More Handstory discussion/web pages

These postings from handheld librarian today:From: "Steven Grove"
To:
Sent: Thursday, February 28, 2002 6:27 AM
Subject: Re: [handheldlibrarians] Handstory 2.0 as Avantgoreplacement--
comments
... This is good news. But won't they discover what we librarians are up
to and starting charging as did Avantgo?

Jake replies...

Hi Steve and all,
Hopefully that won't be the case -- it seems like Handstory and similar
firms have a different business model in mind anyway. I'm a real newbie at
this, but I think that when links are updated/downloaded using a program
like Handstory, you go right to the html pages/sources, (which may be
specially formatted or not) instead of to a special server. These pages are
then downloaded, converted, cached and at some point 'sync-ed' to your PDA.
The software on your PC (Handstory) does the work, which makes things a lot
faster. In this model, the user buy$ the software and that's how Handstory
makes money. With Avantgo's model, you connect to *their* servers which do
some work, download the processed pages to your PC where they are cached,
and sync-ed to your PDA. In this model, the *Info Provider* pays$ to have
their info featured on Avant Go's site and available through their servers.
Software for the user is free. That's how Avantgo makes money (and why they
don't make $$$ when lots of users go to a site via 'custom' channels, where
the Info Provider hasn't paid anything to Avantgo)

I'm torn between these two models -- As a Library kinda guy, I want the
most PDA *users* to be able to access our information, even those that can't
afford the $$$ for software. Avantgo is *free* for users -- great. As a
Info-user/organizer/consumer, I feel Handstory is a much better model (more
effiicient, more powerful and certainly permitting more diversity -- it
includes lots of smaller Info *providers* who can't afford the $$$ paid to
Avantgo). Two models, both valid for libraries. Great stuff for
discussion, so I'll leave it at that! take care, Jake

What is the best way to go about creating pages targeted for PDAs? I want
to use HTML. I am currently using Dreamweaver to manage our website. I do
know that our pages display reasonably well via synching through Compaq
IPAQs. Any suggestions?

Bill Drew

Also I have mentioned your blog to many other librarians from public to
law,
and are excited about it.

Barbara Fullerton

----Thanks, Barbara!

The Health Sciences and Human Services Library at the University of Maryland Baltimore (www.hshsl.umaryland.edu) has created a page for our handheld users using AvantGo channels.

M.J. Tooey

Thanks MJ!