The Squidlist is the best announcement email list for underground / art / culture events in the San Francisco Bay Area. I wanted to be able to browse squidlist emails easily on my wireless palm pilot, so I wrote this WAP application, and I'm sharing it with you. The only thing I ask in return is for you to please watch out for motorcyclists while driving. Thanks.
To access, point your WAP-enabled browser at http://www.danger-island.com/servlets/squidlist
You need a WAP browser and a Internet-enabed wireless device to use this. I use a Palm V, an OmniSky Modem and the KBrowser. It's a bit wordy so it probably won't play as well on a tiny cellphone screen, but it should work.
Eventually I might add a message interface to this so you can review or otherwise discuss the events (before/during/after). If any Java/WAP geeks want to help out, please email me: dav@danger-island.com.
The squidlist is run by Scott Beale at www.laughingsquid.org and he deserves all of the credit. I only hacked this together in a few hours, he's on the ball every day. Thanks Scott!
Feedback or questions on the WAP interface can go to dav@danger-island.com
Also: This puppy is a serious hack, it involves all kinds of geek goodies from procmail to perl to Java Servlets. A stiff breeze will probably break it :)
What is WAP/WML?
Wireless Application Protocol and
Wireless Markup
Language.
If you know HTTP and HTML, WAP and WML are basically the relative
equivalents in the new wireless world. It gets confusing; some web-enabled
wireless devices use WAP/HDML instead of WML, some also render normal
HTML, sort of. I can't promise your web-enabled device will work with
this WML interface to the squidlist.
How does it work?
Whenever Scott sends an email, procmail runs a script which
converts it to
an html file and saves it on my server
here.
When a WML browser loads the squidlist java servlet it simply displays
the list of emails (most recent first) and converts the HTML to WML.
Note that because of data size restrictions on many web-enabled
devices, only a few lines of text are sent at a time.
Isn't that dumb?
Yes, yes it is. Good eye. Want a job?
There are plenty of improvements that could be made, and I might even get
around to making them one day. I am very open to any suggestions. It
isn't apparent at the moment, but I do care about usability issues.
[ HOME ]
Visitor Count: 6489 since Dec/16/2003 [View log]