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  #1  
Old 06-04-2003, 06:45 PM
Jordan Rosenwald
Ponderer
Join Date: Apr 2006
Posts: 82
Default A to Vladimir Zworykin: A Review of The World Book Concise Encyclopedia

Need to know the exact temperature of Absolute Zero? How about if you're walking down the street and someone asks you if you know what contributions John Von Neumann made to the field of mathematics? Who knows when you�ll need to know that the tangor is part of the mandarin family of fruits? Enter the World Book Concise Encyclopedia 2003 Handheld Edition.


PDAs are all about information� Well, and games, being organized, and multimedia. But definitely information! What better source of information than the World Book Concise Encyclopedia? If you�ve written a report for school, you�ve probably used World Book before, but how does it translate to an electronic format?

The World (Book) At Your Fingertips
Making use of the Town Compass DataViewer, The World Book Concise Encyclopedia boast 17,000 entries and 1,200 images. How they achieve so much information is by simply taking the first paragraph from the print edition, for each entry. The end result is a very concise, high level description of what you�re looking up. Not too shabby if you're on the road or in a pinch for some general information.


Figure 1: Warm, inviting, and friendly� Eh. It's just the splash screen.

Organized And Making Sense

Figure 2: Narrowing your search is simple and quick.

The layout of the reference is simple and logical, especially if you�ve used Town Compass� DataViewer before. When you start, you are given a picture of the encyclopedia. Click OK, and move on to a list of alphabetic ranges (A-C, D-H, etc.). Select the letter range your interested and it will continue to prompt you (three times total) to drill down closer and closer to the subject matter you�re looking for. Once you select the topic you�re interested in, you will be presented with the information, including cross-reference links and a picture if there is one for the entry, in ClearType.


Figure 3: Narrowing your search

To go back to the topic list, click the back arrow or home button (looking very Pocket Internet Explorer in appearance). You can also view the index (all entries in one HUGE list), search (more on that later), refresh the view, and even beam the database (wouldn�t recommend that seeing as how it's pretty huge) or application.


Figure 4: Cross-referenced information accessible by clicking on blue text.

Searches
At first I was going to say there wasn�t much to say about this other than you could search the entries, but I was getting some strange results back when I ran some test searches. My first search (the word radon) took over 14 seconds to return four results. My seconds search, the word Jefferson took four seconds and returned 49 results. To really get silly, I searched for the word �the� and got 100 results (which is a configurable maximum in the options screen) in four seconds also. Every search I ran took four to five seconds after that.

It appears that the first search indexes the database, because if you close the database entirely and reopen it, the first search again takes over 14 seconds, but each subsequent search takes four to five seconds. I have to say I�m rather pleased with that.

Gotchas
  • Not much of a gotcha, but with the exception for quick lookup items like how far is a light-year (5.88 trillion miles) or the year The Emancipation Proclamation was made (1863), I found myself wanting more detail on several things that I looked up. But such is the limitation of a concise encyclopedia.
  • Can�t copy and paste entries. I know it's to protect copyrighted material, but I�d still love that functionality.
Where To Buy
The software can be downloaded from Handango or purchased for $24.95 (affiliate link).

Specifications
The DataViewer requires 460KB and can be installed on a memory card. The database requires 12MB and can be installed to a memory card, and gives you the option to do it directly from the install!

Conclusions
The World Book Concise Encyclopedia is a great reference to have on hand. The interface is clean, the searches are fast, and the information is good (if not limited by its clarity). Add to the overall positive experience with the reference the fact that the viewer has several additional resources that are free for download and you have a pretty useful reference source.
 
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  #2  
Old 06-04-2003, 07:28 PM
thomas1973
Intellectual
Join Date: Apr 2003
Posts: 170

Looks pretty impressive! I was just thinking, you could also try out the free Wikipedia encyclopedia, which is available for Pocket PC download in the Tomeraider format. But it's a whopping 103 MB 8O !

Visit the online version here: www.wikipedia.org
Quote:
Wikipedia is a multilingual project to create a complete and accurate open content encyclopedia. We started on January 15, 2001 and are currently working on 130779 articles in the English version.
Read more about Wikipedia on PPC, and see PPC screenshots, here:
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipe...aider_database

Goto the download page, where you want the "WP_EN_(P)PC.tr.bz2"-file, or download the demofile: "WP_EN_(P)PC_DEMO.tr.bz2" (bz2-format is a zip-file format.) Sorry about all the links, but it's pretty hard to find the PPC info and downloads on Wikipedias website, so I thought I'd put it all here :roll: ...


Thomas.
 
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  #3  
Old 06-04-2003, 07:33 PM
Kaber
Philosopher
Join Date: Jul 2003
Posts: 495
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No copy and paste? WTF!?!?
 
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  #4  
Old 06-04-2003, 08:22 PM
Duncan
Pontificator
Join Date: Jul 2003
Posts: 1,468

Quote:
Looks pretty impressive! I was just thinking, you could also try out the free Wikipedia encyclopedia
Now Wikipedia is an amazing encyclopaedia - with astonishing depth on pretty much anything you can think of (so far there hasn't been a single item I couldn't find). Very accurate as well - I searched for some very obscure stuff that I have some specialist knowledge of and it was spot on every time. Very fast too!

The World Book though - very poor. Basic, inaccurate in parts (largely due to the need for 'consciseness' I suppose) and massively overpriced for such a small database. If it was cheaper then it would have value as a conscise encyclopaedia - but I have a battered old paperback encyclopaedia that has as much detail and cost me �5!

BTW - Jordan - I'm not sure I understand your meaning here:
Quote:
the information is good (if not limited by its clarity)
 
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  #5  
Old 06-04-2003, 10:07 PM
bargainPDA
Pupil
Join Date: Mar 2003
Posts: 44

We just reviewed the Palm version which uncovers numerous problems as well including a lack of zoom on pictures, very poor image resolution and unreadable captions and labels. We also found the descriptions to be a little light for most topics. If you're interested...

http://www.bargainpda.com/default.as...wComments=true

Brian
 
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  #6  
Old 06-04-2003, 11:01 PM
Kathy_Harris
Ponderer
Join Date: Apr 2004
Posts: 110

$25 just for tombraider??? Ouch!
 
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  #7  
Old 06-04-2003, 11:26 PM
thomas1973
Intellectual
Join Date: Apr 2003
Posts: 170

Quote:
Originally Posted by Kathy_Harris
$25 just for tombraider??? Ouch!
Oops, guess I forgot about the cost of Tomeraider ops: ... I've just always had it, as the Danish Drug Catalog and the Danish ICD-10 criterias (disease classifications) are both freely, but also exclusively, available in the Tomeraider format, and I'm a Danish medical student.

Tomeraider is a very good program for reference work, as the index searches are instantaneous, even in big files. I haven't tried the 103 MB Wikipedia, yet, as I'm still waiting on my 256 MB SD-card...

There are a lot of other free reference work and other free texts available in the TR format , but you're probably thinking what I would think if I didn't already have TR: 20 bucks for yet another reader ...


Thomas.
 
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  #8  
Old 06-04-2003, 11:53 PM
Craig Horlacher
Contributing Editor
Craig Horlacher's Avatar
Join Date: Sep 2006
Posts: 524
Default Tomeraider

I love having referances on my Pocket PC. They come in handy often. It's true, you need to pay $25.00 for TomeRaider (note, not Tomb, but Tome which is a word for a scholarly book I think) but it's well worth it. It is fast and the Wikipedia is great. I've been amazed at the detail that it has and the variety of topics. Besides that I also got (for free) Rogets Thesauras, a concise Websters encyclopedia and Websters abridged dictionary - in TomeRaider format. So, for the $25.00 I paid for TomeRaider I've got four additional referances that all seem to be good. I forget where I got them all. Maybe Project Guttenberg or something?

I actually bought the World Book one but had to return it when I found out it didn't support mips (still have an e125) as the compatibility list said. They have since corrected the compatibility list. It looks like it could be a good additional referance. It's especially nice because it's so small. I'm not too worried about space on my 1GB cf ($140.00 after rebate thanks to PPCT!) but I know a lot of people may be.
 
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  #9  
Old 06-05-2003, 12:03 AM
thomas1973
Intellectual
Join Date: Apr 2003
Posts: 170

For Tomeraider files, check out www.memoware.com

Thomas.
 
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  #10  
Old 06-05-2003, 01:43 AM
cyp
Pupil
Join Date: Nov 2002
Posts: 31

wikipedia is one confusing website. where is the download link for ppc?
 
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