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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.
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?
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
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?
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.
I totally understand your skepticism, (I had the same thought when I started the development of the channel for my client.)
What I didn't realize was the number of diplomats, politicians, defense contractors, scientists, policymakers, speech writers, journalists, etc. who all like to be able to quote the most recent numbers for how many Nukes North Korea has pointed at South Korea. And these people all use palm pilots.
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