[Windows 8] Learn about your neighborhood by reading Wikipedia on Explora

What are some cool or interesting places to visit in your area? If you’re new to the area, you probably don’t know–but with Explora, you can find out. Explora lets you view Wikipedia articles on local businesses, neighborhoods, and more, while in the process, you learn about your world.

What is it and what does it do

Explora lets you explore the world around you in a new and cool way. Rather than showing you a map with all of the local businesses carefully pinned onto its smooth surface, Explora shows you all of the nearest places that have Wikipedia articles, be they schools, art galleries, or anything else.

Pros

  • Interesting way to learn about new places in your area
  • Intelligently categorizes places
  • Nice design

Cons

  • Wikipedia may not have articles about your area

Discussion

Well now I feel lonely.

If you live in a busy area, there are dozens of popular, important, or famous buildings or landmarks all around you. Wikipedia, the encyclopedia obsessed with combining, processing, and refining the world’s knowledge, is dedicated to cataloging and writing about all of these, and so chances are, there’s a Wikipedia page about something nearby.

Explora is the app for bringing these thousands of pages down to just those about the world close to you. It automatically searches for places nearby, and if can find any, lists them. Unfortunately, not all areas have nearby Wikipedia articles, but if you live in a city, that’s pretty unlikely.

Reading articles is about what you’d expect on Windows 8. The text is arranged into horizontally-scrolling columns, and has pictures placed where they’re normally embedded. The reading is definitely quite average for Windows 8; it’s the discovery that’s cool.

Conclusion and download link

Explora is a fun app. It brings the ability to discover cool new places back to your tablet or computer, and though the reading experience may be extremely average, the discovery aspect of the program is definitely unique. If you’re a Wikipedia fan, Explora is a great way to combine that with the outdoors.

Price: Free!

Supported OS: Windows 8

Supported architectures: x86/x64/ARM

Download size: 128KB

Explora on Windows Store

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