Preparing for disasters usually includes things like storing
food, water, and basic survival gear for keeping yourself
alive and safe through difficult times. But I’ve never seen
anyone suggest that they should prepare for the possibility
that information itself may become difficult to access during
a disaster situation. There is an incredibly simple and
virtually free way of solving this problem; download Wikipedia
itself.
Most people know that Wikipedia, the free online encyclopedia,
is a great place to learn about new things. Few people know that
all the content on Wikipedia can downloaded the their own
computer and accessed offline. It does take up quite a bit of
hard drive space but external hard drives these days are fairly
inexpensive. Visit download.wikimedia.org and select the format
you prefer.
If you are a web designer, software developer, or generally
geeky person, you may want to select the XML or SQL version and
install a fully functional version on your computer. You may
also want to download a copy of MediaWiki the open source
software that powers Wikipedia.
If you are not very technical consider downloading the static
html files and use a web browser to view them. If you install
Google Desktop on your computer it will make searching the
Wikipedia files, and everything else, much easier. If you want a
more secure method of storing the data you can buy Wikipedia on
DVDs.
No matter which option you choose having access to Wikipedia in
an emergency might be very useful, especially during a long
lasting disaster. For more information about downloading
Wikipedia visit
Wikipedia database.
Preparing for disasters usually includes things like storing food, water, and basic survival gear for keeping yourself alive and safe through difficult times. But I’ve never seen anyone suggest that they should prepare for the possibility that information itself may become difficult to access during a disaster situation. There is an incredibly simple and virtually free way of solving this problem; download Wikipedia itself.
Most people know that Wikipedia, the free online encyclopedia, is a great place to learn about new things. Few people know that all the content on Wikipedia can downloaded the their own computer and accessed offline. It does take up quite a bit of hard drive space but external hard drives these days are fairly inexpensive. Visit download.wikimedia.org and select the format you prefer.
If you are a web designer, software developer, or generally geeky person, you may want to select the XML or SQL version and install a fully functional version on your computer. You may also want to download a copy of MediaWiki the open source software that powers Wikipedia.
If you are not very technical consider downloading the static html files and use a web browser to view them. If you install Google Desktop on your computer it will make searching the Wikipedia files, and everything else, much easier. If you want a more secure method of storing the data you can buy Wikipedia on DVDs.
No matter which option you choose having access to Wikipedia in an emergency might be very useful, especially during a long lasting disaster. For more information about downloading Wikipedia visit Wikipedia database.