Mobile Answers & Treopedia Revisited

Accessing information while on the go on your Treo is undoubtedly one of the single most rewarding activities that you can perform. 

There have now been countless occasions where I’ve been able to pull my Treo out of my pocket to find more information and the answer to a particular question. 

The latest was at a small party at a private London club which had been witness to the drafting of the Treaty of Paris of 1783 (the one where Great Britain formally acknowledged the independence of the United States).  People started asking each other questions about the treaty but nobody seemed to be able to provide more information.  I launched iPedia on my Treo and within a minute had enough additional details to keep the conversation going while having had the benefit of all the Oooohs! and Aaaaahs! from the gathered crowd.

However, where the iPedia application is my own personal favourite way to retrieve Wikipedia information it is nonetheless not free like other available options.  Since touching upon this topic I’ve actually now come across six entirely different ways to access Wikipedia information.

1. The most straightforward method is theoretically to simply point your Treo browser to wikipedia.com.  However this is also the slowest method because the normal Wikipedia website is simply not optimized for mobile viewing and searching. [Total of 4 steps: launch browser, launch URL, find search box, enter search string.]
2. You could point your browser to ‘mobile website optimizers’ such as skweezer.net and there enter the Wikipedia URL [5 steps]
3. You can access ‘mobile optimized’ webpages such as mobile.answers.com which will provide you with Wikipedia search results along with others. [3 steps]
4. You could go to either Wapedia (pda.en.wapedia.org) or the newer Wapipedia (www.wapipedia.org) [Thanks A. Davis] with a somewhat easier to remember URL. [3 steps]
5. You could go completely over the top and decide that you wanted to download the entire 1GB Wikipedia database, put it on an SD card and view it on your Treo with TomeRaider. [2 steps after a lengthy setup…]
6. Finally, you could use the dedicated iPedia application which I mentioned earlier. [2 simple steps.

Evidently, I’m a sucker for speed and efficiency and in this particular case not bothered by the added cost of iPedia.  However, if you’re looking for a free solution to access Wikipedia information then Mobile.answers.com or Wapipedia via your browser will be the best options.

In talking about quick access to websites on the go, one of the things that I have been looking for (can anyone help?) is an application that will allow me to create shortcuts in the Applications screen to my favourite websites’ bookmarks.  I know that I could use the Favorite buttons in the Phone app but unfortunately these will only support the Web browser and not Xiino which I prefer (the default Browser app in the Preferences’ Default Apps does not allow this switch).

Previous reviews:
Treopedia
Questions on the Go? Get Mobile Answers.
Skweeze Me Please

Treonauts have the world’s knowledge at their fingertips…