Appendix A. Going Mobile

The following pages were originally published online as bonus material for our readers and are not included in the print version of this title.

I don’t know about you, but I’m not in front of the computer all the time. It just feels like it. I spend plenty of time on the road, in a car, waiting in drive-thrus and lines of various sorts, and nowhere near a computer.

But that doesn’t mean I stop being an information trapper! I may not be able to get to a computer and check out all my e-mail or RSS feeds, but I’m still interested in what’s going on. I just pare it down a little, setting up my cell phone to receive the most important e-mail alerts out of all the traps I’ve set. And thanks to my phone, I can also read RSS feeds.

You may not have the latest and greatest phone, but your phone can probably at least receive e-mail. In this chapter we look at information trapping on the go, some of the options you have with your phone, some of the options you might have with a Palm-powered or Windows-CE-powered device, and how to manage flow on the go. If you don’t have a mobile phone or another online option while you’re on the go, or you carry a WiFi notebook with you everywhere, you may want to skip to the next chapter.

Your Fabulous Phone

Most phones nowadays have the ability to at least get basic e-mail messages. In addition, most phones have the ability to get simple messages sent to a phone number, also known as Simple Message Service (SMS). If you’re receiving an SMS alert, all you have to know is your phone number. To receive a simple e-mail on your phone, it’s a little more complicated. The problem is that often you may not know what your cell phone’s e-mail address is. So let’s start by finding out the e-mail address for your phone. Then we’ll talk about some services that go straight to your phone anyway, and some phone alert dos and don’ts.

Finding your phone number and phone e-mail address

Sure, you know what your phone number is, but your cell phone service may have neglected to give you an address to which your phone can be sent mail. The Internet to the rescue! To see the e-mail formats for various cell phone companies, visit the following URL:

networking.ringofsaturn.com/Telecommunications/mobile-phone-emails.php

This site has the proper format for mail addresses for dozens of cell phone companies. They’re all built around your phone number. For example, a Cingular address looks like this:

[email protected]

You may have to do a little experimenting with this one to find out which address works for you—many carriers have multiple addresses listed. If none of them work for you, or your cell phone company is not listed here, try Teleflip at teleflip.com. Teleflip lets you send messages using a single number format. The first 100 messages per month are free.

Now you have two ways in which you can receive information on your phone—by phone alerts and by phone messages. Let’s take a look at the services that go to your phone, and then the ways you can make e-mail alerts go to your phone.

Services that go to your phone

Many sites offer cell phone services that work like this: you send the service a brief message, and it sends you a brief snippet of information. Even Google has a phone messaging service like this. It can be useful, but not for trapping information.

In the case of information trapping, Yahoo has an excellent service. And other sites do as well—it’s just a matter of knowing where to look.

Yahoo Alerts

As with practically everything else in the Yahoo Universe, you need a Yahoo account to use Yahoo Alerts (alerts.yahoo.com).

Once you have the account and you’ve logged in, notice that you have a huge number of alerts from which to choose. You can get alerts on auctions, breaking news, stocks, sports—even missing children. Pick a category and notice that you have three alert options: you can get your alerts by e-mail, by Yahoo Messenger (an Instant Messaging service), and by phone. (See the “Add a mobile device” link on the Alerts page if you don’t have the option to get phone alerts.)

The nice thing about alerts for your phone is that they’re specially formatted for a phone’s small screen and don’t have a lot of active content (movies, flashing banner ads, complicated Web page scripts, and so forth) that your phone can’t handle. For the most part, you’ll find for the most part that these alerts are brief and easy to read. Be sure to check out the alerts for news and RSS feeds.

Yahoo Alerts has the largest search engine collection of phone alerts useful to information trappers, but as I said already, it’s certainly not the only one available. A lot of the mobile alert services out there are for entertainment, but some of them can keep you up to date on some interesting information. Let’s take a look at two.

FeedBeep

There are other ways to read RSS feeds on newer phones (and we look at them a little later in the chapter), but if you’ve got an old-school, few-features phone, you’ll appreciate this service. FeedBeep (feedbeep.com) lets you send keyword-filtered RSS feeds to your mobile phone, which is handy if you want to keep up with certain kinds of news or other things that are delivered by RSS feeds (tags, classified ads, and so on).

However, Feedbeep is not a free service—it costs either $2.95 or $14.95 a month, depending on how many alerts you wish to get. You could use these for your important feeds that you can filter a little by keyword. (Otherwise, you might find yourself getting a lot of SMS alerts, and spending a lot of money.)

Weatherbug Mobile

You might not think that weather is worth much of a discussion, but after hurricanes, floods, snow, and a variety of other emergency-level meteorology, it’s nice to have the latest forecasts coming straight to your phone. Weatherbug (weatherbug.com/mobile/default.asp) is free.

Note that the services I’ve mentioned aren’t nearly all the mobile alert services that are out there—so many of them are oriented to a particular site that I could never list them all. To find more of these services, try doing a Google search for wireless alert and then type in the keyword in which you’re interested. So you might enter wireless alert stocks, or wireless alert legal. It takes a little sifting, but there are probably hundreds of single-site wireless alert services out there.

As you’ll see momentarily, your phone is not limited to receiving SMS alerts—you can often send e-mail messages to your phone as well. However, when there are SMS alert services available for the topic in which you’re interested, you should use those instead of sending e-mails to your phone. Why? Because alert services are formatted to your phone. They’re short, they’re free of HTML and multimedia, and they’re easy to read. Regular e-mails, even ones that are fairly short, can be tough to read on mobile phones. Even on a phone that’s got an easily readable, large screen, like a BlackBerry, a regular e-mail can look like hash.

But sometimes regular e-mail messages are the only way you can get the information you want to monitor, so let’s discuss how to do that.

Filtering to your phone

In the last chapter, we looked at GMail and how to filter your e-mail. To get information to your phone, there’s just one more step you have to take—set up filters to go to your phone’s e-mail address, which you hopefully discovered earlier in this chapter.

If you have an older phone that only does text messages and doesn’t do browsing, make sure that the mail you’re getting to your phone contains information that you can use independently of the Web. An alert that contains only a pointer to a Web page, for example, isn’t going to be very useful. A page monitor alert that contains the text of the changed page, on the other hand, can be useful, as long as it contains a limited amount of text and doesn’t overload your phone.

I’m sorry I can’t be more specific! There are many phone models out there. Basically, the more recent your phone, the more you’ll be able to do. But even older phones, with their SMS receiving capabilities, can do some things.

While mobile phones can’t do everything a desktop or laptop computer can do, they sure try! For phones, primarily, there’s e-mail and then there’s browsing.

Browsing on your phone

How can you go browsing on your phone’s tiny little screen? You use the WAP protocol. WAP stands for Wireless Application Protocol, and it’s a way to build Web sites so that they’re ideally formatted for those tiny little screens. I’m telling you about them so that you’ll be aware that there is a way to surf the Internet from a phone, and there is a place to go exploring for wireless alerts.

If you want to browse with WAP, start with Google.

Google WAP

Google WAP (wap.google.com) is very basic. You’re given a search box and the option to either search the Web as a whole or search just what Google calls the “Mobile Web”—in other words, WAP-enabled sites. If you want to try this site, be sure to access it from your phone—Google can often tell what kind of browser you’re using and will format the page appropriately. Results only come five at a time and do not include snippets or page information, but rather just page links. This is annoying when you’re relying on snippets for page information, so if you want to search Google WAP, take extra care to make sure your searches are as specific as possible.

As you might imagine, Google WAP is just the tip of the WAP iceberg. Check out the following WAP directories, all of which you can visit from your browser, though the formatting might look a little different.

WAP Catalog

WAP Catalog (wapcatalog.com) has a searchable subject index of WAP sites, though some categories only have one or two listings. This site also has basic information on WAP browsing and pointers to more information and resources.

WAPly

WAPly (waply.com) is also a searchable subject index of WAP sites, but it also offers a service called My WAPly. My WAPly lets you set up your own set of bookmarks that you can access from a WAP-enabled browser. It also has a page of several books with information on WAP, and a pointer to WAP phones.

Seek4WAP

Seek4WAP (seek4wap.com) is a search engine with a keyword search for WAP sites. Note that you can narrow your search for sites by language—handy since there are many sites in many different languages. There’s a list of the latest links available, and if you don’t like searching, you can also browse for WAP links by category.

So far we’ve looked at things that basically any phone can do, but you guys with the advanced phones may be getting a little impatient. Where are the RSS feed readers? Where are the real Web browsers? When do you get to unleash your mad phone skillz? Patience. You’re next!

Software for Advanced Phones

You may have a phone that can run Java applications or that has an operating system that supports programs more sophisticated than browsing and getting short e-mails. In that case, you will probably have several different choices of programs to run on your computer.

I recommend that you look for RSS feed readers, browser software (sometimes third-party browsers are better than browsers that come with your phone), and client software that deliver alerts. I can’t tell you what software might be available for every possible kind of phone—but I can tell you where to look.

First stop: Your service provider

If you’re looking for software for your phone, check with your service provider first. The two big pros of getting phone software from your provider are:

• The company won’t want you to download anything to your phone that’s not safe, so you know it’s going to screen its software carefully.

• You know that if you download something from your provider it’s going to work with your provider. Why would the company make it available if it doesn’t work with its system?

Of course there are drawbacks as well. I don’t know about your cell service provider, but mine is not exactly a cup overflowing with free and open-source software. In addition, the kind of software your service provider offers might be rather limited. Sure, you can get an application to get the latest sports scores, but you might not find an RSS feed reader. To get the more esoteric stuff—the stuff that information trappers might find most interesting—you’ll have to go beyond your provider.

Second stop: Third-party software providers

Finding software for your phone platforms can be a little tricky. It’s not like a computer software download site that might say something is compatible with Windows XP. Some phone sites mention Java, some mention just a phone operating system, and some mention a phone model series.

Multiple platforms

Let’s start with multiple-platform sites. Then I’ll give you a couple of tricks for finding more information specific to your model.

Handango (handango.com) is one of the more popular and well-known software sites for phones and PDAs. Its offering is segmented by operating system: software includes Symbian OS, BlackBerry, and Windows Mobile Smartphone. Within each operating system, products are further segmented by category, and also into lists of new offerings, updated offerings, and offerings that have been recommended by visitors. Check out the productivity, communications, and business and professional categories to find some of the more interesting offerings.

Filao (filaomobile.com) doesn’t offer nearly as much as Handango does, but that makes it quick to walk through. Operating systems covered here include Palm OS, Pocket PC phone, Symbian, and Smartphone. Look at the utilities and the reference software.

GetJar (getjar.com) features freeware, demo, and shareware software for a variety of devices and operating systems. Devices supported here include a number of Nokia devices, as well as Motorola, Siemens, and Alcatel phones. You can also browse by operating system and program type. There are Java programs as well as programs for the Symbian, PocketPC, and Palm OS platforms. I found that the product descriptions on these pages were very extensive, and the user comments were, for the most part, good. Most categories here are worth visiting, but you may want to concentrate on Browsers, EMail, and Productivity. The Other category is interesting as well.

Simon Judge Freeware (simonjudge.com/freeware.html) is not a company; rather it’s one guy who develops mobile software for a variety of platforms and makes some of his applications available on his site. Operating systems covered here include Symbian and Windows Mobile. Resources here are not divided into categories. Take a quick look around.

These multiple-platform sites can give you a good overview of the kinds of things available, but you may be more interested in finding resources more specific to your phone. And there are some types of phones that have lots and lots of resources online (BlackBerry’s a good example). You can find more phone-specific resources, but I recommend using a directory instead of a search engine to do it.

Tricks for finding specific platforms

To find software sites for a specific platform, start with a searchable subject index. I recommend Yahoo Directory (dir.yahoo.com). Start with a search for a model name, such as BlackBerry or Nokia. Yahoo Directory will give you a list of categories that match your search. In the event that you actually get too many results, narrow it by searching for a specific model (for example, BlackBerry 7510). Sometimes this gives you more specific results, sometimes—as in the case of BlackBerry 7510—it gives you nothing. Be sure to search by brand first.

If you’re not having any luck with a directory, you can—cautiously—try using a full-text search engine. The problem is that you’ll find yourself getting a lot of ads, product pages, and so forth. Try searching for a model number with words designed to trigger software sites, like download or software or free trial.

No matter whether you find software or not, you can still revert to using your phone to receive small snippets of text and e-mails to keep up with what interests you most. But how do you manage that information while you’re away from the computer?

Managing Information Flow on the Go

I use a phone that allows me to receive a reasonable level of e-mail messaging and has an RSS feed reader. But I don’t try to use it as my computer away from the computer. Instead I use it in a simpler way.

• As a reminder device. I send to my phone alerts and RSS feeds that cover the broadest categories of what I’m interested in. Getting these notes on my phone and reading them when I have a bit of downtime gives me a heads-up about changes and updates to my topics of interest. I’m not getting specific information on which I need to act immediately. It’s more like just getting a sense of what’s going on in the world of information I’m trapping.

• When I need to act quickly. I do have a couple of alerts set up for very unusual events. If I hear a rumor that SearchEngineCo is going to go public, I might set up a news search alert for SearchEngineCo IPO and send it to my cell phone. That way, if I get wind of some news about it, I can quickly follow up long before I might get back to the computer to check my e-mail.

• As a pointer to the computer. The third class of reminders I get are routine things that I want to make note of or take care of. I have some alerts that go to my phone that I review when I have a free moment, and then forward to members of my team or even to myself to review later. These are non-urgent items that tend to pile up. I use my phone to review them when I’m standing in line, waiting in the car, and so on.

I hope what you’re getting from this chapter is the idea that a phone should not be the place that your information flows to and stops, but rather a place through which your information can flow. From your phone, you can pick out what you want, forward it, save it, sit on it. Don’t try to make your phone a point from which you respond and act (unless it’s a really, really, really good phone), but instead a way that you can get small bits of information and a heads-up on special occasions.