NWTekno Event Calendar goes mobile!

[endquote]

Remember the time you were on the way to the party, but realized you hadn't written down the address or the info line, and of course no one else in the car did either, because they expected you too! And you couldn't call another friend because of they were all already there and couldn't hear their phones!

We here at NWTekno feel your pain, and have come to the rescure. Starting right now, you can access the NWTekno Calendar (http://nwtekno.org/events) on any mobile phone that has a WAP-compliant browser (which is anything fairly recent, really). Just open up the browser, point it to nwtekno.org, and pow! You'll be able to find out everything that's happening for the next week!

Now don't thank me, thank bandicoot (http://nwtekno.org/vb/member.php?action=getinfo&userid=10582) for translating the RSS feed (http://nwtekno.org/vb/showthread.php?threadid=53840) into phone-compatible web pages. Thanks man!

This is pretty new and things are still being tweaked, so if you run into problems, just post here and I'm sure he'll see it.

[bandicot]

This has been a tag-team effort entirely. Thanks endquote for all your help.

A couple extra notes to get this thread started with an appropriate sense of constructive criticism and bug reporting:

1) Not all mobile phones are created equal. Most relevant to this conversation is that fact that mobile phone vendors inevitably put different limits on the size (in bytes) of WAP pages that they will display. I am working on an elegant way to break long pages into multiple short pages so that even old phones like mine will be able to display all the pages appropriately. If your phone is old and isn't displaying some long pages, please be patient. I will solve this problem.

2) While the WAP access works almost flawlessly on the two WAP emulators that I use for testing, it is almost guaranteed that your phone is slightly different than my test package. This mean if you are going out and plan to rely on phone access to find the event, please (please) test before you leave your computer. If it doesn't work, there is always pen and paper.

3) This is a work in progress. If you are having problems, please post them in this thread. I will work to be very responsive on squashing bugs.

Let me know how this works for you. I look forward to feedback and suggestions. Thanks.

[PulpMind]

NEAT!

[PulpMind]

no wait.. not for me... no web on mine... damn...

[matt206]

Thanks for doing this! I hated going to eventnation.com on my phone.

It rocks, and I haven't run into any problems

[bandicot]

Thanks for responding to the thread. You are the first official beta tester. If you have any problems in the future, please post back to this thread I we'll work it out.

If you have a moment, will you let me know what kind of phone you're using?

[Sophistik]

Right

the

fuck

ON!

[nate]

No all we need is SMS alerts for locations and directions.

Actually, I already d/l all party info straight to my iPod, so I guess I'm geeky enough.

Peace.

[matt206]

I've had some problems with certain event links being not found, and same with connection to nwtekno.org via my phone.

[Daz]

very cool... my LG phone through verizon seems to have zero difficulties...

[endquote]

Thanks again to bandicoot for making this happen, by the way. It's come in handy for me two weekends in a row.

[bandicot]

Glad to hear it's mostly working!

I suspect that the event link problem posted by Matt206 may be an issue where the event details overwhelm a character limit on your phone. Current generation phones, with a few exceptions, are not designed to replace your desktop web browser. If a promoter posts scads of info about a specific event, it may just be too much for the phone to handle. If there is a specific event that you find is broken, please let me know and I'll try to do a better job diagnosing.

[Shinobi]

That is rad.

[Daz]

tried to use it tonight on the 13th... it had info for the 6th :)

[bandicot]

Thanks for the reminder. I had turned off the automatic updating because there was an event listing that was breaking everything; strange ascii characters will do that.

endquote fixed the problem and the automatic updating is now back on. Give it an hour to re-learn the events. . .

[fifi]

weeeeeeeee!

[Rinster]

I've got Sprint PCS Vision.. It works.. Thanks..

I'm not doing any self promotion, but I can't wait to try out the Winter White Ball link (Dec. 20th) and see if it blows up my phone. There's a lot of info and a picture on the first post.. We'll see just how much my phone can handle.

[chris]

I have a Nokia 3650 (AT&T) and it took a long time to load, and it doesn't look like it loaded correctly. I have the font set to the smallest size, but even words like 'tuesday' are wrapping.

[anchimon]

dunno if it's a silly question but...

the listings work fine on my mobile phone, but i
wanted to add nwtekno events as a custom
channel for my oldish PDA through AvantGo,
and i guess i am wondering if there is a particular
url i can point it to... i hope this question makes sense ;)

[endquote]

I don't know anything about avantGo, but you might just try pointing it at nwtekno.org, and if it's smart, it'll pull down the RSS feed and display that. If not, try http://nwtekno.org/rss.php.

[anchimon]

Looks like someone's post (http://nwtekno.org/vb/showthread.php?threadid=68017) is seriously messed up and is breaking the feed. They should edit that (i can't seem to -- is that supposed to be japanese or something?).

[endquote]

Erm, try it now.

[goofrider]

I too would like to see a PDA/AvantGo version of the site (sometimes called "lite" sites).

Basically all it means is that the site would be formatted for smaller screens with minimal graphics. See these examples:

http://www.google.com/palm
http://www.guardian.co.uk/avantgo/
http://palminfocenter.com/palm/

One can either view these sites on a PDA with a handheld browser, or add them to AvantGo as custom channels to be synced to the handheld for offline reading.

Other than the fact that WML is strict XML and many HTML elements may break the WML translation, there's also the issue that there are a lot of PDA browsers (and soon mobile phone browsers) that support both WML and HTML at the same time.

The current rediect behaviour leaves users with no options of how to view the site. When I use my Palm Tungsten T and go to http://nwtekno.org/ using WebPro, I get the full HTML site, rather than the WML version. Even though WebPro support both WML and HTML. Worse yet, the WML site seems to break a lot.

As smartphones become popular, there'll even more of an incentive to implement an HTML Llite version of the site. The Nokia 3650 sold very well, and it came with a real HTML browser. I think OpenWave's browser (which is licensed to phone manufacturers) also support HTML I believe.

The RSS feed isn't very useful for PDAs because while there are hundreds of RSS readers for desktops (many of which are fee), there are maybe one or 2 for Palm and PPC, and they tend to expect a direct connection to internet. Personally, I just started using JPluckX to convert the RSS feed and read it on my TT using Plucker. It seems to work well.

I'd imagine write an HTML Lite template for vBulletin would be pretty daunting. How about translating the RSS feed to an HTML Lite format, just like how the WML site works now. It'll also be more reliable since it'll be palin HTML, so it would choke as easily as the WML site.

I think there should be an alias redirect too, just in case the browser detection doesn't work or if the user has a WML+HTML browser and wishes to pick which version to see.

Say:
http://nwtekno.org/wml/ -> http://bandicot.morpheus.net/nwtekno/today.wml

And the HTML Lite version would be http://nwtekno.org/pda/ or something.

See this other thread about implementing a PDA version of vBulletin (apparently it's really hard).

http://www.vbulletin.org/forum/showthread.php?t=17619

I'm far from an expert, but please let me know if my time and knowledge can be of any use.

[endquote]

An HTML Lite version of the site (or the calendar) is not likely to happen until the next redesign (sometime around the end of the year). However if you would like to do some automated munging of the RSS into something for other devices, we could host it or provide a redirect to your version, much like the WML version currently works.

My basic point is that I don't have time to mess with that stuff these days, and don't have any devices that would read it anyway (I can't even get the WML version on my ghetto phone, most of the time).

[goofrider]

@endquote

I highly recommend Mozilla Firefox (or the Mozilla Suite) for any web testing.

Mozilla/Firefox has a WML extension that let you view WML natively.

http://wmlbrowser.mozdev.org/

Plus there's LiveHttpHeaders extension, gr8 for troubleshooting redirects, content types and cookies.

http://livehttpheaders.mozdev.org/

It has XML/HTML highlighting too.

I'll start looking for ways to translate the RSS feed to HTML. I'll contact you if I make any progress. I don't have permanent hosting though. But I'll sort it out with you guys later if I get anywhere.

[endquote]

Yeah, I use both of those. I'm a web developer all day, every day.

What I would try is using some XSLT magic to do what you want. Could prolly just use the XSLT PHP module.

[djsence]

I have not been able to get the site on my cell for quite some time now. Does it still work or what?

[endquote]

I dunno, I think it might be dead. I'll ask bandicoot.

[hy5]

Originally posted by nate
No all we need is SMS alerts for locations and directions.

Actually, I already d/l all party info straight to my iPod, so I guess I'm geeky enough.

Peace.


Or gps locaters for us really lost people.

[midibias]

Works on my AT&T Wireless phone (motorola v600) with WAP 2.0 browser. Works fine on Aug 29th.

[bandicot]

The WML pages were down for a while. They are back online and mostly functional. Promoters who post events without a lot of funny text in the event descriptions tend to work well. Promoters who use a lot of strange characters run the risk of confusing the WML browser. A good example of this, found today, is from this post:

http://www.nwtekno.org/vb/showthread.php?threadid=76510&eventid=17403

Apparently, WML browsers don't really know how to handle multiple angle brackets. A new and interesting WML tag, they wonder out loud:

XML Parsing Error: not well-formed Location: about:blank Line Number 25, Column 24:

<b>>>>> www.MBpdx.com <<<<</b><br />
-----------------------^

When translating from HTML to WML, I try to eliminate any formatting that will cause a WML browser to puke. I haven't found a way to remove all bad formatting, but I've worked to make sure that most unsupported WML tags are removed during translation. Other errors I've been handling on a one-off basis using regular expressions. It's not elegant; every time I crush one formatting problem, five more arise. Literally, I could spend half of every day adding regular expressions to the translation mechanism. Most of the time, I just ignore the problem.

If anyone has any suggestions, I'd love to hear 'em.

[endquote]

HTML::Scrubber (http://search.cpan.org/~podmaster/HTML-Scrubber-0.08/Scrubber.pm)?

[cyssis]

I can't pull up the list on my cell phone. When I first directed my browser to http://nwtekno.org it said there was unsupported content, so I redirected it to http://nwtekno.org/rss.php and it gave me the following warning:

Warning: main(./admin/config.php): failed to open stream: No such file or directory in
/home/1/nwtekno/public_html/nwtekno.org/vb/global.php
on line 129

I have a LG7000 (I think it's a 7000.... Doesn't say on the phone itself) with Verizon. The browser version is 6.2.3.1.174 and is called OpenWave... It's also "RSA BSAFE enabled" if that means anything.

Oh... and I tried http://nwtekno.org/rss.php in IE... Same error. Damn

[endquote]

Looks like that broke when I patched the board to the newer version. Should be good now.

[cyssis]

Thanks man. It works fine now.

[bandicot]

Mobile phone service will be down until Sunday after Thanksgiving. Sorry.

[NotsoDj]

That answers that question...... KICK ASS service by the way..... super neato.

~~tha Notso

[Acidy]

that friggin rox.. now i can check upcomming parties while i'm busy getting drunk!! YAY!!!

[Committed Prod.]

BADUNKADUNK! works with mah Sprint phone(Sanyo-8200). Thanks guys!

[bandicot]

If any of you experienced missing events over the last few weeks, the problem should be resolved now. I've put in a small change to make sure that the same problem doesn't recur.

[Nvgr8tr]

Any special tweaks to see it better on Windows Mobile?

Thx!

[bandicot]

What is your browser showing? The mobile version is presented in WML without any images or fancy font features. Are you seeing a pure text version or the normal NWtekno page (albeit smaller and strangely rendered)?

bandicot

[Nvgr8tr]

It appears to be the the regular page (w/o icons). None of the text is formatting in any compressed form. Is that normal? For instance I have to scroll, and scroll, and scroll to see the info, etc. Perhaps there is a specific link?

Kind regards, and thanks for the prompt feedback! This is an incredible feature (what we mobile people have been missing), and I really appreciate it.

[amuk]

How can I view the non-mobile version on my mobile browser? I have a Palm Treo 700p and the web browser in it renders regular web pages pretty darn well. I like the mobile nwtekno.org page for a quick glance at what is going on, but would also like to be able to view the normal (non-mobile) nwtekno.org page too.

Problem is that when I enter nwtekno.org I automatically get forwarded to the mobile page. Is there a link or URL I could use to access the non-mobile nwteko.org page on my Treo?

Thanks much,

Jason (a.k.a. amuk)

[endquote]

Wow, I'm surprised the mobile version even still works. That's pretty cool.

If you go to any other page on the site, you won't get the redirect.

http://nwtekno.org/events/
http://nwtekno.org/culture/
http://nwtekno.org/people/