Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2009-01-31/News and notes

Mozilla gives WMF $100,000 for audio and video support
Mozilla has awarded the Wikimedia Foundation $100,000 to coordinate efforts to improve the quality, performance, and implementation of the Ogg Theora open video format. The aim is to make Theora a more popular alternative to proprietary streaming video technologies, such as Adobe Flash, Microsoft Silverlight and RealVideo. According to Erik Moeller, Deputy Director of the Wikimedia Foundation, "The $100,000 grant will be used to support the work of long-time contributors to the Ogg Theora/Vorbis codebase and related tools, such as libraries for network seeking. The improvements will be made over a 6 month period." Built-in support for Ogg media will feature in the next release of Mozilla's open-source internet browser project, Firefox 3.1.
 * See Wikimedia Foundation announcement, Mozilla blog



Wikipedia Loves Art begins
Wikipedia Loves Art is "a scavenger hunt and free content photography contest among museums and cultural institutions worldwide, aimed at illustrating Wikipedia articles." The event is scheduled at various institutions throughout the month of February, starting at London's Victoria and Albert Museum on February 1. Editors are also encouraged to go on their own any time throughout the month of February. Participating groups of Wikipedians and institutions are located worldwide. For more information on participating, see the project page.

Jimmy Wales is "character approved"
The USA Network has honored Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia, as "Character Approved". The awards are a new program to recognize those who are seen as "positively influencing American culture". Others honored include Charles Best, David Chang, Jennifer Siegal, Lupe Fiasco, Patrick Robinson, and Shepard Fairey. Along with the award, the USA Network is donating $10,000 to each recipient's charity of choice; in this case, the Wikimedia Foundation.


 * See Wikimedia blog, Character Approved Awards website

Briefly

 * John Broughton's O'Reilly-published book about Wikipedia, Wikipedia: The Missing Manual, has been made freely available in the Help namespace of Wikipedia at Help:Wikipedia: The Missing Manual under the GNU Free Documentation License.

Milestones

 * The Egyptian Arabic (Masry) Wikipedia has reached 1,000 articles.
 * The Slovenian Wikipedia has reached 70,000 articles.
 * The Cantonese Wikipedia has reached 10,000 articles.