Dear all,

Wikiwix, the semantic search engine run by the web company Linterweb that, so far, had been giving only results out of the databases of the Wikimedia Foundation projects, indexes henceforth as well tweeted web pages.

The idea is very simple: when a tweet contains a link to a web page, the content of this web page gets indexed in real time, and the web page is displayed immediately amongst search results. Thus, Wikiwix indexes in real time about 150 pages per second, corresponding to the around 150 “Tweets with links” that are tweeted on average every second on Twitter.

Example: Let’s assume that you are searching for web pages relevant to the search term “Wikileaks”. The two last results (that is, the two last web pages to which a tweet refers to, and that are relevant to the search term “Wikileaks”) are displayed anti-chronologically (that is, the last tweeted pages are shown at the top of the result list, in a Last In First Out order) at the top of the result page, just over the classical results of the search, in a panel called “Results on the recent web”. For each result, the following information is provided:

• Title: The first line of each result shows the title of the tweeted web page. Click this title to reach that web page.
• Snippet: Below the title is a short description of the web page, sometimes an excerpt of text from the web page. This helps you to decide easily if the result really fits your search.
• URL: The web address of the web page appears in green.
• The amount of time passed, since the tweet of the page (in brackets). Unlike Google News, that indicates the time passed since indexing of the web page (sometimes hours after the publication of the page! That is, often slower than Wikiwix 🙂 ).

Then click on the “Plus” symbol, at the upper right corner of this result panel, to open a web page with more recent results (not only the two last ones of the list). You now see the whole list of results in the recent web with, for each result, the same information as just described (Title, Snippet, URL, Amount of time passed) and, in addition, the tweet, and a link to the tweet in which the web page has been posted.

Up til now, Wikiwix had been indexing fundamental articles, for a given subject, background articles of the various Wikimedia Foundation projects. Wikiwix will, from now on, index in addition the pages of the recent web. Both functionalities that, being used simultaneously, will complement each other wonderfully.
This new feature is already available in German, English, Spanish, French and Dutch.

We would be happy to read your comments, ideas, suggestions…

Take care 🙂 Matthieu.

Linterweb is a web company that, for now several years, has been developing various Wikipedia oriented programs, including:

• Wikiwix, a semantic web search engine that gives only results out of the databases of the Wikimedia Foundation projects; My Wikiwix, your own search engine for your own website; wikiwix.mobi, a mobile version of Wikiwix;
• Okawix, the offline Wikipedia browser free of copyrights and free of charge that allows you to read offline the articles of the various Wikimedia Foundation projects, as well as archives of your own website;
• a DVD of around 2000 articles from the English speaking Wikipedia; a USB flash drive that contains the version 0.7 of the English speaking Wikipedia;
• a program that archives the external web pages of the Wikipedia articles (that is, the web pages outside Wikipedia but linked from a Wikipedia article), so that their content remains available and that those external links don’t get broken; this program is used automatically, in particular, for all external links of the French speaking Wikipedia.
• …

As told in our last article, the version 0.7 of the English speaking Wikipedia is about to be released (this Wikipedia 0.7 is actually a filtered snapshot of the English speaking Wikipedia, a core set of around 31,000 articles, after a tough selection based on a combination of importance and quality of the articles; for more information, please read our last article). On the occasion of this long awaited event, we”ve decided to release a Ces sites Internet vous permettent de jouer a la roulette, au blackjack, au baccarat et a beaucoup d’autres jeux de tables, aux machines a sous , au video poker mais aussi au keno et aux autres jeux de tirage. Wikipedia 0.7 special edition of our Okawix USB flash drives.

These flash drives contain the version 0.7 of the English speaking Wikipedia, as well as the last version of Okawix (the free off-line Wikipedia reader that was developed by our firm, Linterweb). These flash drives will also benefit of a packaging specially designed for this occasion. The flash drives are actually black Kingston Data Traveler 8GB USB flash drives, available at the price of €19.99.

This collector”s edition will be limited to 200 pieces.

If you are interested, please do not hesitate to visit our virtual shop.

See you soon 🙂 Matthieu.

Dear all!

Recently, our firm, Linterweb, had the pleasure to introduce you its new service, My Wikiwix.
You already know Wikiwix, the semantic search engine run by the web company Linterweb that gives only results out of the databases of the various Wikimedia Foundation projects.
My Wikiwix, as you may know, is a search engine as well.
The difference with Wikiwix is just that you can run My Wikiwix on your own personal website.
My Wikiwix uses the technologies initially developed for the searches on the Wikimedia projects with Wikiwix.
The user interface is already available in English, French and German, and will in the future be available also in Spanish.
Well, lately, a lot has happened, and we can now announce that My Wikiwix is fully available and usable, and that the famous website OpenDemocracy decided to add the My Wikiwix search box on its start page.
You, too, can integrate My Wikiwix on your website and freely enjoy the use of our semantic search engine.
All you have to do is to follow the instructions on this page: http://my.wikiwix.com/.
If you would like to learn more about My Wikiwix, we encourage you to visit and read our blog, especially the article “My Wikiwix, the search engine that will fit you“.

Just give it a try!

We hope that you will enjoy your time with My Wikiwix, and we wish you a Happy New Year!

Yours sincerely , Matthieu.

Linterweb is a web company that, for now several years, has been developing various Wikipedia oriented programs, including:

• Wikiwix, a semantic web search engine that gives only results out of the databases of the Wikimedia Foundation’s projects; My Wikiwix, your own search engine for your own website; wikiwix.mobi, a mobile version of Wikiwix;
  
• Okawix, the offline Wikipedia browser free of copyrights and free of charge that allows you to read offline archives of the articles of the various Wikimedia Foundation projects, as well as archives of your own website; those archives are available for download on the website of Okawix;
  
• a DVD of around 2000 articles from the English speaking Wikipedia; a USB flash drive that contains the version 0.7 of the English speaking Wikipedia;
• a program that archives the external web pages of the Wikipedia articles (that is, the web pages outside Wikipedia but linked from a Wikipedia article), so that their content remains available and that those external links don’t get broken; this program is used automatically, in particular, for all external links of the French speaking Wikipedia.
• …

You already know Wikiwix, the search engine run by the web company Linterweb that gives only results out of the databases of the Wikimedia Foundation projects.

Today, Linterweb is pleased to introduce you My Wikiwix. My Wikiwix, by using the technologies initially developed for the searches on the Wikimedia projects with Wikiwix, allows you to have a search engine for your own website.

To perform searches on your website, My Wikiwix, like Wikiwix, uses semantic search technologies, in order to generate more relevant results.

In addition, My Wikiwix allows you some control over the way in which the results are displayed by letting you create up to 255 categories ; you can then specify to which category a particular page belongs to, by the introduction of an invisible meta tag in the source code of this web page. You can also directly categorize all together a whole set of web pages whose URL complies with a particular pattern. Thereafter, with just one click, a search can be restricted to the pages of a particular category.

To set up your My Wikiwix search engine, you must first sign up on this web page: http://my.wikiwix.com/index.php.

Next, with the email address and the password that you have given for the registration, you’ll be able to log in and access to the creation form that allows you to ask for the set up of your My Wikiwix search engine.

Once your My Wikiwix search engine has been set up by our team, to connect you on this same web page will allow you to access the search engine management tools.

My Wikiwix is part of a set of web applications programmed by Linterweb, including the research engine Wikiwix, that performs its search exclusively amongst the articles of the Wikimedia foundation, the Wikipedia offline browser Okawix, and a DVD of around 2000 articles from the English speaking Wikipedia.

We spent the week end of November, 22th in Germany, where took place an openZIM developer meeting.

The openZIM project aims to define a new standard for the archiving of Wikimedia content. Based on the ZIM standard, the openZIM format will be open source, so that the users will be given the possibility to browse ZIM files with a variety of ZIM able readers.

Okawix currently uses the Zeno format, which has been a precursor to the ZIM format. Our participation in this meeting aimed to decide if it could be of interest to us to integrate the ZIM format into Okawix, or even to switch from Zeno to ZIM in all of our Wikipedia-related applications.

Indeed, in addition to the development of Okawix, our company, Linterweb, also makes available for download archives of the various Wikipedia projects, in all languages. Presently, those archives are available uniquely as Zeno files, either directly through the Okawix user interface or as BitTorrent links. A switch to an exclusive use of the ZIM format would therefore mean much more to us than a mere integration into Okawix, it would mean deep, substantial changes to the architecture of our applications.

However, after careful consideration, we decided to take the plunge: not only are we going to integrate the ZIM format into Okawix, but we are also going to generate and make available ZIM files. Of course, good things take time, and such changes won’t happen overnight, but the integration into Okawix of the ZIM format should be complete by the end of the year, and ZIM archives of Wikipedia should be available for download by the end of the first trimester 2010.

The openZIM project is approved by the Wikimedia Foundation; it will thus be, after our collaboration with TranslateWiki, our second collaboration with a project supported by Wikimedia.

Yours sincerely, Guillaume, Linterweb developer.

Linterweb is a web company that, for now several years, has been developing various Wikipedia oriented programs, including:

• Wikiwix, a semantic web search engine that gives only results out of the databases of the Wikimedia Foundation’s projects; My Wikiwix, your own search engine for your own website; wikiwix.mobi, a mobile version of Wikiwix;
  
• Okawix, the offline Wikipedia browser free of copyrights and free of charge that allows you to read offline archives of the articles of the various Wikimedia Foundation projects, as well as archives of your own website; those archives are available for download on the website of Okawix;
  
• a DVD of around 2000 articles from the English speaking Wikipedia; a USB flash drive that contains the version 0.7 of the English speaking Wikipedia;
• a program that archives the external web pages of the Wikipedia articles (that is, the web pages outside Wikipedia but linked from a Wikipedia article), so that their content remains available and that those external links don’t get broken; this program is used automatically, in particular, for all external links of the French speaking Wikipedia.
• …

Dear all,

We are proud to announce that, this year again, Linterweb and Wikiwix are supporting the fund raising campaigns of several local Wikimedia associations.
These local fund raising campaigns are taking place right now, at the same time as the global fund raising of the global Wikimedia Foundation.

Linterweb and Wikiwix support these local fund raising campaigns… The logos of the various local Wikimedia associations are added to the Wikiwix search result pages.
If you click on these logos, the webpage of the fund raising campaign of the corresponding local Wikimedia association is then displayed.

Right now, the local Wikimedia associations concerned by this support are those of the following countries:

• Hungary,
• Italy,
• France,
• Switzerland,
• Austria,
• Germany,
• the Netherlands.

Other local Wikimedia associations from other countries may be added in the near future.

Your donation will help to operate the Wikimedia projects and to relate them to your contry.
Among other things, your donation will finance local projects of promotion and diffusion of the contents produced by the Wikimedia community.

We look forward to your donation and to the success of this fund raising campaign,

Sincerely yours, Matthieu.

Linterweb is a web company that, for now several years, has been developing various Wikipedia oriented programs, including:

• Wikiwix, a semantic web search engine that gives only results out of the databases of the Wikimedia Foundation’s projects; My Wikiwix, your own search engine for your own website; wikiwix.mobi, a mobile version of Wikiwix;
  
• Okawix, the offline Wikipedia browser free of copyrights and free of charge that allows you to read offline the articles of the various Wikimedia Foundation projects, as well as archives of your own website;
  
• a DVD of around 2000 articles from the English speaking Wikipedia; a USB flash drive that contains the version 0.7 of the English speaking Wikipedia;
• a program that archives the external web pages of the Wikipedia articles (that is, the web pages outside Wikipedia but linked from a Wikipedia article), so that their content remains available and that those external links don’t get broken; this program is used automatically, in particular, for all external links of the French speaking Wikipedia.
• …

I use Wikipedia quite a lot. Well, I mean… really a lot! Most of the time I can survive without Wikipedia. But I may sometimes feel as well quite disarmed without it. I need it a lot for my work, I use it also just for my own pleasure… Then I find it of course very convenient to be able to browse Wikipedia on my mobile phone. Anywhere, anytime…

Well, people like me may be interested by the fact that our company, Linterweb, has just released a mobile version of its semantic Wikipedia search engine, Wikiwix.

It is quite simply called wikiwix.mobi.

Like Wikiwix, it gives only results out of Wikipedia.

This mobile version is available at the address http://wikiwix.mobi/. Just give it a try!

So, we hope you will enjoy wikiwix.mobi, and of course enjoy Wikipedia,

Take care, Matthieu.


Linterweb is a web company that, for now several years, has been developing various Wikipedia oriented programs, including:

• Wikiwix, a semantic web search engine that gives only results out of the databases of the Wikimedia Foundation’s projects; My Wikiwix, your own search engine for your own website; wikiwix.mobi, a mobile version of Wikiwix;
  
• Okawix, the offline Wikipedia browser free of copyrights and free of charge that allows you to read offline the articles of the various Wikimedia Foundation projects, as well as archives of your own website;
  
• a DVD of around 2000 articles from the English speaking Wikipedia; a USB flash drive that contains the version 0.7 of the English speaking Wikipedia;
• …

Hello everybody,

Recently we (I mean the people who work at Linterweb) have had the surprise to read here and there in a couple of comments or articles that Okawix would regrettably not be a free software. How and why this has been written, is for us great mystery.

Therefore, we’d like to make it completely clear that Okawix IS an absolutely and entirely free software… As free as a bird!!

Okawix, the off-line Wikipedia reader that has been developed by our company, Linterweb, was released officially on the 13th of July 2009, while Okawix’ source code was released on the 9th of the same month; that is, before Okawix’ publication…

More accurately, Okawix is available under the GPL version 2 License, (i.e., among other things, the software is free of copyright and free of charge, and anyone interested may view the source code at the address http://sourceforge.net/projects/okawix/ and edit it).

Okawix uses the Mozilla technologies (XUL / Javascript, XPCOM components written in C++) and can be run on the popular Linux operating system, as well as on the Windows or MacOS operating systems.

Okawix can be downloaded for free from Internet at the following address: http://www.okawix.com/. If your connection is slow, our website allows you too to buy USB flash drives with on it Okawix and all articles of the various projects of the Wikimedia Foundation, in one or several languages of your choice (all of Wikipedia, all of Wikisource, … with the pictures).

It was worth to be said, wasn’t it?

So, have much free fun with our free Okawix software 🙂 take care, Matthieu.

SHOULD I REQUEST A HOME INSPECTION?

A home inspection is often a condition of the Agreement of Purchase and Sale. Having that condition in place ensures that if the house you plan to buy is not in good repair, you have the option of withdrawing the purchase offer. Many agreements are made conditional on home inspections, but some buyers choose to waive it. That can be a mistake because the home may have problems that cannot be discovered without a good home inspection.

A HOME INSPECTION PROVIDES IMPORTANT INFORMATION

A home inspector will conduct an assessment of the home’s structure and condition. He or she will inspect the foundations, electrical and plumbing systems, the roof and ventilation of the house.

The home inspector will also look at:

• Windows and doors
• Heating systems
• Air conditioning systems
• Walls
• Insulation
• Drainage
• Roof Inspection

Once the inspector has completed the assessment of the house, he or she will issue a report on its condition. The report will usually inform you about any areas of concern, such as previous problems or what parts of the home need repair.

THE IMPORTANCE OF A HOME INSPECTION CLAUSE

You can rescind your offer if there is a home inspection clause in your purchase and sale agreement and the home inspectors report advises of deficiencies. You can also ask the seller to lower the price due to the deficiencies. It is also important that the home inspector you hire possess good credentials. It is advisable to ask about their training and experience and whether they have insurance. He or she should also provide you with a written contract.

To ensure your agreement has the home inspection clauses, it’s a good idea to have a lawyer review your purchase agreement before you sign it. This will ensure that your agreement won’t exclude important clauses that could result in delay and additional costs in the future.

At Filice Law, we have extensive experience reviewing Agreements of Purchase And Sale for our clients. We ensure that your contract will have all necessary clauses, including the home inspection clause, to protect your interests. We can also refer you to a qualified and reliable home inspector.

CONTACT US FOR A FREE CONSULTATION

Filice Law offers free consultations. If you want to find out more about home inspections or have other questions about your real estate transaction call our Ancaster, Ontario office at 905-581-2266. You can also reach us by email.

Linterweb is pleased to announce that its offline Wikipedia browser Okawix has just been added to the list of the projects whose translation is supported by translatewiki.net, a localisation platform for open source projects.

This means that, from now on, Okawix translation will be taken in charge by the members of the translatewiki.net community.

We’d like to thank very much Nike and Siebrand, who run the translatewiki.net project, as well as the numerous members of the translatewiki.net community (among others Michawiki, ‎Fryed-peach, Hosiryuhosi, Naudefj, Umherirrender, Bennylin, ‎Александр Сигачёв, Toliño, Kiranmayee, Purodha, Fulup, Cedric31) who have startedtwo days ago to deal with the translation in already more than 10 different languages.

If you wish to help, don’t hesitate to go onto the home page of the Okawix translation project, that you will find here: http://translatewiki.net/wiki/Translating:Okawix.