On August 12, 2006, the first Chinese wiki conference will take place in Shanghai. It is an initiative of Cnic.org, a Wikipedia-like Web site. A short description of the event (CWC2006 for Chinese Wiki Conference 2006) and people taking part is available in English.
Other Chinese wiki initiatives include Baidupedia.
Social bookmarking tools such as del.icio.us or blogmarks have made it possible to share your bookmarks for a while. But Clipmarks goes one step ahead. It allows you to select texts, images, links of interests in one or several Web sites and to “clip” them in a note. All you need is a Firefox entension (there is also a version for Internet Explorer) that will add a couple of buttons to your toolbars. You will be able to clip as many items as you want and then save them with a few remarks and tags. It is up to you to decide if you want your clip to be public or private. If it is public, other people can comment on it and also vote for it so that it can be promoted as popular, if you are lucky. The application is really pleasant to use and a genuine sense of community among “clippers” has arose, as far as I could see.
Let’s say you are visiting a city unknown to you and that you have forgotten your travel guide. How can you learn more about this magnificent statue in front of you ? Or imagine you are enjoying a peaceful week-end in the country, yet preparing your Monday morning meeting and you need to find a piece of information. The trouble is you have no access to the Web. What can you possibly do ?
Don’t worry, a service can help you. It is called Wapedia and what it does is simply to bring Wikipedia’s enormous quantity of content to your mobile phone (or PDA). Using it with your phone, you only need it to be Wap-enabled, but most of them are.
This mobile site is quite well done, with large articles split in several pages and with images and links available.
You cannot edit yet. But the day will come when you can…
