AvantGo CEO on Custom Channels Policy

[marlof]

<a href="http://www.brighthand.com/newsite/features/avantgo.html">http://www.brighthand.com/newsite/features/avantgo.html</a><br /><br />AvantGo received a lot of bad press recently for their plans on charging siteowners for the popularity of their site. One could only have 8 subscribers that set up a custom channel containing info from your site. If more would attempt to try subscribing, the channel was locked for the others. The only way around this would be to set up an official AvantGo channel. But that one comes at a premium price, not for the people reading, but for the ones serving the pages. That might be fine for real businesses, but for popular hobby sites like most PDA sites, that would be killing. Later on, people reported that they could still use their custom channels, and AvantGo seemed to be polishing up their custom channel policy.<br /><br />In the interview Brighthand has published with the AvantGo CEO Richard Owen, he gives an explanation for this change of policy: "In retrospect, we may have been a bit heavy-handed sending out that notice to every publisher. What we had was about fifty companies abusing the service. Some were even developing full-fledged corporate apps using it, despite the fact it isn't secure. That's what we were targeting. We actually only turned off a couple of custom channels."<br /><br />I selected AvantGo sync yet again after reading this interview and all my channels still worked. Yay! As I'm still not too happy with Mazingo speed, and Avantgo suddenly seems to be able to update channel content over GPRS (it kept locking my GPRS connection a few months ago), I'm giving it another go.

[bbarker]

How do you set up Pocket PC Thoughts as an AvantGo custom channel. In the past I used your link that set it up automatically, but I can't find that now.

What I really miss isn't AvantGo; it's the ability to read and reply to comments on my Pocket PC. That just isn't practical with the new forums. I assume you're working on that. What's the status?

Thanks!

[NickF]

I also notice that the Telegraph in the UK has moved to Roundpoint and foresaken Avantgo altogether... go to www.mobile.telegraph.co.uk for a demo, I haven't tried it yet, but it seems overcomplicated.

I still like Avantgo, and Mazingo is still very very slow

Nick

[marlof]

Well, with Jason out of town, I'll try and give some custom channel setup: Lite (http://avantgo.com/mydevice/autoadd.html?title=Pocket%20PC%20Thoughts%20-%20Lite&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pocketpcthoughts.com%2Findex.php&max=400&depth=0&images=1&links=0&refresh=always&hours=2&dflags=127&hour=0&quarter=00&s=00), and With comments (http://avantgo.com/mydevice/autoadd.html?title=Pocket%20PC%20Thoughts%20-%20Comments&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pocketpcthoughts.com%2Findex.php&max=750&depth=1&images=1&links=0&refresh=always&hours=2&dflags=127&hour=0&quarter=00&s=00). You can play a bit with the settings if you want.

These are very unofficial, and I don't even know if these are the best settings. They worked for me when I tested them right now. Beware that the comments things is still a big problem. Jason is working on new templates, and he keeps telling me it will be great. I have no reason to doubt that!

[EllenBeeman]

Marlof, just FYI on Mazingo...if you sync to a card reader, it goes much, much faster. You still have fairly slow load times within the app itself (moving between pages), but at least the load time becomes comparable to Avantgo.

[marlof]

Ellen, yes I know. I have one card reader at home and it works a lot faster. But all I need is one card reader, not two. And I do like to sync at work too.... to buy a cardreader (for both SD (iPAQ) and CF (Jornada)) just to speed up Mazingo is not my idea of a practical solution. And Avantgo simply works for me. It has worked for several years, and I just feel that although it has its downsides, it is a more polished product. Mazingo continues to give me the feeling I'm doing a beta test. Let's just say I had had it with Mazingo. I will return to using it in a while though. Know thyself....

[zucchini]

have been using Mazingo for abt 2 months now and i have to say that i am quite happy with it.. i know the syncing time is a bit long but it is all worthy coz i can have more channels and content in my PPC!!

as for the slow loading time of the app.. all u need to do is to check the option 'uncompressed the data when syncing' (or similar, can really remember the exact wording) under option, setting... this will make things run a lot faster than with compressed files!!

try it!

[bostonnerd]

As much as I like the content provided by Mazingo, I cannot live with it corrupting the file system on my SD card on a semi-regular basis.

[bbarker]

Mazingo works pretty well for me. There are glitches, but they are aggressively releasing fixes. Of course, that means you have to download fixes regularly.

Advantages: The ability to download megs and megs of content, and its handling of advanced formatting.

Disadvantages: Slow moving among pages once you've downloaded them, and no indication (such as PIE's animated icon) to tell you it's working.

Avantgo

Advantages: It's a polished product and it's fairly fast to use, although that may not be a fair point of comparison because it holds so much less than Mazingo.

Disadvantages: I hate the 2MB limit. I'm continually having to play with that. Yes, I know you can set up multiple accounts. But that's a bother, too.

[EllenBeeman]

Marlof, you've probably heard my opinion on subjects like this: "Use whatever works for you!"

There are advantages and disadvantages to both Avantgo and Mazingo. Avantgo will occasionally, for no reason that I can understand, simply fail to synchronize. Don't know whether it's server failure or what, but it's annoying.

Mazingo has its own failings (as already described), plus it also, occasionally, fails to sync.

What I do is use both, duplicating the websites that I can't live without (like Jerusalem Post) in both systems. That way, odds are good that I'll have my key news sites on my machine, somewhere! :D

[eosd30]

Consider me an AvantGo fan once again.

I likewise recently discovered that GPRS sync no longer crashes my device - it's actually a pretty smooth and fast operation. It's a simple matter to get the sync going while I take a shower in the morning, so by the time I sit down to breakfast, my "virtual newsstand" is ready and waiting.

Add to this the fact that AvantGo just added a bunch of new channels that I get a real kick out of (Premiere, Car and Driver, Road and Track, Cycle World, The Golf Channel). Unfortunately, just like the print mags, I believe these channels (except maybe Golf) will only be updated on a monthly basis.

Vic

[Daniel]

I am now using AvantGo again, I am annoyed by all of Mazingos popup windows when syncing, it's just annoying. If it wasn't for that I'd probably use Mazingo more often as I'm a Pro (or whatever they call it) user and can get all the video content.

Daniel

[ricktakagi]

have been using Mazingo for abt 2 months now and i have to say that i am quite happy with it.. i know the syncing time is a bit long but it is all worthy coz i can have more channels and content in my PPC!!

as for the slow loading time of the app.. all u need to do is to check the option 'uncompressed the data when syncing' (or similar, can really remember the exact wording) under option, setting... this will make things run a lot faster than with compressed files!!

try it!


Hi there,

I'm trying to get avantgo to run quicker on my PPC. What program are you saying has the 'uncompressed the data when syncing' option? I can't find it on Mazingo or Avantgo.

Rick

[Ketsugi]

I guess my biggest beef with Mazingo right now is the lack of a non-PPC windows CE version. I would love to be able to use it on my Handheld PC as well as my Pocket PC, but there's currently no H/PC client, unlike AvantGo.