Many of us enjoy pub quizzes and other similar diversions, and often wish for a surreptitious internet connection in order to check facts on a trusted site such as Wikipedia.
Whether it is an honest way to win or not, the fact remains that many people rely on diaries, dictionaries and handheld computers to assist their scores in pub quizzes. Upvise is the perfect tool for quickly and effortlessly browsing WIkipedia from your Windows Mobile device without taking the trouble to launch your web browser.
Upvise is a Windows Mobile application that provides a handy notebook, shopping list and RSS reader – but our main interest in it for the purposes of this review is its interface with Wikipedia. Having said that, the RSS reader is a useful addition which updates quickly.
Available most readily via PocketGear.com Upvise (previously known as Unyverse) requires that an account is setup before it can be used. This can be handily doe via the application itself, once installation is complete.
Installation is the familiar and simple task of downloading a CAB file either directly to your Windows Mobile phone or to your desktop PC and copying it across, before running the CAB to install.
With an interface that you wouldn’t find out of place on an iPhone, Upvise provides a quick and intuitive interface with Wikipedia. It has been recently been revised to incorporate the finger scrolling user interface afforded by Windows Mobile 6.1.
As you can see in the screenshots, I did a search for Windows Mobile. The returned Wikipedia entry is sensibly divided up according to the hyperlinked headings on the Wikipedia page, and each subentry looks pretty much as you would expect, including all of the same information.
On the other hand, images aren’t visible, and citations are not displayed. What you get is the bare bones of the Wikipedia experience, without the multimedia enhancement. You can however follow links to other Wikipedia pages, and scroll up and down entries as well as back and forth.
For its speed and ease of use in a tie-break crisis, Upvise comes recommended as a superb piece of freeware. Whether it is the future of handheld Wikipedia apps is another matter entirely however.