Google has finally pulled back the curtain on a new feature that until now has been in restricted beta: the addition of wiki-style functions in standard search results. Once logged into a Google account, this allows you to click a small up or down arrow to move a specific result, click and delete it from your search entirely, or click on a small comment bubble and leave your comments on that result. Google will remember those settings the next time you search for the same keywords, and has said it may even work for similar or related searches. In many...
Google has released a new feature, called SearchWiki, that allows users to vote search results up or down, remove them entirely, or leave notes with their thoughts. While the rankings appear to only affect the account of the user who made them for now, the notes are public and readable by anyone, and seem to already be in use for discussions (see above). This move appears to have caught most users by surprise, although that reaction, in itself, should be no surprise. Google has become known over the past decade for a strong reliance on automated technology and an...
A couple of months ago, Google vice president Marissa Mayer wrote about Google’s views on the future of web search. One of the things she talked about was the ability to personalize the search experience. “Search engines of the future will be better in part because they will understand more about you, the individual user,” she wrote. One way they could do that, is by allowing users to rate, reorder, and comment on search results, teaching the search engine over time what types of sites you like. Google tonight will be opening up to the public an experimental feature they’ve...
Eric from Creative Commons sez, Creative Commons is in the midst of its annual fundraising campaign. To help support us, Jonathan Coulton has released his greatest hits compilation "JoCo Looks Back" on limited edition CC-branded USB drives that come stocked not only with the standard mixes of the album's songs, but also the unmixed audio stems (i.e. separated vocal track, guitar track, drum track, etc.). All of the material is under a CC BY-NC-SA license and ready to share and remix. The drives are available to people who contribute $50 or more to Creative Commons before December 31. And if...
Wikipedia, to cofounder Jimmy Wales's eternal dismay, is a nonprofit project rather than a lucrative private enterprise. The online encyclopedia, home to volunteer-written disquisitions on subjects like the umlaut in names of heavy metal bands, hopes to raise $6 million this year in a fundraising drive now featured in prominent ads on the top of most pages on the otherwise ad-free site. How's it going? An online thermometer, which has popped on and off the site, shows that the effort has raised $2,155,883 towards its $6 million goal. But that figure is meant to deceive potential donors about the level...
Wikipedia, to cofounder Jimmy Wales's eternal dismay, is a nonprofit project rather than a lucrative private enterprise. The online encyclopedia, home to volunteer-written disquisitions on subjects like the umlaut in names of heavy metal bands, hopes to raise $6 million this year in a fundraising drive now featured in prominent ads on the top of most pages on the otherwise ad-free site. How's it going? Hard to say, since the Wikimedia Foundation, Wikipedia's nonprofit parent, has removed an online "thermometer" which tracks the effort's progress. A good thing, since the thermometer was an intentional lie, meant to deceive potential donors...
Money is a commodity. What venture capitalists really bank is their reputation. And Jeremy Levine of Bessemer Venture Partners has just signaled that he's willing to cash in his reputation to protect a piddling $4 million investment. Levine is not amused by our report of how Levine got Wikipedia cofounder Jimmy Wales fired from his job as CEO of Wikia, calling it a lie. The report is accurate, Wikia insiders confirm; Levine's denial is the lie. The only mystery here: Why is Levine willing to dissemble for Wales? The answer is pure self-interest. $4 million is nothing to a 97-year-old...
Hulu, News Corp and NBC’s “YouTube killer“, just turned one year old. And while YouTube is far from dead, Hulu’s 142 million video views in September might qualify as a paper cut. Other “killers” heralded by the technology press…rarely leave a mark. 1. The Digg Killer Remember MySpace News, the site that we and other news outlets considered a possible Digg killer? Launched in April 2007, MySpace’s Digg challenger is down for the count. 2. The Google Killer While we didn’t buy into the hype on this occasion, the tech press as a whole debated whether new search engine Cuil...
AFP - The age of public collaboration over the Internet is still only in its infancy, Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales told AFP in an interview....
Why did Jimmy Wales, the cofounder of Wikipedia, an online compendium which includes the world's most detailed article on flim-flams, step down as CEO of Wikia, the for-profit website host which recently laid off some of its employees? The way Wales likes to tell the story, years later, he realized he was a free-flying entrepreneur, not an earthbound bureaucrat. So he hired Gil Penchina, a former eBay executive, to mind the shop. That's not what really happened. Wales was fired from his job as CEO by the company's investors. The cause? The same kind of expense-account hijinks that landed him...
Even Bono's privacy is an illusion. A picture of the U2 rocker with two comely teenagers, Hannah Emerson and Andrea Feick, was leaked to the Daily Mail via Facebook. (The site has notoriously bad security on its online photo albums. Know someone who knows someone who knows someone? You can see their pics, no problem.) We now understand why Wikipedia cofounder Jimmy Wales likes to pal around with Bono; great minds think below the belt. Can you think of a better caption? Leave it in the comments. The best one will become the post's new headline. Friday's winner: kgbeat, who...
Even Bono's privacy is an illusion. A picture of the U2 rocker (and venture-capital investor at Silicon Valley's Elevation Partners) with two comely teenagers, Hannah Emerson and Andrea Feick, was leaked to the Daily Mail via Facebook. (The site has notoriously bad security on its online photo albums. Know someone who knows someone who knows someone? You can see their pics, no problem.) We now understand why Wikipedia cofounder Jimmy Wales likes to pal around with Bono; great minds think below the belt. Can you think of a better caption? Leave it in the comments. The best one will become...
Cindy Adams, the endearingly batty New York Post gossipeuse, is mad at Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia. Her beef: She complained about her Wikipedia entry to him two months ago, and he has done nothing. She's so mad, she has found words that rhyme with wiki, like "sticky" and "icky." She has also done investigative reporting about Barack Obama's Wikipedia entry, discovering it that it is now "14 pages long." We think that means she had one of her assistants print it out. Cindy, Cindy, Cindy. That is not how you get your Wikipedia entry edited. Here are your...
When someone announces that they're doing something for the children, one is supposed to applaud dutifully and not ask questions. So it goes with the Wikimedia Foundation's latest announcement. The nonprofit parent of Jimmy Wales's Wikipedia has issued a new edition of the online encyclopedia, carefully screened and selected for children. The question Wikimedia doesn't want anyone to ask: Has the foundation's employees been screened and selected just as carefully. Erik Möller, Wikimedia's deputy director, has a troubling past history of defending pedophilia. He oversees the volunteer administrators who direct the editing of the site's content. Should this not give...
