Dara Karr of Cnet.com reports that the Wikimedia Foundation is set to launch a new ad-free travel website, Wikivoyage. Karr writes, “Want to know more about the German spa city called Baden Baden, or ‘Bathing Bathing?’ Or how to get to Khajuraho — an Indian town known for its ancient erotic rock carvings? All this and more will be in the Wikimedia Foundation’s new travel site, called Wikivoyage. A bare-bones version of the site has already been up and running since September, but the official launch of the filled-out site is tentatively scheduled for January 15, according to Skift.” Read more

Ever heard of the Finnish television series Matkaoppaat? It’s a program about tour guides abroad – something of a reality show that looks like it has already spawned copycat programs with more on the way in other countries.

But of more interest to readers of The Semantic Web Blog is that just a couple of days ago, the series was added as item Q1000000 to Wikidata, on the heels of other recent entries like the English town Newton-le-Willows (item ID Q750000) and American alpine skier Tim Jitloff (ID Q500000). They’re following in the footsteps of earlier items like Dutch Wikipedia (ID Q10000), which was added just four days after Wikidata was launched on Oct. 30.

“Right now the system is launched (since end of October) and people and bots are filling it,” says Wikidata project director Denny Vrandecic, of the Wikimedia Foundation’s effort to create a free knowledge base about the world that can be read and edited by humans and machines alike.

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Anthony Myers of CMS Wire reports, “Core ideas about a more structured Internet, vis a vis the semantic Web, are quickly approaching mainstream consciousness. When Wikipedia, the sixth most popular Web site in the world, debuts its Wikidata platform later this year, it will be a major step in this direction. ’Wikidata is going to blow everything else out of the water,’ Joe Devon of Startup Devs said during the closing panel of the 2012 Semantic Technology & Business Conference. Devon is also on the advisory board, but Dave McComb, who co-founded the SemTech Conference, also asserted his belief in how huge Wikidata is going to be.” Read more

Amir Efrati of the Wall Street Journal reports that Google has seen a surge in search activity since launching the Knowledge Graph. He writes, “People doing Web searches now see a big box of information and photos related to search queries such as sports teams (try typing “San Francisco Giants”), geography (try “Matterhorn”), attractions (try “Matterhorn Bobsleds”), celebrities (try “Pink”), and science (try “Jupiter” or “Einstein”) located prominently on the right of the search results page. Before the change, Google users might have seen relevant search ads, content boxes with information from Google+, the company’s social network, or nothing at all. The new feature currently draws upon information from sites like Wikipedia, as well as music and movie catalogs that Google has licensed, among other things.” Read more