Thursday, December 15, 2005
Read the news whenever you want, without Internet connection (I)
Since the departure of devices such as BlackBerry from RIM, the Treo from Palm, has opened the possibility of being always connected, with all that this entails: email service with instant notification and at all times (PUSH), possibility of connect to the Internet for surfing, reading news, etc.. The only problem is that this marvel, as always, operators charge exorbitant prices for their services. However, I do not want to be without the possibility of using my Palm to read the news and blogs that I usually anytime, anywhere.
And indeed what has been achieved. Every morning while breakfast, I leave the Tungsten doing a Hotsync, during which downloading Internet pages and blogs that I have elected to then be willing to read when you have a moment to relax during the day. And how much this service? The low price of zero euros (or dollars or pesos, as the reader prefirea).
We all know that a website normally do not see too well in the small screen of a PDA (320x320 pixels for the Palm, PocketPC for 320x240). But there are two types of content that it can be displayed perfectly in these devices: RSS feeds and mobile versions of some websites.
Pages as the newspaper El Pais, or portals CanalPDA or PDA Mexico, have their content available as a lightweight, with text and images, so that they can be read comfortably in devices with small screen. The problem is that we need to ISIT Internet connection, with the cost that this entails, so later I comment on how to save on the PDA to read off-line.
On the other hand, an RSS feed is an archive containing post blogs, news sites, etc., with a standard format that allows read them in what are called "RSS aggregators." It is a way to stay up to date without having to periodically visit the page in question, as the consultation programme developments from time to time, and warns us when they occur. There are RSS aggregators for Palm but none of them fully convinced me:
- QuickNews is a great program, but does not support images when synchronize the news during the Hotsync, and also makes processing feeds into our PDA, which would delay several minutes every time we load our favorite blogs.
- Bloglines is an aggregator site, which also has lightweight version for PDAs and therefore from the browser (Blazer for example in my case), we can sail smoothly. The problem is that we will need an Internet connection to browse through it, and that is what we want to avoid.
- AvantGo is the closest thing to what we strive, but to pay, and the free version limited to 2Mb content, apart from being full of advertisements. It is also slow and heavy on the PDA, and we can only choose the content they offer (though recently given the possibility of adding RSS feeds elected by you).
As you can see, none of these solutions pre meets what I ask of them. Anyway, perhaps you seem sufficient to you any of them, we encourage you to try. But for those who seek more like me, I have prepared an explanation of the method that I use personally, but that will be in the next post, since it has already spread too.
By: Mark Gonzalez Troyas in Tricks
RSS comments | 
Print this post
Related articles
Subscribe to stay abreast of developments in this blog
Very good .. .. mint has come to this strong… to see if the method is similar to mine
Ha, ha, ha. I huelo you're Palma who knows very well how to use your Palm
To see if you like my method, and by the way, I am open to suggestions and contributions, of course.