Monthly Archives: May 2010

New Look and Editor for Wikipedia

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The much awaited change is coming to Wikipedia. A new  look and feel and more importantly a new editing toolbar.

List of Changes

  • Navigation: improved navigation for reading and editing pages. Now, the tabs at the top of each page more clearly define whether you are viewing the page or discussion page, and whether you are reading or editing a page.
  • Editing toolbar improvements: reorganized editing toolbar to make it easier to use. Now, formatting pages is simpler and more intuitive.
  • Link wizard: an easy-to-use tool to add links to other wiki pages as well as links to external sites.
  • Search improvements:  improved search suggestions to get you to the page you are looking for more quickly.
  • Other new features: a table wizard to make creating tables easier and a find and replace feature to simplify page editing.

new-editorwikipedia-links

In the FAQ section they say

When knowledgeable people cannot participate in editing Wikipedia because they find it too confusing or difficult to edit articles, it is a serious problem that undermines the potential quality, breadth and depth of the content that we can offer to you.

It also says this is just a beginning to the set of additional changes that are still under testing phase. You can see all those changes on the prototype site. The Wikipedia Usability Initiative is coming to MediaWiki as well. That means all those who were using MediaWiki for there Wikis can also create better wikis.

Google Reveals 'What' Countries Want Them To Reveal ?

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Government Requests is  a tool from Google that reveals what different governments across the Globe are asking them to reveal. These are categorized into two – Data Requests and Removal Requests. Data Requests include requests for information about Google users and products and Removal Requests include requests for removal of content from Google search results.

The data is based on the number of requests received between July 1, 2009 and December 31, 2009. Brazil tops the list with 3663 data requests and 291 removal requests. India is in 4th position in Data Requests with 1061 requests and 3rd in removal requests with 142 requests.

In the FAQ section it says – “We are working on a separate tool to show you when Google services have been blocked by governments or government agencies” .

You can view India’s profile on Open Net Initiative here.

The Story of Facebook, soon to be a Hollywood Blockbuster

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While at Harvard, Mark Zuckerberg hacked into the Harvard servers to get the photos of all the girls in order to start Facemash, a sort of “hot-or-not” site exclusive to Harvard. That eventually led to the creation of Facebook.

This is the story of Mark Zuckerberg – ‘The Accidental Billionaire’ and soon its going to be a Hollywood blockbuster – ‘The Social Network’. From the director of ‘The Curious Case of Benjamin Button’ , David Fincher, the movie is expected to be released this October.