AFI BLOG: Media and Technology

Future of Media
Clay Shirky, author of the Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations, has a fascinating post on his blog about the sheer amount of brain power invested in television and, in specific, the amount of time we spend watching advertisements. According to Shirky, Americans spend the same amount of brain power [...]

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$3 Million Donation For The Sum Of All Human Knowledge - Tech Crunch
The Wikimedia Foundation, the non-profit organization which operates Wikipedia, announced a $3 million donation from The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation today. The donation will be paid ratably over three years.
Last year the foundation had total income of $2.7 million and expenses of about [...]

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MediaWiki Embraces Social Networking - PBS Learning Now
MediaWiki, the wiki tool used by Wikipedia and thousands of other wiki sites around the world, just got a lot more powerful. The for-profit companion project to Wikipedia announced this week that they were releasing free tools that will allow MediaWiki sites to include a range of social [...]

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Wikipedia’s tin-cup approach wears thin
The nonprofit website needs to raise funds, but it resists selling ads.
The new headquarters of one of the world’s most popular websites is 3,000 square feet of rented space furnished with desks and chairs bought on the cheap from EBay and Craigslist.
A sheet of printer paper taped to the door says [...]

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Wikia Open Sources Social Networking - Focused Networking Now Open to All - Read Write Web
Wikia, the independent commercial wiki site founded by Wikipedia’s Jimmy Wales and Angela Beesley, is releasing components of its very nice social networking toolset under the GNU General Public License 2.0.
The ability to set up an Open Source social network [...]

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Times of London
Google is to go head-to-head with Wikipedia, the web’s largest reference work, in a clash of two of the internet’s most powerful brands.
A new Google service, dubbed knol, will invite “people who know a particular subject to write an authoritative article about it”, Udi Manber, a Google engineer, said.
Like Wikipedia, articles in knol [...]

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Domains: Jimmy Wales…The Encyclopedist’s Lair — NY Times Sunday Magazine
Enjoy these bon-bons about the founder of Wikipedia:
Idea of a perfect day: Spend about 10 hours online getting lots of things done. Then go out for a drink.
Greatest misconception about Wikipedia: We aren’t democratic. Our readers edit the entries, but we’re actually quite snobby. The core [...]

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