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RSS feedsWikipedia, the online encyclopaedia containing 650,000 articles at the last count, is to be made available on mobile devices such as PDAs.
Webaroo, a provider of offline web content , has added Wikipedia to its collection of nearly 300 downloadable web packs. The content of the packs is drawn from a variety of websites – sources currently available include sport, newspapers and entertainment.
Instead of using their PDA or smartphone to connect to the internet, users download a Wikipedia slice from Webaroo for free, and read at their leisure.
Content is meta-tagged so users can also search it. The next time the device connects to the net, the content is updated automatically.
“If you think about the time it takes to do a search on a mobile device, look at 10 results, refine your search and look at another 10, then on most mobile devices, even on 3G networks, that could take 15 or 20 minutes, said Webaroo founder Brad Husick. “With Webaroo it could take you less than a minute.”
Husick said the application had proven very popular since their launch in April 2006. He added that the service would remain free, but that when it had reached a target number in various demographic segments, the plan was to show sponsored links to the users. Husick would not reveal the number of subscribers the company has at present.
Webaroo has proven most popular so far in the US, the UK and India.
Currently, the service is available only in English but Husick said that by the end of the year it would also be available in French, German, Italian, Spanish, Chinese and Japanese.
Webaroo also plans, by the end of this year, to enable users to create their own packs based on their personal information needs.
Husick said that academic institutions and businesses would be able to create packs for their students or employees, with content drawn from the most relevant websites in a particular subject area.
