PalmPilot Newspaper Daily Review

Program Requirements:
Device:
Palm 1000, Pilot 5000, PalmPilot Personal, PalmPilot
Professional, IBM WorkPad, or Palm III
Some available free RAM depending on how many news topics you’ve subscribed to.
DOC reader

 

If you are like me, you like to keep up with the news of the day. Now there is a
free service available that brings all the latest breaking news to your PalmPilot. It’s
the PalmPilot Newspaper Daily from i2iUK. It’s
easy to use, and did I mention that it’s free?

To start out, you need to go to i2iUK‘s
web page. There you will find the different news articles divided into different
categories. The news groups are broken down by news in UK, USA, Germany, France,
Australia, and Canada (coming soon). Under each news group are content groups. You simply
click on the content groups that interest you. (See below).

 

US Yahoo Summaries
US Top Stories 4kb
International news 4kb
Business 4kb
Political happenings 4kb
Technology news 4kb
Health and Medicine news 2kb
Entertainment news 4kb
Sports run down 4kb

Now all you have to do is click the download button. The file downloaded is a Doc file,
so you need a Doc reader like TealDoc to read it. All of the news content that you have
downloaded is conveniently put into one file, so there is no need to do each one
separately. Each day’s news replaces the previous day’s news on your PalmPilot, so your
PalmPilot isn’t cluttered up each time you HotSync. The downloaded files run between
4K-30K so the files aren’t that large anyway. (I downloaded everything from the USA
content list and the file was only 30K.)

As you page through the news content, you might find large listings of URLs at the end
of each content category. I contacted i2iUK about this and was told that the URLs are a
function of the news source that the doc files are created from, and may or may not be in
the files. So, you just have to scroll past them.

If you are concerned as to the source of the news content, i2iUK uses a number of
highly respected news sources such as Reuters, Yahoo, ABC (Australian Broadcasting
Commission), and German News. The French news is available en Francaise, and the
German news is available in Deutsch or English. I don’t know if the Canadian news,
which is coming in the near future, will be available in both French and English. (I
suspect it will.)

One option that I would like to suggest to i2iUK is to have a category for sports that
includes the scoreboards. I’m a hockey fanatic, (go Flyers!), and if you don’t live in a
city where hockey rules, it’s very hard to find out the daily scores. I think it would be
great to be able to download a scoreboard or box scores Doc file each day.

 

PalmPilot Newspaper Daily

also has an email option. Using this option, i2iUK will
email you the Doc file each day. This sounded like an interesting option, so I tried. But
as of the writing of this article, I have yet to receive any emails. One problem about
using this option is that you are at the mercy of the email system. (You know the old
saying: Email can take anywhere from 10 seconds to 10 days).

The other problem with the email option for me is that it’s coming from the UK and I’m
in the USA, which could cause confusion in getting timely news (we are 6 hours apart). So
I recommend you go to their web site and download it yourself. If you chose to try the
email option, don’t complain if you don’t get it regularly. Remember, it’s a free service.

And I don’t mind going to the i2iUK site and downloading the file when I need it.
Although I get inundated with news, (Can you say Starr Report!), it’s nice to have the
file on my PalmPilot so I can read it anytime, anywhere, and without advertisements. And
it’s a lot easier than fumbling around with a newspaper. (Less messy too!)

Price: Free

Pros:
Stimulates brain cells.
Keeps you informed.
Did I mention that it’s FREE?

Cons:
No scoreboards or box scores yet…but I’m lobbying.
Lists of URLs tacked to the end of some news categories.