Anybody who surfs online has, at some point or the other, used Wikipedia. And maybe you use it several times a week. But how much do you really know about the world’s leading online encyclopedia?

I have used Wikipedia first at college and later at work and consider myself quite an expert on how to work with and around the website. Here are some of my suggestions to get the most from your favorite encyclopedia:

1. Google Maps and Wikipedia: Did you know that Google Maps comes with a Wikipedia layer? Try this out by clicking on the menu on the top right of your Google Maps page and selecting Wikipedia.
2. Better search results: In addition to the usual search shortcuts such as double quotes and hyphens, Wikipedia offers a few more tricks. Add an asterisk (*) to a search term to pull up all results containing the word. Use a tilde (~) to access “fuzzy” search results – useful when you don’t know the exact spelling (happens when you’re dreaming in class).
3. Publish your very own Wikipedia book: Arrange Wikipedia articles into a book by selecting ‘Create a book’ under the Print tab on the left side of the page. Add appropriate Wikipedia articles into a book and then download it as a pdf.
4. 4. Mobile Wiki: Go mobile by using the ‘lite’ version of Wikipedia. Use http://en.m.wikipedia.org/ for a better reference option when you are on the go.
5. Leave out distractions: Dozens of links in a Wikipedia page may make it too distracting to read. Simply make the page a printable version by clicking on the option under the Print tab on the left menu.

Have fun trying out these new tricks and let me know if you have anymore.

Popularity: 10% [?]

By the end of 2012, South Korea intends to connect every home in the country to the Internet at one gigabit per second. That would be a tenfold increase from the already blazing national standard and more than 200 times as fast as the average household setup in the United States. A lot of Koreans are early adopters and the govt is getting prepared for things like 3-D TV, Internet protocol TV, high-definition multimedia, gaming and videoconferencing, ultra-high-definition TV, cloud computing.

Japan has launched a satellite to improve bandwidth for its citizens. A telecom revolution is brewing again in the US. http://gigaom.com/broadband/we-will-soon-live-in-a-100-gbps-world/

And we are still grappling with a 2G scam and a 2 hour download for a 36 mb file….. we deserve our politicians!

Popularity: 13% [?]