http://physicsweb.org/articles/world/17/10/2/1

Critical Point is a feature of the online version of the magazine Physics World. The article posted here, by philosopher and historian Robert Crease, revisits "the greatest equations ever." He presents the results from his survey of readers in which he asked for a short list of nominations for great equations and "to explain why their nominations belonged on the list and why, if at all, the topic matters." The results place Maxwell's equations of electromagnetism and the Euler equation at the top. Some of the criteria that readers used for selecting their favorites include simplicity, practicality, and historical relevance. [VF]

http://www.aec.at/en/festival/programm/webcasts_timeshift.asp

ARS Electronica, based in Linz, Germany, is a museum and research institute, offering exhibits, symposia and festivals related to technology and society. The website features video footage of the 2004 Festival, which focused on "Timeshift - The World in 25 Years" and brought together international artists, theoreticians and scientists to discuss past developments and the future prospects of media-cultural phenomena. The four panels organized for this conference were titled Progress, Disruption, Spirit, and Topia, and address the promise of technology as well as "how the value of intent is relative and how counter-force can dominate in an imperfect world where things don't always go as planned." The Spirit panel is "intended to refocus our attention from global to self and to explore such issues as wellness, pleasure, family, and mortality." The final panel, Topia, offers some possible scenarios for the world in 25 years. [VF]

www.wikipedia.org

Wikipedia is a free online, editable encyclopedia that "all Internet users can collaborate on by writing and submitting new articles or improving existing ones." The project, which claims to be "living proof that content and knowledge can also organize themselves," uses a wiki, i.e. software to allow users to revise content. The website encourages community participation by listing Open Tasks, such as copy-editing, merging, and peer reviewing needing to be done for particular entries. The texts and media presented on Wikipedia are available to the public "to process the content further and disseminate it." There are also wikipedias in 50 other languages, including one in Esperanto, the invented international language. Users must create an account to contribute to Wikipedia, but anyone can browse the entries by topic area or search on a specific term. Within each entry are links to related items and some of the more extended entries include a table of contents for ease of navigation. Other sections of the website let you view the most recent changes (within the past seven days) or browse entries related to current events. [VF]

http://www.anitaborg.org/

The Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology is a national organization "that provides platforms allowing women's voices, ideas and spirits to influence technology." In honoring Dr. Anita Borg, who "is responsible for including women in the technological revolution - not as bystanders, but as active participants and leaders," the organization offers programs and events for academics, industry, and "technology thought leaders." Its work addresses the ways in which technology is learned and taught, the ways that technology is created, the culture of technology, and the celebration of "the women who change the face of technology." The website posts details on awards and scholarships the Institute offers and highlights women and technology in the news. Various publications providing information, news, and reports on Institute projects, as well as photos from its past events, are also available online. [VF]

http://edition.cnn.com/2004/TECH/internet/10/18/wireless.rural/

This article from CNN reports on the Ulwazi e-learning project, a venture between South African government officials and Motorola that attempts to bring wireless access to five schools in South Africa. The article points to some important ways that less affluent, more remote areas benefit from wireless. For example, in schools where one or two teachers are responsible for 50 to 100 students, this technology "allows schools to share teachers and resources so more students have access to more material." [VF]

http://www.rheingold.com/index.html

Howard Rheingold is a writer who briefly served as Editor for the HotWired online magazine and authored several books on cognition, technology and virtual communities. This website posts a number of articles, interviews and discussions about his views on the Internet and society. Also posted are online versions of his books, "The Virtual Community," and "Tools for Thought," as well as several articles on technology and democracy, technology criticism, technology and education, and the Net. In the section about Rheingold, visitors will find additional information on the virtual community he founded and other projects he supports. [VF]

http://www.science-groove.org/MASSIVE/

Math And Science Song Information, Viewable Everywhere, or MASSIVE, is a database containing information on more than 1700 science and math songs. The songs, suitable for a variety of ages and of varying sound quality, are both silly and serious. Visitors can search on a song or listen to MASSIVE radio, "an Internet radio station devoted entirely to science/math songs." (Note that the radio station requires a connection speed of at least 64 kilobits per second). The database includes the name of the performer, songwriter, the album title, lyrics, and links to sample files along with purchasing information. The database is maintained by Greg Crowther, who is affiliated with the University of Washington, Science Groove, and the Science Songwriters' Association. The project is part of the National Science Foundation's National Science Digital Library. [VF]

http://www.glreach.com/globstats/

Global Reach is a multilingual Web promotion and website translation marketing company geared toward increasing companies' online visibility internationally. To demonstrate the value of expanded marketing, the company has posted this page with useful statistics on "the latest estimated figures of the number of people online in each language zone (native speakers)." They classify the results by languages instead of by countries, since their focus is on the need for translations and thus focus on language communities rather than particular countries in which they happen to live. The table shows language-organized figures on Internet access population, percentage world online population, total population, gross domestic product (GDP), percentage of world economy, GDP per capita, and net hosts as of 2003. [VF]