Kiwix offline

The latest GSMA report is out - the TL;DR version of it is that mobile internet growth has remained all but flat last year. Here are some more takeaways: - Areas covered by connectivity are now 96% of the planet, yet 3.4 BILLION people are not using / can not use the internet; - In fact, even if they wanted to 350 millions (~ the US population) still are not covered; - Main reason for this is... wait for it.... cost. Not everyone can afford a smartphone, and there's actually 1 bn people who can't afford the data; - On the plus side download speeds have increased, mostly in rich countries. Full report: https://lnkd.in/ezaTPHwt

For all German speakers and word lovers out there - we have just released a fully offline German dictionary, in partnership with Berlin University \o/ For the non-German speakers, the interesting part here is that we are now able to not only scrape a website, but also package it into a Kiwix app and whitebrand it for our partners. Download and test: https://lnkd.in/eDbScJ2J

Wiki loves Folklore, a contest we have been supporting for the past two years now, has come to a close. Here are some of the winning images, and as always they're awesome. Rest can be found here: https://lnkd.in/dyGDRjnH

Our sole Asian mirror hit 25TiB of data in about 4 days (!) and we are looking for other Asia/Oceania-based mirrors to help balance the load. Geographically close mirrors make it easier for people to access content, and seeing how our users tend to have very limited internet access, this is key. And since we're non-profit, most of our traffic is actually managed and supported by others (thanks to them!). If you are in touch with an institution (public or private) willing to share a public server with highspeed bandwidth and unlimited traffic, please reach out! (here or via email at contact+mirror (at) kiwix.org). And please re-share!

Our last Google Summer of Code for the year is now complete, with even more UI/UX improvements! Thanks to Dimitrios Sgourdas for his work (the picture below shows the new reading list behaviour he's implemented). The full report is here https://lnkd.in/eaeaYRxs and worth a read if you are a desktop user. Amazing work all around \o/

When discussing offline internet people who are connected often fail to understand what we actually mean, or even what it looks like. So here it is, so that you can see with your own eyes. We just released a new version of zimit, our universal scraper. While the technology is not perfect, results are pretty good! Have a look at https://100r.co, an artsy blog experimenting with the limits of (to?) connectivity. And now look at https://lnkd.in/eC8J5HXQ - its zimit counterpart. They're identical. You can click, click, click all you want and will find the exact same text, images, experience as the original (the only thing missing will be text published since our last update, as zim files are generated once a month only). The whole thing takes up about 174 MB - about the same as 20 high-resolution photos on your phone.

New report shows that we have the tools for solving the digital divide, starting with the fact that the divide is, in fact, not as clear-cut as having internet access or not. https://lnkd.in/eFkQnaE4

Picture from Dunia Salama Foundation conducting a Kiwix training for 140 children in Usa River, Tanzania.

There's nothing wrong with a bit of cross-platform fame - Kiwix made it yesterday to Reddit's frontpage. With 15k upvotes, it seems that people do want to have their Wikipedia offline 😎

The source code for the Apollo modules that went to the moon is open-source and available on Github, along with the original comments which are the true gold. See below the Lunar_landing_guidance_equations file : "TEMPORARY, I HOPE HOPE HOPE" 😶 https://lnkd.in/eqCtDjmU