Mopedi is a Wikipedia reader for your Nokia touchscreen device that, unlike many other Wikipedia readers, works offline. After you install Mopedi (pronounced ‘mō-ped-ee’, with a stress on the first syllable), you also download a full Wikipedia database in any of six languages: English, French, Finnish, Italian, Norwegian or Swedish. So equipped, you can then use Wikipedia on your Nokia device without needing an open — and sometimes costly — Internet connection, or even a SIM card. This could make Mopedi especially useful when you are travelling in a foreign country.

But what I found especially striking about Mopedi is its user interface. As you can see below, the homescreen uses just six main icons, and absolutely no text. I’m not sure if this is a harbinger of a post-literate world, a sign that we now flitter from one language zone or another, or just a shortcut the developer took. But regardless, this is one unusual UI:

Perhaps a bit too unusual, at least at first. After all, what do those icons mean? Well, starting in the upper left corner, the white sheet with a blue ribbon is the Bookmarks icon. To its right, the radar icon indicates Local Places, which uses your Nokia device’s GPS to determine your location, then display a list of Wikipedia entries for nearby landmarks. For example, here is the results page for a location in Brooklyn, New York. The list shows each landmark’s distance from my location, and tapping on any item opens its Wikipedia article:

Next, in the middle row, the cloud with question marks is the History icon. Tap it to view a list of your most recent 10 or so articles viewed. To its right, the crossed wrench and screwdriver icon indicates Settings. Here, you can select the font size, select your keyboard (either your phone’s or a virtual keyboard provided by Mopedi), open or close coordinate in the browser, select kilometres or miles, and pick the database you wish to view. Here is a look at the Settings screen:

Moving to the bottom row of the homescreen, in the lower left corner sits the big question mark that is the Help icon. And in the lower right, the red arrow icon is actually the Exit button.

In addition, three additional fields line the top of the ‘inside’ screens. First, in the upper left corner, is the Home icon; tapping it returns you to the homescreen. Immediately to its right is the search field, which uses predictive entry to speed your searches. And in the upper right corner, the green arrow is the Back button; it returns you to your last previous screen.

So how do Wikipedia articles look on Mopedi? Quite good. Currently, the app comes pre-loaded with the London Centre database, said to contain over 2,000 places of interest and more than 6,000 images. For example, here is a Wikipedia article on London’s Big Ben tower (to enlarge the screenshot, click on it):

Note that the format fits the screen of my Nokia N8 quite nicely. Also, if the type size is too large or small for your liking, you can adjust the size with a slider control on the Settings page. Of course, you will need to do a lot of scrolling, but with the touchscreen, that is fast and easy. Also, for long articles, you will see additional page numbers at the bottom of a text screen, letting you quickly read more.

Photos appear clear and detailed, too, thanks in large part to the high-quality displays on today’s Nokia devices. Here, for example, is a photo of the Queen’s Tower in London:

Mopedi’s unique look and feel has attracted attention and awards. The app recently earned a Special Recognition in Nokia’s Calling All Innovators competition. While Mopedi was not among the competition’s winners, its Finnish publisher, MPaja, was invited to join Forum Nokia Launchpad, a specialty program that helps developers accelerate their application development and time to market.

Mopedi also recently received a complimentary Nokia user experience (UX) consultation, in which a Forum Nokia consultant reviewed the app and prepared a written report outlining both its strengths and design challenges. (To learn more about Mopedi’s UX consultation, view this Forum Nokia case study.) The current version of Mopedi, 2.0, incorporates several changes suggested in the Nokia UX report.

While using Mopedi is quite easy, setting it up the first time is less so. That is mainly because, as I mentioned above, you must download and install not only the Mopedi reader, but also one of the local databases. In my tests, getting the core app and the databases to work together was somewhat complicated; it took me a few tries — and a few e-mails to the publisher — to get everything working properly.

The Wikipedia databases are available from the MPaja website. You must first download the compressed database to your PC or laptop; then you unzip the database file; and lastly, you install the database onto your Nokia device. Patience is required; the Wikipedia databases are large, and MPaja’s transfer rate is slow. The French database, for example, takes up 5.1 gigabytes when unpacked, yet the transfer rate (at least in my tests) was only about 340 Kbit/sec.

Places Databases are another option. These cull Wikipedia articles about a specific location. Currently there are five databases for regions of the United States and two for France — one in French, the other in English. These can be downloaded from either the MPaja site or Ovi Store.

While you can download as many of these databases as you like (and have the device memory for), the Mopedi app can only view one at a time. So you must select the database you want to use at a given moment; to make this choice, go to the Settings page. For example, in the next screenshot you can see that I have a choice of three databases, and that I am selecting the Simple English version, listed here as ‘SimpleWiki’:

To learn more about Mopedi Places, and to see it in action, check out this YouTube video, posted by publisher MPaja:

Mopedi is available on Ovi Store for Nokia Symbian touch-enabled devices, and it costs $9.99 (USD). The Mopedi Places databases are also available on Ovi Store, and they cost $4.99 (USD) each, except for the New York City Places database, which is free. Also, a free version of the core Mopedi app is available as a demo on Ovi Store.

More information is available on the developer’s website.

Editor’s Note: A different app for reading Wikipedia offline, also reviewed in this blog is Wikipedia Offline Reader.