Wales is partially responsible for attracting some of criticisms leveled against him. The rather extravagant use of the Wikimedia expense account, that has been both widely documented and criticised (he once, unsuccessfully, attempted to charge a $1,300 dinner for four to the account) is one factor. It has long been a tricky PR topic for Wales and Wikipedia for some time, with some former employees publishing details of careless expenditure on a few occasions in the past.

Some of these things might not sound so bad, relatively speaking, when taken out of the wider Wikipedia context (especially if compared to some of the behaviour of your average well-paid, high-flying executives and CEOs etc).

Unfortunately for Wales, the problem is all the more serious because of its context. Wales is often going to great lengths to make himself, and Wikipedia seem virtous and noble, though his expense account handling has often been at odds with these claims.

See for example this summary of his views on democracy and the internet, which he is advertising as an after-dinner topic for his guest speaker work. Below is an extract:

‘Mr. Wales predicts that the internet will democratize developing countries by making the world ‘flat,’ opening markets, promoting cultural understanding, and giving developing nations the resources they need to compete in the 21st century. Mr. Wales asserts that internet will combat stereotypes, censorship, media control, and monopolies while simultaneously allowing citizens of developing nations to have a more prominent voice.’

For many, including Seth Finkelstein, this seems frankly tiresome and slightly hypocritical for Wales. After all; it can seem a bit cheeky to claim Wikipedia is a democracy enabling, freedom-of-information spreading revolutionary creation (thus appealing to potential donors to the Wikia Foundation which keeps the whole thing running) – and then to have reports of $600 bottles of wine paid for by expense accounts leaked on the net.

Wales’s lofty claims for Wikipedia are entirely desirable and commendable in theory, and one must not be cynical in denying Wikipedia credit for what it has achieved. However in practice the juxtaposition with the negative press over expenses slightly negates the above assertions, and erodes the credibility of the effort that he otherwise works so hard to promote.

I don’t know if Wales regrets that he chose not to profit from Wikipedia by choosing to run it as a charitable venture (his official answer is that he doesn’t). Perhaps there remains a desire to know how it would have been had he done otherwise, and was now as royally rich as Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook), Tom Anderson (Myspace) and all the other Web 2.0 success-story characters.

One cannot blame him for failing to live up to the lofty idealistic image of himself and Wikipedia that he aspires to (he never made any vow to poverty or sainthood – as Finkelstein observes). However we must recognise that his failure to live up to this, (often in quite spectacular and headline-grabbing ways) is nonetheless hurting Wikipedia, by eroding its respectability, credibility and image.

Finkelstein may exaggerate when he compares Wikipedia to a sweatshop, (in my view his comparison is slightly offensive to people suffering in, and fighting against, the use of actual sweatshop labour), but this is separate matter.

As someone who considers Wikipedia to be a very positive thing (if it can remain independent, accurate, democratic and reliable) I believe it is paramount that Wales guards against the slips that, now he is so in the public eye, damage him not only personally but by extension (and more importantly) Wikipedia. I am one of many that wants to see it develop into the massively positive and useful, democratic, knowledge-sharing tool that it has to potential to become (and that it already is in some countries), which it can only really do if Wales rectifies the slip-ups that inevitably are seized upon by the press, and result in a real PR headache…

Dejan Levi

Slideshare.net

The first thing new visitors will recognise is the layout – the homepage features a search bar, a tag cloud, and then selections of most popular, most downloaded, and recently added shows. Further down there are links to users and groups (like Youtube, Slideshare encourages users to register into the community – though you can use the site without doing this).

All in all the interface is functional and easy to use and, perhaps most importantly, it is also instantly familiar due to the popularity of the globally successful Youtube layout. So far so good in terms of attracting new users.

What distinguishes Slideshare from other competitors such as Flickr or Bubbleshare is that, while these photo sharing sites allow for slideshow options, they are not specifically dedicated to the slideshow format as the primary content form. Slideshare has a narrower focus and hence can deliver a far more developed and comprehensive service.

For example, Slideshare offers extensive SEO potential. The effective use of keywords in both slideshow titles and summaries boosts Google rankings, as does relevant tag deployment. A nice touch is that Slideshare widgets can be added to blogs or websites (again much like Youtube), meaning Slideshare provides a very easy way to add this content type to websites – and achieve greater SEO as a result.

In addition Slideshare allows for closed communities to be formed among friends or work colleagues – so that private slideshows can be shared. Potentially this provides a great method to exchange work presentations in a secure environment between colleagues, or private photo slideshows among friends/family.

The slidecasts function is also a nice touch – allowing for combining slides with mp3s to create musical presentations, comedy clips, or whatever else. This is likely to greatly increase the capacity of Slideshare to attract entertaining content, as well as the more obvious presentations, how-to tutorials, and webinars…

The potential for serious learning materials to be shared is another exciting prospect. In theory we could see a Wikipedia style function emerge except that, rather than hosting articles (like Wikipedia), Slideshare could have presentations explaining complex scientific concepts, historical periods, political ideas etc.

Furthermore, universities or colleges could create closed networks within which to share lecture presentations with all students who are enrolled at their institutions. This could provide a great way to pool learning resources and grant access to material across all departments – creating an online library of all lecture slideshows.

Slideshare was founded in 2006, and has gone from strength to strength since. Though currently still in a Beta testing stage, it has become increasingly popular since that time. If they can continue to add features and improve their service, while retaining the specificity of their function (i.e. not expanding into video for example), then I think they can surely corner this sector as their own in the same way that Youtube has taken the video sharing market. Exciting times lie ahead for this unique start-up; – we’ll keep you updated…

Dejan Levi

They are providing an alternate search homepage, powered by Google Custom Search, which displays its results using a black background rather than Google’s traditional white. As some monitors require less energy to display black pixels than they do for white ones, Blackle hopes to help lower the carbon footprint of our everyday Google use. The folks at Blackle calculate that the site has saved over half a million Watt hours already, since its launch in January 2007, and also done much to raise the profile of green computing.

Despite some controversy regarding the specifics of how this energy is saved; not all monitors use less energy for Blackle – some sizes of LCD monitor actually use more power to display the black pixels (while CRT monitors will consistently save energy), Blackle is providing a valuable service. In reality though its energy saving is not as considerable as Heap Media initially claimed, they are playing an important part in raising awareness and reminding us to factor such concerns into modern web design. Poorly designed pages are not only slower and harder to use, but also require more power (the Wikipedia homepage for example unnecessarily requires 13 images to be fetched over the network each time it is loaded, – as identified by Steve Saunders in his book ‘High Performance Websites’). Hardware and software companies are increasingly focused on contributing to a greener computing future, and it is also time for all web developers to accept this aspect of their work as an industry standard component of delivering modern websites. It might not currently be as big an issue as air travel or energy generation in terms of environmental impact, but nonetheless it is crucial that such a modern and forward thinking industry does its part in taking the challenge seriously.

Dejan Levi