Wikipedia for Mobile Devices

[Darius Wey]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.3g.co.nz/wiki' target='_blank'>http://www.3g.co.nz/wiki</a><br /><br /></div><i>"Users of Pocket PCs, Smartphones and Java-enabled mobile phones running web browsers can now access a lightweight version of the Wikipedia on-line encyclopaedia. New Zealand-based company Instinct has created a mobile version of Wikipedia for mobile devices, currently available as a beta website. With over 1,025,291 entries it's got pretty much everything users could want to know about, from mercantilism to New Zealand history to Fraggle Rock."</i><br /><br /><img src="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/images/web/2003/wey-20060318-Wiki.jpg" /><br /><br />I'm trying to recall how many mobile Wikipedia ports there are, but truth is, I've lost count. Regardless, here's another one to add to your bookmarks.

[Mark Johnson]

I'm trying to recall how many mobile Wikipedia ports there are, but truth is, I've lost count.


Gee, you'd think there would be a wikipedia article that answers that...
:wink:

[Gerard]

Well now, this is a handy resource. I've oft been frustrated by the way Wikipedia appears in Pocket IE, with
one
word
per
line
for
most
pages...

I'll be subbing this link for my old one on my local home page.

[ramjet73]

I'm trying to recall how many mobile Wikipedia ports there are, but truth is, I've lost count.


Gee, you'd think there would be a wikipedia article that answers that...
:wink:
There is one that sort of does that:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia

That's a good example of recursion. :)

ramjet73

[AndyH]

My favorite is the Wikipedia with TomeRaider3. You don't need an internet conection so it's with you all the time. A minor negative is that you need a large storage card since the file with pictures is about 900mb. The other downside is that it is not quite as extensive as the on line version but it has only let me down a couple times.

andy

[onepieceman]

How do you find the speed with TomeRaider? I have it installed, but it is almost unusably slow. OK if you are desperate to know something and are prepared to wait 30secs, but no good for casual browsing.
Maybe it's my card (I have a 4GB SD Card), or maybe its WM5, or maybe that's just the speed I should expect, hence my interest...

[Gerard]

I've seen Andy's Wikipedia/Tomeraider in action, tried it a bit on his older iPAQ, and there was no delay at all. Links work as page turning an average novel in ubook, which is really impressive. I'd guess WM5 was the culprit, as it's reportedly slow in a lot of uses.

[onepieceman]

That's very interesting. I'll try my SD card in my old XDA2 to see whether it's an OS issue. If that's also slow, I guess I'll put it down to my card. It's lovely and big, but I'm not convinced about its throughput rate.

[dma1965]

How do you find the speed with TomeRaider? I have it installed, but it is almost unusably slow. OK if you are desperate to know something and are prepared to wait 30secs, but no good for casual browsing.
Maybe it's my card (I have a 4GB SD Card), or maybe its WM5, or maybe that's just the speed I should expect, hence my interest...

I had this problem and found that fragmentation was the culprit. Use a card reader to copy the contents to your desktop, format the card, and copy it all back.

[AndyH]

:D I have found very little difference in speed with TomeRaider3 running WM5 on my Aximx51v.

Andy

[MitchellO]

I tried this last night and its really fast (the mobile version in the OP). I read a stack of Star Trek articles on it on my Axim last night :D

[MitchellO]

http://img69.imageshack.us/img69/1415/cimg5375small6yw.jpg

http://img69.imageshack.us/img69/3828/cimg5376small7yj.jpg

Gotta love OzVGA + WM2003SE + X50v :D

[Gerard]

It may also be different in performance depending upon card formatting. Andy, what is your SD's FAT type and cluster size?

[AndyH]

It may also be different in performance depending upon card formatting. Andy, what is your SD's FAT type and cluster size?

Hi Gerard!

My 2gb SD card is formatted usinf FAT 32. I don't remember what I set the cluster size to. How can I check? On my old IPAQ, I had Pocket Mechanic which I think has the ability to find out, does Memmaid have that ability?

andy

[onepieceman]

I had this problem and found that fragmentation was the culprit. Use a card reader to copy the contents to your desktop, format the card, and copy it all back.

I don't understand that. Surely fragmentation is only an issue on physical devices like disk drives, because it takes time to move the heads around the disk. On an SD card, it is no faster to read the next byte as one far away. It's just a different address. Or am I missing something?

[Gerard]

Storage Tools can show you tne cluster size, but I've not used MemAid so can't help there. I suppose a PC could show this as well, but I don't know with what program.

[signothefish]

I had Wikipedia on a 4GB Hitachi microdrive, and it was painfully slow. I then switched to a 4GB Sandisk Ultra II card, and the difference was night and day. Now even long articles load almost instantaneously. Also, I have the highest resolution version available, which will eat up almost 2.6GB of your storage card, but it's worth it to get the high resolution images.

[dma1965]

I had this problem and found that fragmentation was the culprit. Use a card reader to copy the contents to your desktop, format the card, and copy it all back.

I don't understand that. Surely fragmentation is only an issue on physical devices like disk drives, because it takes time to move the heads around the disk. On an SD card, it is no faster to read the next byte as one far away. It's just a different address. Or am I missing something?

I don't understand it either, I just know it works.

[Janak Parekh]

Well now, this is a handy resource. I've oft been frustrated by the way Wikipedia appears in Pocket IE
Just FYI, one-column mode in PIE renders the "regular" Wikipedia quite nicely. (Well, PIE in WM5 at least.)

--janak

[captgoodhope]

Also, I have the highest resolution version available, which will eat up almost 2.6GB of your storage card, but it's worth it to get the high resolution images.

Where did you find this version?

[signothefish]

Also, I have the highest resolution version available, which will eat up almost 2.6GB of your storage card, but it's worth it to get the high resolution images.

Where did you find this version?

Wow, it's gone up another 1.2GB since I purchased mine about a year and a half ago! The new filesize is 3.8GB!!! That's one serious file right there. Here is the page you can order it from:
http://infodisiac.com/Wikipedia/Order.html
This is the same person I ordered mine from (Erik Zachte). Product was delivered overseas (I live in the US), and came in a timely manner on a DVD-ROM.

[Gerard]

Just FYI, one-column mode in PIE renders the "regular" Wikipedia quite nicely. (Well, PIE in WM5 at least.).

Oops. Guess I'd not even visited Wikipedia since getting this Toshiba e800 in November. Now that I check under WM2003SE, with OzVGA running, I see there's no such problem as I had with PIE on WM2003 and a Dell X5. The text flows very nicely, with no side-scrolls necessary.

[Miz]

It may also be different in performance depending upon card formatting. Andy, what is your SD's FAT type and cluster size?

Hi Gerard!

My 2gb SD card is formatted usinf FAT 32. I don't remember what I set the cluster size to. How can I check? On my old IPAQ, I had Pocket Mechanic which I think has the ability to find out, does Memmaid have that ability?

andy

You should format it in FAT16 if possible. Other things aren't very important. FAT16 improves the speed for small devices a lot. Even some digital cameras lose the video capture or burst-shot capability only because the card was formatted in FAT32.

I think there's an article around here (involving SKTools) talking about card optimization.

[bmhome1]

I have the Wikipedia 2GB size database running from SD card on my iPaq 5555, having used both Transcend 2GB and 4GB 150X SD cards. Both are equally fast even though the 2GB came as default FAT16 and 4GB as default FAT32 512k clusters. Both databases got loaded on empty cards from SD card reader. Both SD cards were defragmented on the desktop after writing the file.

I had previously tried the 2GB Wikipedia on a PCMCIA 5GB hard drive and smaller TomeRaider 3 databases from Lexar 32X SD cards. Both were CONSIDERABLY slower opening and rendering selections than the Transcend 150X cards. TR3 certainly seems to benefit from faster reading speed cards and I suspect having plenty of free RAM to run it.

[Gerard]

Both are equally fast even though the 2GB came as default FAT16 and 4GB as default FAT32 512k clusters.

There is no such thing as a default of 512k clusters. If there were, users would quickly be calling for refunds, as such a cluster size would render the cards practically useless for the incredible waste - every 1k text file or whatever other small file would take half a megabyte of the card! I don't think an option exists for clusters larger than 64KB.

So it seems you meant 512byte clusters as the default formatting, which is usual.