Mashpedia - The Real-Time Encyclopedia

Here is another gem that Leon shared with me. Mashpedia claims to be a real-time encyclopedia.  What it really is is a meta search tool.

On the front page you can see what are current news items, trending topics, people and brands. And you can see links to the current movies out.

When you enter a search string in the search field what Mashpedia does is searches the following sites with that search string, which is also what is does if you click on any of the links on the front page:

• Wikipedia - for a definition or description about the topic.
• Twitter - so you can see what tweats are being posted about the topic today. 
• Youtube - for videos posted about the topic
• Digg - to see who is bookmarking sites about the topic
• Flickr - for photos posted about the topic
• Google News - for news items about the topic
• Google Images - for more images
• Google Blog Search - for what is being said by bloggers about the topic
• Google Books - for any books about the topic

You can also see comments and post comments. And you can put a link to this page on your website. 

The educational application of this is that you can create some of the search pages for you students and place links to them on your online course site. When the student browse them, the pages will be automatically updated with current information. 

The down side is that you can't turn off any of the sources so if you are not a fan of any one of the above sites, then you may not want to use this with your students. But you could still use it. 

Rod