AvantGo

I use a free information service called AvantGo, which I run on my Palm Tungsten T3. AvantGo is available for a variety of PDAs and smartphones (including Palm, BlackBerry, and Pocket PC). It could be considered to be something like a web browser, but I don't view web pages in real time. Instead, AvantGo uses my PC as a conduit to sync up content on the web. This, of course, requires the installation of special software on both my PC and on my Palm.

Information is provided in the form of channels which you must subscribe to. AvantGo has literally thousands of channels providing such information as news and weather. To be quite honest, though, the vast majority of the AvantGo channels are not worth subscribing to. Like the Internet itself, many channels have been abandoned or contain information this is out of date, or infrequently updated. However, a few of the channels that I do view on AvantGo are AccuWeather, CNET, MarketWatch, and Reuters. The AvantGo software can also be used to view RSS feeds. For example, I use AvantGo to view the feed for this and other blogs. However, setting up an RSS channel requires a little bit more work than setting up other channels on your handheld device.

For a service providing this information for free, I can't complain too much about AvantGo. Is anybody else out there using AvantGo?

Changes in Daylight Saving Time

Happy New Year! I was just recently looking at the list of optional updates at Microsoft Windows Update, and noticed a couple patches for Daylight Saving Time (DST). Curious, I clicked on one to find out more. It was then that I realized that the period when DST is in effect will be different starting in 2007. The new rules are:

DST will begin at 2 a.m. on the second Sunday in March and Standard Time will resume at 2 a.m. on the first Sunday in November.

That means that in 2007, these dates are March 11, 2007 and November 4, 2007. Note that DST (known as "summer time" in some places) actually begins in the last couple weeks of winter! So much for the expression "spring forward."

But, what is really starting to concern me now is the clocks in my VCRs? They are supposed to automatically adjust the time on the first Sunday of April and again on the last Sunday in October. By contrast computers, telephones, and radio-controlled clocks (also erroneously called atomic clocks) all have software that should automatically adjust to the new DST rules. However, as far as I can tell, VCRs (made prior to 2005) are hardwired to adjust their clocks according the old rules. As far as I can tell, VCRs don't have upgradeable firmware to update this change.

I even have a bunch of physical calendars that say DST will begin on April 1, 2007, and end on October 28, 2007. (These are the incorrect dates, by the way.) I refer to these as defective calendars, as they will tell you the wrong dates for DST. This is like the Y2K problem all over again.