Wikipedia's founder gets €10K coolness credit

Jimmy Wales can add "Nokia Foundation scholarship" winner to his list of achievements, having received €10,000 for his sterling work as Maximum Leader of the Wiki.

The award was made to Jimmy on the basis of his "unique contribution to accelerating online collaboration... effectively democratizing information sharing" according to Henry Tirri, chair of the Nokia Foundation Board.

Whether or not Wikipedia is as democratic as it is lauded to be, Jimmy has managed to get 75,000 people to work for free building the site, and that probably deserves some sort of recognition. Symbian would certainly like to learn how to convince people to develop its OS for free, which is why Jimmy addressed the recent Symbian Exposition in London - though he likely netted five times his Foundation scholarship for that gig.

The Nokia Foundation, which made the award, was set up by Nokia back in 1995 to "support the scientific development of the information and telecommunications technologies and to promote education of the sector in Finland". Awards are decided on by three representatives from Nokia and four from Finnish universities. ®