What's AvantGo Up To?
As I'm heavily into weblogs and mobile apps, it's obvious that I'm trying to think of ways to recreate the blogging experience on my mobile (thus the Manywhere Moblogger) as well as the news aggregation part. I don't use an aggregator just yet on my desktop, but the time is coming quickly when I desperately need to. And it would be great to be able to read news and weblogs offline on my my phone during the day when I'm in the john or crossing the city for some reason.
After seeing this story today about the Anatomy of a mobile device user, a survey conducted by AvantGo, I realized that I hadn't thought of them in a while in the new context of weblogging. They're the original aggregator! Before I knew the word aggregator, I knew what AvantGo was! My wife still uses their consumer service daily for her m515. Their service rocks (or rocked... since I don't use them at all anymore).
Well, the survey didn't tell me anything interesting, but AvantGo popped into my head and you have to wonder why they aren't launching more mobile services. Where's the high-profile Vindigo-style deals with AT&T and other carriers? Why aren't they getting into moblogging? Take one look at their site and you realize that the consumer stuff is just a "legacy" service now and that they're concentrating on "the lucrative business market". But man, they're primely positioned to be a killer service on every mobile phone out there. Combine what they do now with some XML-RPC goodness and we'd all be moblogging tomorrow with real content and links from our mobile devices...
Another example of what I was saying a day or so ago about looking at good Palm apps as what to target on mobile devices. The fact that AvantGo doesn't use RSS, doesn't have a J2ME or Symbian app, and doesn't integrate with weblog makes me realize they're yesterday's news and not catching up anytime soon. But it's a shame! AvantGo is cool!
Oh well. Write that one down in my Business Opportunities weblog: "AvantGo Clone. With RSS and weblog integration."
-Russ