Lovely Links
All sorts of bits of the interweb are now coming together in ways I find fascinating.
I started using a chat programme called Trillian yesterday to talk to people using a venerable internet chat protocol called IRC. What I had not realised until using it was that it highlights any suitable phrases you use and links them to their entry on Wikipedia.
This can be a little distracting as you look up the encyclopedia entries for everything that is mentioned but sometimes this can be very helpful and informative.
What it does represent is the start of a really functioning web. Wikipedia is a great example of collective working to provide a good public resource. When this is linked well into other internet activities then this does bring real added value.
Trillian is OK, but in the past I have found that it stops connecting to some networks (particularly Yahoo) after a month or two. Gaim connects to a lot more networks than Trillian- eleven in fact: ICQ, IRC, MSN, Yahoo, AOL, Jabber, Napster (the IM and buddy list, not the filesharing), Novell Groupwise, Lotus Sametime, TOC and Zephyr. Plus it’s open source so you get the full features of the package for free (unlike Trillian).
I like using Wikipedia. It has just about everything.