REVIEW: WikiMobile parses smartly for the phone

Editor’s Note: Welcome to Yay or Nay, a feature for RCR Wireless News’ weekly e-mail service, Mobile Content and Culture. Every week we’ll review a new wireless application or service from the user’s point of view, with the goal of highlighting what works and what doesn’t in the mobile content industry. If you wish to submit your application or service for review, please contact us at rcrwebhelp@crain.com.
Application: WikiMobile Encyclopedia
Running on: Blackberry 8800 and AT&T Mobility’s EDGE network
Yay: A host of information available at your fingertips, all formatted for the small screens and limited processing power of mobile phones.
Nay: Three bucks a month seems like a reasonable price point, but some users are sure to balk at paying for what they’ve grown accustomed to getting free on the Internet.
We say: WikiMobile has just enough information and features to justify the cost, and the application manages to bridge the gap between practicality and fun. But as the Web becomes more usable on mobile phones, such Web-to-mobile applications are likely to become free — if they survive at all.
Review: We love Wikipedia.
Yes, the community-maintained reference is not be as self-policing as some would like, but no reference site on the Internet can match the breadth and depth of Wikipedia. Nowhere else will you find information on the technology of China’s Song Dynasty, the physics of the knuckleball and brief biographies of Rod and Todd Flanders.
And while Wikipedia’s site can be overwhelming when accessed with a mobile device, WikiMobile does a good job of breaking Wikipedia’s information into bite-sized chunks for the phone. The downloadable application, which is available through AT&T’s MEdiaNet for $3 a month, offers a welcome page with five options including search, view a randomly selected article, view popular searches or access bookmarks.
Searching for specific entries sometimes requires an exact match to access the right article, but the application offers an “index” link that allows users to see entries that are similar to the search terms. A request for “Earl The Goat” got zero hits, for instance, but clicking the index link turned up a brief biography of Earl “The Goat” Manigault, a basketball legend from the playgrounds of Harlem. Text is presented in easy-to-read blocks and scrolling to the bottom of the screen prompts an intuitive, left-to-right presentation. A handy feature informs users what to expect before the entry pops up onscreen, telling them how many words the entry offers and how much data is being delivered.
Searching for random articles is perhaps the application’s most compelling feature. While specific searches are a great way to resolve trivia disputes at the local tavern, WikiMobile’s entries are interesting enough — and the application practical enough — that we found ourselves killing more time than we had intended with the offering. And the entries teem with hyperlinks, enabling a kind of stream-of-consciousness reading that allows readers to easily bounce from topic to topic. One quick, random search took us from Hall & Oates’ “One on One” (a 1983 pop hit) to the National Basketball Association (which used the tune in commercials) to Secaucus, New Jersey (where NBA TV studios are) to John Sayles (who wrote “Return of the Secaucus 7,” which is said to have inspired “The Big Chill”).
All of that information could have been accessed wirelessly via other sites, of course, or even through Wikipedia’s traditional site. But the downloadable application removed the speed bumps from the wireless Web, delivering accurate results quickly — and formatted for easy consumption. Offerings like WikiMobile probably won’t be necessary in a few years, after the Web has become more mobile-friendly and handsets are better suited for Internet use. For now, though, we’re happy to pay $3 a month for an entertaining way to spend some time while we sit through the kids’ soccer practice or wait for our flight. Or, more importantly, to settle that big bet at the pub.