News on the Move with Offline RSS Reader on Mobile Device

RSS feeds has actually been a part of my internet experience for quite a while. It really helps me to read news efficiently, minimising the overhead time needed to click between pages of websites and save my time to select the important news. But nowadays, as the job gets tighter and the time gets lesser, I have even tinier and tinier time space to read my fav news provider and blogs which is very much disturbing me. I come to realize that the best free time I have is usually during my commute in the trains or buses, hence I need to find a way to compress everything into my mobile device.

I did quite a research and trial on quite lots of RSS reader out there available for my Windows Mobile device: Viigo, Ibrow,NewsReader,goNewsTouch, but none really satisfied me. As my PPC is not a powerful device, only equipped with 200 Mhz TI-OMAP, I really need to find an RSS reader which is lightweight, efficient, but still powerful and maintain a professional look. I finally fall in love with pRSSreader for its simplicity but elegant, very lightweight, and  features important features like RSS image icons, RSS groupings/channels and most importantly very nice articles caching and offline-mode which allows you to download all the contents of RSS and keep them in your device without the necessity to reconnect to the internet later.

Offline-mode is very important to me as I don’t have any data plan for my mobile device which will be very expensive if I have to download articles per KB base. Not to mention, my old device doesn’t support 3G yet which will even lessen the experience of online reading due to slow data transfer. It even has a weak battery. With the offline feature in the pRSSreader, I can download the feeds while my device is USB cradled (active sync) and charged during my stay in the office or at home so it can use my notebook internet which of course will be faster and most importantly – free. Later, I can read the updates during my commute.

Even the offline-mode will still be very convenient for the more powerful device-owners with good data plan. Downloading using the home broadband typically will still be faster plus it can save your battery during your commute. Also, since the page is cached, you can switch rapidly between articles.

pRSSreader on my HTC Prophet

The real challenge is now in finding those RSS news feeders which provides full text article instead of just a synopsis or even merely the header of the articles. This is important since you won’t have to connect to the internet later from your device just to read the full article which is on the websites. While this is easy for casual blogs, technology or health blogs as they mostly provide full article in their feeds, but as for the news websites, this can be pretty challenging. Local news content like detik, vivanews, straitstimes, to the international: BBC, CNN, yahoo, typically provide only partial RSS feeds which is of course logical. Those articles may only be provided for premium services or they want more clicks on their website which substantially will create more revenues.

Some news websites below provide full text rss feeds:

- theguardians ( UK news paper)

- engadget (Tech blog)

- techcrunch (Tech blog)

- todayonline (Singapore weekly paper)

- boing boing (event blog)

- BBC website through feedburners are also already hacked for their full contents article such as: http://feeds.feedburner.com/bbcnewsenglandfullfeed

Hope this article helps. This tips should work for any operating system if you can find an RSS reader that supports caching for your device. Please let me know if you happen to know any Indonesia local news full text RSS provider. Or if anyone is keen to hack them, please let me know the result. The how-to is provided in the net (just google them). Happy reading!

Exporting Friendster Blog to WordPress

A friend of mine, Alpin, asked me how to move his friendster blog to WordPress. It actually also took me quite a time to look for a way. I’ll explain the steps below.

Q : Is there a way to directly import my posts from my FS blog to WP like you can do with blogspot or livejournal?
A : There’s no way to do that. WordPress can’t import the posts of friendster blog directly.

Q : Is there really no way to import my posts?
A : Call my name three times then I’ll show you how!

Q : Adrian! Adrian! Adrian!
A : Well sorry, but I can’t help you, still, since I’m not the owner of wordpress, I can’t change its features. But, since you have called my name 3 times, I’ll tell you a workaround.

Q : A workaround? How?
A : You can move your friendster blog in these easy steps :

First login to your friendster, open “My Blog Home”, then choose “Edit Post”.

Choose “Import / Export”.

Locate export post on the bottom of the page, then right click on the link and choose “Save Target As”. Save it with any name you like.

Then, login to your wordpress account, hit “Manage”, then click “Import”. Choose “Movable Type and TypePad”.

Finally, choose your file and hit “Upload file and import”. Wait a bit, then you’ll be taken to whether you want to change your fs username. After that click continue.

Voila, your friendster blog has been imported to WordPress.

Q : Will this way work with another blogsite?
A : I suppose so as long as the blog provider support importing from “Movable Type” or “TypePad”.