david(a)bruehlmeier.com (david(a)bruehlmeier.com) [050628 19:19]:
This is how we figured it might work: Send an SMS with
the keyword (the term you
want to look up) to a special number. The server will then access Wikipedia and
return the abstract of the article. You will only get as much as will fit into
an SMS, but in many cases, this will be enough.
This idea has been thrown around for a while :-) You can be sure someone
will implement it eventually. Probably using, as you say, the first 160
chrs of the article.
Perhaps this will lead to better-formed [[:en:Wikipedia:Lead summary]]
sections ;-)
I understand there has also been discussion about this for Africa - where
cellphones are much more common than Internet connections. And how to make
editing via cellphone usable, since we're not a read-only encyclopedia.
(Hmm, what would the GFDL have to say about this?)
- d.