Even though most educational institutes won’t allow it to be cited as an official source, most of us use Wikipedia quite often for all sorts of research and information. If you are anything like me though, Wikipedia is a great place to just randomly browse around and let your curiosity go wild, even if all of a sudden you realize two hours have just passed you buy.

On the mobile front, you have several ways to access this huge online encyclopedia, including your browser or the official iOS or Android app. If you own an iOS device though, you also have a brand new way to do it, through the $4.99 WikiWeb app. Right now you can get your hands on the official Wikipedia app for free, so why spend your cash to do the same thing? The biggest difference from the official app, is that WikiWeb lets you create a web of related entries that can make browsing, and time-wasting, even more intuitive than before. Searching for one topic creates an icon that you can tap to find other articles that are linked within the original entry and tapping more creates an ever-expanded web of related entries and topics. You can even share these webs via Twitter or email.

This is a really cool looking app, though $4.99 still seems a little steep. The good news about the WikiWeb app is that half the proceeds go to the Wikimedia Foundation, so even if you are spending a pretty good sized chunk of change, you can rest assured that half of it is going towards supporting Wikipedia and other Wikimedia efforts.

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The Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) has not sparked too many protests compared to SOPA and PIPA, but it is certainly a reality and the US House of Representatives has passed the bill by a vote of 248-168.

But the result has not come as a surprise as there have been no major US corporations opposing CISPA. Although there were protests from advocate groups such as Demand Progress, Sum of Us and the Center for Democracy & Technology, no major technology corporations have come out against the controversial bill like the way Facebook, Reddit, Wikipedia and others did against SOPA.

But it is unlikely that the bill would clear the Senate. On Tuesday, a statement from the White House condemned the legislation and on Wednesday, President Obama threatened to veto it saying that the bill “fails to provide authorities to ensure that the nation’s core critical infrastructure is protected while repealing important provisions” of privacy law.

Just to refresh your memory, CISPA will allow Internet companies and the US government to share information with each other for protecting and defending themselves against cyber attacks. That means that the government can get access to web users’ private data if a cyber threat is suspected. That’s certainly against Americans’ privacy rights.

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers (R-Mich.) said that the bill is “needed to prepare for countries like Iran and North Korea so that they don’t do something catastrophic to our networks here in America”.

But according to David Segal, executive director of Demand Progress, “Congress needs to wake up and respect Americans’ growing concern about increased corporate and government control of the Internet. We applaud President Obama’s veto threat, and urge members of the House to oppose CISPA, even while supporting amendments that would provide greater privacy protections. The Internet is ever more important to the functioning of our society, and more and more Americans are prepared to vote against politicians who interfere with Internet freedom“.

Head here to take a peek at the full version of the bill.

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What you see in the above picture is Robojelly, a robot jellyfish designed by the researchers at Virginia Tech, which could be very useful in the future for underwater surveillance or search and rescue operations. You might be thinking that there is nothing new about a robot inspired by nature, but the robot jellyfish has a new trick up its sleeve. Theoretically, the Robojelly will go on working without ever running out of energy, as long as it’s in water.

The Robojelly is powered by hydrogen and is made up of materials called shape-memory alloys. Just in case you are preparing to refer to Wikipedia, shape-memory alloys are materials which are capable of returning to their original shape when heat is applied. The robot mimics a jellyfish’s movements via eight moving segments wrapped in platinum-coated carbon nanotubes.

When the oxygen and hydrogen in the water react with platinum powder, heat will be produced. The alloys will change shape due to this heat and propulsion occurs all thanks to the opening and closing movements of the segments.

The research paper has been published in the journal of Smart Materials and Structures and the project was led by Yonas Tadesse. According to him, “To our knowledge, this is the first successful powering of an underwater robot using external hydrogen as a fuel source”.

In the video, you will find an electricity-powered version of the Robojelly swimming in a water tank. The hydrogen-powered robot needs more work to be done on it and has only been tested while it’s clamped to the tank’s bottom. They are currently working to increase its maneuverability.

So, this is a robot which can stay underwater for a very long time as it can refuel itself from the water around it. That’s certainly very innovative. And yeah, almost forgot, the research is US Navy-backed, and you know what that means. Enemy submarines beware!

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Smartpen manufacturer Livescribe last week announced the release of the new Wikipedia app for their Echo and Pulse pens. Once downloaded to the pen, the app lets you search through offline abstracts of the 100,000 most-visited English-language Wikipedia articles using your pen and pad as the interface: Simply write the name or subject in the “dot paper” notebook and tap the word with the tip of the pen and the information is at your fingertips.

The app description is a tad vague, but assumably once the word is tapped and an article is chosen on the pen’s tiny OLED display, the information will be either scrolled across the screen or spoken aloud using the pen’s speaker as is par for many apps.

Livescribe, formed in 2007 by ex-Leapfrog employee Jim Marggraff, has been making smartpens since 2008 capable of recording interviews, doing calculations and transferring notes and sketches from the dot notebook to a computer, among other things. Their pens and platforms have won numerous awards over the last three years, including the Macworld Best of Show Award and the SIIA Ed Tech’s Most Innovative Education Product Award in ’09.

The Wikipedia app costs about $2 in the Livescribe app store, alongside other notable (no pun intended) app names such as Evernote and the American Heritage Spanish Dictionary.

[SlashGear via LiveScribe]

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