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By Times Staff Writer
Published December 4, 2007

Wikipedia to pay for illustrations

The foundation that runs Wikipedia has finally agreed to pay contributors to the online encyclopedia a modest fee for their work. But it won't pay the thousands of people who participate in creating the wiki pages - just artists who create "key illustrations" for the site. The payments are made possible by a $20,000 donation from Philip Greenspun, who said he was moved to give the money because of his experience seeing technical books he had originally published online appear in print.The woman running the project for Wikipedia, Brianna Laugher, says the plan is to create a list of articles that need illustrations and then solicit the work. The first list is expected to have 50 illustrations and be completed this month. Contributors will be able to sign up for an illustration and have two weeks to submit it; if it is accepted, the illustrator will be paid $40.

Video game deal worth $18.9-billion

Vivendi SA said it plans to acquire a controlling stake in Activision Inc. and combine the video game publisher with Vivendi Games in a deal the companies valued at $18.9-billion. The combination of Santa Monica, Calif.-based Activision, whose titles include Guitar Hero, Call of Duty and the Tony Hawk series, and Vivendi Games, which publishes Crash Bandicoot and owns the online role-playing franchise World of Warcraft, would create the world's largest pure-play online and console game publisher, the companies said. The transaction is expected to close in the first half of 2008.

Police frown on new Hershey mints

New mint packets being sold by the Hershey Co. look nearly identical to the tiny heat-sealed bags used to sell illegal powdered drugs like crack, heroin and cocaine, a Philadelphia police official said. Ice Breakers Pacs, nickel-sized dissolvable pouches with a powdered sweetener inside, hit store shelves in November. The packets, which come in blue and orange plastic slide-up cases, are similar enough to drug packets that a child familiar with the candy could mistakenly swallow a heat-sealed bag of drugs, Philadelphia Police Chief Inspector William Blackburn told the Philadelphia Daily News. "It glorifies the drug trade," he said. "There's really no reason that a product like this should be on the shelf." A spokesman for the company, based in Hershey, Pa., pointed out that each pouch - made by two dissolvable mint strips - bears the Ice Breakers logo. "It is not intended to simulate anything," said spokesman Kirk Saville.

[Last modified December 3, 2007, 22:53:43]