Wikipedia will soon provide its editors and users with video editing capabilities. Users will be able to import, edit and review videos inside Wikipedia. This is a true revolution – the ability to use the immense Wikipedia community to tag and append content to video media will contribute new insights and add knowledge.
The huge Wikipedia community and its dedicated editor section that are supported directly by contributions and indirectly by Google's algorithm are in a good position to enter this almost virgin field of scholarly tagging of media.

Earlier this month I wrote here about the reasons we had for building an independent wiki here in Akban. I wrote about the problems that still exist for Wikipedia: "Wikipedia has an unsolved problem with the copyright of non textual media types, a hurdle we solved by videoing and editing all the Akban-wiki techniques." Concisely, mediocre content will always be relatively free of copyrights while top content, content that takes time, effort and money to produce, will always be copyrighted for lack of other decent revenue generating models.
We met with Kaltura team back in the beginning of 2008 and were happy with the solutions they generated in the Akban wiki. These same great innovators are now implementing the Kaltura video system into Wikipedia.

Is the time ripe then for a merge of Akban-wiki's content into Wikipedia? I don't think it is. The Wikipedia will evolve around documenting existing content while this part of our project, as phrased in the last paragraph of our ethical code, will evolve around creating and disseminating new research material.
Link to Technology review article
Beginning of Kaltura in Akban wiki cooperation

When looking at the academical part of the Akban project there is always the question: Why did we, Akban veterans, invest so much time and effort in building and maintaining a martial art wiki when there is an alternative, namely Wikipedia?

A recent Hebrew article in Akban's journal delves deeper into the reasons. Wikipedia deals with existing fields and articles. You can write a Wikipedia article only when the knowledge and facts about this article are already known. An author wishing to publish original academic work has to publish it in a scientific journal, not in the Wikipedia.

Apart from the Wikipedia focus on publishing existing textual and numerical data, Wikipedia has an unsolved problem with the copyright of non textual media types, a hurdle we solved by videoing and editing all the Akban-wiki techniques.

Martial arts research is either adjacent to physiology , psychology and anthropology or deals with comparative backgrounds in the emerging field of Hoplology. There is almost no Martial arts research that is endogenous and deals with the techniques as an investigated entities.

We are still in the beginning of this comparative research and so far we have little more then 1000 techniques from different disciplines in the Akban-wiki. A growing part of these techniques have textual and semantic data attached and more information is added in English and Hebrew weekly.

After several years of being online we are somewhat disappointed that no one has started a similar effort. That, for us, means the independent scientific investigation of martial arts is a niche subject. It also means that we will have to continue with this effort on the current pace. At this pace we will have 5000 videos of techniques that are articles, not how-to clips, only 6-7 years from now.

We are committed to lifelong training, committed to our community and committed in this endeavour.

Most of the discussion is going on on the Hebrew part of our site, but if you have insights or feedback we would love to hear from you, send us an e-mail.

We have a new Martial Arts wiki today.
Gone are the cumbersome wikipedia skins, css and boxes. Gone is the mutual navigation with the akban.org site.

On the helm was Keith Harris from Bifugi who did it with help from Vadim Gilead and me.

Since we are a small crew we overlooked many bugs in the new design. Any remarks, corrections and suggestions mailed to us would be warmly appreciated.

mail Akban, thanks

Recent months have seen a less then average posting on the English part of this web site.

Diminishing writers' base made the decision inevitable; we now write less news in English, more in Hebrew.
We continue to update the Hebrew Homepage almost every day and do our main thing: update and write new articles on our martial arts wiki, both in English and in Hebrew.

עבור לדף הראשי בעברית
התחל להתאמן באומנות לחימה

Here are some ways to stay connected with the Akban-project:
Twitter in English - Akban
Twitter in Hebrew - אקבן
Google reader and iGoogle
Friendfeed Akban
Friendfeed video updates
Netvibes akban page
Akban Facebook page in English
Facebook – אקבן אומנויות לחימה
Akban videos on Youtube
Akban RSS in English
RSS עברית
RSS of recent Akban-wiki updates
Contact us either through akban@akban.org or 972-52-2723207

This web site by Bifugi, an Akban veterans venture

Due to the Holocaust and Heroism Remembrance Day there was no training yesterday - 20/4/2009, and training today - 21/4/2009, will resume only after 18:00.
Next week, in all Akban veterans dojos, there will be no training from the entrance of Yom Hazikaron (Memorial Day) till after Independence day: 27-28-29/4/2009.
link to post in Hebrew

There is no immediate cure for the gap between our growing user base and our small budget.
I guess that this means we will have to deal with periods of downtime due to peak demands. Since the non-existent business model behind our project is just "Serve our community" with no consumerism involved it'll probably stay this way.
Here are some links to Akban martial arts University on the www:
Akban YouTube channel - Hundreds of martial arts clips
Akban's Facebook page
Akban on Twitter

I've been doing the Akban fitness program for years, I like the fact that it's gradual and allows me to stay fit even now, when I'm a bit older.
As every trainee knows, even in best health there are off days, days when we preform below our standard. Number of studies have discovered, or more accurately, rediscovered the fact that a cup of coffee before exercise or competition can up our performance.
Link to NYT article
Technorati Profile

Initially we weren't prepared for so many visitors, bandwidth and database functions - so last month we had several hours of downtime due to server overload.
We migrated servers to one lightly better. Sorry for the inconvenience.
Click here to add us to your technorati favourites:

Four members of the PKF will be dispatched to Turkey to train there in Karate for the First Asian Martial Arts, in Bangkok from April 25 to May 3.
The Pakistani Judo team is practicing in Tehran for the same event.
Link for article in \"International Pakistani news\"

After a recent, post competition check, California State Athletic Commission officials found Shemrok positive with three forms of steroids.
Shemrok, who is now 44, will have to pay a fine of 2500 US$.