I’ve mentioned that Wikipedia entries can be collected into bound books, thanks to Wikipedia’s partnership with a print-on-demand publisher. However, Read Write Web reports that boutique publisher James Bridle (whom we’ve mentioned a few times before for other reasons) has gone this idea one better: he has collected five years of the edit history of a Wikipedia entry into a rather handsome twelve volume set of hardcover books. The entry in question is “Iraq War”, and the reason Bridle did it was to point out that historiography is important. Because of Wikipedia’s change-tracking, he notes, we are able to...

John Scalzi has pointed out a problem with Barnes & Noble’s site search feature brought on by fly-by-night self-publishing firms. When you type “Scalzi” into the Barnes & Noble website search box, the first page of results is cluttered with what appear to be illicit republications of Scalzi’s works, but are actually something arguably worse. They are 32-page compilations of Wikipedia articles about Scalzi’s work, bundled by self-publishing firm “Books LLC” and sold for $12.72. (If you should for some reason want a printed compilation of Wikipedia articles about Scalzi’s works, you can get it a lot cheaper...

The iPad is so popular these days that everything is coming out with special interfaces for it. There was Pulse, which turns a selection of favorite RSS feeds into something similar to a magazine. Then there was Flipboard, which does the same for links posted to social networks. Now here are a couple more web media joining the party. Cooliris, a company known for its browser and iPhone photo apps, has created an app for the iPad called Discover that imports content from Wikipedia and reformats it into an iPad-magazine-style interface. Cooliris hopes eventually to bring the same reformatting technique...

From the Humane Informatics website: The Humane Reader is a low-cost device which can bring a five thousand book library into a home or school which has no other access to internet content. The Reader can be produced in quantity for approximately $20 per unit, and uses any existing television set as a display device for Wikipedia or other content. It is available to NGOs, educators, non-profits or other aid agencies. Only approximately 20% of the developing world are internet users. The remaining 80% do not have access to online reference sources such as Wikipedia, online libraries of books and information to...

Many long-time Internet veterans know that one of the most effective ways for pooling and sharing information online is a wiki. Starting with Wikipedia, then branching off into dozens or hundreds of wikis devoted to niche topics or fandoms, the wiki has pretty much conquered the “encyclopedia-in-the-cloud” idea space. A few years ago, the government found this out, too. Ars Technica is running an interesting piece on the creation of Diplopedia, a State Department internal wiki that is used to collect and share the kind of diplomatic knowledge that could in the past be easily lost when a...

Wikipedia has long had an advantage in flexibility over printed encyclopedias. It can be quickly corrected, whereas the printed works cannot. But the printed works do have the advantage of not requiring an Internet connection to access. So now Wikipedia has come out with a new feature potentially offering the best of both worlds: it is now possible to export selected Wikipedia articles to create a custom book from Wikipedia’s print-on-demand partner, PediaPress. The process works by using a Wikipedia widget that appears at the top of each page or in the mouseover context menu for links...

Here’s an interesting story on Making Light, with more details at the “Fandom Wank” blog. Last month, Larry Sanger (co-founder of Wikipedia, founder of competing crowd-sourced encyclopedia Citizendium) reported to the FBI that Wikipedia was hosting images that could be considered child pornography. (Later, Wiki admins noted that they had checked with their legal department and been informed the images did not violate federal law, nor had they heard from the FBI in response to Sanger’s complaint.) A couple of weeks ago, Fox News picked up the story and began asking corporate donors to the Wikimedia Foundation “if...

Rick Forgione of the Niagara Gazette has posted an editorial about the frequent claims that “the newspaper industry is dying”. Forgione points out that people are always going to need news, no matter whether they read it in newsprint or on-line. So how does print journalism co-exist with its Web site counterpart as we super speed into the future? Beats me, but I do know we try our best every day to put out informative and compelling content in both mediums, which will hopefully keep people reading (or clicking) for years to come. ...