Introducing Rss Bandit 2 Plucker

If you are someone who uses Rss Bandit and use a PalmOS based device and have been lamenting the lack of decent offline Rss Aggregator then worry no longer. Grab a copy of Rss Bandit 2 Plucker, which works with both Rss Bandit and Plucker to synchronise your unread items in Rss Bandit to your device.

Rss Bandit 2 Plucker is not software that gets installed on your PalmOS based handheld, it gets installed on your PC and acts as a pipe that transfers and converts data between Rss Bandit and Plucker. Plucker automatically runs Rss Bandit 2 Plucker when you attempt to synchronise the channel (which can be automatically run on a schedule), so after setup has been completed, there is no manual intervention required.

It is so simple to use i've made a short video that demonstrates everything from running the setup program to performing your first synchronisation. This video runs through everything that you have to do to get up and running.

View the Demonstration Video (3.9 mb)
Download Now (82.5 kb)

PalmOne, The Best Customer Service Ever

I have just experienced the best customer service, ever.

During my move from the Oz to the UK late 2003 I lost the installation CD for my PalmOne Tungsten E handheld. Unfortunately this CD is the only way of installing the Outlook conduits (that allow me to sync my Outlook email and contacts etc), and other software (Versamail).

I sent a support request to PalmOne asking how I can get ahold of a new CD, and within a few hours had a response asking for my address, informing me they will send me a replacement product CD, free of charge.

Wow, I didn't expect that, I expected to have to pay £10.00 or so for a replacement CD. This was about 10 days ago.

This morning, what should arrive in the mailbox but a brand new product CD. Such a simple thing, but done so well! Thanks PalmOne, thats showing 'em how exceptional customer service is done!

Back into my PalmOne Tungsten E + Rss

So, whilst preparing to go to Barcelona last week I decided to fire the Tungsten E back into life (haven't touched in at least 6 months) so I could install the brilliant Metro for a bit of navi-help. As it turns out I didn't get around to syncing Metro, and lived without it (not enough time to sync), but I was once again wowed by how nice the screens are on the current gen PalmOne devices. The font is so smooth and readable.

So. I had to find a use and get back into the PDA thing, despite what Russell is preaching about the death of the PDA. I have had, and hated an Orange SPV E200, although I have never extensively used a Symbian based phone, I am thinking my next may be a Symbian.

Anyway I have gone off topic. So what it comes down to is there's no good free Rss aggregator / Offline Rss reader for PalmOS. I challenge someone to prove me otherwise. I don't want no Java, I want native. Oh, I also want it to sync my unread items with Rss Bandit.

So, Plucker is pretty cool it will let me sync online content to my Tungsten, but that alone aint going to do the job, it doesn't understand xml. It certainly doesn't understand Rss. Luckily however you can provide a "Pre-Spider" program to run before the spidering engine does it job. and the spidering engine can spider local content. This smells do-able to me.

Enter RssBandit2Plucker.

When performing a sync of a channel in Plucker, it will automatically launch RssBandit2Plucker, which will analyse Rss Bandit's unread items, and generate a collection of HTML on the local disk that is representative of the unread items in Rss Bandit. From here Plucker takes over, processes the HTML, downloads the images from the web and dumps it out as a palm database file (pdb) that, once synced will appear within the Plucker application on the device.

It's not quite ready yet, the setup program is mostly done, however I have a few things left to sort out with auto configuration of Plucker. My aim is to make it seamless, no manual configuration (Other than selecting a PalmOS device to sync to which is asked the first time you attempt to sync the channel in Plucker.

Im not sure how big the audience is for this (its pretty specialised, linking in only with RssBandit, though im sure it could become quite extensible to handle an arbritrary desktop aggregator without too much effort.