Just a couple of decade ago, the only way to have a wealth of information available at your fingertips was to purchase a costly and bulky set of encyclopedias. These could take up a whole bookshelf and cost a month’s wages. Now, the Internet offers that wealth of information in the form of Wikipedia. And the WikiReader brings Wikipedia to your pocket for under $100.

The last two decades have brought us from the space-consuming print edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica, through the short-lived time of the CD and DVD editions, and onto the present day when the Web has opened up a whole world of knowledge. There are a number of online resources and encyclopedias vying for your patronage but probably the most well-known is Wikipedia.

Wikipedia isn’t without its problems: the open source, anyone-can-edit nature of the site means information isn’t always accurate; vandalism of articles is rife; and a Web connection is needed to access the huge database. Wikipedia is working on solving the first two issues and the release of the WikiReader solves the third.

The WikiReader is a device with one purpose (a rarity in these days when your cellphone is capable of doing almost anything). It exists in order to bring Wikipedia to a wider audience, making it an offline, in-your-pocket entity. And it does this simply, elegantly, and relatively cheaply.

The WikiReader is the size of a drinks coaster and can easily fit in your hand. It boasts a 3.5″ LCD touchscreen, and the capacity for 8GB of memory. It’s small, light, and is powered by two AAA batteries that will last an absolute age thanks to the low power consumption. And it contains the whole of the English-language version of Wikipedia, which currently amounts to 3.1 million articles.

The one obvious downside to the WikiReader is it contains only a snapshot of the Wikipedia database rather than a constantly-updating one. However, according to AP, OpenMoko, the Taiwanese company manufacturing and selling the device, will provide four free updates each year or a subscription service with a new filled memory card mailed out every three months.

Owners of laptops or smartphones permanently connected to the Internet may find the WikiReader pointless but there are plenty of people out there who could find it more than useful. The brilliant thing is this provides everything (and probably more) than you would get from a full set of printed encyclopedias but does so on a device that will fit in your pocket. Which I personally feel is genius.

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