Mobile Wiki with Wapipedia

[Darius Wey]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.wapipedia.org/' target='_blank'>http://www.wapipedia.org/</a><br /><br /></div><img src="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/images/web/2003/wey-20050705-Wapipedia.gif" /><br /><br />A mobile version of the famous Wikipedia encyclopedia is now available. Simply point your browser to <a href="http://www.wapipedia.org/">http://www.wapipedia.org/</a> - it's a charm!

[bookemdano]

I was hoping this was a downloadable version.
I have the Wikipedia database converted to TomeRaider 3 format on my iPaq and it is the second most used app on my handheld.
It is only about 600 MB and doesn't require a connection.

[GadgetMan]

Wapedia (http://pda.en.wapedia.org/) is another mobile version of Wikipedia. This one has been available for a while now and displays not only text, but images as well. All formated for the small screen, of course.

Cheers,

[Andy Whiteford]

I was hoping this was a downloadable version.
I have the Wikipedia database converted to TomeRaider 3 format on my iPaq and it is the second most used app on my handheld.
It is only about 600 MB and doesn't require a connection.



Lexipedia is available as an abridged version without pictures and installs to 221mb for those who are looking for an offline version. You can get a review on my blog - www.donka.co.uk

[foebea]

I was checking for updates on the wikipedia download server and found they have a 937 meg file which is english wiki with most of the images included. makes a huge difference to be able to see what your reading about and it fits on those 37 dollar gig cards that show up every now and then.

[chu0009]

hi
so how does one d/l the encyclopaedia onto a SD card for reading on the PPC? or you can't?
cheers

[johncruise]

I have to second the motion on pda.en.wapedia.org. Wapedia closely have ties to the original wikipedia (I'm not even sure if they are using the same database). Try doing some searches on the same word between Wikipedia, Wapedia and Wapipedia to see what I meant.

[foebea]

In response to above request for further info, and for those of you who didnt know you could do this on a ppc, but dont have any way to connect to WAP:

Complete information on the download and store on an SD or CF card is available here - http://members.chello.nl/epzachte/Wikipedia/.

There are versions ranging in size from 500 megs to almost 4 gigs, and you can build your own version up to about 25 gigs if you have the space :)

The smallest versions are text only, a 900 meg version downloadable has most of the images, and the larger versions have higher resolution images and can either be purchased on dvd for about 20$ or you can build it yourself, though it can take about a week or so of nonstop processing.

I use the 900 meg version from here - http://download.wikimedia.org/tomeraider/current_tr3/.
Its the one called TR3_WP_EN_(P)PC_IMG.zip

All of these require TomeRaider to view, and to be honest, this encyclopedia is the only reason I purchased TomeRaider and am very satisfied with it.

[petevick]

Hi,
I downloaded the 600mb version, and have a trial of TomeRaider to see if it was worth buying, but I find the find facility useless on it.

To do word AND word AND word either never seems to come back, or never seems to find anything. How do you overcome this problem - or am i just expecting to much, and need a little more patience?

Thanks

Pete

[foebea]

Thats some of the advanced context searching which will take an unreasonable amount of time when dealing with the equivalent of something like 10 or 15 complete sets of Encyclopedia Britannica.

I have never done an AND search since I started using it, I just use the icon on the far right while in the index to locate articles by title as it appears.

The boolean search searches full text of each article to find the phrases you are looking for, and can take a very long time. as articles are heavily cross refrenced, you usually dont need to search for specific items. If you want to find freshwater aquarium plants which are fast growers, you dont need to search for "Freshwater AND aquarium AND plants AND fast AND grow". instead just search for aquarium and look for the section on plants which links to specific articles.

Hope this helps, and if not I can field specific questions through PM.

[petevick]

Thanks - will check it out further

[GadgetMan]

Lexipedia is available as an abridged version without pictures and installs to 221mb for those who are looking for an offline version. You can get a review on my blog - www.donka.co.uk

It looks to me that what Revolutionary Software Front has done was took a free resource (Wikipedia) added a rudimentary GUI and then decied to sell it for money. Does not seem very ethical to me :? I wonder if they are in fact violating GNU Free Documentation License under which Wikipedia is made avialable online. I think Wikipedia should be informed about it...

In any case, I rather stick with TomeRaider (due to vast number of excellent reference resources availailable in this format) and use freely available Wikipedia' TomeRaider files with it (or make my own files from Wikipedia SQL dumps).

Cheers,

[Andy Whiteford]

Lexipedia is available as an abridged version without pictures and installs to 221mb for those who are looking for an offline version. You can get a review on my blog - www.donka.co.uk

It looks to me that what Revolutionary Software Front has done was took a free resource (Wikipedia) added a rudimentary GUI and then decied to sell it for money. Does not seem very ethical to me :? I wonder if they are in fact violating GNU Free Documentation License under which Wikipedia is made avialable online. I think Wikipedia should be informed about it...

In any case, I rather stick with TomeRaider (due to vast number of excellent reference resources availailable in this format) and use freely available Wikipedia' TomeRaider files with it (or make my own files from Wikipedia SQL dumps).

Cheers,


I'm not sure exactly what the licence agreement is but I imagine they are charging for the Pocket PC application itself, not the data contained within - a bit like paying for the Town and Compass viewer but getting reference material for it for free. I know they do link to Wikipedia which suggests there is some form of common agreement.