iPhone/iPod touch only: We’ve already seen plenty of apps that bring Wikipedia to your iPhone, but today Wikipedia launches their own official iPhone app called Wikipedia Mobile.
The application is both free and open source, and while it’s currently pretty light on features (it could really, really use an autocomplete feature), the folks at Wikipedia say that they’re currently focusing on simplicity and speed, but will add features based on requests over time. On top of that, because it’s open source, they claim to be willing to let anyone contribute, so if you’ve got a great idea, you may want to consider lending them a hand.
Wikipedia Mobile is a free download, currently iPhone and iPod touch only.
Source:Lifehacker
Although video has been on Wikipedia in a limited way for the past two years, it is poised to take-off with the recent introduction of Firefox 3.5 along with other imminent developments, we have learned.
Over the next few months there will be the introduction of server-side transcoding technology, a new Wikipedia video player, and a set of collaborative editing tools which will allow community members to amend videos.
Videos on the site are uploaded and watched in a format called Ogg Theora. It is a Flash-like program which is completely open-source. Video producers can render Ogg files in FinalCut and other editing programs by using various plug-ins. Once in Ogg, these files can be uploaded to Wikipedia.
Later this year, Wikipedia will allow uploads of popular file formats directly with server-side transcoding to Ogg. This plug-in is called FireOgg.
For some time, these videos have been viewable with certain Java and other plug-ins. The release of Firefox 3.5 is the first time that Ogg videos can be viewed “natively” on a browser. Opera and Chrome will support Ogg soon, but not Explorer or Safari.
Credit:Beet.TV
