XKCD on the discovery channel commercial

(This commercial, which I love, and could just as easily be an ad for wikipedia.)

Not only is the comic hilarious, it actually matches the syllables.

James Holman (October 15, 1786 – July 29, 1857), known as the "Blind Traveler," was a British adventurer, author and social observer, best known for his writings on his extensive travels. Not only completely blind but suffering from debilitating pain and limited mobility, he undertook a series of solo journeys that were unprecedented both in their extent of geography and method of "human echolocation".

Reading Wikipedia on a Mobile phone

If you've got internet access on your cellphone, head to en.wap.wikipedia.org.

If you'd prefer to download all of Wikipedia at once. Pocket Wikipedia is "the widest array of material you can fit into 175 MB", packaged up for Windows Mobile (and Linux). "The articles are hand-picked...and the interface is condensed to offer quick searching and indexing on mobile devices."

You can also download "enyclopedia", which is like "Pocket" but several times as large. Handbag Wikipedia, if you will.

But geopedia is by far the coolest option. It actually sniffs out your iPhone's physical location and displays wikipedia articles related to stuff nearby. (I don't know if it works on the newest iPhones.)

(And there are more options.)

List of world's most expensive single objects.

1966 Soviet postage stamp commemorating "ten years of antarctic exploration":



There were all sorts of little competitive space-race style projects.

The Kola Superdeep Borehole (KSDB) was the result of a scientific drilling project of the former USSR. The project attempted to drill as deep as possible into the Earth's crust.

The Westinghouse Time Capsules were created for 1939 & 1964 World's Fairs. Both are buried 50 feet below New York's Flushing Meadows Park, the site of both world's fairs, the 1965 capsule 10 feet north of the 1938 one.

Both are to be opened at the same time in 6939 AD, five thousand years after the first capsule was sealed. Check out the messages from Einstein et al.

The Pornocracy or Rule of the Harlots was a period in the history of the Papacy during the first half of the tenth century.

Warning: not wikipedia-related.

My band (The Afternoon Round) is playing the crossroads festival in ypsilanti this friday (2 p.m.). If you're in the area, you should come see us.

You know, sarcasm is just really helpful.

:p Or should I say, ؟

Dion McGregor (1922–1994) was a New York City-born songwriter, whose main claim to fame is that he was a voluble dreamer, or somniloquist.

Hostile media effect

Escaping the tech ghetto

More about the foundation's experiment in turning middle-aged and elderly people into wikipedians.

Even if some of us were long-time Wikipedia contributors we learned a lot about Wikipedia within the first week:

• the longer Wikipedians contribute to Wikipedia the more they forget that Wikipedia is a very complex system. Newcomers are overwhelmed by this complexity and often don't know where to start.
• Wikipedia's help pages are confusing. The printed brochure "Das kleine Wikipedia-Einmaleins" we distributed at the opening (see the picture on the right hand; click on the picture to download the PDF) was much more useful as older people prefer printed material to online material.

I think this is a good time to plug my book, How Wikipedia Works

An older generation of Wikipedians?

The foundation is starting a program to turn senior citizens into "trainers" who will be able to run their own Wikipedia workshops.

The course will last six weeks. During the first weeks the participants will learn the basics of how to edit Wikipedia articles. In a second phase the participants will collaboratively develop a concept for Wikipedia courses for senior citizens. Subsequently, the participants should be able to act as Wikipedia evangelists and motivate other people of their age to contribute to Wikipedia.

This is a great idea; it's easy to forget how big the gap is between techies and the general public (McCain doesn't know how to use a computer, for example; Peter Jennings submitted his stories on a typewriter until the day he died).

I just hope Wikipedia itself will be welcoming when the seniors actually hit the water. Has anyone tried showing Wikipedia to people over 60? How did they react?

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is an area of marine debris in the central North Pacific Ocean. Size estimates vary from an area equivalent to the state of Texas to double that of the continental United States.

Good god, people.

Okay, here's what happened: Someone tried to start a discussion about "all the good things Wikipedia has done for you. Think of all the good times you have had on Wikipedia. Share with us the best memory you have from Wikipedia. Don't be shy!"

It lasted a couple hours before it was deleted for violating the what wikipedia is not ruleset.

Honest to god, fun is what makes the encyclopedia tick. If you're trying to turn contributors into automations, you're cutting wikipedia's feet from under it.

via danny

Writing your first wikipedia article. (How-to guide.)

The oldest living organisms.

Brilliant article about how the internet changes us (ignore the silly title).

Powerset is another wikipedia-specific search engine an alternate interface for viewing and searching wikipedia (and for filtering it in rudimentary ways). Mea culpa.