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Yet another way to Wikipedia on your iPhone

iPhone web application developer, Comoki, has unveiled a new, iPhone-compatible Wikipedia interface. It's not alone, of course, but joins the ranks of web applications like iPodia with some nice interface improvements. It has a more reliable "Save" feature and makes some nice formatting decisions on the page, including making bulleted lists collapsible. It also makes use of a little Ajax for zooming images without reloading the page, which you may or may not prefer to the more traditional approach. I did like the search-as-you-type feature on iPodia, which is currently lacking in Comoki's version.

Of course, you may prefer to go offline with something like wikipedia-iphone (Google Code). Or perhaps make use of an older iPod for such pursuits. Welcome to a wondrous era of unlimited access to questionable information of possibly-dubious origin. Good stuff.

Mac OS X Leopard demo videos a'plenty



As excited as I am for the iPhone, I'm just as excited for Mac OS X Leopard - that's why I have to thank TUAW reader Uros for sending us a link to a big ol' batch of Leopard demo videos posted at Brightcove, a video sharing service. Demoed in the videos are features like Screen Sharing, Cover Flow, Parental Controls, new screensavers and even some interesting new stuff in Preview. Most of this stuff isn't too groundbreaking on the scale of, say, Spaces, but the devil is in the details for me and it's really interesting to see some of the handy new features that unfortunately couldn't make it into Steve's keynotes. For example: Leopard's new Dictionary app can also search Wikipedia, right from within Dictionary itself. If you're interested in seeing more of Leopard in action, these videos might satisfy your appetite - at least until Apple orders them to be taken down, of course.

Ironcoder V results



Ironcoder is a Mac software developer competition inspired by the cult Japanese television cooking show Iron Chef in which Mac developers have about a weekend to produce a cool piece of software based on a particular API and theme. The latest contest was Ironcoder V and featured the ScreenSaver.framework API with the theme "Life." The results are in, and the winner this time around is Ben Gottlieb, whose winning entry, WikiPath, displays a series of Wikipedia pages by following a random path (though the links) beginning from the Wikipedia entry on Life. The results page offers the winning entry plus several runners up for free download.

[Via GusMueller Blog]

Wikipedia battle over iPhone trademark

There's something deeply fascinating about article debates at Wikipedia; reading the intricate threads is like eavesdropping on a librarian's convention where the punch has been spiked with PCP. The tumult du jour is the involved discussion on the appropriate naming and disposition of the iPhone article.

It seems that the rational question of "What do we put at the wikipedia.org/wiki/iPhone page: the Apple product, the Cisco/Linksys product, or a disambiguation of the two products?" has led to fear, thence to anger and naturally to suffering. The commotion and disagreement apparently attracted the attention of some Cisco employees, who attempted to right the perceived injustice and were promptly chastised. The whole affair has resulted in the virtual lockdown of the iPhone page while tempers and keyboards cool off.

If you want a taste of the secret sauce that helps Wikipedia manage as a self-regulating community, check out the conventions on the naming of articles. Highly gripping; couldn't put it down.

Thanks Adam!

Pathway - Wikipedia research tool

If you're like me, Wikipedia is your go-to site for all things research and definition. Read something in an article you don't understand? Wikipedia! Friend use an obscure TLA? Wikipedia! There is almost no end to the community edited encyclopedia's usefulness.

Most visits I make to Wikipedia are just quick fact checking and the like, but every now and then I am pressed to do some good old fashioned actual research; the kind grandpa used to do in the library. For those situations, Pathway is my new best friend. Pathway is a desktop interface for Wikipedia that not only lets you view wiki pages, but keeps a history of the pages you view, and displays your history in a sexy-sexy data map. I've only just started playing with Pathway, but its sleek look, original features, and light usage footprint have already earned it a cozy new home in my Applications folder.

That unique "new Mac" smell


You all know what I'm talking about: the moment you tear open your new Mac and are greeted by that complex combination of a "little bit of plastic bag with a hint of lindenberry followed by a rush of Styrofoam." We all love it. Just like every other Apple product I've purchased new, my MacBook features that same unique scent.

I'd forgotten how much I missed it. I purchased my last Mac (a 15" Titanium PowerBook) second hand, from a smoker. Then I spilt a glass of wine on the keyboard which made it pong of cheap rosé. Needless to say, my MacBook smells significantly better than my old Mac. Its scent is amongst my most favorite smells and in my opinion it is second only to the smell of napalm in the morning.

Knowing this, you'll understand my disappointment after I Googled "that new Mac smell" and found that research suggests that the smell emanating from new gadgets is very unhealthy. Wikipedia's entry on a similar feature found in cars, "that new car smell", links to research that likens the odor to sniffing glue. There's also an article from 2004 on Geek.com that recounts evidence that toxic fire retardant chemicals found in computers can be transferred to dust. Although the article says that "two of the chemicals in question (penta and octa-brominated diphenyl) have already been banned and will no longer be used in production by the end of this year," I'm forced to reconsider my love of the smell of new Macs.

Does anyone have any information that would restore my confidence in my new Mac's smell?

Timeline of Macintosh computers



This is officially cool, mostly because I say so. Wikipedia has a graphic that charts the timeline of Macintosh computers which shows the time length that particular models were (currently are) in production. The coolest part is that you can click on a model name, and it takes you to that Mac's Wikipedia entry.

Wikipedia on your iPod

Way back in 1993, I can remember purchasing the entire works of Shakespeare on a CD-ROM to help me in a college course I was taking. I also had the printed works, but the CD-ROM allowed me to do keyword or character searches in a way the printed text didn't. For me, it was a breakthrough in how I was using computers to access content in a different way. The CD-ROM was accessible with hyper-links to other content on the disc which is notable because before the World Wide Web, hyper-links were really only being used in content like this Shakespeare CD-ROM (and in HyperStudio and HyperCard projects). It was my experience with this CD-ROM and gophering into the University of Minnesota's system to study 1990 Census data that opened my eyes to the coming World Wide Web explosion.

My point is that while content doesn't actually change much over the years, the way in which we access it does. And today, I've learned of yet another interesting way we access content. You can now get the Wikipedia on your iPod. [Note: this requires you to install Linux on your iPod].

The Wikipedia is the free, online, open-source encyclopedia. I've been consulting it for years, particularly for entries that likely wouldn't appear in a traditional encyclopedia. Since Wikipedia content is all user-contributed, it tends to be significantly more up-to-date than traditional sources. Some people worry about the accuracy of the Wikipedia's content, but I've never found it to be a problem.

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