Wikipedia pages should get a lot quicker very soon as the foundation behind the world’s largest and most popular encyclopedia have turned on Lua, a lightweight scripting engine, to speed up access to complex pages. And the site is asking its editors and contributors to learn the new programming language to help make the site quicker.

Those who have ever edited Wikipedia pages will know that the site, like many wikis, uses “Wikitext language” — a sort of a simplified HTML — to enable users to add content chunks, templates, and formatting to a page.

But there was a problem, as Wikimedia’s Sumana Harihareswara posted recently:

But because we’d never planned for wikitext to become a programming language, these templates were terribly inefficient and hacky — they didn’t even have recursion or loops — and were terrible for performance. When you edit a complex article like Tulsi Gabbard, with scores of citations, it can take up to 30 seconds to parse and display the page.

Lua is an embedded scripting language, built so that lightweight but powerful code can be embedded right into web pages. It’s often used as a scripting engine for games. And it’s much quicker than Wikipedia’s existing wikitext solution.

The big question is, of course, is how Wikipedians will take to the new language, which is unfamiliar and potentially more complex than wikitext. And will we start encountering bugs on Wikipedia pages as editors and maintainers now become programmers?

“Now is the first time that the Wikimedia site maintainers have enabled real coding that affects all readers. We’re letting people program Wikipedia unsupervised,” Harihareswara wrote. “Anyone can write a chunk of code to be included in an article that will be seen by millions of people, often without much review. We are taking our “anyone can edit” maxim one big step forward.”

And, she added, that if any Wikipedia user doesn’t look the load time of a page, they can now do something about and improve it themselves, in a very Wikipedian way:

“Just as we crowdsourced building Wikipedia, now we’re crowdsourcing bits of infrastructure improvement. And this kind of massively multiplayer, crowdsourced performance improvement is uniquely us.”

The read-write revolution continues.

photo credit: Stewart via photopin cc

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Sept. 9 - 10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

As if $125 million were not enough, Box has expanded its gargantuan funding round to $150 million, according to an SEC filing.

A company spokesperson said this will allow existing investors to “make additional investments.” The cloud storage startup had not filed the paperwork for its fifth funding round until today — although the news was announced in late July. The news was originally reported in AllThingsD. 

Since it closed its series E round, Box opened an office in Europe and brought on Google Docs’ founder Sam Schillace as its VP of Engineering, among other strategic hires. It also unveiled a host of new product features that make it easier for third-party developers to integrate with Box’s API.

The previous round was led by General Atlantic with participation from Bessemer Venture Partners, DFJ Growth, New Enterprise Associates, SAP Ventures, Scale Venture Partners, and new investor Social+Capital Partnership.

Box’s CEO Aaron Levie (pictured, above) recently revealed plans to file for an initial public offering in 2014.

Never before has Microsoft so desperately needed to prove itself — perhaps because it’s never been in such a precarious position.

Microsoft, a company that’s traditionally been the prime example of boring and conservative tech giants, is no longer afraid to try new things. Its new touch-centric Windows 8 interface will force consumers to relearn everything they know about Windows. Windows Phone 8 brings some distinctive features not found on any other mobile OS. And it’s also building up a cohesive experience across all of its platforms (some games will let you synchronize your progress across Windows 8, Windows Phone, and Xbox, for example).

But, as innovative as this new Microsoft may seem, it still needs support from developers to succeed. In fact, Microsoft needs developers now more than it ever has before (yes, even more than when Ballmer famously chanted “Developers!” over a dozen times like a sweat-soaked madman).

That’s where the Build conference comes in. Microsoft’s annual developer conference kicks off today in Redmond, after selling out in just under an hour. It’s so big that the company has built one of the largest tents in North America to house the conference (you can read some obvious symbolism into that).

Developer excitement is palpable — the real question now is, can Microsoft leverage that into killer apps for Windows Phone and Windows 8?

Apps! Apps! Apps!

Gathering new apps is important for Microsoft, because it’s clear that all of the Windows software we’ve grown used to won’t be around for much longer. Windows 8 offers a desktop interface that looks similar to Windows 7 and runs older software — something that’s nice for backwards compatibility but is absolutely jarring alongside Win 8’s touch-friendly interface.

Windows RT, the stripped-down version of Windows 8 for ARM processors, won’t even run older Windows apps. That limitation is evident with the RT-powered Surface tablet released last week, which is entirely dependent on new apps from the Windows Store.

Given that the Surface literally embodies Microsoft’s vision of the future of computing, the absence of old software seems particularly telling. (Microsoft will also release a Windows 8 Pro powered version of Surface that can run old software, but it’s thicker and will be more expensive than the current $499 Surface.)

Just as Apple offered emulation in OS X for OS 9 apps as a transition step, the desktop in Windows 8 and its compatibility with older software feels like a stopgap measure. The future clearly lies in Microsoft’s new Windows 8 apps. The big problem now is that there simply aren’t many of them. I expected Microsoft to announce some major Windows 8 apps during last week’s NYC launch event, but instead the company repeated a bunch of marketing rhetoric from the past year.

Fixing the Windows Phone dilemma

Apps are also Windows Phone’s biggest problem. Microsoft’s mobile platform offers some truly compelling features that the competition doesn’t, like fully customizable Live Tiles in the start screen, but it’s still failed to make a splash with consumers. Now Windows Phone finally seems to be catching up to the competition, with more than 120,000 apps available, and Windows Phone 8 will launch with 46 of the top 50 apps, according to Microsoft’s Windows Phone head Joe Belfiore.

Given Windows Phone’s low market share, it’s been tough to convince developers to create apps. But at Build, Microsoft can sell its unified computing vision. Windows Phone 8 is powered by the Windows NT kernel, which is also what lies at the core of Windows 8. That means developers will be able to easily create apps that run across both desktop and mobile platforms without much of a sweat.

In comparison, creating an iPhone or iPad app is a dramatically different process from developing an OS X app. It’s also something Microsoft can hold over Google — Android has proven itself a capable mobile platform, but it’s no match for Windows when it comes to powering laptops.

When it comes to wooing developers, Microsoft still has a long road ahead. But with Build, the company has a rare chance to win the hearts and minds of the developers it desperately needs. As VentureBeat’s executive editor Dylan Tweney notes, it’s do or die time for the software giant.

VentureBeat’s John Koetsier is on the ground at Build, and I’ll be following the conference remotely. (I blame Hurricane Sandy for ruining my trip to Redmond.) Check back here for updates from the Build conference throughout the week!

Photos: Devindra Hardawar/VentureBeat

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Big Data and Predictive/Real-time Analytics startups: Are you looking to jumpstart development & accelerate market traction? Sign up for the SAP Startup Focus program to receive technology, support, resources and community to help you develop new applications on SAP HANA, a cutting edge database platform. Get started here, and enter promo code “VB2013″ on the form.

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OpenROV, a mini submarine developed in a Silicon Valley garage, has been hailed by the world’s media as the key to unlocking the earth’s last frontier.

No pressure, or anything.

The 20-something creators, David Lang (pictured, above) and Eric Stackpole, did not anticipate that their open-source robot would infatuate the press or be viewed as the low-cost alternative to subs like the Deep Sea Challenger, which took filmmaker, James Cameron, to the deepest, darkest recesses of the western Pacific.

“At the outset, we thought this might be a great project to discover underwater caves that are too small for divers,” said Lang when I met up with him at open-access workshop TechShop in San Francisco, where he and Stackpole make their parts. “Our ideas for what we wanted to use it for were dwarfed by the community.”

Environmentalists and marine archeologists already say they plan to use OpenROV to discover shipwrecks in Cuba and spotlight pollution in the high seas. Treasure hunters can use the mini sub to look for gold in unchartered waters. In November, Stackpole will be headed to Antarctica as an under-ice pilot in a larger-scale, commercial grade ROV.

“We don’t want to be the wealthiest mini sub builders in the world,” said Lang. ”Our goal is to have a high return on adventure.”

TechShop, the site where Lang and Stackpole solder the submarine’s parts.

On popular crowdfunding platform Kickstarter, OpenROV took on a life of its own and far exceeded its funding goal by netting $111,622 from 484 backers.

It didn’t hurt that Stackpole was profiled by the New York Times’, and OpenROV was credited for its potential to transform underwater exploration.

Lang told me no one has used OpenROV to successfully discover any buried treasure in the ocean’s depths, yet.

The founders’ singular focus is to keep up with the demand for the kits. At TechShop, Lang and Stackpoke laser cut electronic material and plastic and hand-pack and mail the kits. Lang told me that the most common purchasers are tinkerers and hobbyists, who add their own flourishes like robotic arms, payload equipment, and additional cameras.

The TechShop chain is a recent addition to the Bay Area, and is a paradise for hardware geeks. For $100 per month, anyone can access high-tech equipment such as 3-D printers. Classes taught at one of the TechShop hacker spaces include Welding 101, and are available for a few extra dollars. At TechShop, Lang learned how to build robots and work with machines in less than six months.

OpenRov, a mini submarine, can dive as deep as 100m.

The basic prototype has been through 35 iterations and is designed to be portable and cheap. At the basic level, its open-source, remotely operated robot that can be deployed underwater and navigated in 3D using a laptop.

The little robot is elegantly simple, but the real innovation is its inexpensive parts. OpenROV is available for $750, and anyone with a knack for DIY can use it to scale the depths of the ocean, as far as 100 meters.

But if you want an underwater robot of your own, you’ll need to be a dab hand with a soldering iron, as the robot is sold in a kit filled with parts.

To keep tabs on how the robot is being used, the pair launched a company blog and discussion forum. It is already proving to be a powerful tool for small-town environmentalists.

OpenROV can be fitted with video equipment to highlight the pile-up of junk in lakes and ponds. It can go in tiny crevices, where a diver can’t. One user plans to search for evidence of plastic pollution in the unchartered, murky depths of a seabed.

“At a tiny un-touristed cove in southern Maine, I’m finding hundreds — sometimes thousands — of bits of plastic wreckage washing up weekly,” he wrote.

At TechShop, where Lang spends the bulk of his time, he tells me that these findings are the tip of the iceberg for OpenROV. “Our story is just the beginning,” said Lang, who animatedly points out a number of other cool projects that are in development.

“We do know that deep sea exploration, space exploration, drones, 3-D printing are now something that anyone can do,” he said.