes have been in testing on the beta site for a while and they're now deemed ready for mass consumption.
Most of the changes are visual, but there's new functionality as well.&... |
24 October 2012
13:12 GMT |
|
|
Wikimedia, the foundation behind Wikipedia, is continuing to expand the reach of the site. Wikipedia's goal is to make as much information as widely available as possible. While it's safe to say Wikipedia holds quite a lot of info at this point.
In fact, the bigger problem is reaching as many people as it ... |
15 October 2012
15:11 GMT |
|
|
In an attempt to block pirated versions of its software from reaching the web, Microsoft requested the search engine giant Google to block access to links coming from CNN, The Huffington Post, Wikipedia and even the US government. The latest Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) comes with what appears to be an un... |
8 October 2012
02:37 GMT |
|
|
Wikipedia is clearly the most successful crowdsourced project in the history of mankind. It already houses more information than any other encyclopedia and more than most top libraries. Yet, in recent years, it's lost some of its luster, maybe precisely because it's been so successful. Whatever the case, ne... |
5 October 2012
17:21 GMT |
|
|
The controversy surrounding Wikimedia's UK branch continues as the main Wikimedia Foundation, located in the US, has withdrawn funding to the UK charter. It hasn't taken away funds already available, it would have had a tough time doing so, but it is no longer linking to the UK charity on its donation page.... |
2 October 2012
07:12 GMT |
|
|
Wikipedia has always been about sharing, but rather than sharing the knowledge of others with the world, it is now sharing the searches of others with the world. Well, it's sharing everyone's searches with the world.
The site has started releasing complete search data daily (i.e. every query of the previou... |
20 September 2012
13:31 GMT |
|
|
Wikipedia's inner workings are as opaque as those of any other bureaucratic organization, despite most of the decisions and discussions being public. Unless you're in the inner circle, you're going to have a hard time understanding what's going on, let alone do something about it.
It's surp... |
19 September 2012
08:41 GMT |
|
|
Wikipedia is now making it possible to create ebooks on your favorite topics or anything that interests you and have all the pages put together in one file, in the EPUB format.
You can then copy the material and use it on the many devices that can read EPUB ebooks, which is pretty much everything except Kindles.
... |
18 September 2012
04:33 GMT |
|
|
Jimmy Wales is known to take up causes that have to do with internet freedom. More recently, he's been critical of the UK and the various problems there, like the extradition of TVShak's owner due to copyright charges in the US.
Now, he's complaining about a proposed law in the UK which would have ISP... |
7 September 2012
08:34 GMT |
|
|
Wikipedia has been going mobile lately. There's been a lot of effort into making the mobile site better and putting out solid mobile apps. But now Wikipedia is going further and enabling people to contribute via their mobile phones. Granted, this isn't about adding new articles or improving existing ones, i... |
1 September 2012
14:31 GMT |
|
|
Calibre is one of the best eBook management software available right now, but its strength lies in the abundance of plugins available for it.
This week we’ll take a look at an interesting extension called "Wiki Reader." According to the developer, this plugin can be used to create an ebook of pages from Wikip... |
11 August 2012
05:57 GMT |
|
|
Wikipedia has provided a more detailed explanation for yesterday's outage. And, as they stereotypically say, "the plot thickens." The outage was indeed caused by two cut cables. The problem is that those two cables shouldn't have been anywhere near each other as they were supposed to be redundant, i.e. on... |
7 August 2012
07:14 GMT |
|
|
Wikipedia's outage earlier in the day has been linked to a rather surprising cause, two fiber optic cables that were cut near the main data center the site uses, in Florida. With the cables took out of commission, traffic to the site slowed to a halt.In fact, all Wikimedia sites were either completely inaccessib... |
6 August 2012
13:11 GMT |
|
|
Wikipedia, the all-knowing, all powerful website that keeps most (all) of us employed and, or getting passing grades in school, is down. It's not as bad as Twitter being down, at least this way there's a place to complain about Wikipedia being down. Without Twitter, people would be forced to go Facebook or... |
6 August 2012
10:03 GMT |
|
|
One of the criticisms against Wikipedia, from the people that still criticize Wikipedia, is that it's accuracy can't be as good as that of more traditional sources, specifically encyclopedias. It seems true at first glance, after all, Wikipedia is created and edited by volunteer contributors who may or may ... |
3 August 2012
14:41 GMT |
|
|
The Wikipedia town project seems to be inspiring followers. Earlier this year, Monmouthpedia, the project which aimed to make the entire town of Monmouth Wikipedia-friendly, debuted. The idea is to scatter QR codes all over town, at the interesting locations and have those codes point to Wikipedia pages describing ... |
13 July 2012
09:23 GMT |
|
|
Wikipedia is all about collaboration. But not all collaboration is created equally. Very few Wikipedia users actually write articles, or edit existing ones. But that doesn't mean they can't contribute. In fact, Wikipedia is making it easier to do so with a new version of the Article Feedback tool, which is ... |
11 July 2012
06:21 GMT |
|
|
The Russian Wikipedia is protesting against proposed internet censorship laws that are put forward as filters for what is widely accepted as "illegal" content, but could easily be used to block any website the authorities deem fit.
Given the history of abuse in Russia and the lack of freedom of the press, the dange... |
10 July 2012
05:11 GMT |
|
More: next 50 >> |
|
|
Find us on Google+
