TvTrope on an offline rope
March 17, 2011 11:27 AM Subscribe
Can I easily prepare a lot of web pages to read on my Blackberry offline?
I love TvTropes, and lately I've taken to bookmarking + caching a handful of pages at a time so I can read them in the metro to and from work on my Blackberry Curve's web browser.
This is pretty slow though, as my download time is not zippy and it's all rather a pain to manage from within the Blackberry. Ideally what I'd like to be able to do is, from my home PC, set up cached versions of many web pages I want to read, then transfer them onto my Blackberry for later consumption. Almost kind of e-booking bits of the site.
Is it possible? Is there an app for that? Can PC-cached pages be displayed well on a blackberry? I was also thinking of maybe using a crawler to harvest a bunch of pages for this purpose but am not entirely sure how to proceed in that direction.
I love TvTropes, and lately I've taken to bookmarking + caching a handful of pages at a time so I can read them in the metro to and from work on my Blackberry Curve's web browser.
This is pretty slow though, as my download time is not zippy and it's all rather a pain to manage from within the Blackberry. Ideally what I'd like to be able to do is, from my home PC, set up cached versions of many web pages I want to read, then transfer them onto my Blackberry for later consumption. Almost kind of e-booking bits of the site.
Is it possible? Is there an app for that? Can PC-cached pages be displayed well on a blackberry? I was also thinking of maybe using a crawler to harvest a bunch of pages for this purpose but am not entirely sure how to proceed in that direction.
I don't know the hoity-toity way to do it, but when Adding a Bookmark for a page, there's a checkbox for 'Available Offline'.
posted by troywestfield at 11:44 AM on March 17, 2011
posted by troywestfield at 11:44 AM on March 17, 2011
Response by poster: I don't know the hoity-toity way to do it, but when Adding a Bookmark for a page, there's a checkbox for 'Available Offline'.
That's how I've been doing it from within the blackberry, but as mentioned it's slow and a pain. I'm looking for a way to do this or something snazzy on my PC and then transfer the cached version of the page in a readable way to either my blackberry or my kindle. Thanks though!
posted by L'Estrange Fruit at 11:51 AM on March 17, 2011
That's how I've been doing it from within the blackberry, but as mentioned it's slow and a pain. I'm looking for a way to do this or something snazzy on my PC and then transfer the cached version of the page in a readable way to either my blackberry or my kindle. Thanks though!
posted by L'Estrange Fruit at 11:51 AM on March 17, 2011
Response by poster: DOH!
Calibre - by Kovid Goyal, utility for working with ebooks including file transfer to the SONY Reader and many, *many* other reading devices. Uses Python. For Windows/Linux/OSX. Can convert HTML, TXT, RTF, LIT and PDF files to LRF and all other popular e-book formats, such as epub, lit, fb2, mobi, rtf, txt, pdb and others. Also has utilities to download websites and automatically convert them to e-book formats.
I'm still open to other ideas but I'll play with this tonight.
posted by L'Estrange Fruit at 11:54 AM on March 17, 2011
Calibre - by Kovid Goyal, utility for working with ebooks including file transfer to the SONY Reader and many, *many* other reading devices. Uses Python. For Windows/Linux/OSX. Can convert HTML, TXT, RTF, LIT and PDF files to LRF and all other popular e-book formats, such as epub, lit, fb2, mobi, rtf, txt, pdb and others. Also has utilities to download websites and automatically convert them to e-book formats.
I'm still open to other ideas but I'll play with this tonight.
posted by L'Estrange Fruit at 11:54 AM on March 17, 2011
When I had a blackberry, I tried to keep things simple and when I wanted some extended offline webpage reading, I copied the text and emailed it to myself. There was a significant speed bost in loading the text this way.
posted by QuantumMeruit at 11:58 AM on March 17, 2011 [2 favorites]
posted by QuantumMeruit at 11:58 AM on March 17, 2011 [2 favorites]
On the iPhone, I use Instapaper & Read It Later to do exactly what you are talking about. I know that Read It Later has some sort of bookmarking option for Blackberry, and I believe either will work with a mobile web browser, so it should work with the Blackberry.
posted by This_Will_Be_Good at 2:23 PM on March 17, 2011
posted by This_Will_Be_Good at 2:23 PM on March 17, 2011
Looks like there is an app for that: InstaRead ties into Instapaper.
posted by artlung at 2:42 PM on March 17, 2011 [1 favorite]
posted by artlung at 2:42 PM on March 17, 2011 [1 favorite]
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posted by L'Estrange Fruit at 11:36 AM on March 17, 2011