Hey Jake/Joe,

As a PDA user, I find the ability to read websites offline (on the PDA) very useful. What do you think the chances are for implementing a "to Go" version of TWW? Something we could read in Avantgo or whatever...I would find this particularly useful for the Message Boards. Whaddya (and the other TWW PDA users) think?

-bigginal

12/5/2001 3:35:20 PM

i looked into it once. i even downloaded a WAP (wireless access protocol) browser for windows. i basically concluded that WAP (or more specifically WML) SUCKED. it was hard to navigate and very little information could actually be presented. i really can't imagine what we would even present on a screen that is 30 chars x 6 rows. there is just too much information and nothing that really lends itself to a small screen.

I'm not even sure exactly what Avantgo is. I went to the website. it looks like just a service or software that let users access their outlook or lotus notes info.

if you have any specific suggestions, i'm open.

12/5/2001 4:02:03 PM

Avantgo provides a synchronization service that (among other things) allows you to read websites offline. I would agree that WML and WAP aren't all that pretty, and that a small screen isn't the ideal place to view large amounts of information, but that isn't really what I am trying to do/accomplish. Just FYI, the Handspring fits ~13 lines of info in the Avantgo client (see http://ami.avantgo.com/channels/ for an image of the client), and the width varies with font size, but a probable max of 35 characters. The idea behind this was to be able to catch up with threads in the Lounge, etc, and maybe post to them from the PDA (on the next Hotsync). Avantgo creates 'channels' which are basically the downloaded sites on your PDA. What I would think would be to create a channel for TWW:x (where x is the name of the forum to Hotsync). You can see info about creating AvantGo channels at http://ami.avantgo.com/channels/. I've even created a custom channel for TWW:Tech Talk (I haven't had the chance to Hotsync and test it yet tho) that people can add to their subscribed channels at http://avantgo.com/mydevice/autoadd.html?title=TWW%3A%20Tech%20Talk&url=http%3A%2F%2Fthewolfweb.com%2Fmessage_section.aspx%3Fsection%3D3&max=500&depth=1&images=0&links=0&refresh=always&hours=1&dflags=0&hour=0&quarter=00&s=00...I haven't looked into becoming a content/channel provider for Avantgo, but it is something that might prove interesting. Does this clear things up any? Feel free to send me TWW mail, respond here, IM, etc. if there are any questions...

-bigginal

PS- the only tough part about this (that I can see), is minimizing the memory footprint on the PDA. The channel I created above has a 500KB max, and I don't yet know that that is enough to contain all of the information on the first page of Tech Talk. I'm not allowing images to be stored either, meaning that there won't be any of the TWW ads/logos in view. As you can imagine, 500k is a lot of memory on a 8mb PDA...

[Edited on December 5, 2001 at 4:34 PM. Reason : Add info re: images]

12/5/2001 4:29:44 PM

wow, now thats an addiction... its bad enough checking tww on vacation.

12/5/2001 9:52:01 PM

OK, I just checked my custom channel, and it looks like it works fairly well. It actually looks much better than I thought it would. I am just slightly running over the 500KB file size limit. I would think that the best solution to minimize memory usage is to provide another access point into TWW, something like http://pda.thewolfweb.com, which would carry a bare minimum of 'message board' links only. By this I mean removing the links on the top bar:

Home, Calendar, Books, Rides, Photo Gallery, Mail, Users, Statistics, Premium, Contact Us, Help

Okay, a few of those links may be useful to have on the PDA, but let's work on one thing at a time, eh?

I am thinking that http://pda.thewolfweb.com could have (on the front page) links to each of the different message boards in a specialized PDA format (without the links discussed above). This would require a rewrite of the headers for the site, but once we got that worked out, we should be in business, as the backend would remain the same (the posting area will look the same). Let me know what you guys think.

-bigginal

12/5/2001 11:05:04 PM

a computer geek without a computer, but all the amenities.

12/6/2001 12:00:11 AM

You're darned straight Aegis, but I do have the computers to match all my 'amenities'

-bigginal

12/6/2001 9:22:17 AM

What....the.....hell?

12/6/2001 11:02:34 AM

Oh, come on! There's gotta be people here who would like to read TWW on their PDA!

-bigginal

12/6/2001 12:58:24 PM

1 i don't have a pda (buy me one?)
and 2 i already spend too much time on this.

replying on a pda then goign to hot sync would never work cause you'd reply to the last message or some other message but wouldn't post it till hours later and so much more would have happened since then.

12/6/2001 1:30:00 PM

Can I get TWW implanted directly into my brain? Then I could have 24/7 access.

12/6/2001 6:36:00 PM