The World Almanac has now published much of its 1,000-page reference source for viewing on handhelds.

Town Compass, LLC has created the 2002 World Almanac databases for Palm OS handhelds to help keep mobile information consumers informed about important facts and data.

“We’ve accomplished what nobody else can do, what everyone in the industry thought was impossible,” said Eric Makus, President and co-founder of Town Compass. “We’ve compressed most of The World Almanac and Book of Facts into this tiny electronic device and still offer an extremely positive user experience. We’ve provided full text and color graphics — long lists, charts, graphs, pictures, footnotes — complex reference content that you can quickly navigate and access in three taps.”

Makus said that The World Almanac was able to develop a mobile solution without devoting significant internal resources to the process. World Almanac licensed existing Town Compass DataViewer technology to quickly transform the Book of Facts from a large, static, printed reference publication, into a dynamic handheld information directory, easily referenced by users around the globe.

“With close to one million copies sold annually, The World Almanac has been on The New York Times bestseller list for years” said Rajeev Puri, Chief Technology Officer of World Almanac’s parent company, WRC Media. “We partnered with Town Compass to deliver The World Almanac on the Palm devices to extend the reach of this product.”

Users can also download the products at major handheld distribution web sites like www.Handango.com, www.CyberRead.com, and others.