> <rant> Who else is sick and tired of this? Is there an opportunity to
> bypass this? The server gets this information from the client. Can the
> client lie? Why shouldn't Plucker? (Either in the home.html file
> (FAKE="AvantGo" NOIMAGES...) </rant>
It's easy to change the UserAgent which these sites block based on,
and I've done it successfully for hundreds of sites. In fact, I have a
webpage running on my server here that queries my database of urls, and will
fetch the content from the remote site, and format it inside a "palm-sized"
portion of the page, but all links are still "hot", so you can click on
them, a live fetch is done (faking UserAgent if required by the XML ruleset)
and displaying it back in the browser. It's very much like having a PalmVII
wireless unit, and surfing the site, but it's in a browser. Works well, and
works where simple JunkBuster UserAgent faking rules don't work.
Below is an anonymized conversation that I had on irc with the owner
and webmaster of a very large content provider site that has a Palm version
and a PocketPC version, after I asked him if I could point Plucker at his
site, or gather his site's content daily and put it up for download for
other Plucker users (on the Daily Dose page):
[anon] well, that sounds interesting - I'd appreciate hearing from you and
seeing if there's anything we can do together
[me] I am not interested in any profit or gain like that. I simply want to
spread information. Help users get access to more information. If
doing that drives more users to your website, then we both benefit.
[anon] well, that's true
[anon] I'm very much for spreading free information as well, however our
livelyhood is built on the advertising revenue we get from the
[blank] website, so we're very careful with that what we do must not
affect the traffic flow to our website negatively
[me] There are a lot of sites who are under very restrictive AvantGo
agreements, and I would like to stop that from happening. They are
shutting down availability of information to users. They've locked it
into a proprietary format that is inaccessible.
[me] I am in full agreement with that (re: traffic)
[me] I am not trying to hurt users, but rather, increase users, by offering
more ways to get at the information. Web, text, html, Plucker. They
all lead back to your site.
[anon] well, AvantGo did try in our case to restrict us somewhat, without me
being able to talk more about it, but we managed rather easily to get
rid of things we didn't approve of
[anon] yeah, I'd agree to that
[me] I have seen some of their restrictive agreements
[anon] I'm afraid I can't show you ours, but from what I know from talking
with other AvantGo partners we've gotten off lucky
[me] I don't need to *SEE* the agreement, certainly not. I'm just trying to
find out what types of restrictions they say you can and can't do
with your *OWN* content.
[anon] I'm not sure, but I guess they're doing it to make sure their market
share and presence stays at what it is
[anon] ah.
[anon] well, we have no restrictions on what we can do with our own content
[anon] only thing they asked is that I put in a restriction on the avantgo
channel directory, so that nobody else can access that directory
without using the avantgo reader
[me] Why do you suppose they would do that?
[anon] if they would have tried restricting us from anything else I'd tell
them to go stick it :)
[anon] well.
[anon] that one I think is actually quite fair
[me] I can get around that with a simple UserAgent change
[anon] they'd like to protect the avantgo trademark, so to speak
[anon] yeah, but most user's cant :)
[anon] I know they've shot themselves in the foot on a couple of occasions
[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
> Otherwise, how can we make it clear to webmasters that there is another
> (albeit small) community out there? (Plucker & iSilo[X] & ??)
I wouldn't say small, but de-centralized is probably more accurate.
Simply impress upon them that you would like to use their content for gain,
and you'll promote their site whenever you can. I've emailed some content
providers, and they're open to helping us, others simply slam the door,
saying they don't want to contribute to "pirating" their content (I'm not
kidding, one provider said he went with AvantGo because you cant't "cut and
paste" his content and send it to someone else). These are the content
providers that need some nudging. I've created (a long time ago, and
probably needs an update) the "Plucker Friendly" banner that sits on our
website. If we could spread those around, or help content providers a bit
more, the goal is to spread the information, not to restrict it. Help them
organize their information, or validate their content, or give them a hand,
and maybe they'll throw us a bone.
I still have 543 sites or so in Palm-sized format in my local db
here, that I've scraped over the past few months from the web, usenet, and
various crawlers and search engines. I've been trying to organize them and
get in touch with each of the content providers (many of them are
international though, and I can't quite find the right "verbage" to
communicate my points across effectively) and ask that they consider opening
up their own content to a wider audience.
> At least NASA listened to me when they threatened to take
> http://nasa2go.msfc.nasa.gov/ to AvantGo (thanks guys).
Great! I'll add this to my database now too. This is the one I've
been using with Plucker:
http://www.nasa.gov/textonly.html
/d
