Just wanted to draw your attention to the blog post that went out today regarding offline: http://blog.wikimedia.org/
Feel free to leave comments either there or on this list!
Best, Jessie
*** *Update on Offline Wikipedia Projects *
The last week was a big week for expanding offline Wikipedia http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Offline_Projects work.
Right now, /offline/ refers to supporting read access to Wikimedia content without an Internet connection. This increases the reach of the Wikipedia movement by providing more opportunities for people all over the world to access the materials. Some of the recent initiatives surrounding this project were documented in Wikimedia's tech blog http://techblog.wikimedia.org/2011/01/update-on-offline-wikimedia-projects/ about a month ago (for more detail regarding the purpose for offline work, see the offline strategy http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Offline page).
In support of our offline readership work, we're thrilled to announce the launch of a new feature on Wikipedia developed with our partners from PediaPress http://pediapress.com/. Last week we enabled openZim http://openzim.org/Main_Page (the main file format in which offline materials are stored) export for the existing PediaPress collections extension on English Wikipedia and numerous other wikis. This means that individuals can now use the existing PediaPress Create a book http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:Books tool and download it in a format which can be read offline (via an offline reader, such as Kiwix http://kiwix.org/index.php/Main_Page). This is important because it opens new avenues for the creation of offline materials, for example, an openZim library hosting different offline "book" options.
Also, the English offline collection Wikipedia 0.8 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Version_0.8was made officially available http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Version_0.8/downloads, after much hard work by the Wikipedia 1.0 Editorial Team http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Version_1.0_Editorial_Team. This collection is an iteration in the process of developing a vetted collection of offline articles selected based on their quality and topical importance. The main constraint with an offline product is the data size restrictions: the entirety of Wikipedia must somehow be condensed so that it fits on a CD, DVD, or USB stick. Wikipedia 1.0 aims at creating the highest quality and most valuable subset of Wikipedia to meet those size requirements, and v0.8 is a precursor. Wikipedia 0.8 is a general collection of just under 50K articles, It is available for Mac, PC, or Linux with a Linux or Okawix reader; some mobile phone versions will be available later this month as well.
More updates are sure to come on this offline front: Wikimedians around the world are actively assisting in the development of offline collections as well as distribution. We are excited to support and document the momentum going forward.
Jessie Wild, Global Development