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Offline Wikipedia Reader For iRex Iliad
An anonymous reader writes with a link to "an offline Wikipedia viewer for the iRex Iliad e-ink e-book reader (similar to Amazon's Kindle). Take it anywhere — and you don't need to be connected to the Internet in any way!" (You'll need a 4GB flash card and the ability to follow the directions.)
I think I need to take out a small loan to buy an iRex. (or a Kindle!)
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
pfttt... directions are for wussies anyway!
Prediction: The real iPhone killer is going to be sex robots from Japan. Think about it.
Hmm. For print encyclopedias, you rarely know ahead of time exactly which volumes you will need. One entry may reference, or suggest an entry in another volume
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
I got all excited about a Kindle competitor... until I saw the price.
Lop a zero off the price guys, and I'll consider it. Give me a fscking break.
- Necron69
At that price i could probably get an entire bookshelf of books that i can read offline at any time i want. Not only that,i think this is only going to be good for books that you read from cover to cover. If you reference books extensively or are looking for say coding examples, a lot of the time you may have several pages open in several different books at the same time. On a laptop browser that is manageable. A real physical set of books is also manageable if inconventient. But on a reader with the screen the size of a large paperback which displays one screen at a time i suspect it would be very hard to manage indeed unless the navigation is absolutely top notch.
Got to fiddle with an Iliad at the last tradeshow I visited. Looked like an Ikea cardboard computer, seemed about as functional. Honestly thought it was a mock-up until it finally managed to display a new page. Would rather gnaw my arm off than attempt to browse a cached wikipedia on that thing.
Best of luck to the early adopters willing to shell out. The world needs guinea pigs too.
* Making waffles just so I have something to Twitter *
I was reading a book the other day on it, a weapon was mentioned in the book, and I quickly looked it up in Wikipedia to see the image, and then got back to my book with a much better mental image of the scene in question. These are the very reasons why ebook readers are such a great idea, but it is a shame that they need to be encumbered by DRM.
Personally, if amazon were to begin providing buyers, of tradition dead-tree books, with the option to download a DRM free file of a book with the purchase of the dead-tree version I would purchase a kindle tomorrow.
The lack of being able to sell a DRM encumbered kindle book makes the purchase very unappealing. I can't loan the kindle ebook to someone without giving them my kindle. I can't make copies of any of the pages, for use as reference material in writing a paper for example. I can't sell the book to anyone or a used bookstore. I can't even give it away or burn it to stay warm.
I just can't understand why so many people have jumped at the kindle. The list of features and the abilities that it affords when reading are amazing, but the trade off is enormous.