Friday, March 30, 2012

Paul Allen Backs Wiki Project

Paul Allen, via his Seattle-based Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence, is one of the major backers of a new Wiki project from the group Wikimedia. According to Wikimedia, it is starting the development of a new project called Wikidata, an online, collaboratively edited database of the world's knowledge. Wikimedia said the effort is being funded by a major donation of 1.3 million Euros ($1.7M dollars), half of it provided by Allen. The idea behind Wikidata is to create a single database for information, such as the birth dates of public figures; scientific and government information; and more.