WikiReader, the palm-sized device that makes Wikipedia entries available offline, has gone multilingual. In addition to being able to store the more than three million English language Wikipedia articles, users can now download any of 14 other language versions of Wikipedia along with the virtual keyboards with characters to support them.
The lightweight battery-operated “Wikipedia in your pocket” was designed to provide access to the wealth of information stored in the online collaborative encyclopedia without the need for Internet access. Now readers of Chinese, Japanese, Portuguese, Norwegian, Greek, French, Finnish, Danish, Dutch, German, Spanish, Welsh, Russian and Hungarian can download those language versions of Wikipedia for referencing on the go.
"Now virtually anyone around the world can use WikiReader to feed their thirst for knowledge," said Openmoko CEO, Sean Moss-Pultz. "We are dedicated to putting knowledge at the fingertips of inquiring minds from the heart of Manhattan to Madrid, even to remote mountains in Nepal, where WikiReaders are now being used in community centers."
Openmoko, creator of WikiReader, encourages the use of multiple language Wikis on a single microSD memory card or storing them on numerous MicroSD cards and swapping them out in the device’s microSD slot. Versions range from 32MB for the Chinese Wikipedia to 5GB for the English language Wikipedia. WikiReader currently supports microSD cards up to 16GB in size.
The International version WikiReader with an 8GB microSD card is available now for US$99.
