Neomeme » Nine Cool Things You Didn’t Know You Could Do With Wikipedia
Ξ July 3rd, 2007 | → | ∇ Uncategorized, Software, Reviews, Humor |
Quoted from http://www.neomeme.net/2007/02/07/nine-cool-things-you-didnt-know-you-could-do-with-wikipedia%20:
Neomeme » Nine Cool Things You Didn’t Know You Could Do With Wikipedia
Nine Cool Things You Didn’t Know You Could Do With Wikipedia
Published by Ilya Lichtenstein on February 7, 2007 06:49 am under tutorial, Uncategorized
You probably know Wikipedia as the world’s largest encyclopedia, suitable for research on most any topic. You know you can look up terms, but what you may not know is that Wikipedia features a ton of other information that can do a lot more than help you with that research paper. Wikipedia can also be a:
- TV Episode Guide. Just search for “list of ____ episodes” with the name of the show, and you will see every episode catalogued and summarized, often with trivia and other factoids.
- Cliffs Notes Replacement. Don’t want to read that weighty tome for your literature class? Don’t worry, Wikipedia is on your side. Just type in the name of the book, and you will be presented with a plot summary, themes, symbols, and other in-depth analysis.
- Learning Activities. This is from Wikiversity, a Wikipedia sister site. Whether you are a student wanting extra practice for a difficult subject or a teacher looking for homework assignments or handouts for your students, Wikiversity provides tutorials and worksheets on subjects ranging from AJAX programming to Philosophy. Wikiversity is currently woefully incomplete, but many subject have lengthy, well-written tutorials.
- Stock Images Collection. Need royalty-free stock images for your next web design or desktop publishing project? Turn to Wikimedia Commons, where you can browse images by subject, licence, or author. So if you need, for example, a radioactive Diderot for that big presentation to the investors, you’re all set.
- Music Database. Want to discover new music? Wikipedia has extensive cataloguing of music by genre, making it easy to find similar bands to those you already like.
- Time Capsule. Want to know what people thought of a topic years ago? Wikipedia archives all changes, so simply by clicking on the “history” tab on top of the page and then “Earliest” on the very bottom you can see an article as it was written years ago. Aside from demonstrating the fluid and ever-changing nature of Wikipedia, but also offers a glimpse into how people thought years ago. The value of this technique will increase over the years as Wikipedia gets older.
- Future Planner. Just as it can go backward in time, Wikipedia can also go backward forward. Wikipedia has articles stretching far into the next millennium. Want to see what you need to schedule for 2008? How about the World Cup in 2038? And be sure(assuming you’ve reached immortality) to pencil in the unsealing of that time capsule in 8113 AD.
- Trend Tracker. Perhaps even more important than what people are searching for on Google or other search engines is what people are researching. This page show the most popular Wikipedia articles. For example, following the Super Bowl, a lot of people went to research Prince,whose search numbers spiked recently. A list of sexual positions, however, remains an all-time favorite. Which brings us to our next and final topic:
- Teacher of Sex Positions. The list is more comprehensive than most books on the topic, complete with pictures. Hell, you can even use Wikipedia to look for porn.
And there you have it. I’ve only scratched the surface of the myriad uses of Wikipedia. It is truly an incredible resource I turn to time and time again. I conclude with this cartoon from xkcd, which pretty much sums everything up:
