Reading News Without Internet Connection
Tutorial February 26th. 2006, 11:08amSome of you may have been syndicating and reading news feed on your mobile phones. There are some S60 applications out there that allow us to read news feed. Many of them use GPRS or 3G network to download the content. You can, of course, use WiFi too in some newer S60 phones.
Unfortunately, reading news via GPRS/3G is an expensive option for me. That’s why I almost never used RSS reader in my mobile phones. The situation has changed drastically since I downloaded MobiPocket Reader. MobiPocket Reader is originally an e-book reader application. However, they have extended the functionalities to support news feed reader too.
There are two things that I like about MobiPocket, i.e.:
- It is free. Note that the application is free, but most of the e-books are not free. There are some free e-books, of course. One of my favorite is Trivopaedia, which is some kind like a small encyclopedia on your pocket.
- You syndicate some free news feed, like BBC, Business Week, CNet, and many other news. This is the best thing; you can read news offline without any connection to the Internet. This is what I am going to explain in more detail.
Here does how it works? There are basically two applications of MobiPocket Reader. The first one is installed on your phone, which is the one you actually use the read e-books or news. The second one if PC application installed on your PC. The PC application is the one that will syndicate your news. Once we subscribed the news, each time we connect our phones to the PC, the latest news will be copied (read: synchronized) to the phone automatically.
That’s the trick why we don’t need any Internet connection anymore when reading the news.
Here is what I have been every morning since a couple of days ago:
- Startup my PC.
- Run MobiPocket Reader.
- Click Update button to get the latest news.
- Connect my S60 phone to my PC.
- The news will be synchronized automatically.
- Disconnect my phone.
- Take bus to go to work.
- Read the latest news while on the bus.
Note: I don’t have any affiliations with Amazon or MobiPocket Reader. They don’t pay me either. I am just a happy customer.
7 Responses to “Reading News Without Internet Connection”
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July 22nd, 2006 at 2:44 am
I’d love to be able to do this with mobipocket. It’s a beautifully designed app & with the new wifi phones it makes a lot more sense to update your news feeds each morning, for free, before leaving the house.
Unfortunately the last time I looked, the PC component was just that, a ‘PC’ only piece of software. Is this still the case?
Shocking that they make a mobile app that’s supported on an incredible number of platforms ( http://www.mobipocket.com/en/DownloadSoft/DownloadLinuxStep1.asp ) but the other half of their set up is windows only. Effectively cutting off everyone else from it’s news functionality.
A great shame.
July 22nd, 2006 at 9:06 am
As far as I know, they have somehow bundled the support to Symbian OS devices, including S60, in the PC component as well.
If you plug-in your S60 device to your PC (with PC Suite installed), it should be detected automatically by MobiPocket Reader. It will install the reader too.
July 22nd, 2006 at 12:20 pm
There’s no sense in use mobipocket as RSS reader. There are several options (doheadlines) in uiq for getting news FROM your mobile (GPRS) and not from your PC. It’s cheap! I spend about 0.1USD in 2 e-newspaper by day.
July 22nd, 2006 at 12:36 pm
You’re right MobiPocket Reader is not an RSS reader.
Actually if you looked at the the posting date, I posted this blog about 1/2 year ago.
Recently I did upgrade to the newer WordPress and did some cleanup, so this “old” posting may appear as “new” in your RSS reader.
July 24th, 2006 at 5:24 am
Sadly doHeadlines died without trace years ago. It was one of the nicest rss readers I’ve used but the company just dissapeared: http://www.fireseed.com/
You may be able to still download it from some software sites but it won’t be supported & there’ll be no more bug fixes.
The version I had on my old P910 stopped working with certain feeds (slashdot.org etc). I’ve had to move on to other readers since then.
Currently my off line rss reader is Headline. Litefeeds.com produce a lovely reader & have said they are looking in to an offline reader in the future.
August 29th, 2006 at 2:27 pm
I’ve tried both MobiReader and iSilo and I have to say that my vote goes with iSilo, even though it costs money.
All of the RSS feeds I transfered with MobiReader looked like COMPLETE CRAP on my Nokia 6682.
My experience here.
September 11th, 2006 at 12:58 am
Hi Anthony,
I’ve just downloaded Mobipocket Reader & have installed it on my PC as well as my Nokia E61.
I tried adding an RSS feed from a blog (E-Series.org) and it just doesn’t work - http://www.e-series.org/feed/
It works for my firefox. Any ideas why?
Thanks in advance.