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Products of the Year 1998 (continued)
We're told that developing AvantGo specific channels is not an enormous effort. What's required is to restructure your HTML pages, reduce the graphic content, filter out the fluff, and keep the number of externally reachable links to a minimum. In fact, we were so impressed with AvantGo that we'll be updating our proprietary, automated journal production system to create AvantGo pages at some point in the near future.
If AvantGo were just able to download these pre-built "premium" channels, it would be a nice product, but not really a Product of the Year contender. The thing is, you can also download any Web page you want -- although you should expect mixed results. For example, some industrious readers took it upon themselves to specify the PalmPower News Center as a download source, and now they get those pages, updated every day.
One cool example I personally enjoy is the movie listings. There's a big Loew's Cinema in New Brunswick that I like to go to. Each day, I download the latest listings and movie times to my Palm organizer -- that is, AvantGo downloads this information automatically so I don't have to think about it. Then, if I'm out with friends and we decide to go to a movie, I can whip out my trusty organizer and have the latest movie times. Not only does it make for cool bragging rights, it also makes it way easier to choose movies and times.
The look of non-customized pages is a bit spotty. You do "takes your chances", depending on the complexity of the source pages. But we found that more pages work than don't, and that's impressive.
Oh, and the answer to why you'd want to read Web pages on your Palm screen. Simple. Can you say "waiting room"?
What about the Palm VII "web clippings"?
Many of you may have noticed some apparent competition between the Palm VII's forthcoming "web clippings" and AvantGo. As far as we can tell, these are different beasts. First, of course, you can get AvantGo for your existing Palm device for free. No need to buy a wireless unit. Second, AvantGo connects to data at HotSync time and does not incur wireless per-minute charges. And third, and potentially hugely different, it appears Palm Computing is having some role in choosing what you get to see, as the following statement from the Palm announcement seems to imply:
"Upon submission to the Palm.Net site, a query application will be reviewed and tested for quality assurance by Palm Computing. If approved, the query application will be placed in the public area within the Palm.Net site and made available to customers both for keyword search and download."
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