Wikia Search, Boston Celtics, Iraqi soccer, “diabeetus”
Tuesday, July 31, 2007
I read an interesting analysis of Wikia Search and Jimmy “Jimbo” Wales in this past April’s issue of Fast Company. The cover of the magazine read: “Google’s Worst Nightmare: Wikipedia’s Jimmy Wales Has His Sights Set on the Search Business.” One of the coolest parts of the “Why Is This Man Smiling?” cover story was a bar graph titled “A Highly Subjective History of Search” that chronicled Internet search leaders since 1994. Remember the heyday of AltaVista in the mid- to late 1990s? 
Basically, the point of the graph is that Google has been consistently dominating the online search space since about 1999. That’s a long time in Internet years!
So, can an open source project like Wikia Search (Grub) unseat Google and Yahoo from the search lead? Wikia, Inc. published a press release at the O’Reilly Open Source Convention (OSCON) in Portland last week: “Jimmy Wales and Wikia Release Open Source Distributed Web Crawler Tool.” Here’s a more recent article: “Can Open Source Beat Google Search?” Very cool stuff.
Now, on to sports: It looks like the Boston Celtics are relevant again. Kevin Garnett is joining Paul Pierce and Ray Allen in Boston in exchange for seven Celtics. Bill Simmons published a nice summary about Kevin Garnett heading to Boston for the “Al Jefferson pu pu platter deluxe” yesterday before the deal was final. And now it’s final: “Five players, two picks sent to Wolves for Garnett” and “Green pay: Garnett cashes in with extension worth $60M.”
A few days ago the Iraqi soccer team won the Asian Cup against all odds. It’s a nice story.
Speaking of Iraq, the Get Your War On comics always have some interesting things to say about the current political climate. I saw David Rees speak at Powell’s Books in Portland back in 2002.
Somehow I got off on a “diabeetus” tangent today (or maybe it’s spelled more like “dyeabethez,” eh?). I was thinking about the classic Liberty Medical commercial: “Hi. I’m Wilford Brimley. My diabeetus testin’ supplies can help you live a better life. Diabeetus is a very serious disease.” And then there are the LOLcats versions. And what about Wilford Brimley’s Diabetes Dance Mix? Clearly other people have been wasting time thinking about ol’ Wilford as well.
In the spirit of Transformers, there’s also this from YouTube: Transformers Rollout! and Autobots: Roll Out.
I want to see The Simpsons Movie.