Web Clips for 9/6/09

Well, I thought I wouldn't do web clips anymore, but there's just so many clippy things and snippets I need to share. I suppose I wont make it a daily thing, but weekly or so shouldn't be too intrusive.

I'll be moving back into college so the next couple of days could get busy. Just fyi.

People can be politically silly on craigslist.

This is flying around, it's pretty awesome:


I added social media links to posts on our feed. Should I add them to the site posts as well? They would look similarly unobtrusive. Would people use them? Let me know in the comments, thanks.

Do you suck at TF2? Get a tutor for free at the TF2 mentor project.

A recent Wikipedia survey found that, of the people who edit Wikipedia, only 13% are women. Though troublesome, I'd attribute a lot of it to the geekiness of editing Wikipedia. The survey also found that of Wikipedia readers, 69% are men and 31% are women, which probably also has a lot to do with it.

Hire the voice of Serious Sam, for just a dollar a word. Be sure to click on the samples on the right there. Badass answering machine, anyone?

Man Vs. Door.

Wiki of the Week: Wikiversity

This weeks wiki is that of knowledge, or rather, fostering it. Wikiversity is a Wikimedia project that is devoted to learning resources, projects, and curriculum. In a backwards-way, you can actually browse and get a lot of neat information. It's easy to see how this could be a great self-teaching resourse as well as an invaluable resource for anyone even remotely interested in, or working in something related to education.

It's unfortunately not as complete as it should be, and many upper-level and niche courses are still under development, but for major topics it's a great way to go about teaching, self-teaching or just learning.

Wikiversity.

and "Wikiversity" from Wikipedia.

Wiki of the Week: Wikirank

So this time it's not actually a wiki. But this is seriously cool. Like google trends for Wikipedia, Wikirank lets you see up to 90 days worth of page view history of wikipedia articles. Searching for something will give you its history, as well as an excerpt from the article, total views, and the ability to add other pages to your graph. There's also some nice, easy URL stuff you can do. For example, doing something like: http://wikirank.com/en/Superman,Batman will give you a graph of Superman and Batman hits. This is helpfull if you want to compare a bunch of different article's but don't want to have to manually put them in using the interface. In general the site is a really great jumping off point for browsing wikipedia, as thier front page contains information on what's being read now and what's getting popular. FWIW I'm also a fan of the site design.

Wiki of the Week: International Music Score Library Project

Ever looking for some new music to play? Looking for the complete works of Bach in .pdf? Then look no further than the International Music Score Library Project. The somewhat self-explanatory goal of this Wiki project is to "To create a virtual library containing all public domain musical scores, as well as scores from composers who are willing to share their music with the world without charge."

The site was shut down for about a year due to copyright issues and public domain laws in different countries, but returned this past summer as strong as ever. The content is really interesting. looking through you get a whole bunch of really awesome works from famous classical artists (and many not-so-famous ones), but you also get new-age, wierd, CC licenced stuff too.

This is a great resource for those of us looking for some new recital material, or just something new to play.

IMSLP main page.

IMSLP on Wikipedia.

Wiki of the Week: Galaxiki

Well, I''m going to ignore the fact that there hasn't been a "Wiki of the Week" in a few months now and go ahead and highlight a really creative use of a wiki, Galaxiki. Galaxiki is a fictional galaxy that anyone can add to or edit. You can get and create your own solar system, add planets and alien races. Network and have relations with other planets, and explore the galaxy with Google maps-like tools. There are so many things you can do. There's also some pretty robust social and community features to enhance collaboration between writers so that the galaxy can really have a thriving system and virtual economy. It's all pretty damn cool. Membership is free and you can get your own solar system and star to create your own races and history as you wish. It's like the most open rpg you'll ever play. Galaxiki on Wikipedia. Galaxiki Homepage.

Wiki of the Week

Ok, so I'm recycling the idea from my older blog, I like it and I can do it if I wanna. Don't judge me! This week I'm posting a new kind of wiki you may have heard of since it's been gathering media attention. It's called Citizendium. It was started by Larry Singer, the guy who co-founded Wikipedia back in 2001. Think of it as a Wikipedia but with valid information. Everyone who signs up to write articles must reveal their full name as well as credentials to write on their subject. There is significantly less articles (only about 8,000), but all of them cite valid sources, so if you're doing some research you need not fear. here's the Wikipedia article about Citizendium and the Citizendium main page.