log of Logfish.net

Project B is out and OpenMoko inc is bringing us: the wiki reader

What is it? Well, it's a small ebook reader like device with a touch screen with WikiPedia on board. Think of it as a TomTom navigator but without a colour screen and it doesn't talk. Come to think of it, if you would buy a TomTom and put in an SD card with wikipedia, you would probably have Project B, with the added bonus of being in colour and cheaper.

I looked up some e-book readers and it looks a lot like a Pocketbook 360, a product of the Pocketbook company. Never heard of them before, but they seem to make similair products. Another thing is that I don't get the whole idea: if you want to use Wikipedia on a mobile device, either use your phone (which has a browser these days), or a netbook. People are better off just buying an iPhone because it has Wikipedia on it two, and you can see the articles in colour and you can even look up other things on the internet.

One thing is nice, the device is cheap. They even mention on their page that they didn't bother painting it because that is cheaper (and better for the environment)footnote. But with that cheapness comes the idea of another single-use device that is cheap to buy and useless to own, a bit like an apple core remover: nice to have it IF you don't forget to actually use it. But when it comes down to it, you will still just use the internet or your phone because at that time you can't find the damn thing.

Footnote. From: http://thewikireader.com/story.html

We even removed paint from the manufacturing process to save costs and minimize the harmful effects on our environment. From the start, our goal...