ComicEdge: Comic Reader For Pocket PCs

[Janak Parekh]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.edgeq.com/ComicEdge.aspx?platform=PocketPC' target='_blank'>http://www.edgeq.com/ComicEdge.aspx...atform=PocketPC</a><br /><br /></div><i>"You'll always be entertained with dozens of the most popular comics available at your fingertips. Webcomics, syndicated comics, and editorial comics are all there. You can view the last 2-4 weeks of comic strips and keep track of which ones are read and which ones are new."</i><br /><br /><img src="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/images/web/2003/parekh-20050221-ComicEdge.gif" /><br /><br />I've got a ton of webcomics I read every day (15? More? I've lost count) and a tool like this sounds like the ideal way of keeping track of them. Best of all, it's free during the current beta period. I'll have to download it and check it out. :)

[OSUKid7]

Nice. The two comics I read are available with it. :)

[muaddip]

Looks cool, but I can do this already with any RSS reader.

Well....I use to be able to anyway, it appears the Tapestry website that normally hosts the RSS feeds for the comics has gone bye-bye. It is my guess that ComicEdge also uses Tapestry since I could not get a list of comics when it starts up. That is to bad for ComicEdge, just goes to show, relying on others peoples data or web sties could be a bad thing.

I found a new site http://www.comicalert.com it is a free site, but you have to setup a username an password. Then you subscribe to whatever comics you want and pint to a rss feed. There are hundreds of different web comics out there and comic alert looks like it have links to all of them.

EDIT: Hmmm...just setup comic alert and unfortunately, they don't send the comic strip in the news item, they just link back to the website that has the comic strip. So, not a good alternative, hopefully the Tapestry site will go back up sometime soon, otherwise I will have to create a way to grab the strips myself.

[Ed@Brighthand]

What ComicEdge does is legal, but I don't believe it is ethical. Essentially, what it does is take the content from web sites, most of which are advertising supported, and present it to you without the advertising.

Just something to think about before you sign up for this service.

[Vincent M Ferrari]

What ComicEdge does is legal, but I don't believe it is ethical. Essentially, what it does is take the content from web sites, most of which are advertising supported, and present it to you without the advertising.

Just something to think about before you sign up for this service.

You mean like the thousands upon thousands of people reading sites with RSS readers?

[surur]

ComicEdge pushs the latest comic URLs to your phone so they you directly read your favorite comics. It does not store any comics on its servers or on the phone so it does not violate any copyrights or trademarks. All it does is lets you directly access the latest strips from your favorite comics. It would be the same as if you opened up PocketIE and started typing in the image URLs of comics available online. ComicEdge just gets you that information fast and effectively.


Can I agree with Ed. If they are planning on charging for this product, and making money this way, they are being terribly unethical. They are costing bandwidth but stripping away any source of revenue for the website and comic producer. This kind of thing kills the digital commons.

On the other hand I would not really be prepared to pay much for the service. Maybe $10 per year, which I assume is much more than they can expect to earn from ad impressions from me (as I nearly never click on advertising links) Unfortuanately I expect Dilbert et al would rather charge me $30 for only their collection of comics.

I would not use this service, but I hope this prompts the comic syndication people to start a service of their own, at a price but stripped of ads. Of course more likely they will fight against the service and even remove their comics form the web. Only time will tell I guess...

Surur

PS: A simple way to fight this would be to use tables to break the comic into small uneven bits. That would prevent one url from representing the whole picture, and would only display properly in the right container enviroment.

[Vincent M Ferrari]

They're only providing a vehicle for downloading the comics and keeping up to date, they're not really selling the content. No worse than an RSS reader or other News Aggregator. Most of them charge also... (Feed Demon comes to mind)

[surur]

They're only providing a vehicle for downloading the comics and keeping up to date, they're not really selling the content. No worse than an RSS reader or other News Aggregator. Most of them charge also... (Feed Demon comes to mind)

Dont most of them redirect you to the full story or web page when you click on the link,which allows the site to earn money from advertising, versus only displaying the content from the page without any opportunity for ads at all?

Surur

[Vincent M Ferrari]

They're only providing a vehicle for downloading the comics and keeping up to date, they're not really selling the content. No worse than an RSS reader or other News Aggregator. Most of them charge also... (Feed Demon comes to mind)

Dont most of them redirect you to the full story or web page when you click on the link,which allows the site to earn money from advertising, versus only displaying the content from the page without any opportunity for ads at all?

Surur

There is no "most" with RSS. They display the feed depending on the configuration of the site. There are tons of sites that are ad-supported that place their full article content in their RSS feed, completely alleviating the need for visiting the site altogether.

[foebea]

To lean back into the topic for a bit . . .

I installed this program, and it seems nice at first, but there are two kind of major (in my book) flaws I have identified.

In the 'feed' selection screen, you have to click on each item and choose subscribe for each. so with a list of a hundred or two, that means 200 taps if you want them all. select all, or some type of multiple selection process would be nice here.

The other flaw, even majorer ( :roll: ) is that this is not an aggregator. This does not compare to RSS at all. All this does, is give you links, and when you select one, it goes to the website (i am assuming it goes to comic edge website) to get the comic currently selected. It does not store this on the ppc, and if you are offline you can not use this program.

My that surely will be useful for me on the train, i can select hundreds of comics that i cant read because i dont have them.

If im at the office, i will use the desktop computer to read. I guess this would be fine for internet enabled devices, but I was really hoping this would be a comic aggregator. That would be the answer to my dreams. honest :D

[bluevolume]

It doesn't actually store the comics on the PDA for offline reading?

Downgrade! :razz:

[bjornkeizers]

Big bummer. If it stored like avantgo, It'd be a must-have app. I read a lot of web comics, and I'd love to be able to sync say... 40 or so for my daily commute.

Maybe someone could make a program like that?

[Vincent M Ferrari]

It doesn't actually store the comics on the PDA for offline reading?

Downgrade! :razz:

I just realized that. What a major frickin' oversight!

[bjornkeizers]

I just tried it out. It works, it does do what it promises, and it has a reasonable selection of comics, with a good archive access feature.

But the fact that I can't sync &amp; go makes it 95% useless. If I have net access, I'd rather read it on my laptop....

[surur]

I just tried it out. It works, it does do what it promises, and it has a reasonable selection of comics, with a good archive access feature.

But the fact that I can't sync &amp; go makes it 95% useless. If I have net access, I'd rather read it on my laptop....

Logically it would work that way, but they are claiming to have found a loophole in the whole "illegally distributing some-one else's copyrighted work"-thing by only distributing URL's, not any actual graphics. It also makes it much more difficult to block them. They should remember that this defence did not help the original Napster much, when they claimed to only be an introductory service, and that they did not actually touch the files distributed.

Surur

[comicedgedev]

Hi, I'm the developer of ComicEdge. First, thanks for trying ComicEdge. It a program I'm excited about and would like to share with the community. This isn't a big money making scheme. It's just a program I developed that I thought would be fun to use. It will alway be free, but maybe with a donation request to help support future versions. I also will probably develop some RSS feeds &amp; web service in case others want to grab the data and do what they want with it.

This application was never meant to be a comic aggregator. This would be better suited for a desktop application with maybe a mobile sync component.

This application is build for internet enabled smartphones, wifi pocket pcs, and pocket pc phones to view comics on the go, one at a time. I dont think I'm violating any copyrights or being unethical or anything. It would be the same as if you just put in the comic image url into pocket IE to view comics. This is something i used to do to read foxtrot, calvin &amp; hobbes, and penny arcade.

Anyways, thanks. Please email us or post here if you have any comics you'd like to be added or have any feature requests.

[surur]

Thank you for coming to PPCT to defend your program in person and to clarify things. If it will always be free at least that removed the criticism that you are making money from other people's work while at the same time depriving them of income. IANAL, but from recent cases prosecuted in America I'm not sure that is a complete defence however.

If you are confident that you are legally in the clear, why dont you add a "cruise" function, where it will download the comics in your list while docked in your cradle, into a cache on the device? That would increase functionality and make the program useful for unconnected devices, and devices out of network range.

Surur

[Vincent M Ferrari]

I think that's a terrific point. And of course, make the cache size selectable so that the user doesn't bloat their phone/pocket pc up with comics.

Great idea.

[armwood]

I have repeatedly tried to launch the cab file on my h6315. I keep on receiving the error " setup failed, the file is not a valid windows ce setup file". Is anyone else experiencing this problem? :cry:

[armwood]

I found a windows installer on the comic edge website which worked. I installed it onto my ipaq file store. I was pleasantly suprised they featured my favorite daily comic read " The Boondocks" I am very happy. This is a great comic strip. Check it out if you have an open mind!

[Ed@Brighthand]

They're only providing a vehicle for downloading the comics and keeping up to date, they're not really selling the content. No worse than an RSS reader or other News Aggregator. Most of them charge also... (Feed Demon comes to mind)
An RSS feed is created by the site itself. It contains the information that the site owners choose to give away. If a site chooses to give its entire contents away without advertising, that's its decision.

ComicEdge, on the other hand, is taking the contents from another site and presenting it in a way that the site owner has not approved. That's a very, very different thing.

comicedgedev, if you are certain that's nothing ethically wrong with what your application is doing, go to Universal Features Syndicate and the other owners of these comics and ask for permission to present their content in your application. To be honest, I'd be very surprised if they agreed without a significant licensing fee.

I'm not trying to pick a fight with you. I'm aware you're just this guy in a home office who came up with what you thought was a way to help other Pocket PC users, and you aren't making any money off it. But I can't agree with what you are doing. Probably it's because I'm a person who makes a living by coming up with content and then giving it away in exchange for people looking at advertising. If you did to Brighthand what you're doing to Comics.com, I would object very strongly.
.

[armwood]

Comic Edge is another form of Deep Linking

Here are excerpts from two stories discussing the legal case which set precedent for this issue:
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" Deep linking has an official seal of approval now that U.S. District Judge Harry Hupp He ruled a few years ago that websites can legally provide links to any pages on all other sites.
Tickets.com won the ruling in a case filed by TicketMaster that alleged that deep linking should be banned. Here is an excerpt from a Wire magazine arrticle of November 2nd 1999

Tech Jobs Partner Today's the Day.
Deep links, also called hyperlinks, typically bypass the front page of a website. The problem, webmasters say, is that deep linking allows viewers to skip over the prime-area advertising that is typically placed on a website's start page.
And in the worst-case scenario, viewers may not even realize they've been whisked off to another website.
Hupp said deep linking is not illegal as long as it's clear whom the linked page belongs to.
"Hyperlinking does not itself involve a violation of the Copyright Act," Hupp said in his ruling. "There is no deception in what is happening. This is analogous to using a library's card index to get reference to particular items, albeit faster and more efficiently."
Website designer Laszlo Pataki cheers the judge's decision but thinks that the case should have never gone to court.
"Why bring the lawyers in when there are simple technological fixes that could have solved the problem?" Pataki said. "For instance, Ticketmaster could have blocked all referrals from Tickets.com. That's an easy thing to do, so I suspect that by taking the legal route TicketMaster wanted to either get publicity or squish Tickets.com."
Pataki sympathizes with content creators' desires to keep people from 'piggybacking' their websites, but believes that Internet law should be based on what the technology allows you to do, not on legislation.
"Bottom line is if you stop people from linking then the Web is no longer a Web," he said. "It would become a collection of isolated chunks of information. The Web is based on the concept of hyperlinking out to other sites. And it worked fine for all concerned until the big corporations started setting up their cyber tents online."
Charles Conn, TicketMaster's CEO, says his company "is in favor of linking," but there has to be a difference between directly linking to information and "competitors linking to all of a site's content to build a business on the back of [another] company's site."
This isn't the first time companies have tried to legally ban deep linking. In April 1997 TicketMaster filed a lawsuit against Microsoft to stop MS' now-defunct Seattle Sidewalk Web from linking to TicketMaster's website. The case was settled when the two companies worked out an agreement to license TicketMasters' content.
And earlier this year, eBay tried to stop other auction sites such as AuctionWatch.com from providing listings and links to items offered for sale on eBay.
AuctionWatch announced Thursday that it had signed a licensing agreement with eBay, allowing AuctionWatch's users to search for items that are available on eBay's site.
Deep linking will be a difficult issue to settle in court, says intellectual property rights legal consultant Darren Deutschman, who is not surprised that most companies end up settling their differences without legal involvement.
"The deep linking issue attempts to answer the question that's been asked since the Internet first became part of the general public's consciousness: Is this medium a free source of information for the benefit of the people, or a controlled presentation of branded content that benefits commercial interests?" he said.
Deutschman believes that Hupp's ruling is a good thing, but worries at the effect that corporate content-licensing agreements will have on Internet culture. He fears that big corporations will "agree the real Net right into oblivion."
"I can envision a time when all the major commercial websites won't let you link to them without a licensing deal. This is a bad precedent for Joe or Jane Smith who wants to put up a little web log page about his or her hobbies or community. Will average folks be able to link out to a search site or a news wire page in a few years?"
This story was written by Michelle Finley
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There is no legal problem that I can see with this software. I am a law professor in the Mass Media Arts Communications Department at Clark Atlanta University

[Ed@Brighthand]

There is no legal problem that I can see with this software. I am a law professor in the Mass Media Arts Communications Department at Clark Atlanta University
Oh, it doesn't surprise me that that ComicsEdge is doing is legal. But, in my opinion anyway, it isn't an ethical practice.

If more programs, web sites, etc. make a practice of this, I suspect we'll end up with the comics having advertising embedded in them. For example, Dilbert will be three panels, and then there'll be a Pepsi ad in the same graphic.
.

[bjornkeizers]

We'll burn that bridge when we come to it :D

For now, I'm going to enjoy this neat little program, and I hope the author will add caching to it.

Oh and if it's at all possible, could you add a feature so we could add a comic ourselves? If you know the URL it shouldn't be too difficult at all.

[PPCRules]

Big bummer. If it stored like avantgo, It'd be a must-have app. ... Maybe someone could make a program like that?
Mazingo tried but couldn't make it. I don't know that it would be any easier today. Someone with deep pockets, maybe (Microsoft/Sync-n-go?).

[comicedgedev]

[quote=vincenzosi]
ComicEdge, on the other hand, is taking the contents from another site and presenting it in a way that the site owner has not approved. That's a very, very different thing.

comicedgedev, if you are certain that's nothing ethically wrong with what your application is doing, go to Universal Features Syndicate and the other owners of these comics and ask for permission to present their content in your application. To be honest, I'd be very surprised if they agreed without a significant licensing fee.

I'm not trying to pick a fight with you. I'm aware you're just this guy in a home office who came up with what you thought was a way to help other Pocket PC users, and you aren't making any money off it. But I can't agree with what you are doing. Probably it's because I'm a person who makes a living by coming up with content and then giving it away in exchange for people looking at advertising. If you did to Brighthand what you're doing to Comics.com, I would object very strongly.
.

Hi Ed. While I understand I'm definately knee deep in a gray area, I really think it'd be overreacting to say that I'm exploiting these comics in some sinister way.

I'm sure United Syndicates (&amp; most of the web comic artists) dont want me doing this. I've already gotten a nasty letter from a web comic (I removed his comic from the list yesterday). If United Syndicates really wants to protect its content, it'll hire 2 developers for a month to come up with a session based image system so images can only be accessed from web pages. I could probably whip up a solution to this in a day. However the sad truth is these companies would rather spend millions on their lawyers than spend a few thousand on developers.

And in the grand scheme of things, this isnt going to replace webcomics or newspapers. Try reading all the comics in the newspaper via ComicEdge. You'll be sitting there for half hour. Comics take 30-60 seconds to load for me since GPRS and smartphones are so slow.

I see ComicEdge as more of a comic promotion tool. I'm sure if some bigwhig at comics.com thought of it first, they'd give it out for free too since it gives people access to a lot of the lesser known comics. And the webcomics especially I would think would want more people using ComicEdge just so they get some comic views which will inevitably translate into pagehits.

Anyways, so just so everyone knows, ComicEdge probably has a limited lifespan for less than a year. I'll keep it up until the cease and desist letters start coming in strong. Though, armwood, if you want to give us some free legal advice, we'd be very grateful =)

[Wiggster]

I made myself a web-based comic aggregator a while back, and I faced this same ethical dilemma. The difference was, I decided that since it was for personal ease-of-use rather than for public use, I wasn't too worried about this. I got an angry letter from a web cartoonist, though, when he checked his referrers and wound up at my page. He fires off a letter that I'm stealing bandwidth, and I write back saying that I removed his comic, but it was actually saving bandwidth to do it my way. My aggregator would only load a comic once every x hours (12 by default), read the HTML page, parse through and grab the comic, then save it on my server. So, only 2 files were loading on the entire site: the home page, and the comic. He was actually really satisfied with the solution (he had no ad revenue, but still had to pay his hosting bills), and sent back a response saying I could aggregate his site if I wanted. However, I had sort of given up by that point, and stopped using my script. Still, I often thought about changing the script so it loads the advertisement from the comic's page and displays it on the aggregated page; that way, you still get ad impressions, and if it's for a good ad, you'll click it. It won't be the randomly rotating ad like it would on the actual page (what with the 12 hour caching), but it'd still work on a rudimentary level.

I still wonder if that would be a viable solution or not; take the comic and the advertisement and display them together.

[Don't Panic!]

I'd like to see Sluggy Freelance included in Online Comics.

Also a lot of people are getting a Cannot find Directory message when they try to start the program. Any idea how to work around that? Dell Axim's are the devices with the problem. Not mine though.