Some people think it's a bad idea to rely on the Internet for research or communication because it's a dangerous place where hackers or others with sinister motives can easily wreak havoc with the truth. That charge is sometimes leveled at Wikipedia, the free online encyclopedia that anyone can edit.

"...I have spent an interesting afternoon in Ritz Carlton, Millenia here in Singapore to listen to a talk by Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia. Perhaps, the picture on the left speaks a thousand words about how the evening transpired, since the discussion revolves around censorship, creative commons and free software movement..."

Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales will be in South Africa next month to promote his goal of having Wikipedias in all major languages around the world.

"Wikipedia Founder Jimmy Wales is leading workshops in Johannesburg, South Africa, this weekend to stimulate the growth of local-language Wikipedia sites there..."

Wikipedia's Jimmy Wales and Ubuntu's Mark Shuttleworth are backing a scheme to make publicly funded education materials freely available on the Internet.

Wikia Search launched live Monday in its first publicly accessible form.

The search engine, backed by Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales, is an open source search tool that allows collaboration.

Wikipedia and Wikia operate independently and are unrelated except for Wales' involvement in each.

Wales announced plans for the project last year and said he wanted to provide an open alternative to Google (NSDQ: GOOG).

Wikia Search uses a social networking model, allowing users to create profiles, select friends, share photos, and manage privacy preferences in addition to providing traditional search capabilities. Users can click on an option to start or participate in discussions about search rankings and write mini-articles about search terms.

"The open-source search engine backed by Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales could go live as an early test version as soon as next week. Unlike Google, Search Wikia will not share search data with advertisers, nor invade privacy by storing users' search terms..."

Groklaw's Sean Daly had an opportunity to meet Vint Cerf, Vice President and Chief Internet Evangelist at Google, at OpenForum Europe last week. Mr. Cerf, known as the Father of the Internet because of being the co-designer with Robert Kahn of TCP/IP protocols and the basic architecture of the Internet, was gracious enough to answer some email questions Sean propounded regarding the future of the Internet, standards in general, and OOXML in particular. Like many others this week, Cerf has been giving the standards process considerable thought, and he concludes in connection with OOXML that "Internet users deserve better handling of global Internet standards."

"Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipdia talks about how Wikipedia aims to give people access to the sum of human knowledge. He describes how Wikipedia is very popular across the globe. Hundreds of thousands of articles in numbers of languages. He notes how Wikipedia is a charitable organization with only 12 employees. Yet, look at the affect they have on the world. Spent $1,000,000 in 2006 - supported by small donations from people around the world. (Also gets donations of caching servers around the world.) Wales goes on to define, what he means by free access to the sum of human knowledge. “Free as in speech, not as in beer.” The Wikipedia’s license allows you the: Freedom to copy, Freedom to modify, Freedom to redistribute, Freedom to redistribute modified versions ..."