Friday,
December 14, 2001

Am I thinking of you, or am I just enjoying a Shatner moment? You decide.

Now, y'all know about my new Palm m505 and how it's a wonderous piece of kit. What you might not know, however, is that it is possible to download web pages to a Palm or other PDA and read them off-line using software such as AvantGo. The Man from McKinney, frex, uses his Palm to read the Onion and other delightfully subversive e-rags at lunch, and I've taken to using it for the same reason (and often with the same subversive e-rags).

The way this works is, you sign up with the AvantGo site (it's free), select the stuff you want to read (Salon, Sci-Fi Channel, BBC News, etc.) from their pre-set lists, then hotsync your PDA. Et voila -- instant reading material in the palm of your hand.

But AvantGo realized that you might not want to read anything on their lists, so they also created a function where you can set up custom "channels" that will download any website on the internet into your PDA. This is sweet because it lets you grab stuff from your favorite sites and carry it around with you anywhere, instead of tying you to your desk or laptop and that pesky internet connection. Want to read the Onion while you're sweating out another weekly meeting? Download it to your PDA. Want to read John Scalzi's Daily Whatever while you're stuck in traffic? Grab that puppy for off-line reading.

Want to read Nekkid, Clueless and Feelin' Good while you're in the john?

Well, now you can, and it's even simple to do because, hey, I'm all that when it comes to my readers. At the bottom of this page are a set of links -- if you have a PDA and are using AvantGo software, click on the NCaFG link to automatically create a custom channel in your AvantGo preferences. The next time you hotsync your PDA, you'll also download a copy of the most recent NCaFG entry. All Melanie, all the time -- I tell ya, it's irresistable.

If you have a PDA but aren't using AvantGo, what are you waiting for? Go, sign up, make your lunch break a whole new experience. You can thank me for it later.