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Web Access on Handhelds
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."
http://www.isilox.com
It's not quite as customisable as AvantGo, but it does what is needed. You supply it with a webpage, and how many links deep to go, and it takes care of the rest. It also compresses the web page down to iSilo format, so it takes up less space.
It works in a similar manner to Avantgo, has just as many channels, but the only problem I noticed is that it sucks up ALOT of memory, guess that is what happens when you select the movie trailers channels!
In the state of the internet with advertising revenue down substantially, where are many of the sites that are struggling to survive themselves going to come up with these funds?
I work at a newspaper and we've just recently scrapped the whole Avantgo feed idea because they want to charge content producers to deliver their feed.
Everyone knows that nothing is free and someone should pay for this, it should hardly be Avantgo but it's too much with too little work.
IMO a successful model would be for Avantgo to do some of the legwork and go out there and promote themselves instead of relying on all the content producers to fill the trough. It's a double burden because first you have to pay for a service and then you have to find some way to get substantial traffic numbers there so perhaps ads can pay for it.
I think Avantgo even though they do a lot of corporate business is going to lose a lot of the people who thought it was a cool service. Avantgo should be charging the people who download and give a percentage to the content producer. It's a win win situation that way. This is the way the internet is moving, why not try to embrance and not abandon?
I've got to say, I'm a fan of AvantGo's service but not their client relations. I spent months trying to establish a channel through them, (I was practiaclly begging to pay them money) and they just about ignored me. And this channel wasn't schlock either, it was up-to date news information on the status of nuclear nonproliferation worldwide.
I never have figured out how that business plan works. Ignore your customers and make them beg you to provide them service. We'll, I guess it works for my cable isp anyway.
tcd004
Asside from the fact that wireless (via cell modem for example) would cost too much, and WiFi just doesn't provide the needed coverage, neither of these possibilities are much help for people using AvantGo to pull down pages from "free" sites. Personally I suspect that this will do more to hurt AvantGo, than it will the sites they are going to start blocking. If you have been relying upon AvantGo to pull down some specific web site, how likely are you to petition that web site to buy into being distributed across AvantGo. There are alternative MAL servers out there, though it may take a bit of work to find one. Then again, that's just my opinion... I could be wrong. -Rusty
You never know...
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)
there are great advantages of using an offline sync process. you can sync in the morning, and, read the news/pages etc while you travel to work. mobile internet connectivity isn't free - unless, like you had in your position wireless access using your own router. if i was behind my own router, i would probably use my PC to read webpages than my PDA. if i was on a bus, the PDA might become more useful for doing such tasks.
One of these days, I knew it'd bite AvantGo users in the ass... Because it uses open protocols on an open device [1], it is immune to getting screwed when a company like AvantGo, which uses proprietary technology, decides to change their business plan!
[1] Not open source or open schematics, but the OS is very open. Using NewtonScript, a language that resembles Self, Smalltalk, and Lisp but using a more C-like syntax, one can develop on the Newton itself or the desktop. Code developed on the Newton can replace parts of the OS or other installed apps. You can call methods and use objects from any app, without them being explicitly exported. A platform truly for a hacker. Unlike those Linux PDAs, which have the otherhead of using something like GCC (ha!), or don't have anywhere near the system-reflectivity even whem programs are written in a language like Python. Dynapad hopes to fix this, bringing it one step further, to a completely open system.
Working toward a usable PDA environment in the spirit of Newton OS: Dynapad
Unfortunately, it needs third-party browsers such as Plucker or a DOC reader. Even then, it's not as good as Plucker natively.
--
# Canmephians for a better Linux Kernel
$Stalag99{"URL"}="http://stalag99.net";
Being able to read the pages while you travel or have other downtime isn't an advantage to offline sync. With my Newton, I'm not grabbing these pages wirelessly, although I could. They're downloaded either manually or automatically (on a schedule) over ethernet, and cached for later reading. No wireless or desktop required. That is, if I'm at work or school, and want to grab a page to read later in the day, I don't have to *go home* just and sync (ha!) just so I can have a new web page on my Newton.
That's the point, I'm reading pages on my Newton while sitting on the bus. Downloaded to my Newton before I leave, along with my email.
Working toward a usable PDA environment in the spirit of Newton OS: Dynapad
I use a PalmOS platform that does not have a wireless tranciever (I can pick up a bluetooth sled for it, but I would have to add bluetooth to one of my systems to make use of that, more expense...) What AvantGo provides is a mechanism for me to pull down content off the internet, i.e. newspapers, magazines, C|Net, Heavens-above, and the like, and review it when I am someplace where it does not make sense to pull out my laptop. Say on the bus, or a train to or from work, where I really do not want to spend five minutes bringing up the laptop, and another couple of minutes before my stop shutting things down. I am sure that there are other places where it makes sense. Sure I could pull this kind of stuff up on a cell phone via WAP, but if I sync first thing in the morning as I get up, by the time I leave the house, I will have far more information than I can go through on the ride to work, and I am not paying Verizon or AT&T 10 cents a minute to view that content. Hey, it's just my opinion, I am sure you have your own. I could be wrong. -Rusty
You never know...
What's so complicated about Plucker? I'll admit that setting up your own script to scrape the web might be too complex for grandma, but you the provider can build a Plucker.pdb of your own site.
Users could then just download the plucker.prc (once) and then sync with your PDB whenever you update it. They never really have to install any of the desktop scripts at all as long as you provide them the PDBs.
-- Don't Tase me, bro!
Avantgo is an awesome service that I use because it takes the data from my PC's internet connection and feeds it down to my PocketPC. The information is fast, the data was tuned to the PocketPC (no mangled WWW like you said), and I don't have to be in a coverage area (try that on an plane) to view it. Even if fast wireless internet did exist, there'd still be a use for it.
Besides, try putting a laptop in your pocket.
"Derp de derp."
This same discussion is being help at VisorCentral. So far we have come that if you want free, you use Plucker. If you are willing to pay you should use iSilo. Check out the thread if you want
You don't actually need a pc to do avantgo syncing with the pocket pc - just go under settings, connections, avantgo "sync" button - it will download all your cached websites off the net over whatever wire you have connected to it be it wireless (802.11 or cpdp), modem or hard wired ethernet.
Plus while you are online you can use internet explorer to browse the net just like your desktop pc.
Here's what I thought, in case it gets slashdotted:
Why iSilo 3.0 whales on everything else I've tried
Size: It has a smaller footprint. The documents are reduced too. Want graphics: you can choose page per page, greyscale, bw, color, or none at all. Same with Link Depth, as deep as you want.
Easy Automation: iSilo for Windows to set up the channels, iSiloXC to have them update nightly. It's not as dead simple as AvantGo, but it sure is easier than Plucker (for now, we'll see what I think when I'm not running a windows box)
Channel Customization: Each channel becomes its own document. No homepage to configure. You can
delete channels when you're done reading them.
Navigation: iSilo has back, forward, page up, page down, and % of a page navigation.
Scrolling: the Autoscroll is still not as clear as CSpotRun's (nothing is, IMO, and I can't say why..), butclear enough and handy. You can also customize the behavoir of scroll buttons, jog dials, screen scroll buttons...
Custom Views: Whatever you want, from straight BW up to the max your PDA can handle, be it Handera or Sony's monster-color. like the scrollbar, keep it. hate it? ditch it. Same with the top and bottom toolbars.
Speed: yep. She's fast.
Expansion: Ok, this doesn't apply to me since I use a Treo. But iSilo can install directly to expansion cards (though I don't know about visors... may not be there...).
Categories: Put your channels in categories.
One App for both Documents and Web sites.
Copying: easily copy text, whatever portion you want.
Button Customization: Set up all your buttons (including Handera/Sony's jog push and back.. and hopefully soon also for the Treo) to do what you want, scroll, next page, autoscroll toggle, bookmarks, back, forward, etc.
Bookmarks: Insert bookmarks in any document on the fly. You can also just "mark" a location for faster
returns.
Screen Regions: The screen is split into 4ths, each region can be set to dragging scroll, page scroll, line
scroll, etc.
...phew! That about does it.
The not-so-good
Custom content: AvantGo hides their channel links and some are just unavailable to others. I can't find the NYT frontpage or bookreviews. I had to sign up for Salon Premium and do their daily download to get it.
Link Depth: Somehow, even channels designed for avantgo get screwy. Slashdot, for example, gets hella-big when I set link depth to 3. when i set it to 2, no comments, so no point.
Not a Browser: well, this is a plus for me, b/c I've got a browser in ROM and therefore I don't need another. but still...
Easy Channels: Hunting for channels is a PITA, especially when you discover that you're just not going to find them. Your only friend in this endeavor is the site: tag on google.
...there ya go, get iSilo
I really like Vindingo. I ran across it a week ago while searching for software to fill up the seemingly vast 16 megs on my treo.
You choose specific cities to download - they have most metropolitan areas covered - and then when you sync your handheld, the software checks on the web for updates.
To use the software, you tell it what neighborhood your in, and then what intersection you are nearest. It lists restaurants (with reviews), movie theatres (with showtimes and reviews), and shops, sorted by distance from your current location. It will also generate walking/driving directions from your current location - all while offline!
It also has a wireless sync option so I can sync using the modem in my treo and never have to hook it to a desktop.
Overall, I think it's pretty damn cool.
Eh, I don't use the IR port for anything. And frankly, there's nothing that I'd want to do on a Palm or PocketPC that I couldn't do on the Newton, with the exception of running Squeak. I purchased an iPAQ H3150 for the purpose of running Squeak and developing my Newton replacement environment, but found the device's screen inadequate for taking notes- I take all of my class notes on the Newton. One thing that may bother some people is the lack of color on any Newton model, but I prefer B&W, both on the Newton and the iPAQ I have. better readability and far better battery life, especially when you comapare iPAQ models.
:)
I'm not trying to convert anyone to the Newton. It's impractical for a lot of people for a number of reasons (not officially supported, no color, size), but it's the only thing that's worth using for me, and it amazes me what people put up with on their Palms and PocketPCs.
Working toward a usable PDA environment in the spirit of Newton OS: Dynapad
I'm an AvantGo user and am happy with the free service. I don't use custom pages anymore -- page size and link depth are a problem when trying to get a multipage article. However, I think that our reliance on a service like AvantGo points out a problem that's only going to get worse, unless we look to consientiously follow standards.
The increasing popularity of PDAs of all kinds will start to pose a problem in terms of conveying content in a useable way usable for these devices. Until now, we've been getting by with various hacks like AvantGo, but I thnk we are starting to come to a breaking point. There are probably as many ways to retrieve web content as there are PDAs these days, and I'm sure some will do a better job than others.
Before we start to go the way of designing multiple pages for each browser and PDA (which will *still* lock some people out), maybe we should actually start thinking about standards.
Today's standards/recommendations from W3C basically are tilted at separating style/layout from content. If site designers as well as web-client programmers work to implement the standards, then there would be no reason to creat alternate versions of a page for each device. Since content and style/layout is seperated at a structural level in the markup, then it will be easy for any client to serve up the content and display it according to its own necessities (screen size, colors, etc).
This does mean that we have to disabuse ourselves of the notion that a webpage must look the same on all browser, or that it's okay to make a webpage that can only be displayed in one type of browser, or only if certain plugins, etc are present.
The web, and the net, for that matter is not about, style, it's about content. Let's focus on content.
If we would have been doing this all along, chances are that services like AvantGo wouldn't be necessary in the first place.
All one has to do is hit the right keys at the right time and the instrument plays itself. - Johann Sebastian Bach
With it, the main website I visit just happens to be Slashdot, processed for PDA consumption by AvantSlash
The only downside is that there is no specialized content available for it, like AvantGo: it only knows how to read plain web pages. Hence, ocasionally, you'll need a preprocessor (like AvantSlash) to put the web pages on a diet.
I can explanate how to administrate your network. You must configurate and segmentate it, so it can computate.
It's a cool service, but consumers aren't going to pay for it. It's just a program that crawls a site and downloads it to your Palm.. it is possible to write software that will sync a webpage to your palm without ever going through a "service provider" like AvantGo.
Microsoft doesn't charge people for the priviledge of using IE to crawl a website.. it's no different here. AvantGo can boast one thing - a well-written cross platform browser for handhelds. they are not a service provider, they're a software company.
I agree, Plucker isn't that hard and the if there's a "printable" version of the web page available, it usually looks fine on the palm. For example, try "printer.wunderground.com", weather information formatted just fine for a PDA.
PHEM - party like it's 1997-2003!
AvantGo doesn't really work unless the content providers take the trouble to provide content that works well with a small-screen browser. Providers can't simply provide links to their regular frame-and-graphic-intensive web pages, because the result is unreadable. (Took some clueless providers a while to figure this out.) The best AvantGo providers are old-fashioned print newspapers and journals that have always catered to people who just want to read -- but are tech savy enough to understand what "minimal use of markup" means.
AvantGo does 2 things: transcodes content to fit the abysmally bad PDA screens (both pocket PC and Palm screens suck for web content display), and cache the content so you have it when you're walking around away from your cradle (which is where your desktop or laptop probably is located anyway). Can we all agree that sooner or later both of these problems will be resolved by improvements in technology and delivery? ;-). Avantgo is not a solution, but a technical bandaid with a widow-of-life based on how long it takes these problems to be fixed at the source.
As others here have noted wireless connections will make the second need go away. Better PDAs and a solution to the screen issue will make the first unecessary.
Neither of these needs are going away this week, but perhaps those at Avantgo see their product for what it is and are preparing to give up
Let's hope those that can will address the real problems.
I say this loving Avantgo: it does what it does amazingly well. Things would just be so much easier if it didn't need to be there, and it doesn't.
I've owned a Cassiopeia E105 (WinCE 2.11), and now own an iPaq 3730 (Formerly PocketPC 2002, now Familiar Linux).
I tried nearly all the 'PDA Web' software out there - AvantGo, Mazingo, MobiPocket, but got really pissed off with them. The synchronisation was flaky at best, and downright broken at worst.
As an end consumer, I really appreciate websites that offer PDA-friendly versions of their pages. Surprisingly, Slashdot is very PDA-friendly - the middle column with all the text just fits into the 240 pixel screen width.
My take on 'synchronisation'?
For the developer - go for a 'site download' model that downloads known PDA-friendly sites into a tarball, copies the tarball onto the PDA, which then uncompresses it and browses locally, using the native browser. Or even skip the tarball - just provide an app which 'rsync's a tree of PDA-sized pages onto the PDA.
For the content publisher - if your site is PDA-friendly, and you promote it well, content-starved PDA users will find you, don't worry.
All the WindowsCE and Linux-based PDAs have a free web browser available (built-in or freeware).
-- In the beginning was the WORD, and the WORD was UNSIGNED, and the main(){} was without form and void...
Has there been a single one yet which hasn't created an enormous gulf between the lowest price point and free which just doesn't seem worth crossing?
I mean, 9 users, and it's 1000 bucks a year? I thought the article said they were worried about BIG businesses using them.
Every time a free service starts charging, it seems, they charge way too much for way too little, often while still leaving the free services there, which sometimes are good enough anyway. (Yahoo mail, for example)
Is there an example of a service which charges small increments in price for small increments in service?
A few years ago they published the MAL server source that you could use to set up your own site that the avantgo browser could sync to. Unfortunately, they yanked it after a while and went completely closed with it.
Should be possible to reverse engineer the server protocol/formats/etc. from the SyncMAL tools, but sure would be easier if source were still available.
"Asside from the fact that wireless (via cell modem for example) would cost too much"
Not really. I pay around $40/mo for my Sprint PCS wireless access (w/ the Sprint springboard adapter). It's quite excellent, and is ready for 3G, whenever it's deployed, for faster speed.
I should add: the plan works like a cell phone. I get all sorts of crazy minute (3000 minutes total, 200 weekday, 2800 weekend (practically unlimited if you think about it)). It's a great value.
Oh, btw, there is an SSH client for the Pilot, which means I am now a portable sysadmin. Woo hoo.
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.
Coverage is the big issue - 90% of my commute is underground, and there is no wireless coverage period - not even AM or FM radio. You have access only to what you bring with you.
I also record to local radio morning show from 6AM to 8AM to 4 MP3 files. My AvantGo sync and mp3 sync (separate devices) take about 5 minutes, and by 8:15 I can depart and have "internet" and "FM radio" without needing to be in contact from the subway.
The best alternative to AvantGo that I could see would be an online data gathering app that condensed everything down into a few Palm DOC files. That could run automatically at prescheduled times, and when you sync your Palm you just load the latest set. (It doesn't have to be Palm DOC, other formats could work too.) But it's got to be easy to set up. AvantGo has a significant edge in sync-transactions - you can make changes to your setup on the Palm, and they take effect next time you sync.
The other alternative for AvantGo is passthrough pricing, where smaller sites can set up for free but can only be loaded if the AvantGo user pays for them through AvantGo. Don't knock it - AvantGo has a significant aggregation edge there. This is exactly how DoCoMo's i-mode is doing it.
Yeah, OK, free speech is nice... free beer is nice... but come on, a single-user license for iSilo is $17.50! Pay for it, already.
Even if you're not that concerned with downloading Web pages to your Palm, it makes for a great alternative to first-generation Doc readers. Unlike those, it can do text formatting (justification, italics, bold, header-sized fonts, images, etc.) and its files compress down to smaller sizes than Doc format.
Breakfast served all day!
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...?
This means that things like Slashdots own palm friendly version and my AvantSlash (along with thousands of other non-profit making sites who provide an ability to view their content for free) are going to be left a little out in the cold.
As already mentioned, Plucker is one alternative. For PPC users you could try Mazingo
The biggest downside to Avantgo alternatives is that they don't have some of the custom channels that Avantgo has and you can't get the URL for. Some however you can, and Plinkit is a useful list of those.
Come on guys, if you expect us to pay and help you out here, the least you could do it take breaking news that we submit and actually post it. Rather than waiting a fortnight and then sticking it up.
"Stuff that matters" is all very fine and well, but "Stuff that matters, once everyone knows about it" would seem closer to the point, although less catchy.
Avantslash - View Slashdot cleanly on your mobile phone.
Sports Illustrated and others have used Palm's Web Clipping applications (WCA, alias PQA - Palm Query Application).
I've developed for them and you can actually surf web sites and view CGI output in the clipper browser built into the OS (English v.4 or with mobile lib). Palm's gateway will reduce image sizes for you for free too.
Well, you can do this now with a little script voodoo.
wget to pull in the data
perl, python, whatever to mangle it to a single, simply formatted text file.
makedoc or such to convert to pdb
cp to move it to the install folder.
No hyperlinks, mind you, but surely this is not needed for most apps. For slashdot, for example, you could pull down one article + all the +3 comments and turn it into a single DOC file, repeat, 5 files gives you the top 5 articles, bing.
Or use something on the palm that reads HTML if size is not a problem.
Easy enough I imagine. Step II is probably the hardest.
~~~~~ BigLig2? You mean there's another one of me?
Software companies when they move from 'give it away for free just to get users' to 'I must make money now' often take a poor approach to the problem of transition.
Ask yourself who is getting value from using Avantgo - the obvious answer is both consumers and providers of content to varying degrees. But as far as Avantgo is concerned they need to go after the ones that are willing to pay, be it either. It looks likes they have gone after the providers because they probably have invested more in the relationship with Avantgo and are more likely to be willing and able to pay for prices Avantgo will need to charge to make it worth their doing it. Avantgo like many software companies probably does not have the infrastructure to charge micropayments that might make sense to consumers of content.
The problem with going after providers is that they come into several groups some that have money and will pay and some that do not or will not pay because the value Avantgo offers them is simply not worth the money that Avantgo is asking.
One group is the non commercial customers - they don't make money out of whatever service they offer to consumers but they do increase the value of Avantgo to the consumers in general. These are the people that suffer with Avantgo's new model and it looks like the original poster is one of these. Now if Avantgo could identify these people as non commercial users and license them to use Avantgo as long as they stay non commercial then they would keep such users recognising that there is no money in that relationship at the moment and keeping the increased value of having them part of the Avantgo network. A very good example of the implementation of such a model would be Cincom's Non Commercial Smalltalk license.
Another option would have been to migrate all their non paying providers over to a consumer payment service whereby the consumer pays a small monthly amount for unlimited access to the non paying providers and gets paying providers for free. In fact everyone would get the fee paying providers for free. this way Avantgo would have gained a consumer service they could charge for and a free consumer service for the providers that it make sense to do that.
But I am sure that they thought long and hard about the right way to change their charging model - it is absolutely critical for any business and getting it wrong can have catastrophic effects on a business. They seem to have opted for a simple to implement and straight forward model that is likely to generate more money in the short term (from the providers who do feel the need to pay the $1000 to continue this service) rather than one that will build their network over time and add value to the network. They are clearly willing to risk losing many valuable providers (who add value in terms of the breadth of their 'channels') because they do not bring money to Avantgo's bottom line. I suspect they implemented this change too late in their business and when the need for money was to strong. But it may just be that they did not realise they had other alternatives and if so maybe they will react to this /. discussion.
On my Sharp Zaurus, I just use WGET to download my favorite web pages for offline browsing. I'm still tweaking the command line parameters to drop as much useless content on the pages (ads and such).
When I find a new page I like to download, I add it to a script for future use.
http://www.handstory.com
This is already happening. For example, the Linux Documentation Project (LDP) recently added support for Plucker; the LDP now automatically generates Plucker format for all HOWTO, mini-HOWTO, and FAQ documents. The LDP also automatically regenerates the files when the documents are updated. Pluckerbooks has over a thousand pregenerated books and they have links to other sources of Plucker documents.
In fact, I've recently added support for Plucker to my own website. My paper Why Open Source Software / Free Software? Look at the Numbers! also has a Plucker version available. I also generate a Plucker version of my book on writing secure programs. So I'm speaking from experience here.. Plucker works well for at least some content providers!
Downloading the tools and then generating the Plucker format is easy if you can use a command line interface. Plucker's format is essentially compressed HTML, so for most websites it's easy to support. Plucker is GPL'ed, so its components (the generator and reader) can't be "taken away"... and they are free for any use. This combination of free reader, free creator, and no risk (because it can't be taken away) makes Plucker much more appropriate for many content providers. The Plucker viewer itself is quite capable, for example, it supports larger fonts for headings, bold text, italics, hypertext links, images, horizontal rules, and tables (formatted as one cell per line). If you click on a hypertext link to a page not included in the file, Plucker will show you the URL so you can look it up later.
Installing just the viewer is actually quite easy for end-users; you can download just the viewer from the Plucker website, and Plucker users can beam the program to other users of Palm-compatible PDAs. Generating Plucker files is pretty easy from the command line, but I do agree that currently grandma may have trouble generating documents on her own. It's also true that getting "new" versions of Plucker documents isn't automatic; you have to do something to get an update. The Plucker folks are actively working on solving these problems, e.g., creating GUI interfaces. Since Plucker is already a really nice viewer, and other work is already ongoing, I think that the Plucker developers will quickly succeed in making it easier for naive users to generate their own documents.
- David A. Wheeler (see my Secure Programming HOWTO)
My post was in response to the problem at hand. If it's so easy and practical to access real web content with other PDAs, then why not that be the solution to AvantGo's change in policy? That's my point. Oi.
Working toward a usable PDA environment in the spirit of Newton OS: Dynapad
Color screens don't make up for an inconsistent or severely limited operating system or a small screen. I want to be able to use a PDA for more than grabbing stock quotes and keeping tracks of names and dates. A lot of people are content to do just that, and that's great. But not me, so get off of it. Oi.
Working toward a usable PDA environment in the spirit of Newton OS: Dynapad
Can't say that I'd ever consider a Palm device until I could get one with a big screen (480@320 prefferably, at least low-DPI 320@240) and real handwriting recognition like CalliGrapher. :)
Working toward a usable PDA environment in the spirit of Newton OS: Dynapad