Goodmorning all-
I am new to the Wikipedia mailing list, but have spent the last few days researching an idea, and it was suggested to me that I might receive some further insight or assistance by bringing it to all of you:
I have been involved with technology for several years now, and have come to believe very strongly in the potential power of developing web interfaces for cell phone technology. I have spent some time both personal and professional researching this market, and understanding that more and more cell phones come equipped with the ability to access the Internet, and that cell phones are now in service even in some of the remote corners of the world. It occurs to me that Wikipedia could possibly be the ultimate extension of this technology, and would require very little effort on our side or the side of the cell phone user to integrate.
Simply stated, by creating a cell phone web interface for the Wikipedia database, instant access to a dynamic encyclopedia could be given to all cell phone users worldwide. From what I can tell of the site, the infrastructure to undertake such a project is all there.
I do not know if this is a project that you are already considering, but if not, I would be happy to lead this initiative, and am very interested in recruiting others who are interested in becoming involved in the project.
I would like to hear the ideas or suggestions of all, I already have constructed ideas for Phase 1 and 2 of the project, and would be more then happy to share them if there is any further interest.
Thank you all for your time - Alex Hottenstein
On Friday, July 16, 2004 4:06 PM Alex Hottenstein ahottenstein@gmail.com wrote:
I do not know if this is a project that you are already considering, but if not, I would be happy to lead this initiative, and am very interested in recruiting others who are interested in becoming involved in the project.
I would like to hear the ideas or suggestions of all, I already have constructed ideas for Phase 1 and 2 of the project, and would be more then happy to share them if there is any further interest.
There is already a page on meta about a mobile version of Wikipedia. This might be a good place to post your ideas:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mobile_subdomain
--Arne (akl)
Arne Klempert wrote:
On Friday, July 16, 2004 4:06 PM Alex Hottenstein ahottenstein@gmail.com wrote:
I do not know if this is a project that you are already considering, but if not, I would be happy to lead this initiative, and am very interested in recruiting others who are interested in becoming involved in the project.
I would like to hear the ideas or suggestions of all, I already have constructed ideas for Phase 1 and 2 of the project, and would be more then happy to share them if there is any further interest.
There is already a page on meta about a mobile version of Wikipedia. This might be a good place to post your ideas:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mobile_subdomain
--Arne (akl)
<>One critical difference for WAP phone browsing is that many phones have extremely small page size limits; a maximum of 1397 bytes.of compressed content per page in order to work with currently fielded devices. So Wikipedia pages will need to be chopped up into right-size chunks, and an effective navigation interface provided to move through these. Fortunately we already have hierarchical subheadings and paragraph breaks, so these can be used to "paginate" the WAP data cleanly, rather than breaking it on arbitary boundaries.
-- Neil
<>One critical difference for WAP phone browsing is that many phones have extremely small page size limits; a maximum of 1397 bytes.of compressed content per page in order to work with currently fielded devices. So Wikipedia pages will need to be chopped up into right-size chunks, and an effective navigation interface provided to move through these. Fortunately we already have hierarchical subheadings and paragraph breaks, so these can be used to "paginate" the WAP data cleanly, rather than breaking it on arbitary boundaries.
The issue is rendered moot by the fact that WAP is effectively dead. XHTML and CSS have supplanted it, offering easier (and more widespread) implementation with very little additional overhead. (In fact, I don't remember seeing a WAP browser that wasn't on a five-year-old, four-line-display Nokia.)
Wikipedia's XHTML source is hardly ideal, but it works. The lightweight skins make it perfectly suitable for the kind of dynamic interaction we would ask from it with WAP, and for a more tailored interface there's always TomeRaider.
-- Neil
On 07/16/04 16:31, Neil Harris wrote:
One critical difference for WAP phone browsing is that many phones have extremely small page size limits; a maximum of 1397 bytes.of compressed content per page in order to work with currently fielded devices. So Wikipedia pages will need to be chopped up into right-size chunks, and an effective navigation interface provided to move through these. Fortunately we already have hierarchical subheadings and paragraph breaks, so these can be used to "paginate" the WAP data cleanly, rather than breaking it on arbitary boundaries.
I don't know that WAP is actually that important to consider. Mobile phones are rapidly advancing technology that customers regard as disposable, i.e. get a new phone every year or two for new features. How are the numbers for WAP versus GPRS, i.e. proper Internet on Opera or (soon) mini-Mozilla?
- d.
On Fri, 16 Jul 2004, Alex Hottenstein wrote:
Goodmorning all-
Wherever you may be ..
Simply stated, by creating a cell phone web interface for the Wikipedia database, instant access to a dynamic encyclopedia could be given to all cell phone users worldwide. From what I can tell of the site, the infrastructure to undertake such a project is all there.
On comp.sys.palmtops.pilot, "Mat Ripley" mat@proporta.com.remove wrote :-
: Date: Friday, July 16 2004, 03:26:28 PM SAST : [1] Re: Encyclopedias for Palm : : Hi : : We are currently in the final stages of TR3 for Palm and Windows. Both : should be out in beta next week. There is still lots of polishing to be done : but yes, the palm version will be able to hold the entire Wikipedia in one : file. We have had to do some pretty new stuff to make this possible but it : looks like we will have it done. : : As well as ultra large file support, TomeRaider 3 will have zillions of new : features (Images, categories, filters, search acceleration.....) It is a : total rewrite two years in the making, and we hope it will be as ground : breaking as the original TomeRaiders were all those years ago. : : If you would like to be a beta tester for the Palm or the Windows version : then drop us an email at the normal Proporta software address. : : Regards, : : Mat : Cheers, Andy!
On 07/16/04 14:06, Alex Hottenstein wrote:
Simply stated, by creating a cell phone web interface for the Wikipedia database, instant access to a dynamic encyclopedia could be given to all cell phone users worldwide. From what I can tell of the site, the infrastructure to undertake such a project is all there. I do not know if this is a project that you are already considering, but if not, I would be happy to lead this initiative, and am very interested in recruiting others who are interested in becoming involved in the project.
You want http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mobile_subdomain
This is an idea that's in the air at the moment. Have you seen this?
Have a look at this thing and read the FAQs and marketing documents.
It's a collaborative user-contributed articles thing for mobile phones in the UK, done on a commercial basis. "The first group to welcome new technologies and ideas are predominantly the young. Since this group is also the largest to own browser-enabled mobile phones, we anticipate the bulk of the market for Kwickee Bitesize will be 16-30-year-olds. It is also understood that the 30+ market use the Kwickee website - taking full advantage of the special features and subscription services."
(i.e., it looks like the sort of wishful thinking dot-com marketers come up with on a Tuesday afternoon down the pub.)
I think they're onto a loser, because their intended market uses Internet-capable phones. Which would therefore be quite able to access any web page readable in Opera. Like OURS, let's say.
They plan a *significant* marketing push for this thing (from http://www.kwickee.com/2a_marketing1.html):
"How will Kwickee Bitesize be advertised? A major marketing programme is planned for the first year of launch. This will include a major SMS campaign, advertising in magazines, daily newspapers, cinemas and over the Internet. The marketing campaign has been awarded to a UK top three Advertising & Data Marketing Agency." "How big is the UK market for Kwickee Bitesize?" "There are approximately 30 million people with mobile handsets capable of receiving a Bitesize. Alternatively, anyone with an Internet connection can receive a Kwickee Bitesize."
Dot-com taught us that trying to *start* an idea as a business that your competitor could start in their garage is unlikely to work.
We should be able to ride this big time. How does Wikipedia look on browser-capable mobile phones? Do we have any automatic function to pull the intro from all articles (that have an intro) and just send that on request?
(This'll make news style for article intros a better idea ...)
- David.
I had not seen the http://www.kwickee.com site, but it does prove that there is movement toward doing more and more things on cell phones. I do not know that it is actually what I am hoping that we can achieve however.
Wikipedia is perfect for this type of endeavor simply because all the information on it is free, and saved in a centralized, basic standard (I am assuming) all of which should be able to easily be pulled into whatever cell phone form we would need to use.
I am not looking for some complex site with user interaction, only one which allows the user to punch in a keyword, get search return results, and then see the article (obviously broken down screen by screen). This would not need to be complex, and there are few to no security issues that I can think of if we make this read-only.
Wikipedia can gain greatly from the concept that this would push. Publicly available information accessibly anywhere that a Internet enabled cell phone is accessible. Would it be 100% useful in the first phase? probably not. But, it could (and I believe) should be done.
Again, I do not know the protocol here, so who is in charge of determining actual product movements?
On Fri, 16 Jul 2004 19:20:45 +0000, David Gerard fun@thingy.apana.org.au wrote:
On 07/16/04 14:06, Alex Hottenstein wrote:
Simply stated, by creating a cell phone web interface for the Wikipedia database, instant access to a dynamic encyclopedia could be given to all cell phone users worldwide. From what I can tell of the site, the infrastructure to undertake such a project is all there. I do not know if this is a project that you are already considering, but if not, I would be happy to lead this initiative, and am very interested in recruiting others who are interested in becoming involved in the project.
You want http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mobile_subdomain
This is an idea that's in the air at the moment. Have you seen this?
http://www.kwickee.com
Have a look at this thing and read the FAQs and marketing documents.
It's a collaborative user-contributed articles thing for mobile phones in the UK, done on a commercial basis. "The first group to welcome new technologies and ideas are predominantly the young. Since this group is also the largest to own browser-enabled mobile phones, we anticipate the bulk of the market for Kwickee Bitesize will be 16-30-year-olds. It is also understood that the 30+ market use the Kwickee website - taking full advantage of the special features and subscription services."
(i.e., it looks like the sort of wishful thinking dot-com marketers come up with on a Tuesday afternoon down the pub.)
I think they're onto a loser, because their intended market uses Internet-capable phones. Which would therefore be quite able to access any web page readable in Opera. Like OURS, let's say.
They plan a *significant* marketing push for this thing (from http://www.kwickee.com/2a_marketing1.html):
"How will Kwickee Bitesize be advertised? A major marketing programme is planned for the first year of launch. This will include a major SMS campaign, advertising in magazines, daily newspapers, cinemas and over the Internet. The marketing campaign has been awarded to a UK top three Advertising & Data Marketing Agency." "How big is the UK market for Kwickee Bitesize?" "There are approximately 30 million people with mobile handsets capable of receiving a Bitesize. Alternatively, anyone with an Internet connection can receive a Kwickee Bitesize."
Dot-com taught us that trying to *start* an idea as a business that your competitor could start in their garage is unlikely to work.
We should be able to ride this big time. How does Wikipedia look on browser-capable mobile phones? Do we have any automatic function to pull the intro from all articles (that have an intro) and just send that on request?
(This'll make news style for article intros a better idea ...)
- David.
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
On Fri, 16 Jul 2004 14:53:16 -0400, Alex Hottenstein ahottenstein@gmail.com wrote:
Again, I do not know the protocol here, so who is in charge of determining actual product movements?
In theory, the Wikimedia Board (http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Board_of_Trustees) are, but in practice, it's up to the users interested in a new project to organise it. It depends what you think you need to start off such a project. If you need money, then you would need the board's assistance with this. However, if you simply need a new sub-domain, like mobile.wikipedia.org or whatever, then this can be requested on Meta at http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_new_projects assuming there has been little or no objection to it.
The guidelines that exist for starting a new language Wikipedia might help, although won't be completely relevant: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/How_to_start_a_new_Wikipedia.
If you are only at the stage where you want to be discussing this new project idea with other interested people, a page on Meta will be the best place to start documenting your proposal. You can advertise the idea to get more people interested at places like http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Goings-on.
Talking to some of the developers about this idea might be useful. If you use IRC, drop into #mediawiki on freenode. If not, Tim Starling (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Tim_Starling) is Wikimedia's Developer Liaison and should be able to point you in the right direction.
Hope that helps.
Angela.
Wikipedia is already browsable on my GPRS Nokia 6610 phone, when accessed through Google. But you can't edit or log in (or search).
On 07/19/04 13:09, Mark Ryan wrote:
Wikipedia is already browsable on my GPRS Nokia 6610 phone, when accessed through Google. But you can't edit or log in (or search).
Kwickee.com is *so* f*cked.
Those heavily interested in mobile issues need to form an action plan on:
1. How to make Wikipedia more mobile-friendly as needed (if needed). 2. Strongly researching Kwickee so that we can thoroughly ride on their planned ridiculous UK advertising spend.
- d.
While contributing content to the text articles would be tough on a cell phone keypad, there are ways to make cell users useful contributors - photos.
Dpreview just had an item about a 3 megapixel camera/phone, and many new phones now have 1 megapixel cameras. It would be nice to make it easy for folks to submit photos via mobile means for articles. This might be part of a larger effort to make the whole photo submission process more friendly.
http://www.dpreview.com/news/0407/04071202samsungsph2300.asp
- User:Fuzheado
On Fri, 16 Jul 2004 14:53:16 -0400, Alex Hottenstein ahottenstein@gmail.com wrote:
I had not seen the http://www.kwickee.com site, but it does prove that there is movement toward doing more and more things on cell phones. I do not know that it is actually what I am hoping that we can achieve however.
Wikipedia is perfect for this type of endeavor simply because all the information on it is free, and saved in a centralized, basic standard (I am assuming) all of which should be able to easily be pulled into whatever cell phone form we would need to use.
I am not looking for some complex site with user interaction, only one which allows the user to punch in a keyword, get search return results, and then see the article (obviously broken down screen by screen). This would not need to be complex, and there are few to no security issues that I can think of if we make this read-only.
Wikipedia can gain greatly from the concept that this would push. Publicly available information accessibly anywhere that a Internet enabled cell phone is accessible. Would it be 100% useful in the first phase? probably not. But, it could (and I believe) should be done.
Again, I do not know the protocol here, so who is in charge of determining actual product movements?
On Fri, 16 Jul 2004 19:20:45 +0000, David Gerard fun@thingy.apana.org.au wrote:
On 07/16/04 14:06, Alex Hottenstein wrote:
Simply stated, by creating a cell phone web interface for the Wikipedia database, instant access to a dynamic encyclopedia could be given to all cell phone users worldwide. From what I can tell of the site, the infrastructure to undertake such a project is all there. I do not know if this is a project that you are already considering, but if not, I would be happy to lead this initiative, and am very interested in recruiting others who are interested in becoming involved in the project.
You want http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mobile_subdomain
This is an idea that's in the air at the moment. Have you seen this?
http://www.kwickee.com
Have a look at this thing and read the FAQs and marketing documents.
It's a collaborative user-contributed articles thing for mobile phones in the UK, done on a commercial basis. "The first group to welcome new technologies and ideas are predominantly the young. Since this group is also the largest to own browser-enabled mobile phones, we anticipate the bulk of the market for Kwickee Bitesize will be 16-30-year-olds. It is also understood that the 30+ market use the Kwickee website - taking full advantage of the special features and subscription services."
(i.e., it looks like the sort of wishful thinking dot-com marketers come up with on a Tuesday afternoon down the pub.)
I think they're onto a loser, because their intended market uses Internet-capable phones. Which would therefore be quite able to access any web page readable in Opera. Like OURS, let's say.
They plan a *significant* marketing push for this thing (from http://www.kwickee.com/2a_marketing1.html):
"How will Kwickee Bitesize be advertised? A major marketing programme is planned for the first year of launch. This will include a major SMS campaign, advertising in magazines, daily newspapers, cinemas and over the Internet. The marketing campaign has been awarded to a UK top three Advertising & Data Marketing Agency." "How big is the UK market for Kwickee Bitesize?" "There are approximately 30 million people with mobile handsets capable of receiving a Bitesize. Alternatively, anyone with an Internet connection can receive a Kwickee Bitesize."
Dot-com taught us that trying to *start* an idea as a business that your competitor could start in their garage is unlikely to work.
We should be able to ride this big time. How does Wikipedia look on browser-capable mobile phones? Do we have any automatic function to pull the intro from all articles (that have an intro) and just send that on request?
(This'll make news style for article intros a better idea ...)
- David.
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
Andrew Lih wrote:
It would be nice to make it easy for folks to submit photos via mobile means for articles. This might be part of a larger effort to make the whole photo submission process more friendly.
Yes. A certain fairly well-known wikipedian just went on a big tour of Europe and made a special point of taking "encyclopedic" photos of many prominent landmarks on his journey, but he still hasn't uploaded any of them, because it's a huge pain in the ass.
I don't know the solution, but it sure would be sweet to have some means of bulk uploading, for example ftp or something like that.
--Jimbo
Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales wrote:
I don't know the solution, but it sure would be sweet to have some means of bulk uploading, for example ftp or something like that.
Personally, I would very much like to see a textbox where one can enter a URL that Wikipedia will then fetch automatically. In order to allow bulk upload, one might as well have a textarea where one can enter several URLs. (I might actually do that myself if no-one beats me to it.)
Yes, I do realise that this makes it easy to upload copyrighted images from websites. But I don't think that's a problem: The wiki way is not to make things impossible, but to make things back-tracable and undoable, so all it needs is to put the URL in the image description, and everyone can check if it's on a website that has copyrighted images.
Timwi
On Mon, 19 Jul 2004 15:55:52 +0100, Timwi timwi@gmx.net wrote:
Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales wrote:
I don't know the solution, but it sure would be sweet to have some means of bulk uploading, for example ftp or something like that.
Personally, I would very much like to see a textbox where one can enter a URL that Wikipedia will then fetch automatically. In order to allow bulk upload, one might as well have a textarea where one can enter several URLs. (I might actually do that myself if no-one beats me to it.)
Yes, I do realise that this makes it easy to upload copyrighted images from websites. But I don't think that's a problem: The wiki way is not to make things impossible, but to make things back-tracable and undoable, so all it needs is to put the URL in the image description, and everyone can check if it's on a website that has copyrighted images.
Any bulk uploading should probably be limited to admins as its potential for abuse is pretty evident.
On Mon, 19 Jul 2004 09:58:23 -0500 Dori slowpoke@gmail.com wrote:
Any bulk uploading should probably be limited to admins as its potential for abuse is pretty evident.
Not necessarily. Wikipedia-style soft security will work for that _provided that_ bulk undoing of uploads is even easier than the bulk uploads themselves.
Andre Engels
I disagree - we have way too many dodgy images as it stands. I've asked for another SQL query to find out what percentage of our images are untagged and what percentage are tagged as non-free.
The time in adding images is in preparing them for publication (cropping etc) and adding them to articles.
Special:Unusedimages says that we have 26,121 unused images. I am aware than mediawiki 1.3 has a problem in this area but we don't have a grip on image use at the moment.
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Special:Unusedimages&limit=50...
Caroline
Caroline Ford wrote:
The time in adding images is in preparing them for publication (cropping etc) and adding them to articles.
Amen. Gotta think about file size, contrast, sharpness. If WP aims to compete with EB, we need to get our pictures as close to a professional look as possible.
Special:Unusedimages says that we have 26,121 unused images. I am aware than mediawiki 1.3 has a problem in this area but we don't have a grip on image use at the moment.
It must be a lot less than 26,000. Everytime I randomly sample, almost all of the images are in some article somewhere already. Looking at the list is basically a waste of time until the corrupted data tables get fixed.
Stan
Stan Shebs wrote:
Caroline Ford wrote:
The time in adding images is in preparing them for publication (cropping etc) and adding them to articles.
Amen. Gotta think about file size, contrast, sharpness. If WP aims to compete with EB, we need to get our pictures as close to a professional look as possible.
It would not be a serious blot on 1.0 if it had fewer images than some people want. This is probably an area where significant sacrifices can be made for the sake of getting the book out. Images can always be added back in future editions.
Ec
"Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales" jwales@wikia.com writes:
I don't know the solution, but it sure would be sweet to have some means of bulk uploading, for example ftp or something like that.
uploading isn't the problem, using the pyhton bot it is easily scriptable.
the time consuming job are all the preparation steps: "washing" the picture, choosing a good filename, providing a sensible description and adding similar picture to the description for comparison, and, finally, connect the images with the articles.
On 07/19/04 14:22, Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales wrote:
Yes. A certain fairly well-known wikipedian just went on a big tour of Europe and made a special point of taking "encyclopedic" photos of many prominent landmarks on his journey, but he still hasn't uploaded any of them, because it's a huge pain in the ass. I don't know the solution, but it sure would be sweet to have some means of bulk uploading, for example ftp or something like that.
Possibly we wouldn't need to do this ourselves. fotopic.net already offers bulk mobile phone uploads for paid users. You can do a pile of photos on your phone, upload to your fotopic.net page and have a gallery up a minute or so later (so they claim). Expect to see other photo sites offering similar services.
This lets people use another service as their staging area, and then they can do the *hard* work, which is picking a non-sucky name and so on.
(Developer idea: If anyone tries to upload an image with a name of eight characters or less before the extension - such as, ooh, CIMG0134.JPG or DSCN0023.JPG or such *straight out the camera* names - ask if they really mean that. If not forbidding it utterly.)
- d.
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