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VisorCentral.com (http://discussion.visorcentral.com/vcforum/index.php)
- Visor General Chat (http://discussion.visorcentral.com/vcforum/forumdisplay.php?forumid=31)
-- AvantGoing...Going.... (http://discussion.visorcentral.com/vcforum/showthread.php?threadid=18091)

Posted by Keefer Lucas on 09-05-2001 06:24 PM:

AvantGoing...Going....

While we are on the topic of best Avantgo news channel (see string below) its also a good time to consider how much longer Avantgo can even stay in business. It is unquestionably a great service, but the company's stock price has deterioated to near penny status (Motley Fool has closed its bulletin board on the company as they don't want to promote penny stock trading).

I can't help but wonder what a post-Avantgo world would look like. My guess is that we would get a Microsoft oriented replacement app that would be yet another nail in the Palm OS coffin.

Frankly, I'd much rather pay $20 annual subscription fee for Avango than see it go out of business.

Posted by dick-richardson on 09-05-2001 07:32 PM:

$20 annually? I agree.

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Posted by Madkins007 on 09-05-2001 08:45 PM:

I think it would be smarter marketing on their part to offer a tiered service- some sort of selection of channels for free, a wider selection for so much a year ($15-30 seems good), and literally everything for either a monthly (say $3-6) or annual subscription.

I also am looking forward to the day SOMEONE opens a Palm-oriented ISP with fair rates and services for our type of use. Seems that AvantGo should have the know-how and marketting base to make this work.

Posted by Keefer Lucas on 09-05-2001 09:40 PM:

quote:
Originally posted by Madkins007
I think it would be smarter marketing on their part to offer a tiered service- some sort of selection of channels for free, a wider selection for so much a year ($15-30 seems good), and literally everything for either a monthly (say $3-6) or annual subscription.


I agree wholeheartedly; I am afraid Avantgo doesn't have the luxury of waiting around much longer for the corporate server market to take off and effectively subsidize the free service we all enjoy.

Unfortunately neither Palm or Handspring are in a good position to offer financial support to Avantgo. It is difficult to fully appreciate just how much the Avantgo service puts their product in front of users eyeballs....without Avantgo my VDX would stay in my pocket a hell of a lot more than it does now.

Posted by flips13 on 09-05-2001 09:59 PM:

quote:
Originally posted by Keefer Lucas Unfortunately neither Palm or Handspring are in a good position to offer financial support to Avantgo.

I am not sure that Handspring would want to subsidize Avantgo, when it has the Blazer product that does more or less the same.

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Posted by ashmed on 09-05-2001 10:17 PM:

I agree that switching to an annual fee would be good for them (I'd pay it). I personally LOVE avantgo because it gives me information that is important to me daily but does not nag me about it like setting up alerts or whatever on your cell phone. If I want to know movie times or news i just pull it out and its right there. I had my cell phone send me news and weather for about a month, the only problem was that when it received this stuff it beeped and got really annoying. Sometimes I don't care about the news or weather but when I do I want the information right there right then. Avantgo fits the bill perfectly.

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Posted by Keefer Lucas on 09-05-2001 10:24 PM:

quote:
Originally posted by flips13

I am not sure that Handspring would want to subsidize Avantgo, when it has the Blazer product that does more or less the same.


I consider Blazer a pure pocket browser, not the nifty hybrid that Avantgo is, the ideal combination of both browser and text optimized site content that Avantgo offers.

I wasn't entirely serious about Handspring offering Avantgo assistance (these dayes they might be able to extend a case of Piels to the development team); I merely wanted to highlight just how much the Avantgo product is responsible for usage of their products.

Posted by flips13 on 09-05-2001 10:40 PM:

quote:
Originally posted by Keefer Lucas
I consider Blazer a pure pocket browser, not the nifty hybrid that Avantgo is, the ideal combination of both browser and text optimized site content that Avantgo offers.

Isn't that what Blazer does as well? When HS bought Blazer & made it a pay product, they changed the proxy server so you would have to purchase the updated application. Doesn't sound like an actual browser to me any more than Avantgo is a hybrid.

The key part is that Avantgo is clearly the leader in having a great selection of channels available already. These channels are nothing more than (mostly) text based HTML. Anybody can make text based content for Avantgo, it will work equally as well in Blazer, as well as any PC based browser.

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Posted by Keefer Lucas on 09-05-2001 11:24 PM:

quote:
Originally posted by flips13

Anybody can make text based content for Avantgo, it will work equally as well in Blazer, as well as any PC based browser.


This is true, though its virtually impossible to locate the html file locations that Avantgo content partners use to access with Blazer, YadaYada or any other Palm-based browser app.

Posted by acajigas on 09-06-2001 04:54 AM:

I agree with the part where you guys say that we should pay something a year. However, I don't agree with the amount of money you guys suggest. I guess they will have to brake things under at least 3 different categories:

1. Free AvantGo:
-2 Personalize channels
-2 Existing channels



2. 10 a year AvantGo:
-4 Personalize channels
-4 Existing channels

3. 20 a year AvantGo:
-16 channels either one you would like.

This way the ones that really use AvantGo A LOT get to pay more and the ones that occationally use it. I guess it might be the ones that have fewer channels will keep using it for free.

Make sense? Let me know..

Al

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Posted by heed on 09-06-2001 05:28 AM:

I have THREE avantgo accounts with the max number of channels or MB's on each, so needless to say I use it a lot. Hey, if Avantgo goes belly up, would anyone else be interested in getting together a group of investors (less than a hundred) to buy up what's left of Avantgo and do the subscription thing? Just a thought....hmm...now if I can just sell my worm farm and Elvis velvet collection....

Posted by Keefer Lucas on 09-06-2001 11:58 AM:

quote:
Originally posted by heed
Hey, if Avantgo goes belly up, would anyone else be interested in getting together a group of investors (less than a hundred) to buy up what's left of Avantgo and do the subscription thing?

If we opened the investment group up to 125 we might be able to pick up Handspring too.

Posted by flips13 on 09-06-2001 02:52 PM:

quote:
Originally posted by Keefer Lucas
This is true, though its virtually impossible to locate the html file locations that Avantgo content partners use to access with Blazer, YadaYada or any other Palm-based browser app.

Which IMHO is where Blazer somewhat dropped the ball.

Avantgo make is very easy for the end user to find channels via it's web site, and configure those channels, again, via it's web site.

For the developer, they make it very easy to market their Avantgo channel via Avantgo's web site. They provide links for the developer to use to add channels to an end users account, and even if it is not an "official" channel, the developer can still use those links (think PalmStories).

What could be really interesting, if someone out there made an open source version of these services, but did not do any of the hosting of proxy servers. That would be up to the individual/company they work for. You could have a couple flavors of the proxy server, one that would work on a server providing access to many people, and one that was only geared to the desktop serving the person that uses that computer.

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Posted by Keefer Lucas on 09-06-2001 03:05 PM:

quote:
Originally posted by flips13

What could be really interesting, if someone out there made an open source version of these services, but did not do any of the hosting of proxy servers.


From a software standpoint all the proxy server actually does is create the potential for a subscription based service. There is no reason, from the software development standpoint, that you couldn't load a channel directly from the site host server.

Posted by mcristia on 09-06-2001 03:08 PM:

quote:
Originally posted by flips13
Avantgo make is very easy for the end user to find channels via it's web site, and configure those channels, again, via it's web site.

Do any of you use iSilo ro iSiloWeb as an alternative? Wondering what the +/- of this are, other than the fact that it looks like you have to be more active in identifying URLs you want synced.

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Posted by flips13 on 09-06-2001 03:13 PM:

quote:
Originally posted by Keefer Lucas
From a software standpoint all the proxy server actually does is create the potential for a subscription based service. There is no reason, from the software development standpoint, that you couldn't load a channel directly from the site host server.


That is correct, but if you have a wireless connection at a whopping 14.4, do you really want to download all those images from non-handheld friendly sites? Then if you do, do you really want to shrink down the size of a large JPG file using the 16 or 33mHz processor in your Palm? Let the PC / server handle those jobs. They have more horsepower for shrinking images and (hopefully) a faster internet connection.

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Posted by flips13 on 09-06-2001 03:36 PM:

quote:
Originally posted by mcristia
Do any of you use iSilo ro iSiloWeb as an alternative? Wondering what the +/- of this are, other than the fact that it looks like you have to be more active in identifying URLs you want synched.

I do not currently use iSilo / or iSilo web. I tried it at one point, but I was looking for a DOC reader at the time, not a web browser, and prefer the common DOC format for it's portability and the fact that I can modify these directly on my handheld via Wordsmith.

The iSiloWeb was not available at the time. It appears that the ISweb does run off of the desktop, but it converts the web pages to iSilo format, and to get images and full formatting, you need the iSilo paid version. I also don't think that you can surf the web in "real time" the way you can with Avantgo / Blazer. With either of these and an Internet connection, you can access most any web page (via the proxy server). This looks as though it is a step towards the open source bit I mentioned earlier.

As far as finding the URL's you want synched, that doesn't bother me too much. I work as a web developer and look at code all the time.

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Posted by Toby on 09-06-2001 03:48 PM:

quote:
Originally posted by Keefer Lucas
This is true, though its virtually impossible to locate the html file locations that Avantgo content partners use to access with Blazer, YadaYada or any other Palm-based browser app.
That's by design. IIRC, AvantGo content providers have to agree not to make their channels available through any other method to show up on AvantGo's service.

Posted by flips13 on 09-06-2001 04:19 PM:

quote:
Originally posted by Toby
That's by design. IIRC, AvantGo content providers have to agree not to make their channels available through any other method to show up on AvantGo's service.

I guess that makes VisorCentral in violation of that agreement since they have a link to http://www.visorcentral.com/mobile/ on the page http://www.visorcentral.com/page/0-12-0-12.htm

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Posted by Toby on 09-06-2001 05:27 PM:

quote:
Originally posted by flips13
I guess that makes VisorCentral in violation of that agreement since they have a link to http://www.visorcentral.com/mobile/ on the page http://www.visorcentral.com/page/0-12-0-12.htm
But is that the same directory that AvantGo is served out of? Apparently, it's for performance reasons (but I seem to recall several sites not using AvantGo because of exclusive content requirements, so either their policy changed or wasn't very clear originally). From AvantGo's page:
quote:
Restrict access to AvantGo sync servers only.
Again, this does not mean you need to provide your content exclusively to AvantGo (feel free to mirror it in another directory), but we do ask that your AvantGo-specific directories are available only to AvantGo servers.

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