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!

My new Gadgets – just before going home

After nearly two years away from home, I’ll be taking the morning flight tomorrow to Pontianak for a little stretch of holiday and election. Hence, I feel like this is a checkpoint, where I should at least save something here before moving forward. I figure then I would just keep within this box of what notable things I’ve spent my money for in the recent months.

Sennheiser PX100

Bought on February 28, 2009. I’ve been aiming for this piece for at least the last few months and finally I went all the way to Computer Mega Bazaar just to get my very own impulse heightened and could no more push the urge away. Superb bass, light-weight and nice compact flip and fold design, the money spent indeed proved to be worthy.

Sennheiser PX100

HTC Prophet

This thing has been keeping me for a while busy toying with the stuff: unlocking, migrating to Windows Mobile 6.1, trying out many different softwares. As you may have noticed though, this is no new model. The obsolete gadget was indeed second hand and bought at March 5, 2009. Nevertheless though, it’s indeed a good buy since I could just play around without worrying too much that I would break the stuff since in fact, it’s relatively cheap.

HTC Prophet AKA Dopod 818 Pro

Premiere Ticket

I know this may sounds funny and bumpkin, but finally just today, on April 7, I had the chance to get myself sitting on the comfy chair of the Premiere Theatre, covered by the warm blanket. Too bad, the movie was only perfect until its last 15 minutes. Once you reach its final of final climax, everything turns sour and reminds you of the disastrous “The day the earth stood still”.

As of the theatre though, that was by far my best experience of watching a movie in cinema. Just the super superb sound quality and effect you’d need to make you chicken-ing out during the horror/thriller movie, only at the slightly chear price of what? The far worse Cathay at Singapore?  I vote revisiting here for Transformers 2!

Premiere Ticket - Knowing

I guess it’s enough of blabbering. I need to finish up packing since it’s already 1.30 AM. Can’t wait to finally step again the soil of my hometown. Ciao!

Introducing the Old and New NCKIA 5700++ XpressMusic

In order to counter the successful Walkman branding of Sony Ericsson, Nokia has crowded the market with a list of XpressMusic and Music Edition series. One of the most famous of the series would be the Nokia 5700 which features uncommon Swivel design and huge screen. I finally got my hand to give the mobile phone a try.

"Nokia" 5700

Let’s give the mobile phone a closer look. The phone features the white reddish stripes on the casing giving the trendy look aimed for youngsters who want to appear stylish.

The front panel

The back panel

Oops, while it appears almost identical, needless to say actually it’s a chinese made clone of the famous NOKIA 5700 branded as the NCKIA 5700++ XpressMusic! The phone itself has quite different features contra the original. It lacks the swivel part of the original NOKIA 5700.

The screen of the phone itself however is actually a touch screen which operating can be done with a stylus or hand. Unfortunately, the screen is not that sensitive that operating by hand would use extra effort.

The clone is equipped with a huge touch screen

The phone, unlike the original, also features dual GSM sim card which both can be online at the same time. Besides that, it also comes with a very huge battery : 2600 mAh that offers very long lifetime minimizing the necessity to recharge the phone.

The gigantic 2600 mAh Battery and dual sim card slot

The phone uses the micro SD slot as the expansion and features very indentical UI to the original phone.

The UI. Picture taken from http://nokia.solnew.com/2007/07/17/another-nokia-5700-xpressmusic-clone

The phone also comes with dual camera (VGA front, and 1.3 Mpixel on the backpanel), stereo bluetooth -A2DP support- and stereo speakers which offers pretty good quality of voice. What comes better, the phone is sold at a very cheap bargain : Rp. 800.000,- or equals to 90 USD.

So, if you’re not a Nokia hardcore fans, not caring about bringing cloned product will hurt your pride, looking for a phone with plentiful features at cheap price, and not having problem with product hijacking, this phone maybe a choice for you. After all, to the phone’s owner confession he has used the phone for eight months without problem, hence the build quality may not be that bad after all.

The owner with his proud NCKIA 5700++ XpressMusic

Are you interested?