Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Web Access on Handhelds

Posted by michael on from the slasheverywhere dept.

An anonymous reader sent in: "According to The Register, AvantGo is shutting down unregistered (unpaid) "custom channels" with more than eight subscribers. Until now, AvantGo has been free (as in beer). What alternatives are there for Web sites that wish to distribute free information to PalmOS devices? Blazer and Eudora Internet Suite require wireless connections; Plucker is open-source and almost does the trick but doesn't automatically synchronize and the installation is way too complicated for the average user. Is there an alternative to paying AvantGo thousands of dollars? All I want to do is give away information, not charge for it."

4 of 149 comments (clear)

  1. Web content for PDA's? by jawtheshark · · Score: 2, Interesting
    Well, I consider Palm systems mostly as toys. They are not bad for what they are designed for but surfing the web is not really what they were intended for.

    I however have Psion Revo+ and I connect to the "real internet": no problem checking your mail, neither having to miss the web on the road. Built in email-client and Opera for EPOC systems. The screen is even large enough to comfortably read from it.
    Of course it is rather expensive over cellphone, but hey, if you use it just occasionally (mainly for email) it doesn't even appear too hard on your bill. I woudn't trade my Psion for any PalmOS based machine :-)

    Too bad Psion stopped making hardware :-(

    --
    Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
  2. Re:I use iSiloX for my Palm. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    I don't think there's much 'catering to' needed. I've been able to view some AvantGo sites (those whose URLs are not hidden) just fine using iSilo. It's basically just stripped-down HTML. But yes, iSilo does need more visibility; so far, whenever web-browsing for Palm is mentioned, people think AvantGo.

  3. AvantGo squashing "palm-ified" sites? by PlatinumMac · · Score: 3, Interesting
    I was a regular user of AvantGo (on my Macintosh) until this weekend, when I finally got my Visor and my Linux box talking to each other. I enjoyed the service very much, because I love being able to read the news or a short story while on the bus. I was never a fan of AvantGo, the company -- their website is annoying to use, they put ads onto your Palm, and now they are threatening to charge providers for AvantGo's right to slurp their content.

    So, I'm trying to switch over to Plucker (and SiteSweeper). I find this approach to be much more flexible & customizable (and therefore more useful), in addition to being free (as in speech). Plus there is the advantage that Plucker downloads and parses the websites before I hotsync, rather than during, like AvantGo (which was murder on my handheld's batteries). Plucker is also faster, because my handheld does not have to do as much rendering.

    However, I have had some trouble finding useable versions of many of the websites I want to use. For example, I have not been able to find good palm-ready Mac websites (like MacNN, MacCentral, and MacFixIt). There are rumors that this situation is due to AvantGo forcing channel providers to only make their channel available to AvantGo, not the general public.

    All in all, I have found the AvantGo alternatives to be much more useful than AvantGo ever was. I am certainly no Linux hacker, but I have had no problems with Plucker, which is very well-documented. If I can find all of the content I want elsewhere, I will get rid of AvantGo entirely, and be happier for it.

  4. Slashdot via AvantGo by quigleymd · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Up until a week ago I was an avid user of avantgo reading slashdot on it daily. Then one day under my slashdot link mysterious errors began appearing. I believe the error was something such as 'Connection Timed Out.' I find it odd that avantgo did not give a more specific error message, after all they knew why I couldnt have slashdot on my palm.. it was their doing.. those bastards.

    Reguardless, I would like to bring to light the idea of slashdot getting their own avantogo channel and perhaps funding it through the topic of a recent poll - OSDN Subscriptions. I know I for one would be willing to pay a small monthly fee to be able to read slashdot in class once again as opposed to listening to those damn professors... Anyone agree...?