How to download and install all Wikipedia articles to your iPod

Mark from over at MakeUseOf wrote an excellent article on how to install the ENTIRE Wikipedia library of articles onto your iPod! Before reading this, I didn’t even know you could download the entire Wikiepdia site locally, but apparently you can! You can then use the giant 1.7GB file to access all Wikipedia articles offline on your local computer or on a mobile device, such as your iPod.

So next time you have to go to a Triva contest at your local bar, make sure to bring your handy iPod along with the entire 2 million+ articles that are on Wikipedia. The Wikipedia file is updated every 6 months, so you probably won’t have the most up to date information, but hopefully you’re reading Wikipedia as a reference not for current events!

Above is a screenshot of how the Wikipedia articles look like on your iPod. using the eBook reader application that comes along with the Wikipedia database, you can quickly find articles and read articles in different languages.

You can read the full instructions from the source web site, but I’ll give a quick overview also:

Connect your iPod to your computer and start iTunes. Make sure that “enabling disk use” is checked, then shut down iTunes.

While keeping your iPod connected to your computer, download and run the program installation wizard. The software will automatically be installed on your iPod. At this step, you’ll be asked whether you want Wikipedia as your default system or not, choose No, otherwise you won’t see the music menu anymore.

Eject the iPod and reboot it by holding down the play and menu buttons at the same time. Once you see the logo, press and hold down the rewind button for 5 seconds to bring up the Wikipedia menu.

If the menu comes up, then download the Wikipedia data file and put it into the following directory on your iPod “data\encyclopodia\library\”.

Eject the iPod, reboot and press the rewind button to access the Wikipedia section. Your file should now be loaded.

You can use the scroll wheel on your iPod to perform a search by choosing letters as your scroll. Press the Play button to perform a search. Also make sure to go to “Settings” on your iPod and adjust the sensitivity for the wheel otherwise you won’t be able to search.

Finally, if you want to get back to the music section of your iPod, you need to reboot it by holding down the menu and play buttons together.

This downloading of Wikipedia will only work on some models of iPod, which you can view here. For example, the 5th generation iPods will not work because they have encrypted firmware.

If you’re interested in downloading the entire collection of articles from Wikipedia in static HTML format or in SQL format, you can download them from Wikimedia. You can use these for personal use, informal backups, or in an application of your own. Enjoy! Source MakeUseOf

[tags]download wikipedia, download wikipedia articles, save wikipedia articles, download wikipedia to ipod

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