Depending on who you ask, the first bloggering happened in the late 1990s, when the web was still young, and clicking links to pages where you'd click more links was cool. This was in the days when the only use for an animated GIF was to tell people you were still working on your web page. Even if you weren't.
"I invented bloggering," says mad old Laurence Fortey, a mad old internet guy from the old, old days. He can remember hand-coded websites. He started coding his own just weeks after Tim Berners-Lee, a tunnel engineer helping to build the STERN protein collider, discovered ancient scrolls buried in the Swiss soil that revealed the secrets of HTML.
Since its launch in 2001, Wikipedians have created about 4.5 million articles on the English version of Wikipedia alone which is roughly equivalent to 2000+ print volumes of the Encyclopædia Britannica. If you are also interested in becoming a contributor, follow the Wikipedia tutorial or get the Missing Manual which is available online for free.
Q: Can I download Wikipedia? Or maybe buy Wikipedia on a DVD just like Britannica?
You can download Wikipedia through Kiwix. It is a single zip file that’s also available via BitTorrent. A children’s charity group in UK has created a Wikipedia DVD with some 6000+ articles for school children that you can download at schools-wikipedia.org.
Q: How do I know which Wikipedia pages are linking to my website?
A: Open the Link Search tool on Wikipedia and type the address of your website. Always use a wildcard before the domain name to take care of both www and non-www links. For instance, a query like *.xyz.com will show all Wikipedia articles that link to the xyz.com site.
Q: How do I save Wikipedia pages as PDF ebooks?
A: You can use the book creator tool inside Wikipedia to create an ePUB or PDF ebook from one or more Wikipedia articles.
Q: Share me some cool tools and mashups built around Wikipedia?
A: Here’s an updated list:
stats.grok.se – Find the daily pageviews (traffic) of any article on Wikipedia.
Deletionpedia – this is an archive of pages that have been deleted from the main Wikipedia website.
Wikipedia Vision- See edits happening on Wikipedia from different parts of the world in near real-time.
User Edits – Get a list of all the deletes and edits made to a Wikipedia page by any particular user.
Wikimindmap – It creates mind map of any Wikipedia article with the various nodes pointing to other articles that are linked from the main article.
@CongressEdits – This is a Twitter bot that tweets anonynous edits made to Wikipedia from IP address in the US Congress.
Edit List – The list of most active Wikipedia users by the number of edits.
Count List – The list of most active Wikipedians by the number of articles created.
Wiki Blame- quickly find the author(s) of any specific passage of a Wikipedia article.
Wiki Checker – Get a list of all users who have edited a particular Wikipedia article.
User Contribution – See the contributions and edit history of any Wikipedia user.
Wikistream – Visualize the current editing activity on Wikipedia in realtime.
Q: I want to contribute to Wikipedia but the Wiki syntax is confusing.
A: You can write a document inside Microsoft Word and then use this extension to convert the Word Document into MediaWiki markup that Wikipedia can understand. Alternatively, you can write in HTML and use a convertor to transform the HTML tags into Wiki markup.
Q: I am looking for some free images for my website. Can I use images from Wikipedia without worrying about copyright?
A: It depends. Every image (or media) available on Wikipedia has an associated copyright tag which indicates the license of that file. This page has more information on reusing content outside Wikipedia.
Q: Does Wikipedia offer RSS feeds?
A: Every article on Wikipedia has an RSS feed though they aren’t obvious. Click the “History” tab on any Wikipedia page and you’ll find RSS icons in the left toolbox. See: How to Track Wikipedia Articles.
Q: Wikipedia is blocked in the country. Any workarounds?
A: Please read this guide on how to access blocked sites for reading Wikipedia through alternate routes.
Q. How should I create links to Wikipedia articles?
A: Wikipedia articles change with time. Therefore when you are linking to any Wikipedia page from your website, consider linking to the current snapshot of the page and not the main article. You can find the permalink (URL) to the page snapshot in the right sidebar as “Permanent Link.”
A groundbreaking work -- named one of the five most influential sports books of the decade by Sports Illustrated -- How Soccer Explains the World is a unique and brilliantly illuminating look at soccer, the world's most popular sport, as a lens through which to view the pressing issues of our age, from the clash of civilizations to the global economy.
i'm so pleased to learn this is a thing that happens.
Later this week, the World Bodypainting Festival begins in Austria, but last month a similar competition took place in the southern hills of China: Buffalo Painting. Located in Jiangcheng county, the annual International Buffalo Bodypainting competition coincides with the region’s founding. This year marked the 60th anniversary for Jiangcheng, and a total of 48 water buffaloes got “dressed” for the occasion.
The tradition behind painting the animals stems from a local story in which a buffalo was attacked by a tiger. As the creatures fought and struggled in a field, the buffalo became caked with mud and blood. The tiger looked at the buffalo, became scared and ran away. Some local herders began painting their buffaloes to keep predators away and eventually a festival of painting the buffaloes emerged.
Each buffalo in the competition was painted by 3-7 artists, with the cash prize for the most beautiful example a sizable 100,000 yuan ($16,042). Some of the competitors are from other countries such as Laos, Vietnam, New Zealand, Finland and Germany. This year, at the end of the harvest themed festival, a group of schoolchildren took home the big prize.
For every doomsday net neutrality thing I post, it's nice to remember that good people doing good things happens.
We're here at the MIT Knight Civic Media Conference, where Alberto Ibarguen and John Bracken have just announced the winners of the latest news challenge, which asked the question "How can we strengthen the Internet for free expression and innovation?" Sands Fish and I were there to liveblog the presentation of grantees. Willow Brugh contributed artwork.
Two of this round's grantees went to public libraries that are planning initiatives for community members to check out WIFI hotspots for their neighborhoods: the New York Public Library's "Check out the Internet" project and "Internet to Go" by the Chicago Public Library. Here's what they said when they went onstage:
Check Out the Internet - @NYPL works to bridge the digital divide by allowing New York residents with limited Internet to borrow portable WIFI hotspots (Tony Marx, James English). Tony describes the New York Public LIbrary as a 19th century institution trying to transform itself for the 21st century. The NYPL is the largest library system in America. Combined, they have 40 million physical visits, more than the cultural institutions and sports events combined. The NYPL is the largest free provider of computer training in New York. A third of New Yorkers rely on them because they don't have computers at home.
Tony Marx gets on stage to tell us more: when first arrived at the library, he was dismayed that publishers weren't allowing libraries to borrow electronic books. He worried about a future where people would not have access to books if they chose to read them electronically. A technology designed to increase access to knowledge was going to reduce that access. Lending electronic books is now an opportunity for all libraries.
Through their partnership with the Digital Public Library of America, the NYPL is excited to create a future vision where everything is online for free any time. That's the holy grail. In the meantime, they noticed that 46% of New York households with incomes below $35k have no broadband access -- around a third of all New Yorkers. In the South Bronx and Harlem, around 90% people can't afford Internet access. The NYPL could have all the content in the world and pump it out for free, and people couldn't get it. When they open the library, there's a line. When they close, people sit on their stoop to get WIFI.
Libraries are no longer constrained by walls -- provision of access should not be constrained. Since NYPL is in every neighborhood, they decided to let's leak purposefully. They've designed an approach that uses MIFI hotspots, testing with 100 hotspots. With Knight Foundation money and another $1.5 million they're raising, they want to provide 10,000 hotspots to people involved in their education programs: the 8k students involved in out of school learning, the 10.5k ESOL students, and the 1.5k students involved in technology training. To demonstrate that this is nationally possible, the NYPL is partnering with Brooklyn and Queens libraries, as well as libraries in Kansas and Maine.
This is about everyone in America, sys Tony. Close to 100 million americans don't have the Internet access we take for granted. If America leaves a third of its population behind, we will not have an economy that works and we won't have a democracy that works.
The Internet To Go at the Chicago Public Library is offering communities WIFI hotspots to check out to access information (Brian Bannon, Michelle Frisque, Andrew Medlar)
Andrew Medlar gets on stage to tell us about The Chicago Public LIbrary, which is already in every community in the city of Chicago. Their new Internet to Go project will distribute WIFI hotspots to community members in areas that have limited access to the Internet. The library already loans fishing poles, school backpacks, and robots. They're giong to start by rolling out 300 of these hotspots in 3 branches in targeted communities. They plan to triple that after the initial pilot. They will double this number after 3 months.
The library hopes that these WIFI hotspots will help community members to learn how the Internet can be relevant to them. They hope to reach 10,000 people in their first year and create a proof of concept that can inspire other libraries to do similar work.
In honor of the U.S. team's big match against Germany today, we decided to collect some of our favorite GIFs and memes from the World Cup so far. Check them out here.
Maybe it's because it's New Castle or maybe it's that old camera magic, but this place looks timeless.
Jonathan Keys is on a mission to bring traditional methods of photography back to the spotlight. Instead of going around the streets with the latest DSLR, Keys takes his 130 year old wooden camera and his 1920s lens to find subjects. Roaming his home city of Newcastle, he captures a classical England in modern times.
Keys uses a wet-plate collodion process in developing the shots; and due to the labor involved, he can only really take two to six images a day. Regardless of the difficulty, he is appreciative of the work involved in the process. “It’s definitely far more rewarding than digital photography because of the time and attention needed for each picture.”
In a world where everyone and their grandmother is taking instant photos with their phones, tablets and cameras, it’s nice to appreciate the “old days” when every single image needed some love and attention to come to life. Check out more of Jonathan’s work on his site, 47 Images.
Nobody really talks about discrimination in these terms. It's pretty stark when you think about where you can go easily and why...and who can't.
People may be increasingly leaning on technology and personal devices to house their personal information, but a hard copy passport still carries a hefty amount of weight. This infographic offers a glimpse into the power of the world's passports -- ranked by the travel freedom a passport holder enjoys.
Tim Wu, the Columbia Law School professor and author who coined the phrase "network neutrality," is running for lieutenant governor in New York.
If he wins, Wu will try to block Comcast's attempted purchase of Time Warner Cable. While the merger is being reviewed by federal regulators, it is also being reviewed at the state level. In New York, the Public Service Commission is scrutinizing the deal.
"The main issue [related to technology] I'm focusing on right now is Comcast and the really big mergers," Wu told Ars today. While the lieutenant governor doesn't make merger decisions, "I see the lieutenant governor position as one that puts pressure on other agencies and advocates for the public's interest. I would push the agencies to block the Comcast merger," he said.
The World Cup started in Brazil this week among celebration and protests. The host nation won the game opener in front of 62,100 fans at Corinthians Arena in Sao Paulo, and masses watched in various positions around the country and world. -Some in protest that a huge amount of funds are directed to this prominent event.--Leanne Burden Seidel (27 photos total)
A boy runs in a decorated street in Fortaleza, Brazil , June 12. The FIFA World Cup 2014 is taking place in Brazil from June 12 to July 13. (JARBAS OLIVEIRA/EPA)
As the FCC sleazes its way towards a world of cable company fuckery, Bittorrent's Join the Fastlane provides a preview of a world where your ability to get reliable access to parts of the Internet you love is a function of those sites' willingness to bribe your ISP for "premium" carriage.
Read the rest
I feel that the current trends in cereal box art--the wildly distorted faces and poses, the lurid digital-airbrush modeling--have surely reached some kind of maximum.
don't know if you go for music, but this is really damn good.
The New Jersey native Sharon Van Etten has just joined the long, long list of indie types who have covered Bruce Springsteen. In her case, she did a soft, emotive solo-piano version of “Drive All Night,” a slow, grand centerpiece from The River. She did it for The A.V. Club’s new video series Pioneering, performing her version at the storied old club the Stone Pony, in Springsteen’s old Asbury Park stomping grounds. Watch her version of the song, along with another video of her talking about Springsteen, below.
What exactly is a good shot in soccer? The nascent field of soccer analytics is hard at work trying to figure that out. It won't surprise anybody to learn that closer is better, and using your feet is much, much better than using your head. So, much like getting into the lane is of paramount importance in basketball, getting the ball at your feet in front of the goal is just about the best thing you can do in soccer. Getting to the byline (baseline) in the corner of the penalty areas (like where Maicon was in the above video) is a hot destination. That's where you can cut the ball back for a teammate to have one of those coveted close shots. Hey, look at that - it's like basketball again: Get to the goal or get to the corners.
In the interest of spreading good music, read about Coltrane. THANKS.
"The day after Christmas, in 2012, I packed my rented Chevrolet Impala in New Orleans and drove five hours northwest to Shreveport. My plan was to spend a couple of days with Dr. Cuthbert Simpkins, Coltrane biographer and trauma surgeon." An Absolute Truth: On Writing a Life of Coltrane, by Sam Stephenson. Splendid.
Beginning June 12, the world’s eyes will turn to Brazil for the start of the 20th FIFA World Cup. In celebration of the event, ESPN commissioned Brazilian artist and graphic designer Cristiano Siqueira to make a series of images featuring each team… and they capture the passion of the game perfectly.
Each image tells the unique story of the featured team, including favorite heroes along with a representation of the countries flag. Siqueira also included each team’s stylized nickname – from Les Bleus and the Dragons, to The Yanks and Seleção.
Make one of these your phone’s wallpaper and you’ll be plenty pumped when the first kick happens.
Compelling! I wish he would comment more on how to improve improv'd scenes.
Using Edgar Wright as a positive example, Tony Zhou laments the lack of good visual comedy in American comedies and provides examples from Wright's films (Hot Fuzz, Shaun of the Dead, etc.) to show how it's done properly.
Exactly 69 years ago today, on April 24, 1945, a young trumpet player named Miles Dewey Davis got the chance of a lifetime. He had recently left his native East St. Louis for New York City, and at only seventeen years old, he was playing alongside the legendary Charlie Parker. On this day, he was heading into the recording studio for the first time. Perhaps he wasn’t quite up to the task: in his first recordings, Miles’ playing comes across as tentative, especially when compared to Parker’s confident saxophone. But Miles soon found his voice, and over the next forty five years, his vision pushed him into uncharted territory and repeatedly redefined the scope of jazz.
May 27, 1957 Columbia 30th Street Studios, NYC
But Miles Davis didn’t do it alone. At every step of his career he surrounded himself with wonderfully talented musicians who were innovators in their own right. Gil Evans’ arrangements helped drive the birth of cool jazz and supported Miles’ orchestral explorations of the late 1950s. John Coltrane recorded his groundbreaking album Giant Steps only a few weeks after performing on Miles’ Kind of Blue, the best selling jazz album of all time. And in the 1960s and 70s, Miles was backed by players who would become the vanguard of ’70s jazz-rock fusion, including Herbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter, Chick Corea, and John McLaughlin.
In fact, there are too many talented musicians to name, so we put together Scaled in Miles, an interactive look at Miles Davis’ career and collaborations. Using the history of his recording sessions as documented by the Jazz Discography Project, we show every session that led to a recording, and if that recording is available on iTunes, you can listen to a sample. By scrubbing and clicking over the timeline of recording sessions, you can see who performed with Miles on each date. You can also find specific artists and highlight their sessions by clicking on the circles, or by entering different names in the search box. Larger circles indicate artists who had more sessions with Miles.
Beating into towering walls of freezing water in search of fish, crab and octopus might not sound like the most enjoyable form of employment, but photographer/fisherman Corey Arnold’s fantastic book Fish-Work: The Bering Sea surely makes it look that way (besides an odd missing finger or two).
“When the economy went South in 2002, I decided to head North and return to commercial fishing in Alaska. I landed a deckhand job aboard a 43 foot cod jigger which led to a King crab job in the Bering Sea. I spent 7 years crabbing aboard the f/v Rollo and brought my camera along to document the experience. Known as one of the world’s most dangerous jobs, we battled up to forty foot seas and a marathon of sleepless nights often working in freezing conditions. Many of my best photographs were never made as all hands were needed during the fiercest storms.”
Considering the already fierce wind and waves in many of Corey’s photographs, that’s saying a lot. You can see more of the series Fish-Work, along with enough superb water-based photography to keep any salty soul happy, at coreyfishes.com.
Everything in its own, neat, speedy, expensive, internet-destroying track. Thanks, asshats.
iOS 7 downloads helped show the need for Apple to build a CDN.
It's long been rumored that Apple is building its own content delivery network (CDN), and now it appears that the company is negotiating paid interconnection deals with "some of the largest ISPs in the US" in order to deliver Apple content to consumers.
Dan Rayburn, an analyst with extensive contacts in the CDN and Internet service provider industries, reported on Apple's latest moves today. Apple has not responded to a request for comment from Ars.
"In February I blogged about a new group formed inside of Apple last year, tasked with building out their own CDN to deliver Apple software updates, apps and other Apple related content," Rayburn wrote. "Since my post, Apple has been very busy with their build-out deploying a lot of boxes running Apache Traffic Server and buying a ton of transit, co-location, wavelengths and other infrastructure services. Their CDN is quickly growing, and it won’t be long before we start seeing a portion of their content getting delivered from their new CDN."
I feel that the current trends in cereal box art--the wildly distorted faces and poses, the lurid digital-airbrush modeling--have surely reached some kind of maximum.
Someone dug up the North American continent and transported it to Jupiter to create this awe-inspiring image. (Via Reality Carnival)
