English - Tag Archive

What did you Wiki search for in 2012?

6 Replies Christopher Roberts

Did you use Wikipedia in 2012? Probably a silly question, as according to Alexa, 12.80% of all web users yesterday visited the online encyclopaedia, as part of their online day. The 3 month average reach of Wikipedia.org is 12.575%, so yesterday’s figure was no anomaly.

I usually visit Wikipedia multiple times a week.

Wikipedia logoThe fact that Wikipedia is open source is good, as it enables it to use the help of millions of people around the world to build its massive online encyclopaedia. Open source does however also leave it open to vandalism, as on most articles, nobody needs to verify your changes. Many Wikipedia articles are very accurate though, and they are getting better year on year.

In 2012, what was it you Wikied? A few days ago, Wikipedia released a list of the most popular pages visited on its site, segmented by country. The statistics make interesting reading, if you get some time.

With 32,647,942 views in 2012, Facebook topped Wikipedia’s list for the most visited English page. Wiki came in second with 29,613,759 views. Deaths in 2012, One Direction, The Avengers (2012 film), Fifty Shades of Grey and the 2012 phenomenon all had over 20 million views. The Dark Knight Rises, Google and The Hunger Games (all with 18+ million views) made up the rest of the English top 10 list.

For all of the top 10, I think you can understand why they were such popular searches. As Facebook becomes evermore a global brand, more and more people want to know what it is, and those using it, want to know more about it. A logical big winner.

With Wikipedia the 6th most visited site on the net, searching for what Wiki means, is probably not unexpected. One Direction, the 2012 phenomenon, The Hunger Games, Fifty Shades of Grey, The Dark Knight Rises and The Avengers were all popular 2012 trends online and off, hence their Wikipedia fame. Like Facebook, with growing web usage, and Google’s top spot on the web, that page you would naturally expect top have a big viewing.

The list isn’t limited to 10 pages though, Wikipedia have released the top 100 pages for many of the languages the site is published in.

Stephen Hawking - Photo from WikipediaThe 100th most visited English page is Stephen Hawking, the page about the British scientist, which had just over 7 million views in 2012.

Theoretical physicist, cosmologist, author, lecturer, defier of motor neurone disease and now 100th most visited English Wikipedia page 2012, what a career the 70 year old (71 tomorrow) has had!

With an extra 53,106 views, Albert Einstein just beat Hawking, claiming 98th place. That said, neither of the scientists had anything on Psy, who saw the page for Gangnam Style hit the 21st spot, with over 13 million views!

Many of the top 100 spots were claimed by websites (e.g. Facebook, YouTube, Wikipedia, Google etc.), countries (United States, United Kingdom, India, Australia etc.) and trends (Katy Perry, 2012 Summer Olympics, Skyfall, Downton Abbey etc.).


The stats for other languages are also interesting to look at. Facebook appeared in most of the lists, topping the Spanish list, claiming 10th place in the German list, 3rd in the French and Turkish, 4th in the Portuguese etc. Wiki was also very popular, appearing in the top 10 list for eight languages, as was Google, appearing in three languages.

What did you Wiki search for in 2012? Can you even remember? I know I searched far too many pages to recall them all, but looking down the English list, I recall visiting most of the top 100.

Do the amazing figures behind this list (Facebook getting 30+ million on its English page alone) worry you sightly? Do we trust Wikipedia, which is potentially a very unreliable site too much?

MobiReader Pro Android App Review

12 Replies RonF

Misplacing a valuable work document or losing the biz cards of important contacts is every businessman’s nightmare. Having to locate some paperwork just before a conference or hunting through scores of cards to find a particular phone number is indeed stressful. I recently found an Android app called MobiReader Pro that solves this problem.

If you are looking for a iPhone app for business card scanning, check out my review of WorldCard Mobile, it has loads of features and is a good tool.

What is the app about?

MobiReader Pro scans business cards and documents. The contact details from cards are sorted out and saved in the respective fields of your phone’s address book. Printouts of your projects, text from books, magazines or newspapers and any other paperwork can be scanned quickly and saved on your phone.

MobiReader Pro Android AppHow does it work?

The app works on OCR and transfers details from business cards and documents to your iPhone. It focuses on a card automatically, captures an image of it, recognises the details on the scanned card and saves them in the correct fields. There is a virtual card holder that sorts out cards according to contact or company names.

Scanned documents can be organised in folders, edited, converted to pdf, renamed, deleted, sent as MMS or through email and uploaded onto Google docs. This app can even recognise the structure of a document in addition to its ability to recognise text.

Special features

The app has an image correction function that improves the quality of scanned content. It is efficient in organizing your documents and has a separate indication for pdf files, making it easy to locate documents when you have many in your folder.

As MobiReader Pro can process text written in English, German, French, Spanish, Italian and Russian, you don’t have to worry about receiving cards with information in different languages. Details like the contact’s name, designation, the company’s name, phone number, postal address, email address etc., are sorted out by the app with a high level of accuracy and you don’t have to manually type in the info. You can use this app to translate your documents to as many as 54 languages.

I found the augmented reality function to be very useful getting info about a location by recognizing the details in the address field of a business card. The convenience of looking up word definitions in a dictionary, without having to type in words through the keypad, is another feature I found very helpful.

Low points

The only low point is that the OCR is not hundred percent perfect. I did encounter a few errors and one needs to have a keen eye to spot those. But as any OCR based app, I assume there are some kinds of readability problems attached to them is no surprise.

To conclude, MobiReader Pro is a smart and quick way to digitise your cards and documents and carry them around wherever you go. By efficiently managing your cards and documents, it takes the strain out of your work life. The app is available in the Android market for US $4.

EDITOR NOTE: This app no longer exists, so links to it have been removed – note by Christopher

Worldictionary – The Perfect Travel Companion

17 Replies RonF

Have you found yourself staring at signboards in an attempt to decode the unfamiliar words written in a foreign tongue? Have you sighed in despair wondering why you didn’t think of carrying that bulky multilingual dictionary when you set out on your world tour? Wouldn’t it be unnerving to find yourself lost in a strange land?

If it wasn’t for Worldictionary, I would have felt like a fish out of water during my recent trip to Germany. Thankfully, a friend of mine had told me about it earlier and I was able to make the most of my vacation. With the simplest and most efficient translation tool in my hand, I didn’t have to pore over tourist brochures or look for assistance from locals.Worldictionary iPhone App Translation ScreenshotDesigned to be the best travel tool, Worldictionary is an iPhone app that provides instantaneous translation of words. It recognizes words in several languages like traditional Chinese, simplified Chinese, English, Japanese, Korean, French, Germany, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Finnish, Danish, Norwegian, Polish, Hungarian, Russian, Czech, Slovak and Romanian and translates them immediately.
This app is synonymous with versatility. All I had to do was point my iPhone’s camera at a word and Worldictionary swung into action! The word was translated in a flash. And I didn’t have to manually type it in or take a snap of the word. This is indeed technology at its best.

Worldictionary keeps a record of the words you’ve searched for, making it easy to come back to them for later reference. This feature is indeed of great help to those who are interested in learning a new language. There is also an option of taking a picture of a line of text and getting it translated word by word. I found this feature to be quite helpful. Images of words saved in your phone can be easily translated too, without any typing.

The only improvement I would hope for this app is the ability to recognize and translate handwritten fonts too. Though there were places where I couldn’t use this app due to the unavailability of a network connection, I still think it is the perfect travel companion one can find.Worldictionary iPhone App Dictionary ScreenshotThanks to this app’s instantaneous translation services, you need not fret when you come across words on a signboard, in a menu or in a newspaper that are in a language that’s not your own.

Download Worldictionary now and visit exotic holiday destinations all around the world. Its available in iTunes for £3.99.