Valleywag
geek love
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the sum of all human knowledge
Jimmy Wales, the nobody everybody knows about
"A nondescript man with thinning brown hair and a slight paunch" is how W nondescribes Jimmy Wales, the cofounder of Wikipedia, the site where anybody can write history, and nobodies do. Wales, once known for sporting kimonos and Mao jackets, has reverted to wearing all black, which gives the fashion magazine rather thin material to work with. One would think the magazine would turn to probing his brains, not his looks — but there, too, they came up empty. More »
10:40 AM on Thu Aug 7 2008
By Owen Thomas
4,133 views, 78 commentsLatest by dogcat: "...just never knew he would become what he is now." You mean a vain, arrogant, greedy, pompous, bullshitting, sex-mad ex-pornographer? Yes, more »
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rachel marsden
Jimmy Wales's former Fox fling wins the Knol land rush
You guys are slow! Conservative pundit Rachel Marsden has already penned roving Wikipedia cofounder Jimmy Wales's first biography on Knol, Google's write-it-yourself compendium of articles. "And it will be a closed collaboration," she adds. Unlike Wikipedia, Knol lets an article's initial author control all subsequent edits. Other contributors can write their own articles about Jimmy, but Marsden's prank hints that Knol fights — in which multiple people attempt to author the definitive entry on a topic — will be a lot more fun to watch than re-re-re-reversions of the same old Wikipedia page. -
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the sum of all human knowledge
How Jimmy Wales gets the ladies
We've always wondered how a schlubby guy like Jimmy Wales sees so much action. It can't be the I-founded-Wikipedia-can-I-edit-your-page pickup lines — for every Rachel Marsden he lands with those, one thinks Wales would get 10 drinks in the face. At last, we've gotten a scientific explanation: It's the stubble. A recent study found women prefer mates with stubbly cheeks to smooth faces or full beards. (Thank you, Don Johnson.) And according to Wales's comprehensive compendium of facial hair stylings, Wales himself is the iconic paragon of stubble. (Photo by EvgenyGenkin) -
superficial
What would Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan's love child look like?
One in a while a Web application comes along that's so damn useful, even we'd invest in it. Facebook? Nah. MakeMeBabies, the site that lets you create ruddy-cheeked mashups from any two photos? Its diapers will be filled with nothing but spun gold. Here's what the site came up with from photos of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and girlfriend Priscilla Chan. After the jump, we give a few other notable couples the same treatment. Please do add your own in the comments with our image-upload feature — best and worst fake babies will win an as-yet-undetermined prize of nominal value! More » -
antivanity ads
New York Post's desperate bid for Google relevance keys on ... "Rachel Marsden"?
Google has turned us all into monetizable micromarkets. An ad for everyone, and everyone in an ad. the New York Post is now advertising against the keyword "Rachel Marsden" on Google to attract readers. If you're asking "Marsden who?", then you've gotten the point already. Marsden, the Canadian political commentator (and Valleywag commenter), is best known for having been dumped by Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales on Wikipedia. Current Post readers are no doubt more interested in her reportedly unceremonious exit from the Fox News show Red Eye. What this ad buy tells us: That the Post thinks it can profit from attracting the small number of people who have heard enough about Marsden to search on her name. And that if Marsden is worth advertising against in Google's frictionless marketplace, every last one of us is next. More » -
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the sum of all human knowledge
Is Jimmy Wales getting Wikipedia in legal trouble?
Jimmy Wales's clandestine editing of a girlfriend's Wikipedia entry has done more than just bring the online encyclopedia into disrepute. It may well put the site's nonprofit parent, the Wikimedia Foundation, in legal jeopardy. Wikipedia has thrived in part thanks to a protection granted by the Communications Decency Act, which spares websites which merely host users' content from liability for what they say. But what if one of the website's officials moves to have that content edited? Then the protection vanishes. That is the legal argument advanced by Wales's ex, Rachel Marsden, in a series of emails with Mike Godwin, Wikimedia's general counsel, that she has posted to Valleywag. More » -
the sum of all human knowledge
Jimmy Wales drops off the Time 100 list again
Safe to say that Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales's plan to take Canadian journalist Rachel Marsden to the Time 100 party are definitely off. Not only have Wales and Marsden broken up, but Time has, as we predicted, declined to return Wales to its list of the most influential people. Think he'll shrug this off? Check out this video from last year where he complained to Stephen Colbert about getting bumped for the likes of Tyra Banks: More » -
nerdspotting
Jimmy Wales takes his Wikipedia magic show to New York City
For a province of California, Silicon Valley can be strangely puritan at times. That made it an uncomfortable locale for libertine Libertarian Jimmy Wales, the less-than-saintly founder of Wikipedia. Wales told ex-lover Rachel Marsden, the Canadian controversialist, that he wanted to move to New York to be closer to her. Their affair is over — ended, fittingly, via a posting on Wikipedia — but Wales has relocated to New York all the same. The likely reason has to do with work, or the appearance of work. Although Wikipedia's nonprofit parent, the Wikimedia Foundation, is located in San Francisco, and his ostensible employer, for-profit wiki venture Wikia, has itsheadquarters in a suburb to the south of the city, Wales is charged with running a search-engine project for Wikia which is based in New York. More »
11:40 AM on Tue Apr 29 2008
By Owen Thomas
1,239 views, 42 commentsLatest by Rachel Marsden: @gitahne-o: Damn straight. more »
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the sum of all human knowledge
Jimmy Wales hires bodyguard for New York event
Invited to speak about "the future of the Internet" at New York University, Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales instead spent the session dwelling on his smartphone's inbox. Why was the muse for the world's most exhaustive list of Simpsons episodes so distracted? Likely for the same reason he hired a personal security guard for the event: would-be paramour Andrea Weckerle. We're told that Weckerle, a PR consultant previously linked to Wales, has such a crush on Wales — unrequited — that she flew cross-country for the event, and told friends she was sharing a hotel room with Wales for a supposed tryst. More »
