By Rodney J. Smith
I'm a huge fan of Palm devices and think the Palm IIIxe is still the best Palm device for your money. I'm also a huge sports fan, so it only makes sense that I'd incorporate the two. There are many ways you can use your Palm device to feed your love of the game. In this article, I'll share some of the sports resources I've discovered.
AvantGo
If you're a sports fan and a Palm device user, the first thing you need to do is sign up for AvantGo at http://www.avantgo.com. For those of you not familiar with AvantGo, it's a free bit of software that enables you to specify information that should be updated and downloaded from the Internet to your Palm device. The conduit is excellent. Once you've specified the information you want, it's updated with each HotSync. You use AvantGo's mini-browser on your Palm device, and the underlined links work just like they do in Explorer or Netscape.
Sports fans, AvantGo will make sure you constantly have the latest sports news at your fingertips. I subscribe to Fox Sports. Fox Sports gives you both national and regional sports coverage, including all the scores and a dozen or so articles. Their regional coverage adds another half-dozen or so articles in relation to your local area. AvantGo is a great service. As you might imagine, the more channels you subscribe to, the more memory is required. However, like most applications for Palm devices, AvantGo is a memory-miser. The Fox Sports channel occupies only 56K of memory on my Palm IIIxe.
Fox Sports isn't the only sports channel available. AvantGo offers over sixty recommended channels, including sites on college football and college basketball. If you're a fantasy sports fan, there are also channels that deliver very comprehensive fantasy sports information and analysis available. These channels could prove invaluable for the die-hard fantasy sports player.
AvantGo has a lot of nice features. It's quick, easy to use, and it's free. The only drawback is that it's not a live connection to the Internet. There are two ways to get Web content to your Palm device: HotSync (i.e., AvantGo) or direct connect (i.e., modem). If you simply must have a live portal to the Internet, you can use a modem and software such as HandWeb or ProxiWeb to surf the Web for your sports fix. I HotSync every morning before leaving for work . I find it easier and quicker than using a modem connection. Besides, I'm not such a sports junkie that I need to constantly know the absolute latest news. However, if you are, you now know how it can be done.
MobileDB and Memoware
After subscribing to AvantGo, the second thing you should consider doing is obtaining a registered version of MobileDB at http://www.mobilegeneration.com/products/mobiledb/. MobileDB will let you view and create databases of all sorts. One example is the schedule of your favorite teams, as shown in Figure A.
