{"id":940,"date":"2026-07-06T16:54:25","date_gmt":"2026-07-06T11:54:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/?p=940"},"modified":"2026-07-06T16:54:25","modified_gmt":"2026-07-06T11:54:25","slug":"a-ragtag-community-is-keeping-this-aughts-wikipedia-gadget-alive","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/?p=940","title":{"rendered":"A ragtag community is keeping this aughts Wikipedia gadget alive"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><script>\r\n  atOptions = {\r\n    'key' : '644b717812d811d6a1c1fc5b6ccd6fa6',\r\n    'format' : 'iframe',\r\n    'height' : 90,\r\n    'width' : 728,\r\n    'params' : {}\r\n  };\r\n<\/script>\r\n<script src=\"https:\/\/www.highperformanceformat.com\/644b717812d811d6a1c1fc5b6ccd6fa6\/invoke.js\"><\/script>\r\n<br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div data-adroot=\"true\">\n<p>In 2009, the world met the WikiReader, a single-purpose gadget that holds all 6.5 million articles on English Wikipedia, from the <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Depopulation_of_cockroaches_in_post-Soviet_states\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\" class=\"T3D\">depopulation of cockroaches in post-Soviet states<\/a> to the<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/List_of_lists_of_lists\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\" class=\"T3D\"> list of lists of lists<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Perhaps you are stranded on <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Tristan_da_Cunha\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\" class=\"T3D\">the most remote inhabited archipelago in the world<\/a> without internet and you want to read about the <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Mary_Toft\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\" class=\"T3D\">18th-century woman<\/a> who convinced doctors she had given birth to rabbits. Or maybe the <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/List_of_U.S._state_dinosaurs\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\" class=\"T3D\">list of U.S. state dinosaurs<\/a>. All you\u2019d need are two AAA batteries and your trusty WikiReader. <\/p>\n<p>The aesthetically unremarkable aughts gizmo measures 4 inches by 4 inches, with a resolution of 240 by 208 pixels. It has an e-ink display with a rather janky touchscreen that\u2019s better fit for a stylus than a finger, and its outer body has only the WikiReader logo and three buttons for search, history, and random. It\u2019s simple. Some might even say it\u2019s perfect. And it\u2019s been off the market since 2014, when parent company OpenMoko pulled the plug on WikiReader operations.<\/p>\n<p>But the device didn\u2019t really die, thanks to a highly-private and tremendously dedicated figure called Jack, who keeps the utility of the decade-old device alive. Jack sells SD cards with updated content for $34, or $29 for a digital download (without the new SD card, your WikiReader\u2019s contents are totally outdated.) Jack initially developed a new SD card for 2015 content, and it took more than a year to get the Ubuntu environment set up and fix the Wikipedia download so it would process for the WikiReader. \u201cIt was taking 5-6 days to process the Wikipedia download into a WikiReader database.  So each test cycle was a week,\u201d Jack told <em>Input<\/em> in an email. \u201cIt was all very time-consuming.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He keeps doing annual updates even though he sells \u201cjust a few a month.\u201d The 2022 update has been available since July.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMany buyers are elderly people or 50-somethings buying it for their 80-something fathers,\u201d he said, adding that many avid WikiReader fans \u201cdo not use a computer or the internet (think 90-year-olds).\u201d He continues, \u201cYou wouldn&#8217;t think there is a market for this, but there is a small one. I&#8217;ve sold to the Philippines, U.K., and Australia.\u201d He says some of his other buyers who want offline Wikipedia access for trips or airplanes. Other customers have been inmates who live in facilities that allow small electronic devices.<\/p>\n<p>There\u2019s a 189-person-strong WikiReader<a href=\"https:\/\/www.reddit.com\/r\/wikireader\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\" class=\"T3D\"> subreddit<\/a>, and Jack believes he is the only person in the world who \u201cmakes the update and makes one that works and has all the articles (at least the articles that can be viewed on the WikiReader).\u201d His SD cards are sold on <a href=\"https:\/\/ebay.us\/hNA0te\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\" class=\"T3D\">eBay<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/WikiReader-Update-Device-Reader-Upgrade\/dp\/B06XFPBYNR\/ref=sr_1_2?dchild=1&amp;keywords=wikireader&amp;qid=1616182123&amp;sr=8-2\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\" class=\"T3D\">Amazon<\/a>, and jacksuniversal.com, which is plastered with the fitting tagline: \u201cWe specialize in everything WikiReader!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>To WikiReader owner Ryan Michael Moberly, constant Wikipedia access is crucial: \u201cThe grid is down, massive rolling blackouts, tornadoes, but I must know about the history of the <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Horseshoe_sandwich\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\" class=\"T3D\">horseshoe sandwich<\/a>!\u201d he jokes.<\/p>\n<p>Though the WikiReader was not created <em>by<\/em> Wikipedia, the Wikimedia Foundation \u2014 the nonprofit that maintains Wikipedia \u2014 put out a statement condoning the device upon its release in 2009. \u201cWikipedia content is <a href=\"http:\/\/freedomdefined.org\/Definition\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\" class=\"T3D\">freely licensed<\/a>, allowing anyone to copy, modify, and re-use it for any purpose, including commercial uses,\u201d wrote a Wikimedia Foundation representative in a <a href=\"https:\/\/diff.wikimedia.org\/2009\/10\/13\/openmoko-launches-wikireader\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\" class=\"T3D\">public post<\/a>. The official WikiReader <a href=\"https:\/\/thewikireader.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\" class=\"T3D\">web page<\/a> states that \u201cSocrates pondered more important things than bandwidth. So do you.\u201d<\/p>\n<h3 data-md-text-align=\"center\">gone but not forgotten <\/h3>\n<p>WikiReader is like so many of those late-aughts internet gadgets \u2014 relegated to dusty shelves or basement storage bins. Take, for instance, the Kin, a social networking device which Microsoft spent a billion dollars developing just for it to be taken off the market <a href=\"https:\/\/web.archive.org\/web\/20130517223829\/http:\/\/www.electronista.com\/articles\/10\/07\/18\/verizon.decides.against.selling.out.kin.stock\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\" class=\"T3D\">after two months<\/a> due to poor sales. There was also the legendary Twitter Peek, a cyan-blue handheld device made for Twitter alone \u2014 which sounds more like a torture device. For a monthly fee of $8, you could get internet access&#8230; but just for Twitter. <\/p>\n<p>The Twitter Peek was met with broad criticism (it\u2019s on a slew of \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/gizmodo.com\/the-50-worst-gadgets-of-the-decade-5432480\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\" class=\"T3D\">worst<\/a> product\u201d<a href=\"http:\/\/edition.cnn.com\/2009\/TECH\/12\/23\/tech.fail\/index.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\" class=\"T3D\"> lists<\/a>). Not long after its failure to launch, Twitter Peek terminated service in January 2012, abandoning the users who paid $299 for \u201clifelong service.\u201d Yikes. These days, the Twitter Peek graces the shelves of collectors \u2014 and the<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Museum_of_Failure\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\" class=\"T3D\"> Museum of Failure<\/a>. Perhaps one of the reasons that the Twitter Peek failed to pique interest is its horrifying user experience, where you have to click on a tweet to read more than the first few words, defeating the purpose of a site full of bite-sized posts.<\/p>\n<p>But the remarkably still-present WikiReader stays relevant. I bought one on eBay a few months ago and I\u2019ve been pulling it out on the subway when I start wondering something and need to scratch the itch. Unfortunately, I\u2019m hooked. I\u2019m a lost cause. This device has suddenly become indispensable to me. I\u2019m spending less time scrolling Instagram and more time scrolling through the Wikipedia article on <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Mondegreen\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\" class=\"T3D\">mondegreens<\/a>. The online encyclopedia is great, but the offline encyclopedia is even better sometimes. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<script async=\"async\" data-cfasync=\"false\" src=\"https:\/\/pl30214220.effectivecpmnetwork.com\/9ab3d4df8a7e1a6171e16ddbf732cc19\/invoke.js\"><\/script>\r\n<div id=\"container-9ab3d4df8a7e1a6171e16ddbf732cc19\"><\/div>\r\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In 2009, the world met the WikiReader, a single-purpose gadget that holds all 6.5 million articles on English Wikipedia, from the depopulation of cockroaches in post-Soviet states to the list of lists of lists. Perhaps you are stranded on the most remote inhabited archipelago in the world without internet and you want to read about&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":941,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/imgix.bustle.com\/uploads\/image\/2022\/9\/16\/89291fc0-175a-4769-86ea-159d983de129-23c09ae1-6770-4bbc-8b35-b471232b1f2f-image-9-13-22-at-1205.jpeg?w=1200&h=630&fit=crop&crop=focalpoint&fm=jpg&fp-x=0.528&fp-y=0.5204","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-940","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-newsweek-trending"],"brizy_media":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/940","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=940"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/940\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/941"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=940"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=940"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=940"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}