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AvantGo provides a free mobile Internet service for Palm, Pocket PC and Windows CE devices. With it, you may get regular downloads of information from websites you choose, every time you sync. So with your FREE subscription, you might choose the daily headlines from the New York Times, CNN, or the latest news from BioMed Central.
AvantGo offers over 1,500 pre-selected sites, also known as "channels," for general news, weather, technology tips, sports, health information and more.
Custom channels are also available. For this service, you get to choose any site, anywhere on the 'Net (so long as it's publicly accessible). Just think - you could make the JEFFLINE Forum a custom channel on your Palm!
What's the advantage? It's an easy way to keep up to date, not only on the popular news of the day, but professional news as well. Tables of contents of some journals are becoming available, so it's a convenient way of scanning for further reading.
How do you get AvantGo for your handheld?
- From your desktop computer, go to http://www.avantgo.com/
- Click the New User? Sign Up button and follow the easy screen-by-screen instructions to download the AvantGo software and set up your free account.
- This should take about 5 minutes.
How do you choose channels?
- Once your account is set up, log in with your password.
- Now you have a personal page, and a "My Account" box, which shows your current profile of channels.
- Choose from the pre-selected AvantGo channels by browsing the topic options on the left of the page. Click the + sign to add any of interest. When you are done adding content, logout of AvantGo.
- The selected channel will be added to your profile, and the next time you sync, the new content will be available on your handheld.
- Pre-selected health contents of AvantGo include CollectiveMed, DocCheck, HandheldMed, pdaMD, BioMed Central, and more.
AvantGo Health categories
What about custom channels?
- Click the Create Channel button on your My Account box.
- Give the URL of the Web site and call it something you'll recognize on your list of sites. Example: The URL http://jeffline.tju.edu/Education/forum/ and name JEFFLINE Forum.
- Tell AvantGo how much of the site you want to see. We recommend the following settings to start with, so you don't wind up with too much content, but the choice is up to you. Bear in mind you can always change your settings at any time.
Maximum Channel Size: 100K (or less)
Link Depth: 3 (or less)
Include Images: No
Follow Off-Site Links: No
Create Channel Screen
- Tell AvantGo how frequently to update (refresh) the site. The common default is to update it whenever you sync, assuming you sync once a day. Bear in mind that the more channels you have loaded, the more time it will take to complete a sync. Common selections of 5-6 channels may add 1-5 minutes to your sync time.
- Click the Save Channel button and logout when done.
- The next time you sync, the new site will be added to your handheld.
To access your channels on your handheld, touch the new AvantGo icon on your screen. It will show a menu of your channels. Use the menu just like a Web browser, touching links to show pages, and using the back arrow at the top of your screen to back up a level in the hierarchy.
AvantGo is one of the easiest ways to get started using your PDA for daily updates. Check it out today!
Next month's topic: Downloading individual applications for your PDA.
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