Online / Offline Forum Reader

[lewinr]

Dear fellow DISBoards members

I've been lurking for a while, and finally decided to post so I could get your feedback on an idea.

For a while I've been looking for a way to read DISBoards when I don't have high speed internet (or when I'm offline, like flying). I tried products that download websites to disk but they download way too much (which pisses off the admins) or too little (which is useless). RSS readers just see "feeds", not forums, sub-forums and topics and I cannot manage so many subscriptions.

The ideal solution would run on my notebook and download my new topics/messages in the background. Then let me organize/view them the way I want, read them (online or offline), and compose/upload posts.

I'm thinking about hiring someone to write such software. And I'm wondering: could this be a commercial product? (it would work with any vBulletin forum, not only DISBoards.)

Some ideas for features:

• set rules on how to handle new forums, subforums, and topics. for each one I could
  
  [*]subscribe (automatically download anything new that appears)
  [*]unsubscribe (don't download new items)
  [*]download only the first X messages (to review and decide whether to subscribe for future posts).​
• optionally transfer the messages to a PDA for reading
• work with multiple forums and let me organize threads from different forums into my own folders (like favorites)
• track which messages I’ve read or not (independently from the forum's DB)
• download of forum messages in the background, with or without images (and mark images for later download)
• compose replies offline to upload when I connect to the net
• track links that I click while offline, so later when I’m online I can open them

My fellow DISBoards readers: would you buy such a product? I think it could cost $20 to $35. Please vote and let me know what you think.

And if you have any ideas for other features, tell me!

Ron

PS. I made my best attempt to find the correct place for this post... if I'm wrong, I hope it'll be moved and not killed...

 

[lewinr]

hmmmm.... somehow I expected more interest on DISboards (versus the other forums I'm on) because in some sense this is a travel oriented forum where people might have more use for the reader. But I see not so much interest. I wonder if that's because for readers here it is not so critical to constantly be in touch with the board. Perhaps because most people are active here for short time (while planning a trip) and then go into passive mode where they dont visit at all until the next trip approaches (like me)...