> area. When you connect via AvantGo, either wireless or serially, you are > being delivered the "programming schedule" for your Palm, based > on what you > decided to "tune into".
I still disagree. What is on someone's website is a delivered content. I dial "3" on my TV set to get the BBC news to look at on television. I type "bbb.co.uk/low/english..." to get it on my Palm to look at in Plucker. Whether I point the information source to BBC, memepool, the harddrive from my neighbor's cubicle, or a Gutenberg novel, it is a one way delivery of a pipe of information that I knew where to make a pointer to the source and the information is delivered to me in the format of my device. > We've misused it before, and I'm sort of opposed to propagating the > term, since there are something like 23+ doc readers now. At some > point, it > may come that Plucker, via a plugin, supports reading DOC files directly, > which then means Plucker content (created *BY* plucker) and > Documents (*NOT* > create by Plucker) may be available within the Plucker UI. If we globally > use the term "Document" now, that's going to get much more confusing later > on if that feature is added. This is reasonable. > > I think "Pluck" isn't bad either, and the word can be extended into > > whatever meaning desired. The drawback is that mmediately people don't > > know what one is talking about. It reminds me of "Flooz". One has to > > always define and remind what one is talking about. One also makes the > > user feel stupid by giving them terms they don't understand. > > An easy-to-explain analogy: > > pluck == fetch Casual users don't know what a fetch is either. A developer has a good idea, users not as much. > How do you describe a channel in one word? You don't need to. That is the premise of it in the first place, and why it is the one used across IsiloX and Avantgo and Pendragon. When one has to tell new/migrating users what the new word means, it immediately adds an extra layer of complexity. But I digress, and am not really overly-interested in spending more time on debating the semantics of a word when there are other things that can be more productive. I'll leave a blank spot and whatever term the Plucker team and fans can come up with, will be the one to go with. > "[anon] for instance, www.pocketpcthoughts.com > are now shutting down their official > AvantGo channel because they're being > charged with $6000 USD since they have > more than 5000 registered AvantGo > subscribers" > > The content providers are, by contract, told to restrict the access > to the content with any measures that will only allow the content to be > retrieved by AvantGo's browser The reason why content providers would agree to such a draconian measure is that the AvantGo has a manager client that casual users can use pretty much off the bat. When other free options exist, that are usable by the casual user, then agreeing to such contracts is less enticing. > > I am quite happy myself with a full-client side solution. That certainly > > shouldn't exclude other mechanisms which would be useful for others, > > similar to the way we have parsers for python, but also different > > languages. > > I rather like a way to subscribe to a list of available streams > > online, if only for the purposes of building you a custom script which can > be downloaded and run locally, prepared for your customizations. > The server > holds the urls, and when you configure each of the ones you want, you are > delivered one large XML file which is used by $TOOL to download them. When > you want to change those things, you can either log in (XML file stored by > account name) or upload your existing locally stored XML file and have the > server "figure out" who you are and adjust the settings accordingly. Some people would probably also like a server-centric model to manage. For m e, I'd rather have as few things as possible showing my browsing habits being run through or stored in a remote place, as trust is low online. ePocrates [made medical drug reference for doctors] went and changed its agreement to start selling personally identifiable information (including things that were tapped on the Palm) to interested 3rd parties, including the drug companies. That kind of thing ruins trust for more benevolent organizations. > Just some ideas. I am all in favor of a client-side operation as > well, and it's still one of the reasons I use Plucker every single day. Amen! Best wishes, Robert
