Ten Wikipedia Hacks

When something's working, you stick with it. My series of social media hacks (RSS, Technorati, blogging) has been such a hit, I am going to keep it going! So, with that in mind, here are 10 hacks that will help you get more out of your favorite reference site and mine - Wikipedia!

1) Create a User Account to Gain Access to Additional Features
Wikipedia is an open source encyclopedia with 800,000+ articles that anyone can read or write to anonymously without the need to register. However, there are enormous benefits to registering. These include: nice watch lists you can save, a selection of site skins, and much more. Check out this killer skin!

2) Use Wikipedia's Keyboard Shortcuts
Wikipedia is a Web 2.0 site, so naturally it has a boatload of killer keyboard shortcuts that use the ALT key on Windows or the Control key on the Mac. For example: “ALT E” on Windows edits an article, control H on the Mac opens an article's history, “ALT T” shows discussions and so on. If you log in and create a Wikipedia account you get lots of other shortcuts as well.

3) Search Wikipedia the AJAX Way
I don't know about you, but I am Mr. Instant Gratification man. I don't want to wait for Wikipedia to load a page with search results when I query. I want to search AJAX style - like Google Suggest. Well, using this page, you can baby!

4) Take Wikipedia to Go
It happens to me all the time. I want to settle a bet right here and now while I am having the argument. Once in awhile I would open up my celly and use Google SMS to settle the score, but that became cumbersome after a while. Now I Wapedia-it on my Treo. Wapedia is a mobile version of Wikipedia that works in any WAP-capable browser or even on a PDA! It's available in multiple languages too!

5) Hey, Your Wikipedia is in my Firefox!
Yup. You can easily add Wikipedia to Firefox in a couple of ways. The easiest is by adding a bookmarklet (this works in other browsers as well). The second easiest is a Firefox search plug-in that searches the encyclopedia using Google. Click here to install it. The ultimate is to move up to this Firefox extension. Boo ya! There are also Konfabulator widgets and a Mac OS X Dashboard widget too.

6) A Stitch of Searching with A9 Saves Time
Using A9, Amazon.com's search engine, you can search Wikipedia and Google at the same time! Just make sure the proper boxes are checked at the top. Add a check for blogs and you get a trifecta!

7) Track Wikipedia Using Wikipedia
Forget the information that's in Wikipedia. The whole freakin' Web site is a fascinating animal onto itself! There's lots of great tools that you can use to track it. For example, this page lists real-time statistics including the number of articles and edits to date. Did you know that each article has an average of 11 edits? Or this page shows the list of registered Wikipedians by the number of edits they have made. Last but not least, there's traffic data and lists of press mentions to boot.

8) Connect Articles and Places with Placeopedia
Placopedia marries Wikipedia and Google Maps in a Web of AJAX goodness. Using Placeopedia you can map people, places and things. For example, the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry or Rotorua, New Zealand.

9) Save Trees with Printable Articles
Every Wikipedia article has a toolbox in the left hand margin. There are lots of cool gizmos here including a backlinks link, a pointer to related changes and more. My favorite, however, is the printable version tool. Look how nice and clean this page is! Ed Begley Jr. would be proud.

10) Play Six Degrees of Wikipedia!
Last but not least, who remembers the Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon meme? The idea here is that virtually every actor or actress can be connected to Kevin Bacon in less than six degrees. Well, you can also play Six Degrees of Wikipedia. Using this site you can find the shortest path between any two Wikipedia articles in the main namespace using wiki links. For example, it's not hard to connect the devil and Bill Gates (three degrees) or Jesus and John Lennon (six hops)!

Technorati Tags: A9, Hacks, Placeopedia, Web2.0, Wikipedia