Sunday, February 25, 2018

Swallowed a Dictionary

The above, even considering there are two entries on encyclopedias and one on wikis, is not exhaustive; it didn't take me long to realise that I had not included the Dictionary of Irish Architects despite intending to do so nor to give up quickly after commencing a country-by-country check of foreign online encyclopedias. Or concede that my decision to exclude Veropedia was idiosyncratic but, to be fair, mirroring Wikipedia is something other sites do regularly and I can't see the point unless you are going to do a Touched by the Son and use this to make new discoveries.

Should we look at the definition of dictionary or are we content to say we think we know the difference to encyclopedias? As with wikis there is considerable crossover. Probably you won't get far if you look up 'steel-wheeled tractor' in an online dictionary, it might be better to find out, using a search engine, what some of these tractors were and then use a dictionary though, chances are, you will have the information by then. And were they perhaps 'iron-wheeled'?


Online Dictionaries


posted by Berko Wills @ 10:01 pm   0 Comments

Tuesday, February 20, 2018

Psych lo PDA

Encyclopedias and dictionaries cover a range so you won't find one specifically on the F250; that would be a handbook or a manual. But you could potentially have a reference work of this nature dealing with Ford vehicles generally, or with trucks.

GNE was formerly GNUpedia. Interpedia was the first site to propose a free encyclopedia written by users.

Open Link is well described but hard to find with such a generic title.

I Bag Your ¿Perdón?

 Image result for online encyclopedia



posted by Berko Wills @ 4:21 pm   0 Comments

Sunday, February 11, 2018

Look it up

Due to the popularity of Wikipedia there is some blurring in lines between wikis and online encyclopedias. The difference is that a wiki is a shared site, so a group of people who are Valiant enthusiasts, whether that's ute or car (or, in this case, comic book), will contribute information. Online encyclopedias are much like their bound predecessors, also containing information but in a strict format and either staffed contributors or - and here's the overlap - fellow enthusiasts or scholars.

We're fortunate that I had the presence of mind to note down the remaining site types in our top 100 before they removed the bottom 50 so we can still do that. Encyclopedias, meanwhile, were touched upon in our preamble to site rankings where we noted in September that Wikipedia was the fifth most popular site on the planet.
What follows are a sample, removing those we mentioned in the last post about wikis and, in the case of dodgy ones like Conservapedia (goes with the territory dare I say), worst directories. And so forth.

Online Encyclopedias


Image result for animal diversity webImage result for zipcode zoo

posted by Berko Wills @ 10:45 pm   0 Comments

Tuesday, February 06, 2018

Wiki wacky woo

The only trouble with using Wikipedia as your source is that it may not be the same the next day you log in due to the regular editing. In our case we're lucky we've got this far through the list as someone has decided that, since Alexa only provides their top 50 for free, this list should also be reduced from 100.
I don't think we had very many categories left (our last, online office suites, is gone, being below 50). One I do recall is wikis (irony?). On Wikipedia - currently - is a list of 93 such sites; too many to canvas.
Image result for "wiki"
If we remove the ones we've mentioned that are issued by Wikimedia Foundation (see post from 29th September) and cull idiosyncratic efforts like Heroes Wiki, Lostpedia, Memory Alpha, Nukapedia, Supernatural Wiki, Wookieepedia and WoWWiki (devoted to individual shows or games), other minority interests such as Spanish and Chinese language encyclopedias, and wikis that have already received mentions such as Conservapedia  and Uncyclopedia, we have:

*I tried several times to log into the Planetmath.org site with no success


posted by Berko Wills @ 3:21 pm   0 Comments

Thursday, February 01, 2018

Suites for my sweet

You might think that Microsoft Office is the boss when it comes to online office suites and this is reinforced by it being the only one [Alexa 62, SimilarWeb 48] in the Top 100 most popular websites. There turns out to be a number of others and they divide into freeware suites, open source suites and proprietary suites
In computing, an office suite is a collection of productivity software usually containing a word processor, spreadsheet and a presentation program.
We should note that office suites are often desktop based; either multi-platform or designed to work exclusively on DOS, Mac OS X, Microsoft Windows, or Unix; with mobile suites designed for tablet or smartphone.
Thankfully our brief is not to look at LibreOffice or Aster*x

Online Office Suites

posted by Berko Wills @ 10:42 pm   0 Comments