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Offline Wikipedia Reader For iRex Iliad

Posted by timothy on from the don't-panic dept.

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.)

6 of 112 comments (clear)

  1. Re:weird by TheRaven64 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Did you carry an entire encyclopaedia with you to the coffee shop? I have an iLiad, and I carry a small selection of textbooks on it as well as a new novels. I've only got a 1GB card in it, but it's a long way away from being full. It accepts compact flash cards, so I'll probably pick up a 16GB one soon. That's enough for all of Wikipedia and most of Project Gutenberg in something light enough to carry with me.

    --
    I am TheRaven on Soylent News
  2. I badly want one by hairykrishna · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I really, really want a decent e-ink ebook reader which can handle wikipedia and pdfs. £400 ($800) is just far too much though. I'm amazed that anyone is buying them at that price. They need to get down to ~£100.

    --
    "Physics is to math as sex is to masturbation." -R. Feynman
  3. Re:Don't Panic by ramsejc · · Score: 3, Interesting

    My thoughts exactly. This is the second 'prototype' of a HHG that I've read about in the past two weeks: http://www.hackaday.com/2008/05/13/pocket-hitchikers-guide-to-the-galaxy-wikipedia-style/

    At the rate that we are evolving, we will see/discover the first babel fish in the next 100 years, and the first improbability driven space ship by the year 2400.

  4. Misses One Important Point by Nom+du+Keyboard · · Score: 4, Interesting
    One of the charming, and important, features of Wikipedia is the timely updating on current events. Often by the time I've read something in the daily news the Wikipedia article has already been updated with even better information by the people who care about and watch over their articles. This feature is missed in any offline reader.

    Also having to download the entire Wikipedia DB to update the offline version each time will be time consuming for the user, and bandwidth killing for the Wikipedia site if this becomes popular.

    Now if Wikipedia could organize themselves in a manner that allowed you to download the updates since your last update, you'd have a win-win on both sides.

    --
    "It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
  5. Re:weird by mewyn · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I very recently bought a Kindle, and I love having access to wikipedia on the device, as well as a built-in dictionary. If I don't know the meaning of a word, now instead of guessing the meaning I will look it up really quick, if it doesn't break my rhythm.

    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.

  6. Compact flash card will drain the battery by Yeti7226 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I own an iRex and this is very cool. Problem with the compactflash cards is that is significantly drains the battery. The SD slot does not take anything over 1 Gig. Hopefully this wil be corrected in a next version.