I really love AvantGo...been using it for years. So it seemed timely to write this up in the blogger.
It makes a wonderful addition to PDA applications. And you can't beat the price - FREE.
I especially like the following channels:
AccuWeather.com - current weather for up to two predefined locations
American Airlines - flight schedules at your fingertips
CNET - news at your fingertips
USATODAY.com - headlines from USA today
There is one other channel that until recently was really useful: the Yahoo! channel. Problem was it has issues with moving data from your Yahoo portal to AvantGo. It recently stopped giving news and movie schedules-stuff I use most, so I found a way to fix the problem.
After doing some web research, I found out that there appears to be some problem which has been around for a while, but remains unresolved. I was really bummed, because I grown spoiled to having a really good movie reviews and showtimes feed (MovieMinder).
AvantGo knows about this problem and I also told Yahoo Mobile. The work around from AvantGo was to use Hollywood.com. Unfortunately, Hollywood.com doesn't quite measure up - actually, it doesn't even come close. On the other hand, Yahoo!'s movie section on their portal is really good. But, that was one of the features that didn't work on the AvantoGo channel. I had just about given up, when I was inspired to do a search on web and found some info about in a Yahoo! search (as opposed to a Google search). Yahoo! has a WAP service, but trying to use the pda on-line is subject to your connectivity, and AvantGo stores pages when you are not connected. So the WAP pages work great as Personal Channels on AvantGo! If you started with the URL for the main Yahoo! WAP pages: http://wap.oa.yahoo.com/ , that choice requires customized information for some of the sub-pages, and your interface must support cookies, which AvantGo channels do not.
Fortunately, there is another work-around. Rather than configuring the main page as a channel, you can configure each of the sub-pages as a channel. Using this method, you can use a URL which includes the identifying information needed to generate the desired results. The easiest way to do this is to open the Yahoo! WAP page in your PC's browser, then navigate to each of the sub-pages, filling in the required identifier (usually your zip code), then copying the address of the resulting page into the Personal Channel configuration screen in AvantGo.
TIP: after you set up each page, make sure to click on the Personal Channels link to open a new default Personal Channel page. If you just go edit the name and URL after clicking the "save channel" button, only your last entry will actually be saved.
For example, for the Yahoo! Movies page for theaters in an area, the URL is: http://acid1.oa.yahoo.com/mbl/mov/home?&addr=&ct=YOURCITY&st=YOURSTATE&zip=YOURZIP&air=
Weather is http://wap.oa.yahoo.com/raw?dp=weather&&addr=&ct=YOURCITY&st=YOURSTATE&zip=YOURZIP&air=
(where YOURCITY, YOURSTATE, YOURZIP would be replaced with values for your desired location) My weather info is still working via Yahoo! directly.
News is http://wap.oa.yahoo.com/raw?dp=news
Hope this helps you set up the channels.
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