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.

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..."

"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 ..."

Look out, Google! Jimmy Wales is coming for you. The founder of Wikipedia is aggressively building out his Wikia effort, a commercial collection of Web sites anyone can edit. One of its key parts? Search.

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.

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

"He's a one-time futures trader and the force behind one of the internet's most successful sites - and unlike many of his peers he hasn't sold out to big business for billions. It's all done in the name of free knowledge for all, he says.

"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..."