The whole world in your pocket (almost) by Shaun McGill

Wikipedia is a very well known source of information and one that thousands (probably millions) of people use on a daily basis. It's reach is astonishing and because it is kept updated by the public it is a more valuable resource than most encyclopeadias that are viewable on a PC or PDA. Most of the reference works available for PDAs work well but are naturally limited by the amount of storage space needed to carry them and, in my opinion, there has not been a satisfactory way of carrying a large database on a PDA until recently- Antonio and Maya sent in emails about Wikipedia and I decided to give TomeRaider 3 a try to see if it's possible to squeeze 100,000's of articles onto a PDA.

TomeRaider 3 is relatively new and there are no pre-formatted Wikipedia files available yet for it but you could try TomeRaider 2 if you can cope with the slow speed and poor interface- a solution for using Wikipedia on TR3 is below though). TomeRaider 3 is a whole new ball game though- it's super quick (I mean super super quick), the interface is clean and simple and there really is nothing I can find fault with in it's design. You can get it for £12 (if you use discount code PALMSM at checkout) which is superb value for a product that can bring so much to your little PDA. There are a lot of files available for TomeRaider, mainly at MemoWare, but many will need converting to TR3 format using TomeRaider 3 for Windows which is available for £12 (use the same discount code as above)- I managed to do some converting with the trial version so it's worth looking at it first anyway.

Here are the steps I used to get all of the latest Wikipedia database onto my Fujitsu Loox (this will work with Palm PDAs etc.). This is a text only database as to include images would take the file size past 1.5GB and I can't afford a 2GB card at the moment:)

1. Download TomeRaider 3 for PPC/Palm (purchase this one) and TomeRaider 3 for Windows from www.tomeraider.com.

2. Download the TomeRaider 2 Wikipedia database file from http://download.wikimedia.org/tomeraider/current/. If you want the English language version grab TR_WP_EN_(then choose the format you need). This file is 481MB and the Wikipedia servers are not too fast so expect a long download even on a fast connection.

3. Once you have installed TR3 for PPC/Palm and Windows you need to try to open the TR2 formatted file from step 2 in TR3 for Windows which will give you the option to convert it to TR3 format. Now, if you thought the wait was long for the above download this will shock you- I had to leave it converting overnight after starting the process at 4pm in the afternoon! There is a point where you have to click OK after a few minutes so make sure you do that.

4. Once the file is converted you will be left with a file that weighs in at 464MB (phew!)- when you see what's in it though it will seem positively tiny... Obviously a good sized expansion card is required and this is where the Loox comes in handy with SD and CF expansion slots. A 1GB from Clove currently goes for £63.45 and a 1GB SD card for £69.33 so we are not talking mega bucks here. All that's left is to transfer the file to your expansion card and away you go. It's a real surprise to see how quickly TR3 navigates through such a huge database.

So far I have searched for almost 100 references and only 2 or 3 have been missing which is remarkable considering I was looking obscure items like my home town and people who are not that well known. The beauty of Wikipedia and TR3 is how the hyperlinks work and here's are some examples:-

A search for Freddie Mercury brings up a detailed article on his life and you can see a lot of hyperlinks in the image to the left. Clicking on any of these will take you to another article which is just as detailed. For example clicking 'Queen' takes you to the image on the right. This is repeated again and again throughout the database and in one day I have found out so much about areas of interest that I did not know before.

There are other way to get Wikipedia on your PDA (see http://members.chello.nl/epzachte/Wikipedia/ProcedureTR3.html) but in my view this was the simplest. If you do install TR3 and Wikipedia I am very confident that you will consider it one of the best usesof your PDA which will come in handy every single day from now on.