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Wired: Why Wikipedia works. Cory Doctorow: This month's Wired Magazine features a good, in-depth article on why Wikipedia works: the thing that motivates its founder and its contributors. In the beginning, encyclopedias relied on the One Smart Guy model. In ancient Greece, Aristotle put pen to papyrus and single-handedly tried to record all the knowledge of his time. Four hundred years later, the Roman nobleman Pliny the Elder cranked out a 37-volume set of the day's knowledge. The Chinese scholar Tu Yu wrote an encyclopedia in the ninth century. And in the 1700s, Diderot and a few pals (including Voltaire and Rousseau) took 29 years to create the EncyclopAcdie, ou Dictionnaire RaisonnAc des Sciences, des Arts et des Metiers. With the Industrial Revolution, the One Smart Guy approach gradually gave way to the One Best Way model, which borrowed the principles of scienA­tific management and the lessons of assembly lines. EncyclopA|dia Britannica pioneered this approach in Scotland and honed it to perfection. Large groups of experts, each performing a task on a detailed work chart under the direction of a manager, produced encyclopedias of enormous breadth. Late in the 20th century, computers changed encyclopedias - and the Internet changed them more. Today, Britannica and World Book still sell some 130-pound, $1,100, multivolume sets, but they earn most of their money from Internet subscriptions. Yet while the medium has shifted from atoms to bits, the production model - and therefore the product itself - has remained the same. Now Wales has brought forth a third model - call it One for All. Instead of one really smart guy, Wikipedia draws on thousands of fairly smart guys and gals - because in the metamathematics of encyclopedias, 500 Kvarans equals one Pliny the Elder. Instead of clearly delineated lines of authority, Wikipedia depends on radical decentralization and self-organization - open source in its purest form. Most encyclopedias start to fossilize the moment they're printed on a page. But add Wiki software and some helping hands and you get something self-repairing and almost alive. A different production model creates a product that's fluid, fast, fixable, and free. Link [Boing Boing] 10:10:42 AM

50.1% of chips sold in 2004 went into consumer market. The Semiconductor Industry Association says the 2004 split was 50.1% consumer and 49.9% business, and people in the industry see the consumer slice growing steadily. The consumer side will be two-thirds of sales before 2010, says SIA. More on this story at www.ITfacts.biz [AlwaysOn Network] 9:48:38 AM

Project CFFA: CompactFlash for Apple II R&D Automation is selling the Project: CFFA interface card, which allows users of the Apple II computers to use CompactFlash cards for storage. Since most Apple II software is stored on floppy disks¡Xfar from the most robust long-term storage medium¡Xmany users are using the $109 cards to backup their old timey favorites to something a bit more stable. Of course, adding a few thousand times the solid state storage than was originally available for the Apple II is pretty great, too. You can finally build that less-than-real-time MP3 player for the Apple //e you've always wanted. Even better, in the spirit of open schematics and firmware listings like the original Apple II, they've provided all the software and hardware specs so you can build one for yourself, if you'd rather. (Thanks, Gruverja!) Project Page [Dreher] - lev (tips@gizmodo.com) [Gizmodo] 9:26:15 AM

Mac mini Lexus In the glove box of this new Lexus sits a Mac Mini, USB 2.0 hub, and an easy bundle of Wi-Fi and Bluetooth support. On the dash is a Pioneer in-dash receiver with touch screen displaying the mini's OSX output. Gin and juice, money on your mind optional. Hopefully within a couple of months this will be so common it's not notable. Mac Mini in a Lexus [theRADblog] - lamb (editor@gizmodo.com) [Gizmodo] 9:25:44 AM

Sony's Hi-MD Photo Sony's tries at gaining serious ground in the portable media game is starting to remind me of a very special Hallmark movie about crippled children, only without the winning against the odds part at the end. Their new Hi-MD Photo player gets a few things right: it's small, which is always nice. The display is a 1.5-inch color screen, and the built in 1.3 megapixel camera is fun, if pointless. But with only 1 GB of storage, even on cheap, removable MiniDiscs, and a current suggested price of $500, it has a pretty steep barrier to entry. On the other hand, all of the new Hi-MD players from Sony play MP3 natively now, which is pretty great. Sony "Hi-MD Photo" [DAReview] It's Official¡XSony's MP3 Playing Hi-MD Player [TechJapan] New Sony "Hi-MD PHOTO" Walkman With Camera and Colour LCD [TechJapan] Sony MZ-DH10P Hi-MD Walkman Uses $7 1 GB Discs [MobileMag] - lamb (editor@gizmodo.com) [Gizmodo] 9:25:08 AM

Sleeptracker: Wearable Sleeping Aid Sleeptracker is a watch you wear while¡Xwait for it¡Xsleeping that monitors muscle activity and tension along with body temperature and mysterious "other signals." When those signals match the particulars of an "almost-awake" moment (the weakest points of your sleep cycle, usually around the REM phase), it can wake you up. The idea is to program Sleeptracker with the space of time you need to wake up in, and when you're closest to being naturally conscious during that span, the alarm goes off. How does it do all this? The makers ain't tellin'. For those of you leading a Fight Club-esque double life, Sleeptracker also functions as a regular water- (and blood-) resistant watch. Sleeptracker: Waking Up Has Never Been Easier [Sleeptracker] - lamb (editor@gizmodo.com) [Gizmodo] 9:22:53 AM

ClockBall Desk Clock I suck at math, but even without the long series of equations I can tell that ClockBall's neat factor is pretty much equal to its complete and utter uselessness. ClockBall is a desk clock that rolls forward a centimeter ever hour until it reaches the black border of its pad. Then it rolls backward. Time is told in both direction by a yellow bar across the black number line in the middle. Pretty cool, but call me back when they make a Phantasm version. Also, this picture is awful, but has to be respected for making something that rolls forward and backwards look the least bit dynamic. I think I had this on a Trapper Keeper once. ClockBall the Rolling Time Piece [Loadsmorestuff] - lamb (editor@gizmodo.com) [Gizmodo] 9:20:57 AM