Condé Nast Traveller Nominates WikiReader For Innovation & Design Awards 2010

3 May 2010
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WikiReader makes the short list among innovative travel-related products in ten different categories

TAIPEI, TAIWAN - May 3, 2010 - Condé Nast Traveller has nominated WikiReader, a 4.5 ounce, palm-sized touchscreen device with more than 3 million Wikipedia articles, as a contender in the Condé Nast Traveller Innovation & Design Awards 2010 in the Communications Technology category.

WikiReader was developed by Openmoko, Inc. and designed by Thomas Meyerhoffer, an innovator whose simple, elegant designs can be found in homes, offices and garages around the world. Meyerhoffer designed the lightweight battery-operated WikiReader to be fun and easy to use and extremely portable with simple three-button design, glass touchscreen and comfortable rounded housing. A sophisticated compression technique enables WikiReader to store and deliver more than 3 million Wikipedia articles, making it a self-contained device that requires no external connections, no subscriptions, and lightning fast response to users' searches.

"WikiReader is a beautifully simple idea: all of Wikipedia's content on a little machine as portable and user-friendly as...well, a book." says Condé Nast Traveller.

"Imagine replacing many pounds of heavy printed travel guides with a lightweight device that provides a wealth of information not only about the place a traveler is visiting, but countless links to topics related to a destination, its people, its culture, personalities, arts, politics and history," said Openmoko CEO, Sean Moss-Pultz. "That was our thinking behind WikiReader - a device that makes searching for information fun and immediately satisfying."

WikiReader turns on instantly, and works for months before replacement of its two AAA batteries is necessary. The large monochrome screen uses a touch interface. Articles are scrolled with a stroke of the finger and hyperlinks selected with a simple tap. Three buttons, Search, History and Random, enable users to read specific topics or discover topics by chance within Wikipedia's rich array of more than 3.1 million articles. Updates for WikiReader are provided quarterly and available for free download via their website. An annual subscription plan for two updated micro-SD cards per year is also available for $29. WikiReader costs $99 and is available now at thewikireader.com and Amazon.com.

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