Tag: wikipedia

Wikireader provides instant access to Wikipedia

Want to find out the origins of Halloween or when Samuel Pepys was born while walking round the park with your inquisitive six year old but don’t have an internet connection? Then the WikiReader might just be worth checking out.

A palm-sized electronic encyclopaedia designed for all ages, it contains more than three million English language entries from Wikipedia that can be immediately accessed any time, anywhere without an internet connection. Developed by Openmoko WikiReader turns on instantly and will work for months on two AAA batteries.

The large monochrome screen uses a touch interface, articles are scrolled with a stroke of the finger and hyperlinks selected with a simple tap. Updates for the WikiReader are provided quarterly and available for free download via their website. A yearly subscription plan for updated microSD cards is also available for $29.

“We created the WikiReader to be fun, easy, informative and entertaining for all ages,” said Openmoko CEO, Sean Moss-Pultz. “WikiReader is a whimsical look at the joy of learning in the digital age. It’s personal and it’s fun. We’re extremely excited about sharing our device with the world.”

Costing $99 the WikiReader is available from Amazon.com starting today.

For more information on WikiReader visit http://thewikireader.com.

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Shinychris Gadgets

Wikipedia also opts out of Phorm

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Following in the footsteps of Amazon, the Wikimedia Foundation has announced that it too will be blocking user-profiling software Phorm from scanning its site.

Interestingly, the blog post announcing the move mentioned that Wikimedia had an internal discussion about whether blocking the tech would mean legitimizing it. Many websites are ignoring Phorm entirely, wanting to have nothing to do with it whatsoever.

Wikimedia’s opt-out will mean that nothing hosted on Wikipedia, Wikiquote, Wikimedia, Wikibooks, Wikinews, Wikisource or Wiktionary will be able to be tracked by the spyware. As those sites tend to rank very highly in search engines, it’s a big blow to Phorm. It also begins a rolling ball that could see all major websites blocking the service.

(via Wikimedia Tech Blog)

Duncan Geere Websites

Encarta ended, Wikipedia wins

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Microsoft’s encyclopedia software, Encarta, has finally had its plug pulled. In June, the software products will disappear, and on October 31st 2009, the website will go too. Japan gets slightly longer, until December 31st 2009.

Microsoft has an FAQ page dedicated to the subject, which sets out why the project is getting axed: “The category of traditional encyclopedias and reference material has changed. People today seek and consume information in considerably different ways than in years past.”

Basically, it’s saying ‘people use Wikipedia, so we’re giving up’. Fair enough, I suppose – it’s increasingly difficult to cope with the crowdsourced project, and it’s good that Microsoft isn’t kidding itself that it can compete, like it is with Games for Windows.

What I’ll miss most from Encarta is Mindmaze, which I spent many happy hours on at school once I’d got past the orbital simulator and had enough of listening to Martin Luther King’s ‘I Have a Dream’ speech.

Mindmaze was a quiz where you had to travel through a medieval dungeon answering questions to progress. It featured inappropriate cleavage (pictured) as well as insane non-sequiturs from the court jester stood on a big blue box and the creepiest alchemist ever. Ahh… happy days.

(via Ars Technica)

Duncan Geere Software