“This campaign has proven that Wikipedia matters to its users, and that our users strongly support our mission: to bring free knowledge to the planet, free of charge and free of advertising,” Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia and the Wikimedia Foundation, wrote in a thank you letter posted on Wikipedia and the Wikimedia Foundation’s Web site. “We deeply appreciate the generosity of our supporters.”

The Wikimedia Foundation was behind in its total contributions in late December, but Wales published a personal appeal on the foundation’s site to increase funding. In the eight days trailing that message, more than 50,000 contributions flooded in, totaling $2 million and closing the gap toward the goal.

The Wikimedia Foundation is still accepting funding on its donations page.

Do you remember the start of wisdom of crowds idea Wikipedia? Many non internet believers judged and criticized Wikipedia in a preliminary stage saying: “an encyclopedia like this can never meet the accuracy of the existing encyclopedia’s.”

Maybe or mostly, we tend to judge based on assumptions. Or we do not like it, since we do not “do not do it ourselves yet” or because we “do not like it ourselves yet”. That’s the same mistake many marketers made on: internet, instant messaging, gaming and more.

Maybe we need to leave assumptions out of our professional judgments?? To ASS-U-ME equals: Ass-You and Me! Maybe we need to perceive things with an open mind, before we start judging?

Isn’t marketing all about observing trends and new consumer behavior to adapt to this behavior? And don’t worry, if you are open mind or a bit more patient, there will be enough time left to have “your judgment day” after a while.

Are you happy we saved Wikipedia?

Myngle offers a solution by providing students and teachers in different locations with a complete online language instruction platform, containing all the tools needed for synchronous e-learning.

Maybe you’re not very surprised by the fact that Myngle was founded by former eBay employees? Since December 2007 Myngle generated 18.000 users registered for teaching or taking language lessons. Myngle closed a first financing round raising 800.000 euro from both professional as private investors.

On the Benelux Venture 50 conference Myngle was elected one of the most promising ICT start ups in the Benelux. That ex eBay people are behind Myngle can also be distracted by the embracement of VoIP (Skype is an eBay company) and by these gift vouchers, which can be paid with PayPal (PayPal is an eBay company). More about Myngle can be seen here on Dutch TV (with UK subtitles).

How do teacher and student communicate? Myngle offers a toolkit for synchronous learning, which consists of VoIP (Skype) own integrated whiteboard, payment systems (PayPal), feedback and a community environment.

Myngle’s feedback system made up of comments and ratings left by students who were taught by the relevant teacher. These comments and rating will be available in the public Feedback Profile of each member. Extra features will be gradually added to enrich the learning experience, such as podcasts, homework, 3D virtual reality classroom / role plays etc.

‘We conveniently eliminate the need for face-to-face interaction between students and teachers and, with it, the requirement for physical displacement’, says Marina Tognetti, founder and CEO of Myngle.

Why now? The time is ripe for the expansion of the language teaching market from offline to online for a number of different reasons: free of charge high quality VoIP (Skype), high international broadband penetration and whiteboard technology are now available at mass prices.

Also, the increasing success of community websites like Facebook and MySpace (or Hyves in the Netherlands) has expanded communication and social interaction beyond the restricted circle of geographical reach. Last, but most important, the internet generation is reaching now spending power and interest in language learning.

Tell our community how you rate the Myngle concept.

Mydeco sells more than one million products from over 500 retailers, while 3D room-planning tools help users see how the products will look their own room.

In the first Facebook widget, Facebook users can create their dream dinner party, using a mix of famous and fictional characters as well as their own Facebook friends. They can then invite friends to the party and those friends can change the seating arrangements or invite their own preferred guests. You can even get your mates to rate your dinner party.

Try mydeco’s My Dinner Party widget at Facebook here. I’ve tried the widget and it was fun! You can even upload photos of your friends into the widget and send it to Facebook friends easily, to invite them to be part of your VIP dinner.

Do you know more great viral widgets? Don’t be a stranger and post them below.