Category: News

Update: 2011 WikiMedia drive ends with $20 Million

Those banners on Wikipedia asking you to donate just raised $20 Million, sukkaaaz*…

*note that thats 20 million US dollars (currency) – comma – (pronoun) sukkaaaz. Not 20 million suckers. that’d be cool though. Im gonna have a lollipop drive. Imagine if lollipops could drive? I bet BlowPops would rock a Ferrari and DumDums would be in Chevy Volts. But seriously – whats the deal with airline food?

Bu BAM:

The San Francisco-based non-profit group that maintains Wikipedia, the popular online encyclopedia, officially closed its annual fundraising drive on Tuesday. The total amount raised: $20 million.

That’s a record, and a step up from the $16 million Wikimedia raised last year during a nearly two-month-long fundraising effort.

Raising $20 million may seem commonplace by the standards of today’s super-heated venture capital start-up world. But given the difficult economic environment, and some of the struggles that other non-profits have experienced raising money, Wikimedia’s result is notable.

The drive garnered some big-ticket donations, such as $500,000 from Google co-founder Sergey Brin and his wife’s foundation. But according to Wikimedia, the majority of the pledges came from more than a million ordinary folks coughing up donations in the $20 range.

The money will help Wikimedia — whose more than 20 million Wikipedia articles are written and edited for free by volunteers — pay for the technology and infrastructure necessary to keep the service growing, develop new features for the website and bolster its legal defense fund.

Wikimedia’s record-breaking fundraising drive still isn’t enough to cover the 90-employee organization’s operating budget. According to Wikimedia communications head Jay Walsh, the operating budget for the 2011 fiscal year ending June 30 is $28 million.

Romney wins Iowa Caucus by 8 votes

I’ve been hatin on tricky Rick Santorum this election cycle but I gotta admit that he worked hard, gave a great speech with no notes, has a beautiful family and some okay ideas. its just that… the guy who beat him by just 8 votes also gave a great speech with no notes, has a beautiful family and a lot of GOOD ideas in addition to his okay ideas + doesnt freak me out and doesn’t hold any positions that would embarrass me out of publicly/vocally supporting him, so I’m gonna say good job and congratulations to Mr Santorum, but we’ve got a better choice (by a wide margin) in this race.

In other thoughts: Caucuses are weird and outdated and this emphasis on Iowa being the first in the country to vote for president is even weirder and more outdatederz. Shiz needs to change.

California doesnt vote in this process until June and the nominee is always chosen by then. Lame. Change it. Should be a lottery on which states go first. Iowa and New Hampshire aren’t representative of the rest of the country enough to have such an important role in this process.

That’s not what “Photobombing” means…

The Daily Caller ran this headline and image above on their front page about this news item. Weird, right? That image of the woman outside the window is Congresswoman Wasserman Shultz and it is photoshopped. But it looks real, right? I wonder how many were fooled… Anyway – the point they were trying to make was that of the contents of this news item:

Democratic campaign officials are fighting to get onto the GOP’s Iowa podium, because they’re hoping to jostle the GOP candidates, trip up Mitt Romney and color the public’s image of the Republican coalition and the eventual winner.

Democratic National Committee chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz will be in Des Moines, Iowa, on Tuesday, where she’s expected to slam Romney as an out-of-touch elitist.

Brad Woodhouse, the DNC’s communications chief, was in the state Jan. 1. He worked to damage the former Massachusetts governor’s campaign by trying to shape reporters’ coverage of Romney‘s win or loss in the race.

“Romney has now predicted a win tomorrow. He’s been running for 5 years, is all in here and has spent millions to win. He sure better,” said a Monday evening tweet from Woodhouse.

Democrats also showed off their Iowa general-election organization in the hope of a getting favorable comparisons to the Republicans’ ill-funded, ramshackle campaigns.

The New York Times displayed a flattering video of campaign volunteers hard at work, but also downplayed Obama’s use of Wall Street donations to portray itself as a champion of Iowa’s middle class.

Okay. so… fine.. but I’m still calling fowl on the use of the term Photo-bombing with this photoshopped example of a photo-bomb. For context, here is a genuine photo-bomb below:

Bust Stop Bubble Pop

I don’t get it. but I love it. A bus stop in Malaysia features boards of bubble wrap for people to pop in an advertisement by Sony. I guess popping the bubbles is supposed to be practice for playing the PSP? It’s always a smart idea to make people think of your product when they interact with non-yourproduct related things so maybe that was the thinking behind this. “The next time they pop bubble wrap, they’ll want to play video games!”. Sounds solid to me…

2 months later and iPads with iOS 5 STILL can’t play Podcasts or Audiobooks

The iOS 5 update from October 2011 introduced the following issues that have yet to be fixed:

1 The playback speed control for podcasts has gone

2 Chapter support in audiobooks has gone

3 The 30 second rewind button for podcasts has gone

4 Customizable menu so podcasts and audiobooks can be moved to the front page

5 Podcast count–You now have to open each podcast “folder” to see the number of unplayed podcasts

6 Time elapsed/remaining–used to be able to look at a podcast/audiobook and determine how far along you were. Now it has to be the active track.

7 Link to more episodes has gone

Please give us back these useful features and address the bug(s). iOS 5 is exciting but for podcasts on the iPad it is a great disappointment, and very unworthy of Apple.