Interment.net Announces its Mobile Edition
by Steve Paul Johnson, October 5, 2000
Do you have a handheld computer such as the Handspring
Visor, the Palm, the Sony
Clié, or a Windows
CE based device? If you do, then subscribe to our new Mobile Edition.
You'll love it!
The Mobile Edition is like a miniature version of our site. It is optimized
for viewing on the small screen. Here's what it will give you:
- The latest news and articles on The Cemetery Column
- A list of newest cemetery transcriptions on Cemetery Records Online
- Tips submitted by our visitors
- News about Interment.net
In the future we will be adding some more features. We're currently lining
up some regular columnists to feature their writings for The Cemetery
Column, and those too will be on the Mobile Edition.
So, why did we choose to do this? Well, we see the world becoming more
and more mobile. It should already be evident with the proliferation of
mobile phones. Handheld computers sales are booming. Palm and Handspring
just cannot make enough of these devices. Handheld Global Positioning
System (GPS) devices are booming too. We're turning into a handheld world.
The United States is actually way behind the times. Countries like Finland,
Japan, Taiwan, Germany, are already handheld dependent. In those countries
they're like the U.S. equivalent of televisions: you're "strange"
if you don't have one. It's just a matter of time before Americans become
that mobile.
Another reason we chose to do this is because web-based publishing has
a serious disadvantage: it's not portable. Traditional print-based media
such as the newspaper and magazine can be read anywhere, anytime. Unfortunately,
you can't surf the 'net while having lunch at Taco Bell.
The Mobile Edition is portable. As long as you have your handheld computer,
you have our content, and you can browse it anywhere, at anytime. All
you have to do is a one time set up, and then it automatically gets downloaded
to your device whenever you run a "sync". A "sync"
is the act of synchronizing the information in your device with a number
of external sources, such as your PC, Outlook, or a website.
To subscribe to our Mobile Channel, you must have the AvantGo client
application installed on your handheld computer. AvantGo is like a offline
web browser. The Mobile Edition is simply a website optimized for viewing
on a handheld platform. AvantGo grabs the pages from the Mobile Edition,
and copies them to your handheld. When you are away from the Internet,
you can use AvantGo to browse the pages.
AvantGo is a product of AvantGo Inc,
and it's free. They distribute the mobile editions of thousands of publishers,
and big ones too. USA Today, Wall Street Journal, TV Guide, The Weather
Channel, The Sporting News, are but a handfull. You can download movie
listings weather forecasts, and restaurant reviews for your area, your
daily horoscope, daily almanac, lotto results, sport scores, stock tickers,
and news of every category. In my opinion, using AvantGo is half the reason
for getting a handheld computer! Now, they have our mobile edition.
In fact, our Mobile Edition is the first genealogical content distributed
through AvantGo. There have been other content optimized for the handheld
platform, but never distributed through mass means such as AvantGo. As
a result, that material went largely unknown and rarely updated. Our agreement
with AvantGo requires us to keep our content fresh, and AvantGo will distribute
it to their 700,000+ users.
I think this is the wave of the future. I expect other genealogical publishers
to follow our lead and create their own mobile editions. And we welcome
them. Publishers of entertainment, technology, and political content are
already well established on handhelds. If Genealogy is so popular these
days, why hasn't there been a similar presence? Is it because most genealogists
don't own a handheld? Or is it because most genealogists had no reason
to own a handheld?
- Steve Paul Johnson [stevepjohnson@mchsi.com]
Visit our Mobile Edition page to
learn how to subscribe.
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