[Wikimedia Announcements] Offline blog post

[Jessie Wild]

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_0.8>was 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


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