Encyclopedia Software

Wikipedia: The free encyclopedia

Wikis are open-source Web sites that anyone can edit: Navigate to the page, click a button, and change or add whatever content you want. At first this might seem like a recipe for chaos. However, with a few simple rules and the ability to roll back to previous versions of a page, the communal approach to knowledge gathering is proving extremely effective. There are wiki dictionaries, wiki quote collections, wiki news, and even wiki books. But the most popular resource is Wikipedia, an online encyclopedia.

The free Wikipedia Dashboard widget by Sean Billig makes it even easier to look up information now. By pressing a function key, you gain immediate access to a wealth of communally gathered information. Just be careful: If you are doing research for school or a mission-critical project, double-check with another source before pronouncing anything you find on Wikipedia as absolute fact.

[ Jason Cranford Teague and his daughter Jocelyn live near Washington, D.C., where Jason is a senior user interface designer at AOL, and Jocelyn is in second grade. Jocelyn wants to be a punk rocker when she grows up and Jason regularly rants about technology and culture on his blog, webbedENVIRONMENTS.]

This Dashboard widget gives you instant access to the Wikipedia Encyclopedia.

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