Wednesday, September 10, 2008

Geekipedia!

kw: neat things to know

My brother sent me a remarkable 60-page special edition of Wired that contains the contents of Geekipedia as it was originally released. It is growing.

Link in and look around. One of the newest articles is titled PICNIC, an acronym for Problem In Chair Not In Computer. While it can be used as an insult similar to "The problem with your car is the nut that holds the steering wheel," it is used in the tech support community to refer to an apparent problem that is most simply resolved by educating the caller a little bit. The article on Quantum Computing explains why it is still worth following.

Each article includes a button: "Suggest an entry", but be prepared to have a really good idea. The editors of Wired want Geekipedia to be really useful, not just a geeky clone of Wikipedia, which they see as bloated, having a few pithy nuggets awash in mediocre or uninteresting articles. Personally, I don't browse Wikipedia, I search it, so what I find is typically of great interest and use, at least to me. Having the 2007 version of Geekipedia in print, I'll read it all.

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