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WikiLook Displays Dictionary Word Definitions Without Leaving The Website

Martin — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 10:29:09 +0000

If you want to look up the definition of a word in a web browser you usually have to open a second browser window or tab and open a web dictionary to do so. The Firefox add-on WikiLook optimizes the process by displaying word definitions that are listed in the Wiktionary dictionary directly on the active website containing the word that needs to be looked up.

Here is how the Firefox add-on works. Wikilook offers several methods of looking up words on web pages. The unobtrusive approach works by pressing the shift key and moving the mouse over a word that needs to be looked up in a dictionary.

This will automatically open a small popup window next to the word or phrase that should be looked up in the dictionary. The word definition will stay on the screen until the left mouse button is pressed by the user which closes the popup window.

Word phrases can also be looked up in dictionaries. This is done by selecting the phrase with the left-mouse button before pressing shift and holding the mouse cursor over the phrase. This will then look up the selected phrase in the dictionary. It is possible to follow links that are displayed in the dictionary popup window. A left-click would open the page in the same tab. A middle-click or pressing Ctrl while left-clicking will open the link in a new tab instead.

WikiLook can also look up words in Wikipedia and Uncyclopedia. These look ups are initiated by pressing the Ctrl or Alt keys and right-clicking on a word or phrase that should be looked up. These functionality did not work properly on our Windows XP test system with Firefox 3.5.2 installed. It could be that another Firefox add-on interfered with this option though. If any of you who install the add-on can get this to work let us know.

The English pages of Wikipedia, Wiktionary and Uncyclopedia are used by default. Users who want to access dictionary definitions in other languages can change the English pages in the options easily to other language pages. The add-on comes with advanced settings that can only be accessed in the about:config menu. Easiest way to do so is to filter for wikilook in the configuration menu.

Most of the configuration settings define aspects of the popup window that is displaying the dictionary definitions.

Wikilook provides one of the most unobtrusive ways of looking up words in dictionaries saving users who do so regularly lots of time.

Tags: dictionary, dictionary look up, firefox-add on, wikilook, wikipedia, wiktionary, word definition, word look up

Download Wikipedia With Okawix To Access The Data Locally

Martin — Sat, 22 Aug 2009 16:58:25 +0000

Wikipedia is a popular online encyclopedia that is used by most users to get a quick overview on a certain topic. Wikipedia and its sister websites like Wikimedia or Wikiquotes can not only be accessed from desktop computers and web browsers but also from smartphones and other electronic devices. All have in common that an online connection is required to access the contents.

Okawix now offers a solution to download the full Wikipedia archive (and the archives of all sister sites) to the local computer system. The software offers its own web browser that can be used to navigate the websites normally once they have been downloaded to the local hard drive. This is an excellent solution for situations where no online connection is available.

The software program displays all supported languages in its interface on the first startup. The user can then select one or multiple languages to download contents in these languages. Okawix will then display the available Wiki websites and their size. Included are Wikibooks, Wikinews, Wikipedia, Wikiquote, Wikisource, Wikiversity and Wiktionary. The size of each download ranges from a few Megabytes to astronomical 6 Gigabytes for the English Wikipedia website.

A click on the download link beneath each entry will initiate the download of that database to the local computer system.

Okawix will ask the user to select a path for the download which can be saved so that it will be automatically picked for additional downloads. Images can be downloaded optionally. This will increase the size of the download.

The main interface of Okawix will then display the downloaded Wiki websites in the left sidebar offering a search engine and web browser. There are also options to print a page and find words in the page.

Okawix provides an easy way to download Wiki websites to a local computer system. The integrated web browser is responsive enough to offer a great offline working experience. It would be nice if the developers would add an option to automatically update the downloaded contents with new content that has been added to Wiki websites. Okawix is available for Windows, Linux and Mac.

via Instant Fundas

Tags: apple software, download wikipedia, encyclopedia, linux software, okawix, wikipedia, wikipedia download, wikipedia offline, windows software

Make Wikipedia more usable with Vector

Joe — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 00:48:31 +0000

Wikimedia recently conducted a study into how to make their projects, like Wikipedia, more usable and user friendly. The study highlighted a number of interesting points, like that many users had never been to Wikipedia’s homepage, instead finding articles through search engines. These points have helped steer development.

One of the first things to come out of the Usability Project was a new skin. Wikipedia currently uses a skin called Monobook and has done so for over five years. Since Monobook was chosen, design trends have changed, as have web browsers and the way in which we surf.

The skin, called Vector, makes a number of changes. Vector gives the searchbar a more prominent location, declutters pages and looks much more modern. Basically, it makes it much easier to browse Wikipedia.

Registered users can choose a variety of skins and ‘gadgets’.

To enable the Vector skin, registered users need only go to the ‘Appearance’ tab in the ‘My Preferences‘ page and select Vector.

The usability project has many other plans, and aims to make editing more accessible. This is just a first step, but in my opinion still a marked difference.

Tags: skin, The Web, vector skin, wiki, wikimedia, wikipedia

Google Unified Search

Martin — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 09:02:52 +0000

You need to search on multiple search engines if you truly want to research a search term, as opposed to simply finding a solution to it. Some users might think that searching in Google is enough to find all the relevant information about a search term and while that may be true more often than not it is a good practice to verify that all relevant websites have been discovered by cross-checking in other search engines.

Google Unified Search is a very interesting search add-on for the Firefox web browser. You might have read about add-ons that combine Google search results with those of other search engines such as Bing or Wolfram Alpha. Google Unified Search takes that concept a step further by integrating multiple search engines in Google results. It adds support for Bing, Wikipedia, Wolfram Alpha, Stumbleupon and Delicious in the Google search results.

Search results of one search engine besides Google Search are displayed at a time but it is possible to switch to the results of another one without having to reload the page. By default Google search results and Bing search results are displayed in the interface. A control in the top right corner makes it possible to switch the alternative search engine to another one.

A left click on a search result in the Google column will open the website as usual. A click on a result in the alternative search engine on the other hand will open the result just in the area of that search engine. Users who want to open the website normally will have to open it in a new tab or window instead.

Google Unified Search is an excellent way of displaying additional information about a search term in the Google search results.

Tags: bing, del.icio.us, firefox, firefox-add on, Google, google search, google unified search, stumbleupon, wikipedia, wolfram alpha

Read Deleted Wikipedia Pages On Deletionpedia

Martin — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 14:57:55 +0000

Many users think that nothing gets ever deleted on Wikipedia. There might be some heavy editing going on from time to time but deleting pages? If you visit the website Deletionpedia you will soon realize that Wikipedia pages get regularly deleted. Pages in this case meaning the page including all of its contents.

Deletionpedia provides a mirror of these deleted pages so that they can still be accessed by interested users. The website offers for example pages like “2008 United States presidential election controversies and attacks”, “Elvis Sightings” or a “list of female basketball players”. Searching for some of the phrases on Wikipedia will lead the visitor to a more general page that covers the topic. A search for “Blood Angels” will for example open the Space Marines (Warhammer 40,000) on Wikipedia while Deletionpedia still offers the original Blood Angels Wikipedia entry.

Most Deletionpedia pages contain links to the deletion discussion on Wikipedia which can shed some light on the deletion motives. Some pages contain additional information that the page is going to be transferred to another Wiki in the future.

Deletionpedia is an interesting project that currently hosts more than 60.000 Wikipedia pages that have been deleted. Interested users can browse Deletionpedia by various parameters including date of deletion, by number of revisions or editors.

Tags: deletionpedia, encyclopedia, internet, Online Services, wikipeda tips, wikipedia

Wikipedia gets books and gets printed

Joe — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 20:26:40 +0000

Last year, the German Wikipedia was printed. Now, many Wikipedias worldwide – including the English Wikipedia – has given people the opportunity to compile a book of Wikipedia articles which can then be professionally printed or exported as a PDF or OpenDocument.

Wikipedia has enabled the ‘Book’ extension to MediaWiki, the content management system it utilises. This adds a ‘add page’ link to every page, allowing users to compile a book. This book can then be sorted by the user into chapters. Afterwards, it can be shared with other Wikipedians. Currently, only logged-in users can utilise this tool.

Wikipedia has a built-in rendering engine which will grabs the pages, fetches the images and parses them before they are given to the user as a PDF or OpenDocument text. The user can also use PediaPress to have the book professionally bound and printed.

The ‘Book’ extension has a number of features for ‘expert’ users. For example, the user can elect to only include a certain version of an article. This could pose useful if the article being covered has reached ‘Featured’ or ‘Good’ quality, as they are sure information in the version which reached that standard is reliable and accurate.

Books can be made on any topic, or combinations of topics, on Wikipedia (or other projects with have enabled this extension, such as Wikibooks). There are some restrictions on what can be printed, as PediaPress are based in Germany so German law applies.

It is an amazing display of quite how big Wikipedia is. I made a book about the European Union, comprising about 45 articles, and when I sent it to PediaPress, it totalled a massive 2444 pages (3 volumes!). I shan’t be buying this, as it will cost me about €80! Prices for smaller books start at $8.90 for 100 pages. A fraction of this is donated to the Wikimedia Foundation. These books are black and white and measure 8″ x 5.5″ (about 20cmx14cm).

The books (from the preview I’ve seen) and the PDFs are well laid out. The PDFs are all selectable and are easy to navigate. It also contains links to the images’ pages. Amusingly, to maintain GFDL compatibility every editor to the article has to be mentioned! I, for example, are credited for writing a minute amount of the article on the Czech Republic.

I question how popular this will be though; as convenient as books may be, I would imagine institutions like schools would rather buy published textbooks than volunteer made ones.

It is worth emphasising that Wikibooks contains resources written as textbook entries, rather than articles. Perhaps that will be a practical application of PediaPress and this new move.

More information is available on the Wikpedia help page.

TechCrunch has also covered this story, but I simply found it through browsing Wikipedia!

Tags: books, Open Source, opendocument, pdf, pediapress, reference, wiki, wikibooks, wikimedia, wikipedia

QuickWiki Integrates Wiktionary And Wikipedia Into Firefox

Martin — Sun, 22 Feb 2009 16:37:05 +0000

QuickWiki is a handy experimental Firefox add-on for users who work with Wikipedia and Wiktionary regularly. The Firefox add-on adds a quick look up feature into the web browser that can be used to quickly gain information about a selected word or phrase on a website. QuickWiki opens the information that it has retrieved in an overlay on the same page unlike other add-ons that open the information in a new tab or window.

The results are shown pretty fast, it usually took less than a second for them to be displayed on the page. The Firefox add-on makes use of three different keyboard and mouse shortcuts. Pressing Shift and clicking the right-mouse button will look up the selected word in Wiktionary, while Ctrl and the right-mouse button will look it up in Wikipedia. The last shortcut can be used to open the quick search dialog. The shortcuts can be customized which might be necessary depending on other add-ons installed on the computer.

QuickWiki is an experimental Firefox add-on. This means that it can only be downloaded and installed after logging into the Mozilla website. It has to be noted that the add-on is currently only working with the English language portals of both Wikipedia and Wiktionary.

Tags: firefox, firefox wikipedia, firefox wiktionary, firefox-add on, firefox-extension, quickwiki, wikipedia, wiktionary

Visual Wikipedia

Martin — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 16:25:15 +0000

Visual Wikipedia is a visual mashup of Wikipedia information and Youtube videos. The service works much like the regular Wikipedia website with the difference that it adds additional data sources and visual information about each phrase.

The entry PHP will for instance display part of the Wikipedia article on the top of the results. A Youtube video will be shown on the right with the option to browse through all Youtube videos that are related to the search term.

Below that is probably the most interesting part of Visual Wikipedia: Related Terms. Related terms are terms that are related to the entered search term. They are shown as a tag cloud and mindmap. A click on a tag or an entry in the mindmap will load search for that term on Visual Wikipedia.

A box will all outgoing links of the Wikipedia article, recommended articles and links to different language versions is shown on the very same page as well.

Links to various external search engines are available at the bottom of the page. This includes links to Youtube, Wikipedia, Google or Flickr among others.

The main benefit of using Visual Wikipedia as opposed to the normal Wikipedia website is the additional display of information on the result pages.

Tags: encyclopedia, videos, visual wikipedia, wikipedia, wikipedia search, youtube

Become a Wikipedia poweruser

Joe — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 22:25:01 +0000

You, like me, will no doubt spend a significant amount of your time on Wikipedia so you might as well make your browsing and editing as easy as it possibly can be. Several userscripts, Firefox extensions and small tricks exist which can help maximise your Wikipedia experience.

The most useful tool to improve the browsing of Wikipedia has to be Navigational Pop-Ups. This is a Wikipedia userscript which allows the user to preview an article by hovering their mouse over a link to it; the userscript provides the first few paragraphs of an article as well as an image. The benefit of this is you can quickly understand a technical term linked to inside Wikipedia, preventing another tab from having to be opened. Popups provides a quick way for edits to be reverted (restored to a previous version). To install Popups, one must simply go to ‘Gadgets’ under ‘My Preferences’ whilst logged in and enable it.

The recent Wikipedia censorship controversy led to editors finding workarounds so they could continue to use Wikipedia. One way was to use Wikimedia’s SSL server to access Wikipedia, ensuring pages cannot be censored or edits recorded which obviously has benefits in environments like the workplace. The URL of the SSL server is https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/ (to use a different language/project, change Wikipedia to the other project, eg wikinews; or en to your language, eg de.

The Watchlist is another powerful tool built into Wikipedia. It allows you to select pages in which you have a special interest and a list is then generated of them with any edits to those pages being highlighted. To start watching a page, one must simply click ‘watch’ at the top of the page and to view it click ‘my watchlist’. Even if you don’t utilise it to monitor changes, it can act as a bookmarking tool for Wikipedia!

Directed Edge Encyclopedia is a website based on Wikipedia which adds ‘related articles’ to articles; useful to get background knowledge on a topic! One can include these in Wikipedia by going to their monobook.js page whilst logged in, pressing ‘edit’ and pasting the following:

document.write('');

A list of other cool scripts which can be installed is listed here.

Tags: wiki, wikipedia

Edit Wikipedia Articles Anonymously In The UK

Martin — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 16:48:20 +0000

You might have heard the news that several UK Internet Providers are restricting to the online encyclopedia Wikipedia after the Internet Watch Foundation identified the Wikipedia page of the Scorpions album Virgin Killer as a “potentially indecent image of a child”. Listing the page on the watchlist had the effect that several Internet Service Providers included it automatically in their list of pages that are blocked in the UK.

A side-effect was that users of those Internet Service Providers in the United Kingdom were not able to modify other Wikipedia articles anonymously anymore.

It did not take long however before some users created a Greasemonkey script Antiproxy 4 Wikipedia so that users from the United Kingdom who cannot edit Wikipedia entries anonymously anymore have the opportunity to do so. A Firefox extension based on that Greasemonkey script has been designed in the meanwhile which can also be used to edit articles anonymously.

A more technical explanation can be found at Computerworld:

The measures applied caused the ISPs to redirect traffic for a significant portion of the UK’s Internet population through six proxy servers, which can log and filter the content that is available to the end user, Wikinews say. But the knock on effect resulted in Wikipedia being unable to distinguish UK users from one another by their IP address. That triggered Wikipedia’s anti-abuse mechanism, blocking all non-registered UK users from editing articles, according to the foundation.

A search for Virgin Killer will reveal the album cover on many websites who are still available for UK users.

Tags: antiproxy, proxy, uk, united kingdom, wikimedia, wikipedia, wikipedia ban, wikipedia censorship, wikipedia proxy

Remove adverts on Wikipedia

Joe — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 20:11:58 +0000

Wikipedia are currently having their annual fundraising drive and consequently a large ‘encouragement’ to donate appears on every single encyclopedia article, which is an annoyance.

Whilst it is possible to ‘collapse’ the advertisement to a much smaller one, having to do so is about as big an annoyance as the original advertisement.

A popular Wikimedia-themed newsletter, Wikizine, pointed out that by modifying the theme, it is possible to remove it.

All registered users can edit two files which modify CSS and JavaScript on Wikipedia for them. By default, the monobook theme is used and to my knowledge, this will only under that theme.

To remove the advert, ensure you are logged in, then go to Special:mypage/monobook.css. Go to ‘edit this page’ and paste the following:

/* Remove fundraiser banner and sitenotice */ #siteNotice, #fundraiser, .fundraiser-box { display:none; !important; }

Save the page and then do a hard refresh (Ctrl+F5). The advert should be gone!

Wikimedia obviously requires money in order to operate and they massively value donations, but I find begging for money in such an obtrustive fashion very annoying and it really makes Wikipedia less easy to use.

Tags: adverts, css, wikipedia

Get Free Images, Video and Sound from Wikimedia Commons

Joe — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 20:01:32 +0000

When creating a presentation, a web design, a leaflet or a brochure, it is important to find suitable images to use. Whilst one option is to pay for stock photos to use under a restrictive licence, another option is to find free (gratis and libre) photos.

Wikimedia Commons is the repository which Wikipedias and other Wikimedia projects use for the majority of their media. Wikimedia Commons has 3.5 million files: over 1 million more than the total amount of articles on the English Wikipedia.

Any media, whether that be music, a video or an image, on Wikimedia Commons can be commercially re-used and generally speaking the only major licensing limitation is that credit may have to be provided to the creator and copyright holder, if any.

Wikimedia Commons has some amazing photography and has many useful illustrations, such as maps and diagrams. The vast majority of images on the site are categorised extremely well, and they can either be browsed through the categories or use the substandard search tool available.

Many public domain recordings are on Wikimedia Commons and there’s a wide range of classical music and opera available for download. All audio/visual media is stored in the form of OGG files, which may have to be converted before use, but will be natively supported in future versions of Firefox. Some visual recordings, such as that of “The Spirit of St. Louis”, are also available.

Most media on Wikimedia Commons are either public domain, Creative Commons, under the GFDL or licensed under another free licence, which makes it suitable for re-use.

Tags: free photos, media, Open Source, stock photographs, stock photos, wiki, wikimedia, wikimedia commons, wikipedia

Download And Use Wikipedia Offline With Firefox

Martin — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 20:20:00 +0000

Zipedia (via Instant Fundas) is actually the second (Wikipedia Taxi was the first) application that downloads Wikipedia and provides offline access to it’s contents. The main difference between Wikipedia Taxi and Zipedia is that the latter is a Firefox add-on which adds the Wikipedia offline search right into Firefox. The contents of Wikipedia can then be accessed by typing in wikipedia://wiki/ into the address bar. A keyword could probably help to reduce the address further.

The main benefit of this approach is that you can search Wikipedia while being offline. Other uses could be due to slow Internet connections or if Wikipedia is banned in the network.

The first step is the usual download of the Wikipedia articles. You can select any language version you like from the Wikipedia Dump. The import is started in the options of the add-on which also contains a download link to a recommended Wikipedia backup which has a size of more than 7 Gigabytes. Yes, the download can take a while unless you pick a different article backup. It’s also important to have enough space on the hard drive for the download.

Zipedia imports the Wikipedia download after downloading it which puts some strain on the system and takes a while as well. After that Wikipedia can be browsed by entering the address mentioned above in the Firefox address bar.

Images can’t be browsed and the search is only searching the titles of the articles and not the articles themselves which is a bit disappointing.

Tags: firefox, firefox-add on, wikipedia, wikipedia download, wikipedia offline, zipedia

WikiTaxi Takes Wikipedia Offline

Martin — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 13:53:05 +0000

WikiTaxi takes Wikipedia offline by processing Wikipedia backups and providing a browser like experience. It works by downloading the article backup of the selected language from Wikipedia and importing that backup into Wikitaxi. It is compatible not only with Wikipedia but also with other parts like Wikibooks or Wikinews.

The software program provides a great way of accessing Wikipedia offline. Even the English Wikipedia articles, which are the largest in size, fit on less than 8 Gigabyte of space meaning they can easily fit on USB drives, desktop computers and notebooks.

The only aspect that is not integrated are the images of the articles which would raise the size of the offline archive tremendously.

After downloading one of the article backups from Wikipedia and downloading & installing the WikiTaxi software the backups can be imported into the application. Here is the link to the English backup of Wikipedia, probably the one that most of my readers would want to download.

The importer can be started by clicking on the file WikiTaxi_Importer.exe; Just select the downloaded backup and a name for the converted file. It’s also possible to assign additional RAM for the process. (it did not seem to have a positive effect though) It took more than 45 minutes to convert the English article directory of Wikipedia on my computer.

Once the import has finished the newly created article index can be loaded into the main application. This can also be done automatically with the command WikiTaxi.exe path-to-taxi-file. That file had roughly twice the size of the backup that was downloaded from Wikipedia.

The interface reminds of a basic browser. Just enter a phrase in the search field to load articles about the subject. All internal links are clickable as long as they point to other articles of the same index.

Tags: encyclopedia, wikipedia, wikipedia dvd, wikipedia offline

Google Knol released to beat Wikipedia

Daniel Pataki — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 21:21:10 +0000

Google released a new service today called Google Knol, a service aimed to take on Wikipedia and in my case will definitely beat it after a while, although there are some differences which I think will make both services live on.

While Wikipedia is strictly collaborative work, Google Knol is not necessarily. If you write a Knol (much like a Wiki page) you can edit permissions, from all collaboration to closed collaboration. In my opinion this is a good move, although will have its drawbacks. On Wikipedia, articles are great and informative because in some situations thousands of people have edited an article, making it much more than sum of its parts. However sometimes a personal touch can make things better, and being able to close a Knol mans that content can’t be spammed, by being altered to show a wrong date for example.

This mostly defines the market position of the services. Knol will be used for personal promotion much more than Wikipedia, and this means that it won’t be like an encyclopedia, it will be more like a forum of knowledge in a form resembling an encyclopedia. Articles which take this too far in promoting themselves will possibly be burried under the good content, but this remains to be seen.

One thing I enjoy on Knol is the whole interface. It is much more user friendly and intuitive than Wikipedia, especially for those who are not all that experienced in these matters. Clean and simple, easy to use, the philosophy is like all other Google applications.

In conclusion this is a great implementation of the creative social knowledge model and I wish Google success with it. Some features like unpublish, inserting ads and so on alarm me a bit, but if designed well, this should pose no threat to the user experience, while giving people more impetus to work on quality Knols.

Tags: Google, knol, wikipedia

Qpedia Adds Wikipedia Search to Internet Explorer

Martin — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 11:39:50 +0000

Internet Explorer users are a bit at the bottom when it comes to useful add-ons for their browser. Sure, there is IE7 Pro which is a fantastic add-on but can you name other ones? I’m not using Internet Explorer regularly and one factor that is playing a role is the lack of add-ons that add features to the browser. In addition I think that the Windows Marketplace, that is the website that stores add-ons for Internet Explorer, is rather complex. There is no way to display only free add-ons for Microsoft Internet Explorer for example.

Qpedia is an add-on for Internet Explorer 6 and 7 that adds Wikipedia Search to the browser. The function becomes available after selecting and right-clicking text in Internet Explorer. The new entry Wikipedia is added to that menu and a click on that entry opens a new Internet Explorer window that opens the Wikipedia page that corresponds to the selected text.

There are not any options to configure the add-on properly. There is no way to make the links open in a new tab. The search also uses the English Wikipedia website to search for the phrases. This add-on could be useful to some users who search Wikipedia regularly and use Internet Explorer.

Tags: ie add-on, internet explorer add-on, internet-explorer, microsoft, wikipedia

List of problems solved by MacGyver

Martin — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 20:15:15 +0000

Today was such an evil day full of trying to solve a riddle with only a few clues that I had to find something interesting funny to post at the end of it. I loved to watch MacGyver when I was a kid, it was always cool to see how he was able to build something from nothing to get out of dangerous situations.

Much like the A-Team did in the good old days when they build some huge car to break out of their prison. It seems that someone wasted a lot of time to add a list of problems solved by MacGyver to Wikipedia. Every episode of the five seasons is mentioned in the list and it’s interesting and sometimes funny to read.

Stuff like “MacGyver builds a distraction by balancing pots and pans on a bag of ice that melts from heat produced by a toaster oven. He spreads vegetable oil in the ground to incapacitate some kidnappers” or “MacGyver starts out in Berlin, trying to escape with a microfilm containing government secrets. He takes the place of a dead person and is carried in a coffin towards a bridge, where he is dumped into the water by friends. Upon hitting the water, Mac hits a button and turns his coffin into a jet ski, riding away to safety” are precious, don’t you think..

Tags: Entertainment, fun, macgyver, tv series, wikipedia

IndyWiki a desktop Wikipedia tool

Daniel Pataki — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 09:42:48 +0000

Way back in February I found a cool tool to browse Wikipedia from the desktop called IndyWiki, so let’s get our hats and whips ready and a take a look at the application.

My first impression was that this is too simple, it doesn’t have any fancy buttons, it looks like it’s lacking some features and I generally got the impression of a quick mock-up program. When I started using it however I found that while some of my initial comments were well founded, the application is surprisingly usable, and at the very least, it provides a different experience than we’re used to.

Basically you search for a term and two things happen. You are taken to the Wikipedia page of the term (or disambiguation page), but the page itself doesn’t load, only the table of contents and the text. While this is happening, images are also loading at the top, which have some relevancy to the term, These images are also from Wikipedia, but not necessarily the same article.

You can navigate through the Wiki page by clicking on the table of contents entries. This means you get shorter snippets of information, for some this will help, others will not really like this function. The pictures are pretty usable as well, overall, I like the features the application has.

On the other hand, it really is lacking in features. While it is a cool new tool, as far as I’m concerned it is still easier to browse Wikipedia itself online. If pictures could be streamed from Flickr as well, and the contents could be pulled from dictionary.com and other services, it would make the application much better. The option to have an offline repository for articles you save, or snippets you capture is just begging to be put in, you could build your own personal knowledge base, even your own Wiki in minutes.

Tags: wikipedia

Wikia Search Alpha launches

Martin — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 17:38:05 +0000

Wikia Search is the new project by Jimmy Wales who created Wikipedia. Instead of using an algorithmic approach it combines that approach with user feedback to provide everyone with better search results. The theory sounds nice, let users week out the spam and fake websites like Made for Adsense sites and websites with no content.

But, and this is a big but in my opinion, we will most likely see more and a different kind of manipulation that could have a huge impact on search results. That being said Wikia Search Alpha launched a few days ago and the interface looks clean and crisp. It’s fast as well and has some nice Ajax build in that adds to the usability of the search.

The search itself is not up to the point yet and one should not use Wikia Search just yet to research a topic. Ratings do not work yet as well but that is understandable if you consider the fact that it is the first public release. One difference to other search engines are so called Mini articles that will be shown in the search results.

They are basically mini Wikipedia articles that can be edited by all users and display information about the search term. I’m not quite sure how this is going to work out. I mean, if I want information about Microsoft I prefer to visit the official website, Wikipedia or other encyclopedias that hold the information.

There is also the social aspect. Every search results page displays “People matching” pictures and I’m not sure what I can make of this. I prefer a search engine to provide me with the best results. I don’t want to see other people searching for the terms or people who are related to those terms. I don’t want to read mini articles about the search that I perform unless that mini articles contains the BEST links to the places where I can get the answer that I’m looking for.

I do have troubles giving users more power over the system because it will be abused, you can be sure of that. The misuse will grow with the growing popularity of Wikia Search and the creators have to make sure that it will not get out of hand like the Stumbleupon, Digg, Propeller and to a lesser extent Wikipedia spam.

Having said that it is an alpha version that works. It’s not yet the best search engine there is but it is a beginning. It does look promising and I will return and see how Wikia Search progresses over time.

Tags: Search Engines, wikia search, wikipedia

Install Wikipedia Locally

Martin — Sun, 06 Jan 2008 15:18:20 +0000

I theoretically mentioned the fact that it was possible, and in fact quite easy, to install Wikipedia locally which has several advantages but also one disadvantage. Advantages should be clear; You do not need a net connection to access the Wikipedia contents, you can distribute the solution to as many computers as you want and you can make it available in a local area network.

The only disadvantage that I can think of is that you will not use the latest version on their website and that you have to update the database to keep up to date. The English database file has a size of more than 3 Gigabytes – packed that is – and it can take some time to download it depending on your Internet connection.

I did use a download manager to make sure that the download does not get interrupted and I have to start over again. Here is the list of files that you do need, I walk you through the installation afterwards:

Wikipedia Database Snapshot – the file needed is currently called enwiki-latest-pages-articles.xml.bz2
An Apache server. I did use the free XAMPP to install it on my Windows system.
Wikifilter – the script that makes Wikipedia available in the Apache server.

I suggest you start by downloading the files needed. The Wikipedia database download will naturally take longer than the other two downloads which is excellent for our purpose. Once XAMPP has been downloaded install it. You are asked if you want to add services to your system during installation, this is not needed. Make sure you start the XAMPP control panel afterwards.

Keep this open and wait for the downloads to finish. Now unpack the file that contains the Wikipedia articles and wait for it to finish. The unpacked file has a size of more than 13 Gigabytes so make sure you have enough free hard drive space on that drive.
Now add the date of the release in the format YYYYMMDD to the file name. I added it at the end before the .xml.

Now run WikiIndex.exe and drag and drop the XML file in the program window. It starts indexing the database file which should take a while as well (5 minutes on my system). We are almost done now.

You need to locate the httpd.conf file in the XAMPP directory and add an entry to it. The file is located in xampp\apache\conf. Just open it with a normal text editor and add the following line at the end:

LoadModule WikiFilter_module “C:/Program Files/WikiFilter/WikiFilter.so”

Please replace the path to the WikiFilter.so file with the path on your system. You should also note that the file path uses “/” instead of the usual “\” to separate directories.

Start Apache using the XAMPP control panel and point your browser to the url http://localhost/wiki/.

Tags: apache, database, encyclopedia, wikipedia

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