Digital Universe Powers Up the Earth Portal

The Digital Universe is a fascinating experiment in trying to get all the benefits of Wikipedia's distributed approach to content creation without the well-publicised hiccoughs that an open philosophy can entail.

This makes the news that the grandly-named Earth Portal, part of the Digital Universe, has acquired some high-powered UK academics for its forthcoming Encyclopedia of Earth of particular interest. Given that Encyclopedia of Earth is likely to be the first part of Digital Universe to go live, it will inevitably be regarded as a test-case for the whole project.