Newton Meets Facebook

By some miracle I managed to get the greatest PDA of all time, the Apple Newton, to connect to the largest social network in the world, Facebook. For all of those interested here are the instructions.

Disclaimer: The Newton does not support SSL or https. Basically this means that anything you type into the website (including your password) is sent as plain text over the Internet. Do this at your own risk.

What you will need:

  • A Newton with Internet connectivity
  • The Newtscape web browser

What you will do:

  1. Open Newtscape
  2. Enter the following address:
    http://www.skweezer.com/s.aspx/-/m~facebook~com/login.php?http
  3. Once the web page loads then enter your account information. Note the warning saying, “Your password will be sent in plain text.”

It will take about 1 to 2 minutes for the page to completely load but once done you will be able to see your news feed. Have fun.

PS. If I could get NCX to take a screenshot then I would show you how great the site looks in green.

Posted from my Newton 2100.

Update: You may be wondering why you can’t connect to Facebook’s website directly from the Newton. Good question. I don’t have a good explanation as to why. I experienced issues when trying to connect through http://m.facebook.com/login.php?http. Both Net Hopper and Newtscape would load the page, but logging in fails. Of course, Courier cannot login because it doesn’t support forms. I haven’t tried Lunasuite.

The solution I came with for logging into Facebook was to use a website that could transcode the pages into more basic HTML. In the past I used Google’s GWT page combined with Net Hopper to view pages but about a year ago things changed. Google changed how GWT worked and since then I have not been able to get it to work on the Newton. After searching the web for mobile browser transcoders I learned about skweezer.com. Using its online transcoder I was able to login to Facebook using the Newton. Sure, loading pages is really slow, but it works. I consider that a success.