While I slumber/seeking rest/my crappy cell phone finds what's best
January 5, 2014 10:57 AM   Subscribe

I am interested in apps for iOs or android devices that gather information that can be used later when there is no cell or wifi available.

An example would be Instapaper, which formats articles for later use, or Crofflr, which is similar. Psygic allows one to navigate without an active cell connection.

Specifically, I like apps that will churn away in the background and cache data for later consumption. Another example might be a twitter client that saved cached copies of all the URLs in your twitter feed. I guess what I imagine is having my phone with me in a bandwidth-desert, and being able to browse content that my phone has been gathering for me on its own, or with gentle guidance. The content could also be music, images, or something else.
posted by mecran01 to Computers & Internet (11 answers total) 13 users marked this as a favorite
 
You could use any one of a number of podcast apps to automatically grab the latest episode(s) of whichever podcasts you'd enjoy listening to. I use Downcast for iOS.
posted by brentajones at 11:05 AM on January 5, 2014


Response by poster: Ah yes, podcasts are great, I forgot to mention those.
posted by mecran01 at 11:09 AM on January 5, 2014


I use Byline as my RSS reader (with Feedly as the backend) for iOS. It has a caching feature for browsing news while offline.
posted by bcwinters at 11:12 AM on January 5, 2014 [1 favorite]


Gaia GPS does offline mapping, but geared toward backcountry navigation rather than driving directions.
posted by ludwig_van at 11:34 AM on January 5, 2014 [1 favorite]


There are a bunch of apps that will download all of Wikipedia (if you have the space to spare, on the order of gigs!) or let you cache articles.
posted by foxfirefey at 11:35 AM on January 5, 2014 [2 favorites]


Google Maps on Android can save maps for offline use.
posted by blue_beetle at 12:45 PM on January 5, 2014 [1 favorite]


PinHog does this for Pinterest.

My dream app would do this with blogs, allow me to comment, and then upload the comments when I had a connection. Even better, it would track the blogs for me, letting me know how long it had been since I'd commented on each one. (If anyone reads this that know of something that exists somewhat as described, either portion of it, PLEASE let me know - even if it's a desktop or online app of some sort! It would *really* make my life easier.)
posted by stormyteal at 2:27 PM on January 5, 2014 [1 favorite]


TuneIn is an Internet radio streaming app. It has recording functionality so you can record a stream and listen to it later offline. You can run in it the background.
posted by moxiequz at 5:17 PM on January 5, 2014 [1 favorite]


Response by poster: These are all great suggestions, thank you!
posted by mecran01 at 9:20 PM on January 5, 2014


Pocket is an Android (and probably also an ios) app. It enables you to store website content on your device for reading offline. You can store the content either from any android or ios device (to your pocket account) or from your PC.

Extra benefit is that it displays the web content better than a native browser, getting rid of much of the side bar junk.

It does not automatically load the content to your device. You have to access the content while pocket is connected to the Web, and then it will bring in the entire page.
posted by mbarryf at 6:13 AM on January 6, 2014 [1 favorite]


Google Play Newsstand will keep news stories offline.
posted by cnc at 11:52 AM on January 6, 2014 [1 favorite]


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