Wikipedia In Your Pocket, $99 412
An anonymous reader notes the announcement by Sean Moss-Pultz (Openmoko, Inc.) of a new geek device: The $99 WikiReader. All of Wikipedia in your pocket with no Internet connection required. Works in bright sunlight. 3-button interface. You can update the information in the WikiReader either by mail (they ship a microSD card) or by downloading a 4+ GB file.
So this is ... (Score:4, Interesting)
Which Search Software Does This Employ? (Score:5, Interesting)
The time this would be really useful to me is when I get into arguments at bars or restaurants with friends. I'm a bit concerned about how well the search part of this device will work for that, I'd probably need to rethink a lot of my searches to start at an obvious Wikipedia page and then lead me to my answer.
Probably wonderful for just reading through Wikipedia on a bus or plane though, too bad it doesn't seem to have the images, videos or audio.
a 4G+ file? (Score:5, Interesting)
That's worse than useless if I have to redownload all of wikipedia to keep it up to date.
Luckily I have a smart phone with internet access.
Is this a derivative work? (Score:2, Interesting)
According to the rules of open source... all derivative works must also be open source.
This is hardware. Does that mean that the design, specifications and technology used are also open source?
Cool gift (Score:1, Interesting)
It's perfect for my niece and nephew for school and writing reports. Just handy not having to have an internet connection. I wish the design was more pocket sized though.
Re:Solution looking for a problem (Score:2, Interesting)
it strikes me as a good solution for people who don't (and don't want to) pay $150/mo in phone plan charges.
or for people for whom battery life is a concern.
Updates (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:a 4G+ file? (Score:3, Interesting)
The file on the device is probably compressed in a way that makes a diff impractical.
Re:So this is ... (Score:3, Interesting)
I was using it very loosely... as in a non-paper book. :)
IMO, not only is the hardware somewhat lacking, I'm not sure I even want a wikipedia reference. Why not something somewhat authoritative? Wikipedia is alright and all, but there are definite issues with it once you get outside of certain to pics. Not that other encyclopedia's are perfect, but at least they have trained/educated editors and researchers that are presumably paid to be good at it.
When I wrote research papers in college, it seems to me that peer-reviewed (not just some guy saying they reviewed it) papers were the only accepted sources for a research paper. Original research was ok (as opposed to WP's position on it) but had to be extremely well documented. Of course, this was a music history research paper, so...
Re:Solution looking for a problem (Score:2, Interesting)
Well it found a problem. Specifically, my problem.
I was reflecting on how I would like to throw some money their way, but don't really want to donate and don't really need CD's.
I don't have a dataplan on my phone and don't want one.
This device is perfect. I will own one.
Re:So... (Score:4, Interesting)
Most people I can think of who'd like this, or have some other form of access to The Great Wiki in their pocket don't see it as unconditionally gospel. It's like the rest of the internet - about right, most of the time. I don't recall ever having been wrongly informed through getting information from wikipedia - it can be (and more often than not is) ambiguous, over-complicated or over-simplified, lacking in detail, but it's very rarely wrong - there's too many anally retentive pedants on it.
Re:So this is ... (Score:2, Interesting)
To chime in with oh2's point, you dont use Wikipedia as a source, but instead as a summary and reference to sources supporting the summary. Dont trust anything not sited, and check the sited sources.
If you use this for your term paper / research / etc, the information shouldnt be sited to Wikipedia (which can change) but instead to the original source.
Re:Solution looking for a problem (Score:3, Interesting)
It's a postapocalyptic civilization rebuilder! (Score:5, Interesting)
1) Huge compendium of human knowledge.
2) Runs off of commonly available, easily stockpiled batteries
3) Runs for a whole year off of one set of batteries (swap Lithium for alkaline, it should run for a decade)
4) Sunlight-readable
5) Compact, sturdy and durable
Hell, at those kind of power usage levels, you could hack a small solar cell into it and it should work anywhere you've got sunlight. Imagine a complete breakdown of civilization as we know it. Books are heavy and inconvenient and make good kindling. Without electricity, compact digital forms of information retrieval become impossible. What do we use to rebuild civilization after a couple generations of this send us back to the dark ages? This thing! It's PERFECT.
Re:Solution looking for a problem (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:citation please (Score:4, Interesting)
This is just as good a place as any to ask about the support of templates in this device. Important components of some articles are generate by templates. One example is the infamous [citation needed] text, which is generated by the "{{cn}}" template. Other times, important words in a sentence are used as a argument for a template, to produce some from of link automatically.
Some other mobile Wikipedia solutions, such as one I saw for the iPhone, just ignore templates. That means that important words in a sentence could potentially be omitted. In some cases, entire sections of an article may be omitted. I consider that extremely problematic.
Assuming they are properly supported, are references supported? In few articles I've seen the feature used for general footnotes in addition to references, and having those disappear could be problematic.
What about the LaTeX math equations? A lot of mathematical and Computer Science articles become completely worthless if those are omitted, but including them means included quite a few generated images for some of the more complex ones that cannot be rendered as html.
And what about the ez-timeline extention. Are the images that it generates included?
What about the hieroglyphics that articles may include by way of the wikihiro extention?
I would not be willing to use a static mobile Wikipedia that did not support templates, references, tables, external links, LaTeX equations.
Other people might insist that the categories pages be included, and that time lines and hieroglyphics be supported.
Re:Solution looking for a problem (Score:3, Interesting)
http://www.thewikireader.com/media/pictures/wr_hand1_small.jpg [thewikireader.com]
Oh, that's funny. I see something on that page that doesn't look anything like a latin character set.
The databases are the same, I don't see why this wouldn't be able to read a non-english wikipedia dump.