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AvantGo Shutting Down, Changing Markets
codebudo writes "AvantGo, the once ubiquitous application for all PDAs, is shutting down its web sync service. Users of the service have just begun to see banners stating, 'Starting June 30, Avantgo will no longer offer mobile web content.' According to parent company Sybase, AvantGo will transition from a mobile web service, to an SMS advertising and content delivery system."
Back when I had my first Palm Pilot and the modem was a dial-up modem it was unrealistic to view the internet any other way than to sync up a load of content to take with you.
These days that's just backwards and unnecessary. So I'm not surprised they're giving it up.
Their service was awesome years ago and I was very grateful for it.
I still use AvantGo on my iPaq. That's how I get the news to read at work. :(
for data storage.
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Back in 1998, when I actually used AvantGo with a Palm m100, I was annoyed by the need to sync, but I knew that it wouldn't be long before handheld devices could access the internet on their own. AvantGo had a pretty decent service for the time, and they should have been pretty well-positioned for handheld internet a long time ago.
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AvantGo was one of the first things I killed on any of the Treos I used to have. Junkware of the first order. Now they are even worse: SMS advertising and content? Who is dying, I mean just waiting for the hour they can start getting text ads and content?
We'll spam you till you cry mommy, and then we'll spam you some more. All you suckers (snicker) that used our services at some point have a 'pre-existing business relationship' with us, so we're free to spam your ass. We pwn3d your PDA. For a small ... 'fee' we can ... 'opt-you-out' of our 'service.'
ELOI, ELOI, LAMA SABACHTHANI!?
I used this for years on my palm pilot and later on my palm treo to read the news on the Subway, when I would be without cell phone service (NYC). Once I moved to an Iphone I never found any RSS reader that worked quite as well, but I guess technology has moved on.
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They let down their avantguard? Will they become avantGONE, or can they stick around because they simply know how to avantgo? If they switch into art, then can become avan(t)goh, DOH!
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AvantGo was a really good thing for devices like the Palm. I used it quite a lot on my Palm V, syncing in the morning before heading out the door.
Of course, nowadays it is much easier to go online anywhere, and the Palm is now in some corner, mostly forgotten.
We don't have generally available wireless access where I work, so I use AvantGO. I'm going to miss it! Are there alternatives with similar functionality?
Avantgo hasn't been working right for a long time anyway. I used to have it on my original Palm Pro and on every Palm device since then. It was great because it would give me content to read on the plane that didn't require wireless. But it was always quirky on the Treo and even more so on the Blackberry. When free content like Heavens Above disappeared, and sync problems increased, I finally lost interest. I had a good experience with Avantgo in the old days, but I guess their time has passed.
But, an SMS service? Sounds like another number I have to lock out of the family phones. $100 in charges to kgbkgb in one bill (kids!) has absolutely killed any interest I might have had in SMS services. They're for suckers. They're this century's AOL -- offering for a fee what anyone with an ounce of sense could get for free on the internet.
I think there is a use for fast, simple, text-only information services, but I don't think sms is the proper mechanism. If web designers would stop trying to make wap pages "a rich experience" and just provide the damned information in a simple and fast-loading manner, mobile web services would be a heck of a lot more practical.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
AvantGo will transition from a mobile web service, to an SMS advertising and content delivery system
Just what we all need: someone spamming our goddamned cellphones with junk SMS. Die in a fire, AvantGo.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
Are you from ETS?
Offline sync was a good concept back in the day of expensive or non-existent mobile data (remember the Palm VII?), but technology passed it by.
What country are you talking about? In the United States, mobile data is still expensive.
AvantGo created an incredibly powerful, platform independant web browser that was years ahead of it's time. It had features that still aren't in many of the browsers available for hand helds (HTML 4.0 compliance for one). The only downfall was that it converted the DOM into a proprietary storage format and never implemented the ability for the device to read raw HTML. AvantGo management steadfastly refused to allow on device conversion of HTML because they wanted to sell licenses for their server to do the conversion from HTML to the proprietary format.
Sybase apparently bought them for their huge customer base, and never cared about the technology at all - allowing the massive lead to disappear.
Now it's just stomping on the bits.
R.I.P AvantGo
Good riddance. I switched from AvantGo years ago to Plucker on the Palm, fed by Sunrise XP. The combination is a bit harder to set up initially but you're no longer limited to the feeds that AvantGo offers.
Yeah, I'm a technological philistine. I'm still using my Palm T|X as it does everything I need it to do. Especially with Avantgo. I've got a mobile platform to catch up on a number of sites while taking the bus to work in the morning, sitting in bed just before going to sleep, or taking a dump on the porcelain throne.
Now I'm going to have to read an actual book or something. Damnit.
How much coudl the old Avantgo servers actually be worth, anyway?
I'm not sure what the advantage of Sunrise is? Is it faster than just defining the channels in plucker? Plucker is pig slow.
Sunrise, however, was only able to load the Christian Science Monitor for me (granted, with only using the point-click-drool install method and the canned 'showcase' channels) despite downloading many meg of channels which it claimed would land on the device after sync. But only CSM. And in a layout that's a pain on the Palm screen. I gave up on it for now - but not before figuring out that it helps to install Sunrise in your Palm folder, you avantgo refugees. This will help get rid of a shitload of "file not found" messages on launch.
Sunrise may work and may be faster than just using Pluckr by itself. I suppose it has to be. Dear god pluckr by itself has a hard time.
That is one thing Avantgo does extremely well - collate content the once and spit it back out to one and all, formatted in a way that really made sense for a palmtop.
My experience with avantgo was that the problems were more often with the content providers than with Avantgo itself.
I've been using Avantgo for 10 years, and am sorry to see it go buh-bye, but am not that suprised. Given the advantages palm + avantgo have together over Kindle (you decide how often to update; touchscreen; small device unlikely to be accidentally folded/bent,) I wonder if any bright sparks over at Palm are talking to Sybase about buying the servers and putting them on a truck so they can offer the service for the Pre.
Yes, I understand the Pre has its own always-on signal. Throwing avantgo in as a way of saving people on costs would go over well, though, if there's a client that would work or could be made to work on the pre.
holy crap. I'm now starting on channel #2 with pluckr.
Why are people claiming pluckr is superior to Avantgo? Granted, any site can be plucked - but for sites with mobile-condensed channels, which is all I'm pointing this at, it's wicked slow and the layout's not that good (I admit: I dry fired with the Onion before adding in the full complement.)
I can't imagine how much fun it would be to wait on this for regular websites.
wow. Now I'm up to channel 4. It looks like pluckr by itself requires more patience than us internet peeps typically have, unless it's able to integrate only the deltas and not the whole site each time content changes. (My impression is that it is not able to do that, that it needs to respider if there's been an update.)