My weekend project - "PalmCatcher", a Java/.NET podcatcher for Palm OS 5
I've been mentioning in my podcast over the last few days (subscribe to the RSS feed here) how I've been wanting to help my father get connected to mine and other podcasts on his smartphone, a Sprint version of the Treo 650. I've had to resort to manually sending my dear old dad SMS text messages containing the URL to an MP3 I'd just published to the Internet to let him download it (the Treo 600 Series has a really cool SMS client that automatically converts URLs and mailtos to active links, so it's single-click for him, saving the MP3 to his phone's removable 512MB memory card).
But such was an obviously laborious process for both of us - mainly me - and with my show being weekdaily, it was a chore and not at all automated. Plus, in the event that he's ever want to listen to other podcasts, I'd have to shoulder the burden of sending those, too.
So I came up with a concept of developing "PalmCatcher" (for any copyright issues/conflicts, see below), a podcatcher application for Palm OS 5, based on a Java 2 Micro Edition client and a .NET server. I'd used stand alone, inc.'s Hand/RSS reader to keep track of my favorite blogs awhile back when I had the Treo 600, and it was great.
I've had to reacquaint myself with hardcore Java and introduce myself to J2ME to get the code to execute on Palm OS 5. Not being a Java guy, development of the client is probably going to take 3x as long as I would normally spen on such a project in .NET. The server is based on a .NET XML web service facilitating the client/server SOAP conversation, leveraging the Microsoft Web Services Enhancements to manage chunking of the downloaded MP3 across the wire (which can get quite large...around 22MB on average). For the beta, the server is using WSE 1.0 with DIME attachments, but once stable the more robust final release will be WSE 2.0 with WS-Attachments.
In the event I decide to port the code for a Windows CE/Windows Mobile client, I can whip it out in a few hours. I'm only planning for it to be a personal app, but if it works out, I'll make the app and its source code freely available.
Also, I'm not aware at the moment if the name "PalmCatcher" is in use by anyone else...I Google'd the topic, which came up lame. So if this is a copyrighted namesake by someone, just let me know. This was one of those things I just threw together to make it sexy.