Wikipedia: the mobile alternative

One of the most useful sites on the net for me is Wikipedia, I find myself several times a day looking things up either when doing a report for the university, doing a review, looking up a new word or just browsing around looking for something new. Our Mobile Diva Darla Mack has found a handy little  tool to take Wikipedia with you on your mobile phone. It’s called WikiMobile by Bonfire Media.  More info, screen shots and links can be found in Darla’s post.

I was excited to put this app on my device when I noticed that it’s only for US Verizon and AT&T handsets, darn.  So those of us outside the US are completely out of luck? I went looking and found several alternatives. But I have say that these are not quite as good as Wikimobil, but it should get the task done. First of all thanks to the wonderful S60 browser we can access the full-blown Wikipedia site, but do expect to do a lot of side to side scrolling. If you zoom out the text will become too small. If you want something more fitted for the small screen there quite a few non-official versions aimed at WAP browsers, among them: Wapedia, 3G.co’s Wikipedia page and Axa.instinct.co’s Wikipedia page.

Another option is Widsets. Widsets is a free Widget app for S60 devices and surprise surprise it has a Wikipedia widget that works quite well and looks really good too. My only gripe is that it’s a RAM-heavy Java app. Among all of these I prefer the Widsets option, but it’s about time Nokia worked on a non-java version.

Do you know any other Wikipedia WAP sites or mobile apps for S60, let me know!