Wikiamo: Unreliable information in the palm of your hand.

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Wikipedia on a phone? What will “those people” think of next?!

Every Wikipedia minutiae is there.

Wikipedia might be the most amazing, addictive, and useful thing ever added to the internet. The concept is simple and amazing: to facilitate the creation of a peer-reviewed online encyclopedia where users can adjust entries based on current events and new information. It’s a well-crafted engine, with links moving from one article to the next in a very organic way. It’s easy to get lost in there for hours, learning new things about absurd fringe topics.

Legal disclaimer: Wikipedia is totally unreliable (according to my former college teachers) and is a useless piece of crap that is feeding misinformation to people on a daily basis. If you really want to write about a topic, you should study it for years, get your Ph.D., and then work hard to get a book–which will probably be debunked in a number of years–published.

But back to the non-academic world of reality and pragmatism: Wikipedia is a great way to find general knowledge (as just about everyone visiting this site no-doubt knows).

And there is now a way to carry Wikipedia in your pocket. A no-frills app called Wikiamo provides a very user-friendly, iPhone friendly interface for Wikipedia addicts to get their information fix.

Links are easy to navigate.

When working within the app, it functions exactly like a streamlined web browser with a forward and back button at the bottom of every page. This helps immensely in moving between connected articles and comparing notes. Also on the bottom of the screen is a button to add a bookmark to the page and a button that shows your history of Wikipedia searching. So, if you want to get back to an article you were looking at earlier, it’s fairly simple.

What I find really cool, though, is the links button. When on a main page, click this button and all the “Table of Contents” information will pop up, allowing you to skip to a specific section of the article. It also has a button that will take you to the main page where you will find a featured article and some news stories. Cute, but somewhat unnecessary, and I don’t ever use it. Nor do I use the “Random Article” button, though I’m sure it’s great for people that are really bored. [Guilty. -ed.]

Auto-complete is handy for quick research.

The search feature works great, narrowing down articles by name as you type so you don’t need to type all of “Yosemite National Park” on your tiny keypad to get your listing.

Overall, I have very little bad to say about Wikiamo. It keeps itself streamlined and simple, providing a fairly pure and fast Wikipedia experience. One caveat: if you’re searching on the Edge Network, be ready for some expected delays. The app is all internet based.