Comments on: What's the Difference Between AvantGo and Coola?

The beauty of Coola is not the right-click thing. As useful as that is, it's 4k limit is too limiting. The real beauty of Coola is the DIRECT insertion of the coolet you click on into the appropriate place on your Palm. For example:

1) click on an address Coolet (button/link) and the address is put into your address book. No need to type/graffiti anything, and all the information is there where it needs to be. All you have to do is categorize it.

2) click on a datebook Coolet and the event is put into your datebook. If the creator included an alarm for the event, you'll be beeped when the event is to happen. Again, no need to create your own event. Events can also have notes attached, up to the 4k limit, great for itenerary or driving directions

3) the memo Coolets work the same way. These are great for driving directions and anything else.

4) coola right-click, although limited to the memo pad's 4k limit, is very useful, espeically for those sites that have no yet enbraced Coola as an option for its viewers.

As powerful as Coola already is, it shows signs of tremendous growth. The underlying technology allows the one-click transfer of any kind of data into your Palm pda. It's only a matter of time and demand for new types of data to be supported.

Also, Coola is still a fairly new company and technology. The user adoption is obviously a lot faster than the content support for it. Sooner or later, web sites will wise up to the advantages of supporting Coola users, and web site adoption will inrease.

AvantGo has all the advantages you mention, as well as disadvantages. It's the best thing out there for keeping up to date on your favorite web sites on the go. Don't forget, you can also create your own channels, so you're not just limited to AvantGo's current set of channels. For the most part, sites that aren't optimized for handheld viewing are optimized by AvantGo on the fly very well.

I'll admit.... i haven't had the chance to really use Coola, but Iwill say this afor AvantGo.

Personally I am really, big on current events.. I like to know whats happening in the world around me. AvantGo lets me capture the type of news I want and or other information as well, so I can read them later with out having to search for the information or visiting any particulare site first. I also have customized channels in AvantGo, so every time I sync, will pull all the movies playing in the movie theaters in my local area, with the times they are playing the movie, a movie review of it, the address of the theaters, and thier phone numbers. I also have it set up to get a full five day forecast of weather for the area I live in as well as pull all local restaurants in my area and even have customize maps set up if I am going to take a trip some with pictures and directions to where I need to go.
For me AvantGo offers much more then just mews articals to sync up to my palm. .... it really is a reference for the things in my local area or any other city I happen to be visiting.

Whether or not you like the Mac, most Palm software like this (for this purpose) will not catch on as well as it could if it had Macintosh software.

The features seem compelling, but AvantGo works great, and it is staying on my Palm.

Thanks for a very helpful review. I now know I don't need Coola. I use Avantgo to keep up the the news and favorite Web sites, and iSilo for information I want to carry with me (which is usually whole Web pages or even entire Web sites. ISilo compresses the information really well, and I can keep it as reference on my CF card, which resides in my TrgPro). For the ocassional note or address mentioned, I simply keep the Palm Desktop open when I surf, and just cut and paste. If I am away from my own computer, I think is simpler to copy down the URL, rather than trying to send a Coolet to myself. Of course, I have never tried.

First:
Avantgo works (generally) with Macs,
Coola doesn't.

Anyways:

Avantgo is best for updating web information which
changes on a regular basis (news, weather, reviews, etc.)
You can use Avantgo to grab the news and read it on your
Palm later in the day (lunchtime). Avantgo isn't limited to
its own provided channels, you can create your own fairly
easily (similar to iSilo, it will reduce graphics to fit to
the Palm's screen).

iSilo is best for larger texts that don't change regularly
(HTML based documentation, ebooks, etc.) You use the
iSilo desktop component to convert text files, Doc files,
and HTML files to iSilo format, and then read them on your
Palm.

iSilo is not aimed at information which changes frequently
(would require separate downloading and conversion each
time the base text changes).

Avantgo is great as a browser and for handling short items
but isn't great at handling large files. And Avantgo isn't as
comfortable as most Doc readers for the Palm.

Coola (from the hype) sounds like it become a nice
scrapbook utility. Copy small stuff to Coola and then let
Coola sort and enter it into the right slot - gee, kinda like
the Intellibooger function on DiddleBug.

I've got a palm m100. The BIGGEST difference for me is the amount of memory taken. With only 2mB of memory, I can't afford the 500k + eaten up by AvantGo and your selected channels. I've tried...

Just to clear up a little confusion, I should chime in here to mention that in order to use Coola's service to get data of your choosing (rather than pre-formatted data from "Coolized" web sites) you'll have to use Syncplicity.

As the anon. comment above points out, the main difference between Coola and Avantgo is that with AG you get automatic updates, but little control over what you get except by channels. It's basically an offline web browser, with channels.

With Coola + Syncplicity, you don't have automatic updates, but the data you're syncing is more flexible, since you pick only the data you want (or stuff from "Coolized" websites). Also, as Greg mentioned, both Coola and Syncplicity data isn't limited to web info - you can sync it to address/schedule/memo/to-do/ or DOC. The other difference is the data sharing aspect - you can simultaneously sync data to you and your friends Palms.

Coola and CognitiveRoot (my company) have worked together to include the ability to send data of your choosing to yourself or someone else over the internet (via Coola) with Syncplicity.

The basic idea behind Syncplicity is that you grab the data you want and Syncplicity formats it to address/datebok/to-do/memo/ or DOC. You can sync to Palm Desktop or across the Coola network. Outlook version will be ready very soon.

Try it, I think you'll like it. Any questions, feel free to contact me...

Oh yeah -- Greg: when you gunna do a review? :)

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Syncplicity. Redefining Simple. www.cognitiveroot.com