A1000blog

Mobile newsreading explodes

I am trying to catch up when it comes to mobile newsreading. After my vacation I saw that Jon from Freerange Communications commented about a new version of FreeNews and John from LiteFeeds sent me an e-mail about their new version. John also pointed to a recent Engadget poll about mobile newsreaders.

While digging into all this my first impression is that the number of alternatives are exploding. This will probably be the last checkout I will do for quite I while. As soon as I have decided which reader I will use I will update you on that.

FreeNews two fwd but many bksp

In sum, for me FreeNews is two steps forward (very fast and easy to e-mail articles), but several steps backward. The lack of wired/wireless feedreading sync is the main drawback (litefeeds has that, as well as some of those readers that Steve mention). Furthermore, there are no links in the stuff you download, not even to the source web page.

It's been a (relatively) long time since I did/posted anything about mobile newsreading (see that category). The combination of that I had to start paying for 3G data traffic and the disappearance of doHeadlines reduced my motivation for wireless feedcatching. In addition, I've turned more and more towards podcatching and as we all know - time is limited. Well, I did install FreeNews a couple of weeks ago but never really used it.

Today Steve Rubel posted in his Micro Persuasion that FreeNews is a winner. That made me sign up for the trial service and play a little bit more with it. After about 30 minutes I can say that I'm not thrilled. But I will give FreeNews it's 7 days and we'll see.

While I wrote this entry I checked the e-mail article feature. An excellent thing is that you can optionally define "nicknames" through FreeNews web site. That makes it possible to within a few seconds, and without much typing, send a story to others, or as in my case - to myself. Suggestions to the developers: a) let the user select a nickname instead of typing it into the mobile newsreader; b) make a "e-mail me this story" button.

World Premiere: Mobile podcatcher

This Saturday I am participating as a panelist about "Advanced blogging" at Bloggforum 2.0 in Stockholm. During that session there will be a sneak preview of, as far as I know, the first mobile newsreader [update 2005-05-31: I should have specified on a Symbian or Java platform, iPodder lists a few readers for other mobile platforms] that manages enclosures - that is, MP3 files. Through an intelligent use of block-streaming it is also possible to listen to the podcasts before they are fully downloaded. Very cool!

The Java based RSS-reader is developed by the Swedish entreprenuer and technologist Erik Hedenström. More details will follow...

doHeadlines did not do it

May 4th "Piet" commented that it was impossible to order doHeadlines. After some checking up I have learned that they are out of business. Too bad. The Swedish Riksdag (Parliament) seems to go for Handy Day 2005 Professional. I might follow. But for the moment I have other things to do than figuring out if I should keep Tracker and find another newsreader (like Litefeeds reader) or switch to Handy Day.

Wire(less) newsreading

By now it is the second week that I have to pay for data traffic. This has dramatically changed my newsreading habits, i.e. how I monitor a selection of blogs.

As you probably guess, I use doHeadlines (my mobile newsreader) less frequently. Maybe heavy wireless reading is not very expensive? I do not know, because while 3 Sweden provides easily accessed information about voice costs, it is harder to assess the cost for data traffic.

So, I increasingly use Bloglines, a wired Web based feed aggregator. Now the problem is that Bloglines is not synched with any mobile wireless reader. That means I tend to get the feeds twice (both on Bloglines and in doHeadlines). Kind of irritating.

If I remember it right, litefeeds one of the mobile newsreaders I tried (in beta) offered some kind of wired/wireless integration. Suddenly a feature that knows what I have read, regardless which reader I used, has become more valuable. I must go back and check with litefeeds...

Issues with doHeadlines

Because I use doHeadlines a lot I found a minor problem with it rather frustrating. It simply does not get any new news from feeds handled by Feedburner (a popular feed value adding service provider used by many bloggers).

This weekend I informed doHeadline's support. They promptly responded that they were aware of the problem. A new version is in beta (I got it to try, but it's not ready yet).

The new version (v1.22) will also add the following features, which I really welcome:

Added import from OPML Fixed compatibility with a number of RSS feed sites Continues to update all feeds even if there was an error Added French translations

Tested Litefeeds (beta)

A couple of weeks ago (when writing about newsfeeders) I was invited to try out an early beta version of Litefeeds. Today I finally got the opportunity to do it, and I liked what I saw (except that it is far from fully functional). Litefeeds is (going to be) both a Web-based news aggregator (compare Bloglines) and a mobile newsreader that is integrated with the feeds you set up with the Web version. The latter is a Java(J2ME) application which should work on the A1000. (It did on mine, but not without bugs - it is a beta).

Anyway, if the people behind Litefeeds continue to develop this product, it's going to provide value beyond the other UIQ newsreaders I've tried. Looking forward...

Adding feeds made easier

My post yesterday about the Swedish Riksdag and doHeadlines seems to be spreading. At least two other bloggers have made trackbacks to the entry (i.e. linked entries on their blogs into my post). As I read the trackback from Media Culpa I decided to put that blog's feed into my newsreader (doHeadlines) in the A1000. Earlier I wrote that it was not possible to enter feed URLs into doHeadlines by pasting. But the other day I recognized a little drop-down arrow at some input screens which drops down a cut/paste menu. Sure enough, doHeadlines hade that feature although I had not seen it before. So, I emailed the feed URL to my A1000 and copied it (see the first screen shot).

Then I started doHeadlines, selected "Add feed" and hit the drop-down arrow. Viola! I was able to paste the URL (see second screen shot) and click "Verify" to get the feed name and recent posts from Media Culpa. A small step for a blogger.

p.s. Since I dont have the USB cable with me I e-mailed the screen shots from my A1000 to my laptop while making this post through Typepads Web interface.

Me and the members of the Riksdag

I learned today that the Swedish Riksdag has purchased 50 licences of the RSS/newsreader doHeadlines, which I found best for my purposes some time ago (see my review). All 349 members of the Swedish Riksdag has a SonyEricsson P910 and some of them should now be able to get web feeds.

BTW, Erik Stattin noted a few weeks ago in his mymarkup.net that English MPs are forbidden to use Blackberries, see BBC News)

Paid for doHeadlines

Last week the trial period for the newsreaders I evalated came to an end (see earlier posts for an overview and early experiences). When I missed reading news for the third day in a row I decided to buy doHeadlines (from Handango).

The purchase four days ago was a little bit tricky. To begin with Handango needed the IMEI number of the phone, which I have noted in a file on my PC. But entering those 16 digits into the four fields at Handango was no fun (could not paste and I had to think I while before I figured out how many digits should go in each field).

Then the registration failed (in hindsight I might have entered the wrong code, but I doubt that). I immediately e-mailed the support at Fireseed (doHeadline's developer) who stated "At fireseed we guarantee we will respond to all support questions within 1 working day". Well, it took some days before I got the reply.

Today I got a respnse from Fireseed and the support person really apologized and explained the delay. For me it's OK, things happen and life is more than newsreading. Anyway, attached to the support e-mail was a newer version of doHeadlines (1.21.8). I bluetoothed it over, installed, registered and was up and newsreading within a couple of minutes. Update at 19:20, I found version 1.21.8 unstable so I replaced it with 1.21.5.

Tomorrow I will talk about blogging at the Web Service Award Event 2005 (in Stockholm) and look forward to demonstrate mobile newsreading of A1000blog (and some other feeds).