The co-founder of Wikipedia, Larry Sanger, (who left the project some time ago) is launching some kind of refereed collaborative publication called The Digital Universe. Details scarce as yet, but there are journalistic reports (e.g. in the NYT) claiming that it will “allow anyone to contribute and edit entries, but experts vouching for the accuracy of entries will oversee major areas of content”.
Category Archives: Technology
Live translation
Joel Parish has written a live translation system in AJAX. You type in one language in the top window, and a simultaneous translation appears in a lower one. Really neat. Jack Schofield says it doesn’t work properly in Internet Explorer though. What a shame…
The PC mini
Behold the PC world’s first stab at replicating the Mac mini. According to the Guardian Online Blog it costs £699 inc VAT with no monitor, no keyboard, no mouse, no speakers and no wireless. A Mac mini with a comparable spec would cost somewhere between £359 and £429. So you pay extra for all those viruses, worms, trojans and other Windows-enabled vulnerabilities. Weird. If it had been priced at, say, £199 then you could understand the logic.
Wikipedia 162, Brittanica 123
From Good Morning, Silicon Valley…
A study published in the journal Nature Wednesday found that in a random sample of 42 science entries, the collaborative encyclopedia averaged four inaccuracies to Britannica’s three. “Only eight serious errors, such as misinterpretations of important concepts, were detected in the pairs of articles reviewed, four from each encyclopedia,” reported Nature. “But reviewers also found many factual errors, omissions or misleading statements: 162 and 123 in Wikipedia and Britannica, respectively.”
Not bad for a reference work whose open nature allows for inaccuracy, opinion and outright vandalism… Certainly, it’s testament to the innovative power of Wikipedia. “People will find it shocking to see how many errors there are in Britannica,” Michael Twidale, an information scientist at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, told Nature. “Print encyclopedias are often set up as the gold standards of information quality against which the failings of faster or cheaper resources can be compared. These findings remind us that we have an 18-carat standard, not a 24-carat one.” Editors at Brittanica wouldn’t comment on the flaws in their work, but had no trouble sounding off about those in Wikipedia. “We have nothing against Wikipedia,” said Tom Panelas, director of corporate communications at the company’s headquarters in Chicago. “But it is not the case that errors creep in on an occasional basis or that a couple of articles are poorly written. There are lots of articles in that condition. They need a good editor.”
The Net and the future of newspapers
Typically thoughtful post by Scott Rosenberg on the way the Internet is affecting newspapers. Excerpt:
The newspapers I grew up loving and that I worked for during the first half of my career represent a model that we’ve taken for granted because it’s had such longevity. But there’s nothing god-given or force-of-nature-like to the shape of their product or business; it’s simply an artifact of history that you could roll together a bundle of disparate information — news reports, stock prices, sports scores, display ads, reviews, classified ads, crossword puzzles and so on — sell it to readers, and make money.
Today that bundle has already fallen apart on the content side: there’s simply no reason for newspapers to publish stock prices, for instance; it’s a practice that will simply disappear over the next few years — it’s sheer tree slaughter. On the business side, it is beginning to fall apart, too. It just makes way more sense to do classified advertising online. And it’s cheaper, too, thanks to Craigslist, the little community (I am proud to have been a subscriber to Craig Newmark’s original mailing list on the Well back in 1994 or 1995 or whenever it was) that turned into a big deal.
Wikilaw launched
Main page here. Its goal is “to build the largest open-content legal resource in the world”. It claims there are “roughly 1,000,000 lawyers in the United States”. Pardon me while I lie down in a darkened room. It’s the thought of all those lawyers laid end to end.
I love the story about Sam Johnson and James Boswell walking together down a street behind another chap. The great Doctor pulled Boswell aside and whispered, “I don’t wish to speak ill of any other person, but I believe that man is an attorney”.
The Uses of Play-Doh
Er, so much for fingerprint scanning. According to this report from Clarkson University,
Fingerprint scanning devices often use basic technology, such as an optical camera that take pictures of fingerprints which are then “read” by a computer. In order to assess how vulnerable the scanners are to spoofing, Schuckers and her research team made casts from live fingers using dental materials and used Play-Doh to create molds. They also assembled a collection of cadaver fingers.In the laboratory, the researchers then systematically tested more than 60 of the faked samples. The results were a 90 percent false verification rate.
But do not despair, Homeland Security Spokespersons. Help is at hand. The Clarkson researchers found that if you scan for sweat, then the detection of fakes improves.
Which only goes to prove that, as someone once said, “genius is five percent inspiration and 95% perspiration”.
(Sorry — couldn’t resist that.) Thanks to the Guardian Online Blog for the link.
The Nokia 770 Internet Tablet
The Alexa story
John Battelle, author of an excellent book on search, has a hyperbolic post on his Blog. It begins like this…
Every so often an idea comes along that has the potential to change the game. When it does, you find yourself saying – “Sheesh, of course that was going to happen. Why didn’t I predict it?” Well, I didn’t predict this happening, but here it is, happening anyway.
In short, Alexa, an Amazon-owned search company started by Bruce Gilliat and Brewster Kahle (and the spider that fuels the Internet Archive), is going to offer its index up to anyone who wants it. Alexa has about 5 billion documents in its index – about 100 terabytes of data. It’s best known for its toolbar-based traffic and site stats, which are much debated and, regardless, much used across the web.
OK, step back, and think about that. Anyone can use Alexa’s index, to build anything. But wait, there’s more. Much more…
It’s all done with web services. And it might indeed be significant because it could enable small but ingenious players to get into the search market.
The BBC is going to put its programme catalogue online
Yep. It says so, here.