Essential App #6: Wikipanion

It’s said Odin gave one of his eyes in exchange for a drink from the Well of Wisdom. Luckily for us, quenching our thirst for knowledge is somewhat less dramatic — all it takes is the punch of a button and bam, we’re at Wikipedia. Question is, which button to punch?

With its dizzying collection of features, Wikipanion is that button.

Search for keywords on the displayed Wikipedia page, bookmark pages and edit those bookmarks, resize the font dynamically, send links to the current page via email or Twitter and lookup terms in Wiktionary without leaving the app.

The app even lets you exercise your inner control freak: want to bookmark or email just one section of an entry? No problem.

It’ll even audibly play a word’s pronunciation and save an entry’s images to you iPhone.

Wikipanion’s only real omission is a bit of a doozy though — if you want the ability to store pages for offline viewing, you’ll need to pop for the $5 paid version. All-in-all though, there’s no better way on the iPhone to drink from the Well of Wisdom.

Alternatives:

Wikiamo: A close second because of its cache for offline reading. Editable history page with the ability to add folders, bookmarks, font scalability from its settings menu, quick, shake-to-randomize-entry feature. Not as powerful as Wikipanion, but if you’re often reading Wikipedia in areas with no coverage (on a subway, for example), this one’s for you.

Wapedia: Cool, quirky features like switching to and searching a different Wiki and options like viewing popular or newest articles; unfortunately, quirkiness also extends to the interface which is difficult to navigate and somewhat buggy. Intrusive ads.

Wikipedia Mobile: Just the facts, ma’am — history, bookmarks, current-location nearby entries; the official app from Wikipedia lags far behind the others in terms of features.

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