[Wikimedia-l] New Google interface to Wikipedia

[Fæ]

On 29 September 2013 11:02, Anders Wennersten <mail at anderswennersten.se> wrote:
> The number of accesses to Wikipedia has jumped 25-40% since July [1] and I
> suspect it is related to the new interface Google has created where an
> extract from Wikipedia resides on the right  part of search page.
>
> It is very neat feature and I have noticed you get it from the language
> version you are used to, meaning it is not only using enwp as Facebook does.
> It also uses some intelligent way of doing the extract as it is not 100% as
> the wikiepdiatext and also find illustrations from other sources than
> Wikipedia/commons.
>
> Does anyone know the background and technique/algorithms behind, or have
> they developed this all by themselves?
>
> Anders
> [1) http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/TablesPageViewsMonthlyCombined.htm

I know that I'm rather impressed with my Nexus 7, which nicely speaks
back to me aloud, explaining answers to my spoken questions using text
from Wikipedia. My Mother, who is in her mid 70's, finds the voice
interface intuitive and needed no training before using this as a way
to access the 'sum of human knowledge'. :-D

I can't fault the outcome of this development work, it would be
interesting to find out how much of the code is reusable or if there
are plans for an API so we can piggy-back some interesting apps on it.

Fae
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