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WikiSlice is an innovative service built upon the idea of being able to selectively extract content on particular topics from Wikipedia. For the uninitiated, Wikipedia is the authoritative, user-contributed encyclopedia on the Internet. According to Nielsen / NetRatings, it is the largest, fastest growing and most popular general reference work currently available on the Internet. However, due to its open nature, some critics feel that its authority cannot be equated to that of a traditional encyclopedia. That aside, it cannot be denied that user-generated and user-contributed content is the future of the web, popularly known as Web 2.0.

Based on the popularity and completeness of the content on Wikipedia, Webaroo, a company headquartered in Bellevue, Washington decided to come up with WikiSlice. As mentioned briefly, the idea behind WikiSlice is to be able to extract or slice a part of wealth of content available on Wikipedia into smaller, downloadable parts.

WikiSlice not only extract the information, it displays it in a very much more readable format compared to the default presentation on Wikipedia. Therefore, you can think of WikiSlice as a ‘skin’ or a new interface for the infomation contained in Wikipedia. The user interface of WikiSlice automatically locates topics and subtopics related to the content you are currently browsing. These are then displayed prominently along sidebars, making it extremely easy and effective to browse the content at greater depths.

Perhaps the most powerful feature of WikiSlice is that users can download the entire set of articles related to the topic of their choosing, provided that the number of articles does not exceed 2000. When the number of articles is within this limit, the WikiSlice interface automatically displays a “Download” button below the count of the articles related to the main topic.

Browsing a particular topic on WikiSlice is extremely easy, all the user has to do is to navigate to the main page of WikiSlice at http://www.wikislice.webaroo.com and he/she will be presented with a familiar, web search engine style interface. Below the prominent search box, the user is presented with random searches on People and Places, besides listing the 7 most popular WikiSlices.

The user can then choose to click on any of the topics listed to browse them, or can alternatively key in the topic of their choice into the search box and be able to freely browse the content related to that topic from WikiPedia, using the powerful WikiSlice interface. For example, if a user were to perform a query for Washington through WikiSlice, he/she will be presented with a total of 3476 articles at the time of writing.

Even more interestingly, the WikiSlice interface engine also randomly picks approximately 20 random topics which may be related to the content being browsed, just for serendipity. This is indeed useful, since many a times useful content on the Internet is chanced upon and hardly ever found by planned browsing. So the next time you want to look something up on Wikipedia, head over to WikiSlice and you will be pleasantly surprised with the new way the people at Webaroo look at the content within Wikipedia.