Comments on: Pocket Hitchikers Guide to the Galaxy (Wikipedia style)

By: John Bokma

John Bokma — Wed, 14 May 2008 19:57:31 +0000

Cool! I wrote about this some time ago, but on more modern hardware (Dell Axim X51v): http://johnbokma.com/mexit/2006/11/25/mobile-wikipedia.html

By: NXK

NXK — Wed, 14 May 2008 02:54:18 +0000

I did this about 4 years ago with a Zaurus C860 running Xfce on pdaXrom. I doctored up the cels from the Babelfish animation for the background. Where the orginal text was, I had torsmo display Artist and Title info from xmms so it read something like: “The Zaurus C860, while comparable in computational power to the Googleplex Starthinker, was mainly used to play bad music, such as %T by %A.” I customized some icons from the Monochrome KDE theme for the menubar/launcher, and it ended up looking pretty good. Xfce made it easy to implement a “DON’T PANIC” splashcreen.

By: Michael C. Reed

Michael C. Reed — Wed, 14 May 2008 00:01:14 +0000

@ p4bl0
From a non-existant Wikipedia Article on the above project:
“The repurposed Psion 5mx handheld Guide scores over the older, more pedestrian Amazon’s Kindle in two important respects. First, it is slightly cheaper; and second, it has the words “Don’t Panic” inscribed in large, friendly letters on its screen.”

By: Mike

Mike — Tue, 13 May 2008 22:05:17 +0000

You’d have to take that up with the creators of the TV show.

By: Roboarmy

Roboarmy — Tue, 13 May 2008 20:36:47 +0000

The letters for Don’t Panic are not friendly enough.

By: Jax184

Jax184 — Tue, 13 May 2008 19:37:16 +0000

That would also be “CF card.”

I considered something like this with my Apple Newton a few years back. It seems a closer match to the Guide as described in the boom. About the right size and form factor, green backlight…

By: ArigornStrider

ArigornStrider — Tue, 13 May 2008 19:13:16 +0000

I could use one of those… I like the handheld unit. Looks like a fun little project for one of my old PDAs.

By: p4bl0

p4bl0 — Tue, 13 May 2008 18:38:18 +0000

Actually it’s not the closest thing to an actual hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy…

The Amazon Kindle allow you to freely and unlimitedly browse wikipedia. Unfortunately it works only in US (except in Alaska and mybe another state, can’t remember).

Take a look at amazon dot com slash kindle :-)

By: Malcolm Parsons

Malcolm Parsons — Tue, 13 May 2008 18:37:37 +0000

“breath new life”?

The word is “breathe”.

By: silic0re

silic0re — Tue, 13 May 2008 18:32:02 +0000

haha that’s a kind of cute project!