Wikipedia In Your Pocket for $99 | Hacker News Reader

Wikipedia In Your Pocket for $99

thewikireader.com

29 pointsedw51929 comments

I wonder what the chances are of using one of these and coming across a wiki page that has been defaced and / or is somehow incorrect. With the online version you have the benefit of time tempering validity of most articles. With something like this, aren't you at the mercy of whenever the snapshot was taken?

and / or is somehow incorrect

The chances are 100%.

Yeah, I did some back of the envelope calculations on this yesterday - approximately 4 million edits to Wikipedia a month, 4% of which end up being vandalism of some sort.

That ends up being approximately 160,000 instances of vandalism a month if you don't mind my hand-wavey oversimplification.

The median time to revert a vandalized article is 14 minutes.

I guess the question is "how many vandalized articles are in an average snapshot?" instead of "are there any vandalized articles?".

  Sources:

http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/TablesDatabaseEdits.htm

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

My favorite feature:

  Forget daily charging, two standard AAA batteries (included) 
  will power WikiReader for about 12 months of normal usage. 
  Or put in those unused rechargeable batteries lying around 
  in the house. Those will work, too.

Sure, you can get an iPod touch or some smart device du jour, but that defeats the point. I'm sure reading text on that crisp b&w screen is far easier and with less distractions than on an iPod. But this is something you can throw in your bag just to have, or give to your niece or nephew or create a homebrew community around. Maybe its the nostalgia talking, but I have a fondness of these 'one use' devices that have just as much computing power as you need, don't need a wireless connection and don't need an power umbilical chord nightly.

If I didn't have a Kindle, I'd consider playing with one.

Destined for a sharper image near you?

Don't want to come off too strong, as this device would have been awesome just a few years ago...but with how common smartphones are becoming, the market for people (without smartphones) willing to spend $99 on an electronic wikipedia device seems like it would be quite small.

If you had wikipedia in your pocket for only $99, you would have known that sharper image closed its retail stores: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sharper_Image#Retail_stores

Specs at Amazon (4.5 oz; 128 grams) http://www.amazon.com/WikiReader-WR-01-Pocket-Wikipedia/dp/B...

A review: http://dvice.com/archives/2009/10/the-wikireader.php

CrunchGear review: http://www.crunchgear.com/2009/10/13/wikireader-packs-all-of...

It's a hp200lx-style: B&W display, incredible battery-life. Anyone have more specs on the processor?

I predict an incredibly small, cheap, light and efficient x-term-based, ARM-based linux machine.

It's like a slightly-less-but-still-awesome Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy :)

This comic strip makes a point about Kindle: http://xkcd.com/548/

I read the title and immediately thought that this is an outrageous price for something that my phone can do for a few dollars a month (cheap data plans in India), and then I saw the form factor, and the amazing battery life.

The question is: can it display the equations that Mobile Wikipedia + my phone have trouble doing?

Make it or break it for me might be images and math equations. Good idea though -- I actually thought of tying something like this to your GPS for roadtrips, and have it pop up the relevant Wikipedia article for the closest town/landmark, expandable to big cities/states/etc.

check out www.wikifieldtrip.org, which does that

Love the spots: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KVnCZI9h46Y&feature=playe...

Anyone have an idea as to how hackable this thing is? A friend of mine and I are looking for a good platform upon which to build a programmable and pocket-sized RPN calculator.

The ARM based HP-20B calculator is fully hackable, and HP has even released schematics and an SDK. Not a lot of non-volatile RAM, though.

http://www.wiki4hp.com/

Very awesome, thank you for the link!

Is the fact that internet access is not required that much of a benefit? Why not spend $199 on an iPod Touch instead...

Can't you get an iPhone for $99 now? Seems like a much better deal with more functionality.

$99... and a $75 a month bill for two years.

Sure, you could pick up an iPod Touch for $199 but that's twice as much, has worse battery life, looks like it'd be far more fragile, and no way to prevent kids for accessing the more adult Wikipedia areas.

This looks like a great device you could give to your 9+ kids to help with homework.

The thing is that you need a data plan for an iPhone to work. This doesn't require anything. (I assume they have something similar to the Kindle)

edit: nevermind. The store page shows this: "Annual Update Subscription $29 for two updates per year Receive content updates for your WikiReader delivered to your door."

It seems to say that the content is loaded once and for all? Surprising… so, it doesn't require a subscription but the content is not live.

The subscription is only for them to mail you a microsd card. You can download the updates for free and load it yourself.

http://thewikireader.com/update.html

Or iPod Touch + Patrick Collison's offline Wikipedia app: http://collison.ie/wikipedia-iphone/

what about the itouch then?

I agree the Wikipedia device is priced way too high, but you cannot buy an iPhone for $99, or even $199. The money you give Apple is just a down payment.

This would be pretty awesome if the screen were bigger, according to me.

Or for $1.99... http://www.appsafari.com/searching/3506/iphone-wikipedia/

nice find! Check out these guys as well:

http://www.wikipock.com/

And um... how big is the screen?

I wonder how good the search is. Searching wikipedia from the site is terrible IMO.

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