Suppose you’re in your hotel room, you’re smartphone is charging, you want to see what’s new on your blog feeds, and you don’t want to wait for your laptop to boot up.
If you have a WiFi-capable Pocket PC or Palm with you, as I always do when I travel, you can use it and a newsreader to do just what you want. I’ve done this many times using NewsBreak on my Dell Axim x51v. I actually use it at home sometimes, too. NewsBreak, by the way, is from the same folks who make eWallet and ListPro, just so you know it’s quality software. There are other fine readers, too — this just happens to be the one I use. They also make a version for Smartphones, but I haven’t installed it on my T-Mobile Dash.
You can also use Google Reader on the Palm to see what’s new on your feeds. Works great with my Palm TX. I’ve not had as much luck with Google Reader on my Pocket PC or Dash, though, probably because the built-in browser is pretty anemic. The problem I encounter on these latter devices is not in connecting to Google Reader, but in connecting to the sites it links to. For example, if there is a story I want to read in full, I can’t get to it using Google Reader on my Pocket PC or Dash. I can see the headlines fine, but can’t follow through on them. With the Palm, I can follow through to them just fine.
Anyway, a simple tip on something I’ve found useful from time to time. Note that there have only been a few cases in all of my travels where I couldn’t initially get a Pocket PC or Palm to connect to the hotel’s WiFi. In a couple of cases, that was overcome by first going through a setup routine on the laptop and using the resulting URL on my Pocket PC or Palm. In a couple of cases, it was a lost cause.