Off-line

I direct Research & Development for a large company in the publishing industry. This involves following trends in digital publishing. Digital publishing has grown significantly in the last five years, with many facets to track and analyze. To maintain a broad base of knowledge, I need to visit 30-40 Web sites every day. The solution to this is my Compaq iPAQ 3630 Pocket PC. More specifically, it is the Pocket PC's ability to browse Web sites "offline."

AvantGo is the offline service most frequently used by Pocket PC users. The AvantGo Mobile Internet Service provides free interactive and personalized content and applications to people with handheld devices and Internet-enabled phones. However, AvantGo does present some limitations to the more advanced user. With AvantGo you are allowed 2 Mb of data per user on a daily basis. Also, since the AvantGo servers provide your connection to the various Web sites, you run the risk of AvantGo server outages.

WHACKFORCE

WhackForce is an offline browser designed specifically for Windows Powered Handheld, Palm-size, and Pocket PCs. You create a database of Web sites in the WhackForce software. Then using a modem or a LAN network connection you can download Web sites to be stored locally on your Pocket PC for reading later.

SITESNAGGER

SiteSnagger is basically the same thing as WhackForce; however, it runs on Windows 95/98 or Windows NT. The reason I use SiteSnagger is that you can start SiteSnagger at a DOS prompt with specific options and then the software will run automatically and it also supports cookies, which WhackForce presently doesn't support.

I subscribe to the Wall Street Journal Interactive Web site. Using SiteSnagger and the batch scheduler on Windows 98 (available with the 98 Plus Pack), I created a Task that downloads the WSJ Web site at 5:00 am every morning.

To automate the last step in getting this Web site to my Pocket PC, I use WhackForce to download the files that SiteSnagger has created.

THE LAST PIECE OF THE PUZZLE

After downloading files to my Pocket PC, the final touch is tying them all together. You can create a Web page or two that can help you navigate through them without having to locate the directory page for each Web site (see Screen 1). Depending on your HTML creativity, you can personalize this Web page to your own liking.

USING WHACKFORCE/SITESNAGGER: A ONLINE STEP-BY-STEP

There's more involved in accomplishing all this than we have room to publish in this article, but I've written a more detailed look at how to actually integrate the three pieces I've described above. Again, if your off-line browsing needs are minimal, AvantGo.Com is a better place to start. But if the approach I've described intrigues you, find out more about it at Pocket PC magazine's Web site (www.PocketPCmag.com/Jan02/offline.asp).

NEWS, WEATHER... AND DILBERT

Using these two software packages, you are only limited by the amount of space that you decide to allocate for your downloads. I actively download 32 sites per day, which add up to a total of 4 Mb of data. The Wall Street Journal alone averages about 2-3 Mb per day.

Every morning as the alarm goes off, I grab my iPAQ, start the batch download, and get some orange juice. A few minutes later I am reading the latest from the Wall Street Journal, viewing the weather radar image for our area, scanning the local news, and smiling as I read Dilbert.