A fond farewell for Avantgo

Avantgo has been around for as long as I can remember, and hadn't thought much about the mobile application until we received a tip that Sybase Inc. (the parent company) was closing the doors on the service at the end of the month.

From the early PDA years to the days of the Smartphone. It spanned Windows Mobile, Palm OS, Symbian and RIM operating systems showing no favorites, offering access to websites offline. It was the perfect solution during the time where data plans were limited or priced beyond most means to take your favorite website with you. It was the pre-cursor to RSS readers.

According to Avantgo.com;

"After June 30, 2009, AvantGo will no longer be providing mobile Web content for sync or online access, and you will not be able to access or update your AvantGo content or account."

We were asked if an alternative was out there that could replace Avantgo and the only thing that came to mind was Viigo. I imagine with data plans becoming more economical and unlimited, most find it easier to simply go to the URL of the website on their browser or rely more on RSS readers to stay tuned to current events.

Avantgo will go the way of the floppy disk and serial port; a valuable tool that played a key role in the technology's development only to give way to improvements that were built upon the foundation it created.  Admittedly, I haven't accessed my Avantgo account in ages but now that the end is near, I may update my channels one last time for old times sake.