Apparently some folks who were visiting Wikipedia saw some annoying banner ads. Not the requests for donations from its founder Jimmy Wales, mind you, but real banner ads promoting things to buy from third-party sites.

Today, the company has stepped out to make its users aware that not only will Wikipedia never run ads, but if you do see ads, then your computer might be infected with some sort of malware. Here’s what the team had to say today about it:

We never run ads on Wikipedia. Wikipedia is funded by more than a million donors, who give an average donation of less than 30 dollars. We run fundraising appeals, usually at the end of the year. If you’re seeing advertisements for a for-profit industry (see screenshot below for an example) or anything but our fundraiser, then your web browser has likely been infected with malware.

Wikipedia also added some instructions on how to remove malware or wayward extensions from your browser and suggested that this could also be something that an Internet cafe or free internet provider is injecting into your web experience.

Have no fear, Wikipedia will be remaining ad-free, thanks to the donations of its users;

But rest assured: you won’t be seeing legitimate advertisements on Wikipedia.

We’re here to distribute the sum of human knowledge to everyone on the planet — ad-free, forever.

If you think that your computer has been infected by some type of malware, check out this list of spyware removal tools and give one a try.

While the US government getting involved in Internet affairs is nothing new, it has only been three months since SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) kicked up dust and called attention to some potential threats to our civil liberties. While SOPA wasn’t “new”, it took quite a bit of time for all of us to realize the ramifications of such a bill passing into law.

Because of being late to the party, many Internet companies had to take drastic measures and make huge noise to get attention, thus causing the proposed bill to be dropped.

Just in case you forgot, those drastic measures included Wikipedia going dark for 24 hours and Google blocking out its logo for a day and urging its users to protest:

While the protest was “successful”, meaning that SOPA and its sister bill PIPA weren’t passed into law, we learned a very important lesson during that time, and that’s not to wait until the last minute to educate ourselves on what the government is up to. I’m not a conspiracy theorist by any means, but when it comes to either watching what we do online or censoring what we have to say, I have a problem with it.

There’s new proposed legislation being passed around in Washington, D.C. and it’s called CISPA (The Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act). Instead of waiting for big companies to educate us on what’s up, some folks are starting to draw attention to CISPA now. An organization called Demand Progress is already calling CISPA the new SOPA, which definitely caught my attention. Here’s how the organization describes the proposed act:

CISPA Is The New SOPA: Help Kill It

Here’s their next move: The Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act, or CISPA, would obliterate any semblance of online privacy in the United States. It’s up for a vote later this month.

CISPA would provide a victory for content owners who were shell-shocked by the unprecedented outpouring of activism in opposition to SOPA and Internet censorship.

SOPA was pushed as a remedy to the supposed economic threat of online piracy — but economic fear-mongering didn’t quite do the trick, so those concerned about copyright are engaging in sleight of hand, appending their legislation to a bill that most Americans will assume is about keeping them safe from bad guys.

This so-called cyber security bill aims to prevent theft of “government information” and “intellectual property” and could let ISPs block your access to websites — or the you with the government and other corporations. That data could then be used for just about anything — from pr whole Internet.

CISPA also encourages companies to share information aboutosecuting crimes to ad placements. And perhaps worst of all, CISPA supercedes all existing online privacy protections.

Please add your name at right to tell your lawmakers to oppose CISPA.

The Center for Democracy and Technology also has some serious concerns with CISPA:

Concerns with CISPA include:

- CISPA has a very broad, almost unlimited definition of the information that can be shared with government agencies and it supersedes all other privacy laws.
- CISPA is likely to lead to expansion of the government’s role in the monitoring of private communications.
- CISPA is likely to shift control of government cybersecurity efforts from civilian agencies to the military.
- Once the information is shared with the government, it wouldn’t have to be used for cybersecurity, but could instead be used for other purposes.

Much like SOPA, it’s not the things that are spelled out directly in the act that scare people, it’s the doors that something like this could open, taking advantage of the broadness of the proposal. The government is quickly trying to amend old security acts to reflect the new realities of technology, and if the consumers aren’t paying attention, they might find themselves under new scrutiny and surveillance that undermine their civil liberties.

While it might be too early for Wikipedia to plan another blackout, it’s not too early for you to educate yourself on how the government wants to be involved with the Internet in the United States.

➤ CISPA | Wikipedia

To say that mobile has been a huge boost for Wikipedia would be an understatement according to a post from the site today, saying that its 2-month-old Android version alone has accounted for 23M page views per month, with 2.25M installs to date.

Today, the Wikimedia Foundation has released updates for both iOS and Android versions and the features are jampacked. The glaring new feature is the fact that Wikipedia has opted to ditch Google Maps in favor of OpenStreetMaps for its popular “nearby view” feature. This is a growing trend for companies, as we’ve seen both Apple and foursquare opt for the open source alternative as well.

The reason behind the move has to do with support for as many devices as possible:

Previous versions of our application used Google Maps for the nearby view. This has now been replaced with OpenStreetMaps – an open and free source of Map Data that has been referred to as ‘Wikipedia for Maps.’ This closely aligns with our goal of making knowledge available in a free and open manner to everyone. This also means we no longer have to use proprietary Google APIs in our code, which helps it run on the millions of cheap Android handsets that are purely open source and do not have the proprietary Google applications.

While that’s bad news for Google, it’s great news for companies who want to put its own spin on the geographical data that it shows within its apps.

Along with this change, Wikipedia announced the following updates:

Wikipedia for iOS

All of the changes in this update are to bring the iOS version up to speed with its Android counterpart:

- Search suggestions
- Full text search
- “Did you mean?” results
- Saving pages for offline viewing
- Share pages via Twitter, Facebook
- Save pages to Read It Later
- Read current page in other languages
- Map integration to view nearby articles
- View location of current article + nearby articles in a map
- Set the default language
- Navigation history features

➤ Wikipedia for iOS

Wikipedia for Android

The Android update is more about feature requests and bug fixes, since this is the first major update since the app was released two months ago:

- Quick Search Bar integration
- Open Wikipedia URLs from any application using the Wikipedia app
- Full Text Search and ‘Did you Mean?’ correction support
- A much better tablet interface
- App can be moved to SD Card
… and plenty of bug fixes!

➤ Wikipedia for Android

Wikipedia also says that its moving to a faster development cycle, 2 weeks to be exact, so you can expect more features and updates to hit your devices soon.

After 244 years of printing encyclopedias, Encyclopaedia Britannica has decided to focus all of its attention on its digital information and kill off the creation of physical books.

The only shock about that was it’s a significant milestone in how far we’ve truly come as a digital society. The fact that kids will grow up never touching an encyclopedia makes me feel super old. This of course opens the door for the Internet, namely Wikipedia.

Wikipedia hasn’t won the war against dead-tree companies yet, but research shows that the education system is slowly adopting it as tool in the classroom. As of 2012, 73% of teachers prohibit the use of Wikipedia for research by their students. That’s down from 86% in 2005, and shows a steady rise of adoption. The likely reason for things not moving along faster is that Wikipedia can be edited by anyone, causing concern about the accuracy of its information.

Even though teachers aren’t completely sold, nearly 8 out of every 10 students still turn to Wikipedia first for research purposes.

Check out some more information about Wikipedia’s (hopeful) rise to educational glory here:

Via: Open-Site.org

Do you remember a simpler time when there were no computers with Internet service full of information? You actually had to leave the house and go to a library to check out one of those Encyclopedias. If you were lucky enough, and had the money, your parents might purchase a set of books from Encyclopaedia Britannica to enrich your learning experience.

Encyclopedias still exist, but as the Internet has taken over everything that we do, the need for them is gone. To that end, Encyclopaedia Britannica has announced that after 244 years of doing business it is going out of print, according to a report by Media Decoder.

To be completely honest, these print dinosaurs have been out of style since the Internet was born, which is about fifteen years now. I’m not quite sure what has taken the company so long to realize that it was losing money by continuing to print books, but either way, the time has come to say goodbye.

The company will continue to focus on its website, but that might be a lost cause already given that Wikipedia has become the go-to source for information, especially when you Google something that interests you.

Jorge Cauz, president of Encyclopaedia Britannica Inc. had this to say about the end of an era:

It’s a rite of passage in this new era. Some people will feel sad about it and nostalgic about it. But we have a better tool now. The Web site is continuously updated, it’s much more expansive and it has multimedia.

The last set of books will feature an update for the year 2010. I will always remember the Encylopedia fondly, but will not miss how much they weigh or how quickly they’re outdated. Still though, it’s crazy to think that generations to come will never get to see one unless they visit a museum.

Damn I feel old.

Want to download all of Wikipedia to your iPhone or iPad? There’s an app for that.

Less than two months ago, the Internet was embroiled in a heated battle to stop acts like SOPA and PIPA. At the time, the loyal users of Wikipedia urged the foundation behind the site to shut down for 24 hours in protest. As we all know, it did just that.

Following up on another promise, the foundation behind Wikipedia has started to remove its domains from Go Daddy’s service. The news was slipped into a February engineering report:

Domain names — The Wikimedia Foundation has started to move its domain names from GoDaddy to MarkMonitor (announcement).

The announcement that it links to is from Wikimedia’s Jay Walsh on February 13th that said:

Hi folks – you may have seen some media coverage recently about Wikimedia’s intentions around GoDaddy. It is true that WMF is still planning to move 100% away from GoDaddy for all of its domain name services.

I’ve been informed that we’re currently working with MarkMonitor to carry out a full switch-over, which as many of you will appreciate, takes time. WMF is going to post to the blog and generally share this information as soon as the process is complete. Until then, it does mean that you’ll see in some of our DNS registrations that GoDaddy is still listed. We’re working on it :)

Thanks – and stay tuned for more news in the next week.

The foundation again has stayed true to its word, and even though Go Daddy backed off of its support of SOPA immediately, the whole situation apparently left a bad taste in Wikimedia’s mouth.

Score another one for the Internet.

The Wikimedia Foundation wasn’t the only one threatening to leave Go Daddy, as Ben Huh from the Cheezburger Network famously kicked it all off with a tweet. Cheezburger domains appear to have stayed with Go Daddy, as of this moment.

Wikipedia has had an official iOS app for some time now, but was missing a presence on Android. That ends today with the launch of the official Wikipedia app for Android.

The app hasn’t been in the Android Market very long, but shows that it falls within the 10k-50k download bucket. Android doesn’t provide actual numbers on its Market pages, but gives you a fair guesstimate as to how its doing. Needless to say, Android users are excited about the new app with many reviews simply saying “Finally!”.

Features include:

Save article to read later or offline
Search articles nearby
Share articles using Android “Share” function
Read article in a different language
Full screen search

The app looks gorgeous and utilizes many of Android’s built in features, especially share.

Even though Wikipedia’s mobile version works just fine on all mobile devices, the addition of location-based features with its native app is definitely a reason to download it. Of course, the app is free and hopefully more features will be introduced as has been the case with its iOS counterpart.

➤ Wikipedia for Android

UPDATE: The app is on a tear and now fits into the 100k-500k downloads bucket

Tomorrow is nuclear day for sites like Reddit and Wikipedia. Both sites will be “blacking out“, which basically means they’ll be shutting down in protest of the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA). While SOPA isn’t dead quite yet, it has lost steam in Washington DC.

Not to be outdone by others, Microsoft has released a statement about its stance on SOPA:

We oppose the passage of the SOPA bill as currently drafted. We think the White House statement points in a constructive way to problems with the current legislation, the need to fix them, and the opportunity for people on all sides to talk together about a better path forward.

Its statement refers to what the White House had to say about the proposed act:

While we believe that online piracy by foreign websites is a serious problem that requires a serious legislative response, we will not support legislation that reduces freedom of expression, increases cybersecurity risk, or undermines the dynamic, innovative global Internet.

Microsoft, which has been slammed for its support of the PROTECT IP Act (PIPA), makes a bulk of its money from software licensing, therefore would have a lot to gain from these two acts passing. Microsoft is a member of the Business Software Alliance along with companies like Apple and Adobe that originally supported SOPA, but relented by saying SOPA “could sweep in more than just truly egregious actors”.

Other than this statement, Microsoft has no other plans for raising awareness about or protesting about SOPA on any of its sites, including Bing. Its search rival, Google, will be displaying a link in protest on its search engine tomorrow.

As we reported today, Wikipedia will be shutting down its English version on Wednesday in protest of SOPA and PIPA. It hopes to educate its users on the two proposed acts and ask them to contact their local congress members to stop them from passing.

Wikipedia is a huge resource of information and many rely on it for homework or just for personal browsing purposes. It’s such an important resource that most of its pages surface as a top Google search result for a prominent figure or event. Having said that, there are ways that you can keep a copy of Wikipedia for yourself. Yes, the entire thing.

There are extremely geeky ways to do this, such as mirroring the entire site, but this will take a lot of technical knowledge, know-how, setup. Instead of downloading the entire Wikipedia database, here are a few ways that will cost you a few bucks, but are infinitely simpler.

The apps below don’t require you to be online to view the pages, and you’ll be able to reference Wikipedia no matter where you are, even when it goes dark on Wednesday.

All of Wikipedia

All of Wikipedia is a brilliant and feature-rich app for your iOS device. It will even prompt you to download a dump of the latest Wikipedia pages in a way that requires no technical knowledge whatsoever. All you have to do is give it some time. And by “some time”, I mean generally between 3 and 4 hours depending on the speed of your connection.

➤ All of Wikipedia / $8.99

WikiPock

WikiPock also brings Wikipedia to your mobile device no matter where you are. It’s available for Android, Blackberry, Windows Mobile, and Symbian devices. In a nifty spin, if you don’t have the space on your device for Wikipedia, they will ship you a pre-loaded memory card with Wikipedia on it. Of course that won’t help you when it goes dark on Wednesday, but it’s definitely good to know. While not as pretty as All of Wikipedia, WikiPock gets the job done.

➤ WikiPock / $9.99

Offline Wiki

Offline Wiki is an extension for the Chrome browser that lets you grab a copy of Wikipedia for your computer. The extension does all of the downloading and decompressing of the massively huge files so you don’t have to. The other great thing is that you can read Wikipedia in your browser as you’d normally do.

➤ Offline Wiki / Free

Kiwix

Kiwix is an offline reader that you can download for Windows, Linux, and Mac. It’s a project supported by Wikipedia itself, so it definitely has a thriving community behind it. This software requires you to download a copy of Wikipedia yourself, which you can do here. Once you’ve downloaded the gigantic file and decompress it, Kiwix will take it from there.

➤ Kiwix / Free

Wiki Offline

Wiki Offline is a Mac app that works extremely well on your desktop. It includes features like full-screen reading and image galleries. Like most of the apps listed above, it prompts you to download Wikipedia and takes care of all of the heavy lifting for you. Since it’s for the desktop, you can customize things like the fonts and theme of the application.

➤ Wiki Offline / $9.99

So there you have it, five ways to get your own copy of Wikipedia in English before it shuts down on Wednesday in protest of SOPA. So far, the foundation is getting quite a bit of support in its efforts to raise awareness about acts that could endanger free enterprise on the Internet, as well as call politicians out on their failures at communicating why an act like SOPA is necessary. Even though it will be down, Wikipedia is a resource a lot of us rely on, so it’s best to be prepared.

Today, founder of the non-profit behind information archive Wikipedia, Jimmy Wales, announced that the site will go dark for 24 hours on Wednesday in protest of the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA).

Student warning!Do your homework early.Wikipedia protesting bad law on Wednesday! #sopa

— Jimmy Wales (@jimmy_wales) January 16, 2012

While only the English version of the site will be down, it accounts for 25 million daily visitors according to Wales:

comScore estimates the English Wikipedia receives 25 million average daily visitors globally.

— Jimmy Wales (@jimmy_wales) January 16, 2012

When we talked to Wales in November, he told us that Wikipedia had over 420m unique monthly visitors, and there are now over 20 million articles on Wikipedia across almost 300 languages.

As we reported last week, the site was contemplating taking this action along with Reddit who announced that it would black out its site in protest against SOPA.

The 24 hour shutdown of Wikipedia will be replaced with instructions on how to reach out to your local US members of congress, and Wales says he hopes the measure will “melt phones” with volume:

This is going to be wow.I hope Wikipedia will melt phone systems in Washington on Wednesday.Tell everyone you know!

— Jimmy Wales (@jimmy_wales) January 16, 2012

Along with Reddit, Wikipedia joins huge Internet names like WordPress, Mozilla, and all of the Cheezburger properties in Wednesday’s “black out” protest.

The proposed act endangers the future of sites like these by holding them directly accountable for content placed on them. It has been widely reported that if an act like this passed through and became actionable, many Internet businesses would suffer greatly due to new scrutiny placed on them by the government.