wikipedia

BOL 1049: The Pirate Bay will never die.... and neither will SCO

Monarchy, mercantilism, and Talmudic tech are on the table today. We get a little obscure in our references...at least I do...but Leo and Brian keep us on track talking about the new Sony Reader, and how the Pirate Bay is unkillable. In bad news, SCO is back, and this time it's personal.

Subscribe with iTunes (audio) Subscribe with iTunes (video) Subscribe with RSS (audio) Subscribe with RSS (video) EPISODE 1049

Sony unveils three would-be Kindle killers--Pocket, Touch and now, 3G Wireless with AT&T http://paidcontent.org/article/419-sony-unveils-new-reader-digital-books-pocket-touch-and-now-3g-wireless/ http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=23187 … Read more

Wikipedia to add editing safeguard for the living

Wikipedia will soon be adding a feature to its English-language site that assigns an experienced editor to sign off on any changes to articles on living people, according to Wikimedia Foundation, the nonprofit that runs the user-written online encyclopedia.

Confirming a story reported Monday by The New York Times, Wikimedia Foundation spokesman Jay Walsh said the "flagged revisions" feature is already active on the German site, but needs some fleshing out before it goes live to the public on the English site.

The plan is to deploy the feature on a test wiki soon so the Wikipedia community … Read more

Wikipedia Diver tracks your Web exploration

We've covered a number of Web history tracking and organizing tools in the past, but Wikipedia Diver may be one of the most interesting, albeit niche. This Firefox add-on gives you a visual history of everywhere you've been on Wikipedia, and organizes it down to the day, order, and session in which you visited the sites, making it easy to revisit old entries.

Each visited page is presented as a small red globe that you can click on to advance the timeline. There's also a source list of every site you visited, that will take you right … Read more

Wikimedia receives $500,000 from Hewlett Foundation

The nonprofit organization that operates Wikipedia has received a $500,000 grant from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation to expand its effort to make educational information freely accessible.

"The enormous popularity of Wikipedia and its collaborative premise make the Wikimedia Foundation an ideal vehicle for spreading the open educational resources movement," Barbara Chow, director of the education program at Hewlett, said in a statement.

A Wikimedia representative said the grant is coming at a "critical time" for the foundation that operates the online encyclopedia.

"We've just begun the planning that will help us … Read more

BOL 1042: Attack of the BelBots

We learn that not only is a botnet using Twitter to store some of its data but that botnet follow Veronica. Who is a bot herself. We also ponder why leaked pictures of the Dell smartphone are so blurry. And bad news folks. Looks like no tablet for the Apple announcement, but it sounds like it will be in September.

Subscribe with iTunes (audio) Subscribe with iTunes (video) Subscribe with RSS (audio) Subscribe with RSS (video) EPISODE 1042

Dell’s first phone spied on web http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2009/08/14/dell_smartphone_pictures/

Apple planning September event? http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-10309110-37.html… Read more

Has Wikipedia editing gone the way of government?

Oh, Wikipedia. Have you really become just another political organization?

I only ask because some clever people with nothing better to do have dedicated their bright gray matter to poring through Wikipedia's pages and drawing conclusions. The members of the Augmented Cognition Research Group at the Palo Alto Research Center could probably solve health care over a nonfat latte and a blueberry scone. Instead, they have examined who makes edits on Wikipedia and whose edits are reversed.

It makes for the same kind of dispiriting reading that you might once have expected from a Politburo travel brochure. You see, … Read more

The 404 387: Where we'd do anything for love

This is the last time we let Wilson choose the show title. Good news--The 404 Wikipedia page is BACK! Edit away, but please don't redirect the page. Today we talk about a fake bus stop in Germany, a "green" iPhone app, the iPhone 4G prototype, the "World of Warcraft" movie, and Jake Gyllenhaal as the Prince of Persia.

That's right folks, our Wikipedia page is back up, and we're praying it's permanent this time! Big ups to our buddy Darth Paxton for helping us out, so go ahead and edit it all you like (we can't edit it ourselves) with inside jokes, characters, guests, etc., but please don't edit the redirections, those need to stay in place. Whoo! We're notable!!!

Also, do not attempt to adjust your monitor, the photo to the left is indeed our first look at Jake Gyllenhaal as the Prince of Persia. With those two swords in his hands and that red sash around his waist, he looks more like a chef at a Chinese restaurant than the video game hero.

Speaking of bad video game movies, we're afraid to see what Sam Raimi has in store for the "World of Warcraft" movie adaptation, although it'd be pretty funny to just have a half an hour of peons mining and chopping wood.

A quick disclaimer: there are two stories in today's rundown that some might deem offensive, but although they're both a little dark, the beauty of The 404 is being able to find a lighthearted (and sometimes tasteless) joke in everything! For example, here's a funny story about a fake bus stop in a clinic that's designed to keep its Alzheimer's patients from escaping. Sounds awful, right? I agree--maybe all the money they spent on building this "net" could have been used to pay more nurses and doctors to determine the reason why the patients are trying desperately to escape in the first place!

Anyway, that's the first story. You'll have to listen to the full episode, which also includes news about an eBay auction for an original Sony PlayStation signed by Michael Jackson and a very "green friendly" iPhone app

EPISODE 387 Download today's podcast Subscribe in iTunes audio | Suscribe to iTunes (video) | Subscribe in RSS Audio | Subscribe in RSS Video… Read more

Wikipedia's controversial video player coming soon

Wikipedia users will be getting new tools for uploading, editing, and viewing video very soon. According to a Beet.TV interview with Erik Moller, who is the deputy director of the Wikimedia Foundation, we'll see all of these things shortly. However, what's more interesting is the Web encyclopedia's choice of video formats and how it fits into a fracas in the browser world.

Wikipedia has been working on video support for years, and is putting considerable effort into making it easier for users to upload video--specifically, to bridge a video format divide. Moller says that while Wikipedia … Read more

Michael Jackson's death roils Wikipedia

As news organizations reported Michael Jackson's hospitalization on Thursday afternoon, Wikipedia editors were wrestling with the problem of whether to allow an unverified report of the singer's death to appear on the online encyclopedia.

The entertainment site TMZ.com reported at 2:20 p.m. PDT that: "We're told when paramedics arrived Jackson had no pulse and they never got a pulse back."

Some Wikipedians repeatedly deleted references to Jackson's alleged demise, saying in separate comments that "This is not yet verified," "He's not dead," "Premature edits," … Read more