Wikireader – Wikipedia in your Pocket

While technology is advancing to implant wifi and 3G in every pocket device, will a device embedded with data but devoid of internet access succeed? Wikireader is a new pocket reader, seeded with 3 million topics from wikipedia, which is one of the finest sources of information on the internet.

The Magic of Touch and Portability:

Wikireader - Access wikipedia offline

Millions of users are getting used to touch technology everyday, and almost every device being designed today starts taking shape with a touch interface. The power and ease of the touch interface being obvious and with innovation powering a fully featured role playing game on a pocket device, the possibilities are endless.

Wikireader uses a touch interface with extreme simplcity. Openmoko boasts a fantastic screen and just the three buttons “search, history and random”. Users can search for topics using a virtual keyboard in the touch screen and also scroll through the page with a swipe. The device is also extremely portable and tapers its way to hold the two AA batteries in the rear. With a claimed 12 months of battery life, durability also seems to be taken care of.

The Motivation:

Openmoko is one of the few companies that focus on open source mobile development and has attracted a few linux geeks, but piled up the stack of companies hit by recession. The open nature of wikipedia is also one of the factors behind the motivation of the device. The data [3 million wiki topics] is stored in a 4GB removable SD card.

No internet Access:

Call it a step back or not, a device with no internet access has loads of problems. For instance, wikipedia is a website, which is being updated everyday, and there are no provisions to update the data. Also, it is misleading if the wikireader has the capabilities to display images from wikipedia pages.

Another Device:

While it may sound simple to buy a ipod touch and use it for multiple purposes, besides accessing wikipedia entries, the offline factor does play a small yet significant role. If you have internet access, buying this device is foolish as the same level as that of kindle. Wikireader may be put to use by young students.

Love the geeky pickup line pointed out by ars: “I have the sum total of human knowledge in my pants. Do you want to see it?” – Wikireader.

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