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KDE GUI Media The Internet

Wikimedia and KDE Cooperation Announced 174

Posted by Zonk from the wikitacular dept.
eean writes "As reported by KDE Dot News, today Jimmy Wales, chairman of the Wikimedia Foundation, announced the beginning of a cooperation between Wikimedia and the KDE project at LinuxTag in Karlsruhe, Germany. As the first applications, like the media player amaroK, start to integrate Wikipedia content the idea is to create a webservice API to access the information from Wikimedia projects such as Wikipedia or Wiktionary."
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Wikimedia and KDE Cooperation Announced More

Wikimedia and KDE Cooperation Announced

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  • I swear to God... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 24, 2005 @11:58AM (#12901299)
    they better not name it Kikipedia, or Wikide.
  • I hope other projects such as the Gnome project jump on this ship as well.

  • Playing Tag? (Score:4, Funny)

    by Gertlex ( 722812 ) on Friday June 24, 2005 @12:05PM (#12901379)
    The plan WAS to get all these linux penguins playing tag, but they never quite got started. The rules consulted on Wikipedia.org were changed from moment to moment.
    • > The plan WAS to get all these linux penguins playing tag, but they never quite got started. The rules consulted on Wikipedia.org were changed from moment to moment.

      Excuse me, I believe that I may have seen something that appeared like a statement of fact there.

      Some people believed that the plan WAS to get all these linux penguins playing tag, but they never quite got started. Still other people believed that the rules consulted in Wokipedia.org were changed from moment to moment.

      The people

  • Thank God (Score:5, Interesting)

    by captnitro ( 160231 ) * on Friday June 24, 2005 @12:08PM (#12901409)
    Finally! This is something I've been preaching for a long time.

    While I understand it isn't (directly) the goal of open-source to compete with Company, Inc., the next generation of computing tools is going to be heavily service-oriented. That is to say: open-source has thus far concentrated on making software "products" -- applications, utilities, libraries, and so on. In a service-oriented community, though, open content is just as important as the tools that use it.

    Furthermore, I like to see when open-source products doing a little more -- wait for it -- synergy. (Shoot me.) Thus far, open projects have, apart from sharing code and libraries, stayed mostly to themselves. But partnerships like this are absolutely beneficial to creating a cohesive, seamless user experience. Via services, you create an entire open "platform" that isn't just the tools, but the content that backs it up. It also creates an entirely new market for companies to support open-source software.
  • I don't want Amarock searching Wikipedia every time I'm listening to my mp3s. I already know who sang the song - they're my legal copies (not living in US).

    Wouldn't it be a better use of resources to incorporate this into a browser or word processor? You could look highlight any word(s) on the web page and, like Firefox searches Google, search Wiki.

    Wouldn't that be nice?

  • Trillian does this. (Score:4, Informative)

    by krgallagher ( 743575 ) on Friday June 24, 2005 @12:08PM (#12901413) Homepage
    I use Trillian [trillian.cc] as an IM client and it does something similar to this. I get underlined links with more information from Wikimedia if words in the message match an existing wiki topic. I think it is pretty cool.
    • I'm not entirely convinved of the usefulness of this feature.. I tried it once and thought it was ultimately useless. Much better would be just to have a context menu with a "Look up in Wikipedia" entry for any word.

      How often do you really need to look up a word in an IM conversation? All this feature does is place useless load on the wikipedia servers because people are bored and are mousing over the links to look at definitions for mundane words.
    • Your example was one of the reasons why the cooperation was made. As time goes by, a number of programms in and around the KDE project will use Wikipedia content more or less. Konversation, a really nice IRC client now has a feature that converts text like "Tomorrow I have an appointment in [[Bruxelles]]" into "Tomorrow I have an appointment in Bruxelles"

      (so far, it does not fix spelling and grammar errors yet, my sentence might have been wrong but you might get the point.)

      The services itself (all hail SO
    • You know, I found that feature annoying. There should be a way to highlight a word/phrase and do a a wiki lookup like Google lookup in Mozilla (forget which extension that is).
    • no wonder wikipedia is always needing money for bandwidth, i wonder how many hits they get from IM clients looking to see whether a topic has a wiki entry or not.

  • Great! (Score:3, Funny)

    by TheStick ( 847894 ) on Friday June 24, 2005 @12:10PM (#12901421)
    Let's just hope they won't add integrated Wikipedia to KTeaTime

    "Earl Grey tea is a black tea blend, which gets a distinctive flavour and aroma from bergamot oil..."

  • This could be really useful... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Mad_Rain ( 674268 ) on Friday June 24, 2005 @12:12PM (#12901440) Journal
    I've looked at a bunch of different ways of playing and organizing my small mp3 collection (is 20GB still small?). Amarok [kde.org] has been one of my favorite aps when I'm using my linux desktop. When I've set up my file server to stream mp3s over the web to my office computer (running Windows), I've used Jinzora [jinzora.org].

    Now, both of these programs use a MySQL database backend to help organize and catagorize mp3s, and use id3 tag information. I think it'd be an absolute joy to have them share the same data, instead of using two redundant databases. Perhaps as this project matures, we could see this become a standardized format for multiple projects to use, so the information can be shared and edited more easily.
    • Yeah, 20Gb _is_ small :)
      • Well, actually he wrote 20 GB which is 8 times as much as you wrote (20 Gb). bits and bytes....

        On the other hand, to the OP: if 20GB used to be a small collection it most definately still is; people's mp3 collections don't shrink....
    • I prefer JuK [kde.org]; I have no idea what sort of black magic it uses to index files, but it sure isn't MySQL, and it is reasonably fast to index and blindingly fast to search/filter/organise.
  • It seems this kind of collaboration, in a lot of ways, will allow people to bypass having to launch a browser and use our favorite search engine to find the information they are looking for. Granted, its only from one resource right now, but for the masses, in most cases, they'd probably be pretty happy with that. Cutting down on the time spent trying to find relevant google results alone is a huge bonus, as many out there have trouble properly narrowing down their searches to begin with.

  • A very good thing (Score:4, Insightful)

    by m50d ( 797211 ) on Friday June 24, 2005 @12:16PM (#12901485) Homepage Journal
    Wikipedia in your media player is one of the things you don't notice you were missing until you have it, after which it's indispensible. I hope other projects start to take advantage of the bindings, hopefully not just within KDE but elsewhere as well. This should benefit everyone.
    • KDE teaming up with history's rudest online community is not a good decision. We're talking about Wikipedia here, whose motto is "edit it yourself you fuckwit!"
      • And KDE's isn't "code it yourself you fuckwit!" :)

        (To be fair, Charles Samuels was very helpful when I was actually writing something, but the replies to feature requests for other programs are often less so)

  • This is a great idea! It's going to help technical application like RKWard (http://rkward.sourceforge.net/ [sourceforge.net], a GUI for the R statistical language: http://r-project.org/ [r-project.org]), integrate informations from wikipedia. In the field of statistics, help is a big issue. It's quite difficult for F/OSS to compete with SAS or SPSS. KDE/Wikipedia is certainly the way to go to fill the gap.
  • Now wikipedia can also become overcomplicated and sluggish with background services nobody needs!

    kidding... though I'm an xfce fan myself

  • right idea, wrong example (Score:3, Insightful)

    by X_Bones ( 93097 ) <danorz13&yahoo,com> on Friday June 24, 2005 @12:33PM (#12901654) Homepage Journal
    Who needs media player to interact with an encyclopedia? I already know who sings the songs I listen to. I've already bookmarked the band's web site, which has more photos and lyrics than Wikipedia could collect. I've seen the IMDB entry on the movie I'm watching, or I have the box it came in. What's the point?

    Now, something like an e-book reader tied to a service like Wiktionary [wiktionary.org] would be far more useful. I think a lot more people would take advantage of something like this (particularly those with handleld wireless devices).

  • Microsoft to do the same with Encarta? (Score:3, Informative)

    by CyricZ ( 887944 ) on Friday June 24, 2005 @12:33PM (#12901656)
    I suppose that Microsoft will copy this idea by linking their desktop services with Encarta.

    Indeed, I would be very hesistant to trust their results. While Wikipedia's veracity has often been questioned, at least it is a public effort with the input of hundreds of thousands of people. Encarta, on the other hand, is a corporate effort without the public involvement. The risk of corporate nogoodery is far greater.

  • WebServices -- NOT limited to KDE. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by roard ( 661272 ) on Friday June 24, 2005 @12:36PM (#12901698) Homepage
    Well, if they create webservices for wikipedia/wiktionary, everybody will be able to use it, not just KDE ... I don't see what will prevent me to write a GNUstep [gnustep.org] client for example :-)
  • As it is, amaroK comes by default with a tag to pull up lyrics for songs. It's very nicely integrated, and convenient. Given my preference for obscure indie bands, I've been doing a lot of submitting - again through that same interface. Point is, the developer(s) of amaroK have certainly noticed the KDE project's emphasis on integration, and they've got their thinking caps on.

    Now what I'd like to see is blog/journal integration with contacts. KDE's use of the standard address book for mail and IM is a

  • Bandwidth (Score:2, Insightful)

    by slapout ( 93640 )
    So, on one hand Wikipedia needs more bandwidth ( http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/02/10/235520 2 [slashdot.org] )...

    And on the other, they are doing things like this that will increase the load on their servers...

    (Then again, I never understood why people mow their lawns and then water them. :-)
    • (Then again, I never understood why people mow their lawns and then water them. :-)

      I never understood why anybody would plant grass on their lawns. Douglas firs are nicer looking and lower maintenance. Then again, the Douglas fir lawn is an Oregonian thing, you're not expected to understand this.

    • If more people use it, they might get more donations, and so be more able to get better/more servers up.
  • I use them every day, Kencylopedia would also be handy.

  • Comment removed (Score:3, Informative)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Friday June 24, 2005 @01:19PM (#12902239)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • Now what would be cool is to translae the KDE documentation translated into the Wikmedia format. That would be really kick ass. I have always taught thatWiki is the ideal documentation tool, by it's dynamic nature, you could add topics, correct documentation, add examples Etc. à la PHP doc for instance or Faq-o-Matic. Linuxdoc can also profit from this, although I believe it's largly dead ?? by now.
  • Well I don't know what to think at this point. As part of google's SoC i basicaly suggested something similar to kde. I'm left wondering if this has been in the works or if they "took" the idea from me?

    Wonderfull way to encourage me to code open source.

  • Wikipedia Rocks (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Etriaph ( 16235 ) on Friday June 24, 2005 @02:18PM (#12902954)
    I think this is an awesome idea as a KDE user. I love using Wikipedia, and have often spent hours just reading through inane trivia I've found there. Integrating this with a desktop application is a smart idea, and I honestly can't believe someone hasn't thought about it before.

    I hope GNOME and the folks in Redmond follow this lead and create a Wikipedia desktop app to interact with this webservice.

  • Nevermind tight integration with applications.... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by JaF893 ( 745419 ) on Friday June 24, 2005 @02:59PM (#12903444) Journal
    I want to be able to download Wikipedia. Obviously this would rape the Wikipedia servers but they could do a monthly release via bit torrent. I think this would be really useful and they could even sell copies of it on DVD.

  • Uniting it with HELP (Score:4, Interesting)

    by mnmn ( 145599 ) on Friday June 24, 2005 @04:47PM (#12904472) Homepage
    What if KDE's own manuals and help system were rsynced with its original data in wikipedia? What if all manuals were rsynced from wikis?

    We could type 'man ls' and get the latest page with comments and all.

    Sure beats submitting manpage patches to developers.

    Even better, like in wikipedia, you'd click on a word in a manual page, and you'd get the man page of that manual and all related pages...

    Now combine that with the google search engine.

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