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Avantgo, a division of Sybase subsidiary iAnywhere Solutions, is one of the oldest mobile Internet services. For years, it has successfully brought Web content and, more recently, marketing to handhelds and smartphones.

Today, iAnywhere introduced a beta product to take Avantgo to another level and greatly expand the amount of content available to users. The new feature enables consumers to view RSS (Really Simple Syndication) subscriptions on their mobile device, online and offline.

RSS shortcourse: RSS is an XML format for syndicating Web content. A Website that wants to allow other sites to publish some of its content creates an RSS document and registers the document with an RSS publisher. Syndicated content can include news feeds, events listings, feature stories, headlines, project updates, excerpts from discussion forums or even corporate information.

iAnywhere views RSS for Avantgo as a way to greatly increase the amount of content available to users. The plan is to draw more people to the service and, perhaps, increase advertising revenue over time.

Avantgo product manager for Sybase iAnywhere Jon Asmussen told PDAStreet & SmartPhoneToday, "As RSS adoption continues to rise, more and more people are looking for RSS reader solutions for their smartphones or PDAs."

Features
With the beta service, AvantGo customers can add any of the millions of available RSS feeds offered by bloggers and major media to their devices. Consumers add these feeds to their account and then synchronize them using a wireless or desktop Internet connection to receive optimized versions on their PDAs and smartphones.



Create RSS Channel on Your Handheld

The Avantgo RSS service requires no additional software, as optimization takes place completely on Avantgo's servers. You must install the AvantGo 5.7 client, however.

"AvantGo's solution is unique. We now provide a single solution for consuming RSS and the 1000+ channels already available through our service. There's no additional software to install, it's free and it works online or offline," Asmussen added.

With AvantGo for RSS, users can view new RSS feeds, save RSS items, personalize channels, and subscribe to RSS feeds with AvantGo's AutoChannel for RSS.

Avantgo touts photo sharing for its new RSS service. So if an RSS feed channel includes photos, a Slideshow link will appear at the top of the channel homepage. Users can select the Slideshow link to flip through the photos in the feed. Since photos are already delivered to the device during AvantGo syncs, users can share pictures from their mobile device without waiting for each image to be retrieved over the wireless network. Users of photo sharing sites that offer photo feeds can make AvantGo their mobile photo album.

Internet content publishers—such as bloggers, online media and magazines—can use an AvantGo button creation tool to generate code for a button to place on their Website, making it easier for readers to take the site's feed mobile.



Get a AvantGo Button for Your Site's RSS Feed

RSS works with Avantgo’s usual array of supported device platforms, including Palm, Windows Mobile for Pocket PC, Symbian UIQ and Symbian v6.1 Series 60. Although Avantgo recently added Research In Motion BlackBerry wireless handhelds to the list, it appears these devices won’t be compatible with the RSS feeds, at least at first.