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To Our Readers
I'M just back from a newspaper conference in New Orleans. While there, I had the Star-Bulletin delivered fresh every day. I carried the news with me wherever I went and read it whenever I liked. Get your local
news anywhereNo, I didn't resort to Express Mail or UPS Overnight. Instead, I used my Palm computer, a modem and a nifty program called AvantGo, downloadable for free from the avantgo.com Web site.
To get each day's edition, I dialed up the Internet and synchronized my Palm with my personal set of "channels." These are special Web pages created by information providers, such as newspapers, for Palm users. On the road, I could update my channels either through my laptop computer or with the accessory modem Palm sells.
To take advantage of AvantGo, a Palm owner first gets online with his PC or Mac and goes to the avantgo.com Web site. There, he can set up a free AvantGo account and download software to install on his Palm.
Once you have an account, there are nearly a thousand preset channels available on the AvantGo site to choose from. Starbulletin. com readers can set up a "custom" Star-Bulletin channel.
You'll find the heading "Palm Pilot Page" on the left side of our home page at starbulletin.com. A click leads to our special, simplified Palm page that has links to our daily news sections, News, Sports, Weather, etc. There's also a link to automatically add the Star-Bulletin to your AvantGo channel list and another to create a channel for our breaking news updates.
Reading a newspaper on a personal digital assistant is definitely geek chic, but staying in touch with news from the islands when you're on the road is a wonderful thing. Sure, you can call home and ask "Wassup?," but scanning actual headlines is more satisfying.
Having a piece of Hawaii in your pocket is a great comfort away from home. What could be better than lunching on crawfish etoufee at K-Paul's in the French Quarter while reading Honolulu Lite?
John Flanagan is editor and publisher of the Star-Bulletin.
To reach him call 525-8612, fax to 523-8509, send
e-mail to publisher@starbulletin.com or write to
P.O. Box 3080, Honolulu, Hawaii 96802.