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Wikipedia In Your Pocket, $99
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.
Finally we have a hitch hiker's guide to Earth!
With ubiquitous cellular broadband practically everywhere (that matters) and phones with good web browsers in them, this is a solution looking for a problem.
Great! Now I can regale and browbeat others with authoritative sounding misinformation wherever I go. Cafe discourses and dinner discussions will never be the same again!
May the Maths Be with you!
It's called an iPhone. :)
[citation required]
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An encyclopedia in the form of an e-book for $99. Sorry if I'm not too excited...
Love the idea but I'm a little cautious of Wikipedia's search engine. Not sure if they're rendering the php the same way and using MediaWiki's built in search engine but I have problems with that if they are. For instance if I search for hottest pepper the answer is the seventh result. On Google, it's the second result but also found in the first (being on the page for Scoville scale on Wikipedia).
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.
My work here is dung.
Have these people never heard of a diff? How about just letting me download the changes! The Wiki can tell them what they are.
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.
Finally, the HHGG in your pocket.
Does it come with a towel, or do I need to provide my own?
Hosting and Domain name coupons
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?
------ The best brain training is now totally free : )
The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination. - Einstein
The form factor is a bit wonky. Adding just a little more functionality would have made it worth twice as much. Right now it looks like you have to depend on the community to provide delta-updates, they want you to dump 4GB. There are numerous tools for gathering your own wiki subset.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Their website is going to host 4GB update files for this gizmo. I can imagine them crawling under bandwidth costs shortly. Why not use bittorrent?
My first program:
Hell Segmentation fault
> Is there any sort of open form factor that vendors could use to be EITHER a GPS, a WikiReader, MP3 player, etc? Stop the gadget proliferation !!
Good news! You can get one gadget that's all that PLUS a phone!
=Smidge=
Mine's called k700i... But I often refer to it as Bob.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Obligatory xkcd
"I bless every day that I continue to live, for every day is pure profit."
I have an iPhone. I already have Wikipedia in my pocket.
Of course, thanks to AT&T, its more like "I usually have Wikipedia in my pocket." :-)
The website looks like it was put together in a matter of minutes. I'm having "Netscape Composer" flashbacks.
I clicked "Media". I stopped looking for information when I saw the picture of the old man "researching" Megan Fox.
Those who believe the Internet is private,
find their privates are on the Internet.
Wikipedia online plus Google, the interwebs, and books too.
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/
Not exactly what you asked for but it's good stuff and it predates Wikipedia.
"Most people, I think, don't even know what a rootkit is, so why should they care about it?"
Is that the largest encyclopedia in the world for just $99 in your pants or are you just happy to see me?
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power lost.
You should have stayed there for just a bit longer.
Then you would have also noticed the white, bespectacled woman in her 50s "researching" Snoop Dog.
And that 6-year-old WikiReader poster child reading about string theory.
I did not click on the links to see the videos though.
I prefer the version I got in my head, where Will Smith bursts in and shoots that kid before it starts some shit.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Sure, but the true secret to appearing intelligent is quick and accurate Googling.
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.
Good news! You can get one gadget that's all that PLUS a phone!
=Smidge=
Great! What is is? The only thing I know of that comes close is the iPhone, but that fails the first item on his list.
Somebody please hack it to contain the complete works of Project Gutenberg, or at least a worthwhile subset.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
Seriously, my iPod touch has the capacity to store the 4GB data file and render the content just fine.
So why can't I have an offline copy of Wikipedia AND take Diff files of the changes and updates when I am near a Wifi hotspot? Its got the capabilities to do play music, video, and display images so why isn't this the better form factor?
Also a refurbed iPod touch is $149 with a color screen and rechargeable batteries and it does more than just read Wikipedia.
No wireless. Less space than a Nomad. Lame.
Drill baby drill - on Mars
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.
I'll buy it when it includes images. The text is wonderful, but there are definitely some things that require a picture, or at least a diagram.
++
Anyone with an Internet connection can download the complete Wikipedia in a compressed file about 5GB (decompresses to about 3TB), or even as SQL or XML. You could probably delete all the non-text content (eg. rm -R /*.jpg) to get something small enough to put on a 4GB Flash card for any smartphone.
And you could get the updated snapsot a lot more frequently than with this subscription.
--
make install -not war
But it is the iPhone. Not the jesusPhone.
At least not until you install the jesusPhone theme...