Free online encyclopedia Wikipedia has launched an iPhone application to accompany its high-traffic mobile Web site.

The application is focused on staying simple and fast, with new features and upgrades to be available soon. The Wikipedia Mobile application mirrors its mobile Web site in look and feel, optimized for the iPhone.

"The aim is simple: we wanted a client for iPhone that is better than just using the Web browser," said David Gerard, volunteer media contact at the Wikimedia Foundation, London, Britain.

"The demographic we are targeting is anyone with an iPhone who wants to read Wikipedia," Mr. Gerard said. "Our goal is to make educational content available as widely as possible.

"So far, developing it on a wiki on the Web seems to be very successful and as mobile phones and net-books and so forth become more common for Web browsing, then we should make our stuff available there."

Wikipedia is a multilingual, Web-based free user-generated-content encyclopedia.

Wikipedia is owned by a nonprofit organization called the Wikimedia Foundation.

The Wikipedia application opens directly into Today's Featured Story, from which the user can search, click-through the links, or scroll through the Wikipedia Top News section.

While the mobile site is delivered in more than 30 languages, the iPhone application is only available in English so far.

However, Wikimedia claims that implementing its full range of languages to the native application is next on its list of things to do.

While online Wikipedia-lovers get to enjoy video clips to assist in their learning, unfortunately the Safari browser does not support Ogg Theora, the video content management system for Wikipedia.

"All Wikimedia video is in Ogg Theora format," Mr. Gerard said. "Apple refuses to implement Theora, so iPhone users are being left out in the cold by Apple at present. Newer iPhones should theoretically be able to play Theora at full quality ? we just need someone to write it."

Wikipedia claims to add video to the application soon as well.

Mobile site visitors aren't the only ones to be excluded from features, though.

Wikipedia Mobile application users will not be given what seems to be a natural right in the Wikipedia world: the ability to edit.

"Our [mobile] site growth has been pretty amazing," said Hampton Catlin, mobile development lead at The Wikimedia Foundation.

"We see about 4 million hits on a given Friday or Saturday," he said. "We call the rush on Friday and Saturday the ?bar bet spike' and its growing by about 7-10 percent week-over-week."

The Wikipedia Mobile application also stores the user's history for future use.

"At the moment, mobile isn't a great platform for Wikipedia, as the Web presentation
on the iPhone is only okayish, but not great, and an app should be able to do better," Mr. Gerard said.

"So making our own free app seemed like the way to go," he said. "The client is open source, so it is
improvable."