10.24.09
A small wedding gift
This weekend I am attending the wedding of my friends Martin Varshavsky and Nina Wiegand. (They did a civil wedding in Hawaii a little while ago; this is the more traditional Jewish wedding.) I wanted to get a gift, but first of all, Martin is a very successful entrepreneur who obviously can have any ordinary thing that he wants. And on top of that, the wedding website suggested that gifts were not necessary.
Well, I just can’t stand to go to a wedding without a gift so I thought really really hard. What would Martin want and appreciate, that I might be able to get?
And suddenly I realized it. Martin has been bugging me to help him figure out a way for his Educar charity to distribute Wikipedia (in Spanish) to schools without Internet connections. The problem is that there has not been a simple offline reader on a DVD in Spanish (or, really, most other languages).
There has been a lot of good work to get a cut-down version of Wikipedia onto the OLPC, but this is a different and in many ways not as difficult project. Some people are very interested in working on the concept of offline editing, but for me, that’s secondary for now. What we need is a version of Wikipedia that is downloadable as an ISO, burnable to a DVD (all the articles of Spanish Wikipedia fits on a DVD pretty easily), with a decent (doesn’t have to be perfect) search and display functionality, using all free software so there are no obstacles to further distribution and modification.
So, this blog post is my wedding gift. I’m putting some effort into pulling together the people who are working on this… and finding some new friends to help us get this done!
I’m looking for more volunteers to help with the effort. SJ (a fellow board member at the Wikimedia Foundation) is helping coordinate various people, and we’re launching a new mailing list to get this effort some energy. If you want to help please let me know in the comments, or just email me!
The work we do on this will not just be about Spanish, of course! Many languages will benefit. But I’m starting with Spanish as a gift to my friends Martin and Nina. Mozel tov, Martin and Nina!
mauro said,
24 Oct, 2009 at 6:42 pm
maybe you should check with those guys:
http://thewikireader.com/
what software are they running?
Guido said,
25 Oct, 2009 at 12:08 am
Jimmy, es Educ.ar , no Educar.ar ;)
—
Jimmy, is Educ.ar, not Educar.ar ;)
jwales said,
25 Oct, 2009 at 10:51 am
Guido, thanks, I fixed the link!
GerardM said,
26 Oct, 2009 at 3:41 am
Hoi, have a look at the Okawix off line reader.. it is localised at translatewiki.net … Only 10 more messages need to be localised to complete Spanish.
NB Okawix is GPL licensed software
Thanks,
GerardM
Axel Boldt said,
27 Oct, 2009 at 11:05 am
I think you want to check out OpenZIM, Kiwix and Moulin. OpenZIM is a format for compressed and searchable web content, Kiwix is a reader for OpenZIM content (currently only for Linux) and Moulin is a project to distribute Wikipedia on DVD (currently not in Spanish or English). I believe there was a talk at the last Wikimania announcing that the three projects are now working together.
Pascal Martin said,
23 Nov, 2009 at 7:41 am
Okawix will use as soon as possible ZIM Format also.
Pm27
Rob K said,
29 Oct, 2009 at 2:41 pm
I would love to help out with the project please email me…
Thanks
Shula said,
4 Nov, 2009 at 9:23 am
Good thought for gifting a friend a simple gift, but the thought about it is great.
Best wishes in your project.
john zagurasky said,
13 Nov, 2009 at 1:37 pm
great idea man. how did the wedding turned out? :)
Eto Crawlitz said,
17 Nov, 2009 at 9:39 am
How can I get in touch with you? I have a great idea about this.
Daniel said,
18 Nov, 2009 at 1:22 am
Is there not something like this already? It sounds like a great idea and when you get something you should sell it to WP.
I know the database is freely available but they say the images/media aren’t included in the file so you would also have to deal with that.
yugaya said,
18 Nov, 2009 at 2:48 pm
Amazing gift…we did something similar on a rather smaller scale for the kids from grades 1-4 in our minority school, with the help of an IT friend of mine. The school is home to primary and secondary school , so the little ones rarely get to use the computers, and all of the resources in their mother tongue are scarce.
Good luck with your efforts :)
Jay M said,
24 Nov, 2009 at 11:24 pm
Decent enough, please let us know if we can help with the development part of any such tool.
Thanks and good luck.
-
Jay M
Soofi Group.
Dana S. said,
26 Nov, 2009 at 2:07 pm
Hi,
First of all it’s Mazel Tov and not how you worte.
Secondly, when you get to hebrew I would like to help.
Hava Nagila..
Dana
Joe said,
28 Nov, 2009 at 4:01 pm
i liked this article a lot… it’s a wedding gift :) and it’s socially conscious :)
i really wish i could help more with the specifics of developing such an ISO file / dvd, but alas, i am quite unfamiliar with that realm of development.
in the meantime, is there a way to help get the ball rolling on providing internet access for these schools and their villages? some socially conscious people i work with at MIT are developing internet connectivity that also eliminates the need for pre-existing wires or antennas. it would be a low cost direct satellite/tower feed that acts as a hub and re distributor of internet connectivity for the surrounding area. we could probably find a way to fly them out there and implement such technology at one of these schools?
Joe said,
28 Nov, 2009 at 4:04 pm
i realized i made the internet connection sound like a tower. it’s not a tower. it’s just a small hub that sits on top of a building (let’s say a one story tall school) and gets internet connectivity from a satellite/tower, then redistributes that connectivity to any other hubs set up around the town. hope that point of clarification helps. would someone be willing to contact me about this? do you think it might help Martin get what he’s looking for for these schools? thanks…
Julian T Rowe said,
30 Nov, 2009 at 12:24 pm
Educar looks an interesting project.
What’s the state of wkipedia and its fundraising campaign? What are the timescales? What happens if you don’t reach USD$7.5m target?
wogga said,
8 Dec, 2009 at 10:14 am
dvds are neat if they can be popped in standard dvd players and used that way with a TV (most have them).
On the other hand, for ONPC (netbook!) how about moving wikipedia to memory sticks? USB Memory sticks are getting cheaper and cheaper and are getting larger than DVDs so they can support pictures and wikipedia multimedia.
How about placing a little application, which when plugged into the USB port on a pc will start it up to show wikipedia – and if a connection is available download the latest and greatest of new wikipedia material.
Then this memory stick can be used as a living wikipedia by gathering wikipedia when available and presenting it when not in a place with internet. I suppose a little application could be on the stick which would make the dvd burn process really easy too for those who have/need DVDs.