Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2005-09-26/Wikipedia applications

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Wikipedia used in new applications

By Catherine, 19 September 2005

More commonly lately, Wikipedia is being used in many different applications, both online and in the real world.

Semapedia

Barcode URL

Semapedia is a project to use the physical annotation technology of semacode to link real-world objects and locations with their counterpart articles at Wikipedia.org. Providers can print a "barcode URL" tag at the http://www.semapedia.org/ or http://www.semacode.org/ website and attach the tag to any desired site. A Smartphone user at that site can then 'click' (take a picture and decode the URL) to be directed to the encoded URL -- in this case, a Wikipedia article on that subject.

PlaceOpedia

PlaceOpedia is a project to link Wikipedia's geographical articles to Google Earth maps, allowing visitors to http://www.placeopedia.com/ to add their own connections. The ever-growing database of connections between latitude/longitude coordinates and Wikipedia URLs is available under a Creative Commons license. (A related project, currently in demonstration mode, is http://www.yourhistoryhere.com/, a collection of local information, history, and trivia attached to Google Earth locations.)

Dashboard widget

Sean Billig has written a free Wikipedia Dashboard Widget for Mac OS X v10.4 operating system. In his announcement of the release of Tiger [1], Apple CEO Steve Jobs used the Wikipedia widget to demonstrate the many uses of Dashboard.

Mobile access

There are several projects to allow mobile access to Wikipedia, including Wapedia, which offers separate versions for phones and PDAs, and JOCA, which allows free access via GPRS.

Link interpretation

Matt Biddulph of the BBC found a way to use Wikipedia and a Yahoo API to build a network of directed links, showing how British government figures are related to each other. [2]


Also this week: Editor's note — Wikimedia hire — ArbCom election — Esquire article — Wikipedia apps — News and notes — Press coverage — Features and admins — T.R.O.L.L.