Columns

Compulsory License

If Congress continues to push for essentially perpetual copyright, something has to give to allow for new works built on the old.

I recently read a really disturbing short story. It was "Melancholy Elephants" by Spider Robinson. In the story Robinson describes a conversation between the wife of a dead songwriter and a powerful congressman over a proposed perpetual extension of copyright. The congressman had already decided to back the bill, and the woman tries to convince him otherwise.

She brings up some interesting points. In the world of the story, every story, song and picture under copyright has been scanned into a vast public database, and new works are compared against it to determine if they are sufficiently dissimilar to all existing works to qualify for a copyright of their own. This sounds like the stuff of science fiction, but it's closer than many think. Computing research into things like fractal pattern matching makes this little more than an "engineering problem." We'll have the computing horsepower to do this soon enough.

The problem in the story is that more and more submitted works are rejected as being too similar to something already under copyright. There are only so many story ideas, combinations of musical notes and patterns of color out there, and they will eventually be used up if we insist on remembering all of them and enforcing the "intellectual property rights" of their creators.

Consider "West Side Story." Would this classic of stage and film have existed if "Romeo and Juliet" weren't in public domain? Or the brilliant "O Brother, Where Art Thou?", which never would have seen the light of day if Homer's estate was still calling the shots. Virtually nothing published in the 20th century can be "built on" in the 21st, because we're too intent on preserving intellectual property rights.

(And yes, I see the irony of my argument, given that both Warner Brothers and Disney are airing TV shows this fall that bear a striking resemblance to my story "Do Over!". It just shows that I'm serious about the idea that ideas belong to society, not individuals.)

There's been some talk recently about instituting a compulsory license to allow file trading networks to traffic in all the music they want, as long as the copyright holders get paid. I'd like to suggest the same idea for publishing.

Compulsory license isn't a new idea. It's been at work in radio for decades. A radio station doesn't have to get permission from the copyright holders to play a song. All they have to do is keep track of what songs they play, and how often, and then pay the copyright holders accordingly once in a while.

Essentially, it's a question not of compensation, but control. I've mentioned before The Wind Done Gone,  Alice Randall's retelling of Gone With the Wind from the point of view of a slave. Margaret Mitchell's estate initially sued Randall's publisher to prevent publication, claiming that it was a "derivative work" and in violation of their copyright. The court eventually ruled that Randall's work was satire, and thus immune to that clause in the copyright code, but it never should have gone that far.

The history of human storytelling is built on repetition and refinement. Ideas are borrowed, cross-pollinate, and create something new. Or, to quote Ecclesiastes, "there is nothing new under the sun." The stories that touch us best do so because on some level, we already know them. The plots, themes, even the characters are already a part of us, deep down in places we don't recognize consciously. In the last century, we've suddenly been cut off from that rich heritage of storytelling, because the last people to tell the stories now have them locked up under copyright. New storytellers, rather than building on the old and reinterpreting it for modern audiences, are forced to try to find stories so far out there that no one's ever heard anything like them before. The result is stories that don't connect with the readers, soulless intellectual exercises that mean nothing to the human spirit.

So here's what I propose. A 20% compulsory license on the new author's net after 25 years. Anything older than a quarter century can be freely borrowed, rewritten, reinterpreted (and republished with no changes) without the original author's or publisher's consent, as long as the copyright holders get a 20% cut of what the new author or publisher makes.

Let me give you an example. Let's say someone wants to rewrite Mario Puzo's The Godfather set in a SF setting. As "West Side Story" or even the recent DeCaprio/Daines version of "Romeo and Juliet" shows, a story can bring new meaning to a new generation simply by changing the setting and not much else. Currently, this would be unpublishable because of copyright law. Puzo's permission would have to be granted, and the new author would have to pay whatever Puzo wanted as a licensing fee.

With compulsory license, the situation changes. If a publisher releases the SF retelling as a $10 trade paperback, the author would get about $1.25 per copy after everyone else in the publishing chain takes their cut. Of that $1.25, the author would turn over 25¢ to Puzo, or $3,750 for an average 15,000 copy print run. Not a bad chunk of change for Mario Puzo, considering it's pure profit off work he did almost 30 years ago, and the SF community gets a great story retold for a new audience.

Compulsory license would also make it easy to make movies from older books, and make file trading legal for works over 25 years old as long as no money changes hands. It would create a vast new source of material for new writers, as well as making commenting on or reinterpreting older works encouraged (no more worrying if your book report is a copyright violation!). And isn't that increase in new ideas (even if they're new ideas about old ideas) what copyright law was supposed to foster in the first place?

Save, then Search, Your Scrawl

In the current Biz 2.0 magazine, Chris Taylor, whose day job is ace correspondent for Time magazine in San Francisco, takes a critical look at the forthcoming Tablet PC.

The writer's conclusion about taking notes in your own handwriting and storing them digitally makes me drool and count down the days to November 7th---when Tablet PCs are officially released to us non-glitterazi literazi.

"Sure, you can translate your scrawl into neat rows of text. But why not just leave it as is?

"With [Microsoft's new] Journal [software program] and most other applications on Windows XP Tablet PC Edition, Microsoft's rejiggered operating system, you can do pretty much anything in handwriting. Save as a Journal document and search by keyword, also entered by hand (the system looks for a close match based on your scribbling). Save as an HTML document and throw it onto the Internet within seconds (get ready for a rash of handwritten websites). Reply to e-mail in digital ink. Highlight and red-pencil a presentation without printing it out. And the coolest feature: Erase words by simply crossing them out."

You can join the unofficial Tablet PC Voyeurs Club by taking an occasional peek at TabletPCTalk.

Another Planning Contender

Pocket Informant has leap-frogged Agenda Fusion in the planning wars with their new 3.2 upgrade. The new version adds to the excellent category management and saved views of 3.11 by giving you the ability to see today's tasks in the graphical "blocks of time" day view. This makes it even easier to convert tasks to "appointments with yourself" and ensure you get things done. If that weren't enough, the day view also adds a little bar to the top of the screen allowing you to see the entire day at a glance, even if you have the regular blocks set to 15 minute intervals, and quickly jump to any part of the day where you have free time.

Columns

Author Up or Author Down?

Who should be in control of publishing? The publishers or the authors?

Traditionally, the publishers have been the king dogs of the publishing business. This may seem like a "duh" statement; it's called "publishing," after all. What I find interesting about this arrangement is that without the writers, the publishers have no business, unless they all get into making those kitchy "blank" books that some people use for journals. So really, do the authors need the publishers more than the publishers need the authors? If not, then why are publishers calling all the shots?

Publishers have set themselves up as "gatekeepers," a kind of filtering system that ensures that only the books worth reading make it into print. This is a nice idea, but it obviously doesn't work. How many books has Jerry Springer published? Anyone read Monica's Story? I rest my case.

As much as the big publishers would like you to believe otherwise, they don't really care about publishing books worth reading. They care about publishing whatever they think they can get you to buy. This means a lot of hackneyed, formulaic crap clogs up the shelves of Barnes and Noble while good books with small or niche audiences, or just unproven storylines, never see the light of day.

For authors, this system is frustrating at best and intolerable at worse. Authors "make the cut" based on whether or not some marketing drone thinks they can sell the book, not based on whether the readers that do pick up the book will enjoy it. The right book with the wrong soundbite will sink like a stone, assuming it ever gets printed in the first place.

The publishers have so much power over what gets read and what doesn't that to an outside observer, it looks like the authors work for the publishers, despite the fact that without the authors, the publishers's business is nothing but smoke and mirrors.

Does it have to be that way? What if we turned the system upside down? What if publishing was a service, with the publisher working for the writer?

Imagine, if you will, a new kind of publishing company. Instead of the "traditional" way of doing things, this publisher works pretty much like any other service business. The author retains all rights to the work. The author gets the lion's share of profit. What does the publisher get? A commission on sales. Of course, on the other hand, the author gets no nice fat advance up front either. The book has to sell.

That's it, kids. If the book doesn't make money, no one gets paid. The publisher makes money as a direct result of the service they provide. If they publish good books (not just "crap of the moment") and do a good job marketing them a readership starved for good books, they make more money for themselves. Seems fair and equitable to me.

In fact, I see two huge advantages to this system.

One, authors are granting rewards instead of getting them. This may seem like fairly small thing, but it makes an huge difference in the balance of power. Does the current system strike anyone else as odd, when the creator of the work is happy to get 6% of the cover price, when the publisher decides to pay up on time?

Two, an author-driven system of publishing would lead to much higher-quality books. I know that sounds weird. Putting the authors in charge brings to mind "vanity" publishing, itself evocative of poorly-written, self-indulgent crap that wouldn't have seen print any other way. So let me explain.

Publishers would still retain the ability to decide what they'll publish and what they won't. A publisher that jumps at everything that comes over the transom will quickly develop a reputation for "vanity" quality works. I'm not advocating publishers give up all their power, only that they approach publishing as equal partners with the authors, rather than their current role of feudal lords. The authors pick the publishers just as the publishers pick the writers.

Okay, so that explains why this isn't the same as vanity publishing. So why do I think this will lead to better books than the current system? Simple. To quote one of my favorite lines from Babylon 5, "the universe is governed by three things: matter, energy and enlightened self interest."

The current system doesn't work. It doesn't work because there's no accountability, no feedback. Publishers don't really know what works and what doesn't, so their best guesses about what works in the future aren't very good. The best they can do is notice when something does remarkably well, and they try to do more of that.

This may work with product marketing-- find a car people like and make your cars more like that one-- but it doesn't work with creative endeavors. Books are-- or should be-- unique. Readers can tell if something is a shameless copy of something they already read, and they won't waste their time. While I might love rereading cherished favorites over and over, I'm in the minority. The vast majority of readers say they never reread a book. So why base your whole marketing strategy on trying to trick people into doing something they admit they don't do. Give them something new instead!

That's exactly where an author-driven publishing system would excel. New books, original books, would shop around the system long enough to find a hungry publisher willing to take a chance on them. And since we've turned the economics upside down, there's no huge advance to eat if the book doesn't pan out. You've still got the prep costs and print run to consider, but that's why you (as a publisher) want to find good books, not just more of the same old crap. You want to recoup your investment and start making profits. You won't take that risk on a book you don't believe in.

So what do you think? Is it time for the publishers to put the authors back on top?

Mister Kirvin Goes to Redmond (Again)

Yep, Beth Goza and company at Microsoft are at it again. I'm flying out to Microsoft again this October for Mobius 2002, an in-depth look at Pocket PC Phone Edition, Smartphone 2002 and other Microsoft mobile tech goodies. If you guys have any burning questions about wireless networking and mobile computing, start loading me up now. I'll take the questions with me to the mountain...

Fahgedabout This Dictionary of Idioms

If you love to write well, you probably have a library of resources on your mobile device to help you ply your craft.

My own PDA is loaded with dictionaries, spell checkers, encyclopedia, and various other references (in far too many formats, but that is another rant for another day).

And as a "real" writer, I own, and use on my desktop machine, the Oxford English Dictionary on CD-ROM---two editions of it!

So with great anticipation I tried the Oxford Dictionary of Idioms from Oxford University Press offered by Mobipocket.

The short-take on the experience: The makers of this product don't give a tinker's dam for its usefulness. That tinker's dam phrase, for example, isn't in the "dictionary" and neither are most other idioms I looked up. And those few that were included had extremely anemic explanations.

If you have a fairly good command of the English language, this reference is just about useless. (Though it may be helpful to non-native English speakers.)

Not only is the content less than one would expect, the interface was flawed--no scroll bars appeared on the screen, and the search function (on my iPAQ running PPC 2002) did not work.

I deleted the free demo version from my PDA after just two days of disappointments. And I'm not the only curmudgeon who views the product as not-ready-for-market. According to its own web site, Mobipocket customers have rated this promising but disappointing e-book reference a mere "2" out of a possible "5" score.

Do you have some references on your PDA that you find useful? Share your recommendations with us all.

Get With the Program

I found myself out for a walk today, when I realized I still hadn't faxed a document to Palm that they need in order to cut me a check for my Palm Digital Media royalties. Fortunately, I had the document on my trusty Jornada, PrintBoy installed, and there was a Kinkos ahead only about one block off my route. A quick detour, and my royalties should be on the way, right?

Wrong.

I walk into the Kinkos, wait for someone to help me. When the guy walks over, I ask where the IR-capable printers are.

"What?"

"I need to beam a document to a printer," I explain. "So I can fax it. I have it on my Pocket PC."

"I'm sorry," the guy says. "We don't have anything like that."

So I walk back into the blistering sun, no royalty check in sight. And I start to wonder...

What the heck kind of a "document center" doesn't have at least one IR-equipped printer in the 21st century?!? I could maybe understand Bluetooth, but IR is hardly new technology. A single $70 Infra-Ready adapter-- what I use at home-- would have solved the problem. Not only did Kinkos lose a customer, but now I'm ranting to you guys about their Luddite ways...

Sheesh...

And yes, I realize I could have used J2 to fax from home if I only had a scanner, a decent model of which I could buy for under $100. I'm still repairing the damage incurred during my long stint of unemployment, and not in that financial league. I'll just have to print it out from here and fax it on my way home from work tomorrow.

What a waste of a good opportunity for mobile technology...

Best of Both Worlds

Palm Reader Desktop

The best ebook reader for PDAs has made the leap to PC and Mac desktops. How does it measure up to desktop readers from Microsoft and Adobe?

Well, first off, given that it's free, how can you possibly complain? Palm Reader is now the only full-featured ebook reader to work on Palm, Zaurus (via the Palm emulator), Pocket PC, Handheld PC, Windows PC and MacOS platforms. Palm Digital Media has bent over backwards to ensure that if you buy a book from them, you can read it on any device you have. (The only exception seems to be Linux PCs, but I'm sure someone in the Linux community can address that.)

The desktop versions of Palm Reader read the exact same files as those on your handheld, although they don't synchronize where you are in the book. If you're reading a book on two different devices, you'll have remember a key phrase near where you left off and search for it. On the whole, though, Palm has nicely sidestepped the debacle Microsoft went through when most Microsoft Reader files could be read on the desktop, but not on Pocket PCs.

As mentioned above, the Search function on Palm Reader works great, and this is one of the features in general that makes ebooks so compelling. While I don't expect a lot of people to read fiction or other "entertainment" ebooks on the desktop (with one notable exception, see below), I think Palm Reader will be great for referring to books on the desktop that you've either already read or only bought for reference anyway. Business books like Selling the Invisible or Rich Dad, Poor Dad are particularly well-suited to this.

A big advantage Palm Reader has over both Acrobat Reader and Microsoft Reader is resizability. With Microsoft Reader you're limited to "Microsoft's Size Fits All" and with Acrobat you have to size the reader window to fit the pre-formatted content. With Palm Reader, you can make the reader window any size you like, and the content will repaginate to fit. I can read what I want to read, how I want to read it. What a novel concept! (Yes, I see the pun, and it was really quite unintentional.)

Keeping with the idea of making the reader happy, Palm Reader also has a collection of "themes" you can use to customize your reading experience. If you really prefer green text against a black background (old school terminal colors), you can read that way. No problem. I prefer the "Canvas" theme, which gives me black text against a subtly textured background. I looks a lot like a quality hardcover. You can also, obviously, read in whatever font you prefer (as opposed to what the author thought you should read in for Acrobat or Berling Antiqua for Microsoft) and whatever font size is most comfortable for you.

The user interface as a whole is much more comfortable than other readers. Bookmarks and annotations are conventient to access, but stay out of your way. Once you size the window to your desired size, you can "maximize" it and center the page on your screen with an unbroken black background fewer distractions (Microsoft Reader also does this, but without the ability for you to tune the page size first). The book title is shown on the title bar of the window, so that's what you see in the Windows task bar. There are lots of little touches that make Palm Reader on the desktop a viable alternative to its siblings on palmtops.

But what's really going to put Palm Reader on the map when it comes to "desktop" PCs isn't a desktop at all. This November Microsoft is going to release the long-awaited Tablet PC. For those of you who haven't seen one, a Tablet PC combines the power of a Windows XP-based ultra-slim laptop with the portrait orientation, long battery life and pen input of a PDA. The Windows version of Palm Reader will be perfectly suited for a Tablet PC, once and for all putting to rest the objection of "I'd like to read ebooks, but I don't want to be chained to my desk and PDA screens are too small." Now you'll have the best of both worlds.

We Interrupt This Channel for a Special Announcement

By request, I've added the ability to permanently link to posts. Unfortunately, this would make the size of AvantGo channel even larger, since it goes one level deep of the main page to get to columns. Now it will scarf every archive page off the main page as well. Between that and other people complaining that they can't get to the columns at all now, I'm making some changes.

If you're currently subscribed to Writing On Your Palm via AvantGo or Plucker, please remove the channel and resubscribe. I'll try to get Mazingo to mirror the same settings and come up with a new iSilo file as well. The new channel settings will save only the front page, but I will start posting columns to the front page in their entirety, so you shouldn't miss anything.

Mark My Words

Wired has a great article about the threat Digital Television poses to current digital recorders like Tivo and ReplayTV. As someone planning on buying a Tivo as soon as I can afford one, I read the article with extreme interest. Afterwards, I found myself muttering and ranting under my breath for a while. Some people never learn.

Hollywood is freaking out again about copy protection. They're afraid that the perfect signal quality of digital TV plus high-speed digital recording will equal rampant piracy. Their solution: withhold their content unless they're allowed to control your hardware.

"If Hollywood gets its way, recording won't be as easy as it is today. Jack Valenti, the head of the Motion Picture Association of America, has said that without proper security measures, the industry won't allow its movies to be broadcast. The reason: Digital signals create perfect copies that won't degrade. Executives fear they would deliver perfect copies to millions of viewers.

The Federal Communications Commission is considering a proposal that would allow cable companies to turn off the firewire port.

Such a measure would keep people from recording their favorite shows, said Jenny Miller, a spokeswoman with the Consumer Electronics Association, something manufacturers have steadfastly refused to do.

'If you talk to anyone on the manufacturing side, we are trying to work with the studios so that people can get high definition television with their recorders,' Miller said. 'But it's getting to the point that you can't even take a show you tape over to your friend's house.'

Cable companies say they have no intention of ever restricting the port, they just want to be able to show blockbuster movies. That puts them at the mercy of the studios."

Just so we're clear on the subject, if I can't time-shift my favorite shows, I'll just stop watching TV altogether. I'm a busy guy. My schedule in Agenda Fusion is generally packed solid from 5 am to 10 pm every day, including weekends. I may like Friends, but for three Thursdays out of the month, I have somewhere else to be in the evening than at home watching TV. If I couldn't record it, I wouldn't see it. Period.

The MPAA (and the other content conglomerates) need to wake up and realize that no one needs their content. They traffic in entertainment, a luxury. If they make it too difficult for people to partake of that luxury, they won't and they'll take their dollars elsewhere.

I pay $72 a month for digital cable, and even that is more than I should probably be spending right now. Go ahead, give me a reason to cancel. I've got lots of books to read. More than that, I have a life of my own.

Mark My Words: The content industries in America are going to get so blinded by their relentless pursuit for perfect protection that they're going to find it. They're going to lock down their content so well, in fact, that in addition to the pirates being unable to access their content, paying customers won't either. And without customers, how long can they stay in business?

Writing Done Right

I just got back from watching the movie Signs, and I have to make a few comments.

I won't review the movie per se, because it's worth seeing clean with no preconceived notions about what it's about or what's going to happen. I will say this. M. Knight Shyamalan has made some pretty good movies in Unbreakable and The Sixth Sense, but this one is even better.

Like his prior movies, this one shows that Shyamalan knows how to write (and isn't that part of what this site is all about?). This movie could be a clinic for aspiring writers (not just screenwriters, but anyone interested in fiction well-crafted). There isn't a single line of wasted dialogue in the entire film; everything matters.

Every plot development builds on what has gone before and contributes to the climax. A couple of the characters are clearly there for comic relief, but for the most part, everyone has a vital part to play. The story is an integrated whole, perfectly reflecting back on itself. When the ending comes, you know that it simply couldn't have happened any other way.

If you're a writer, or just want to be one, go see this movie.

New Soft Keyboard for Palms & iPAQs

Today's Circuits section in the New York Times has an item on a new, forthcoming flexible keyboard for popular PDAs from GrandTec USA.

The PocketVIK--for Virtually Indestructible Keyboard--is a rubbery see-through device, said to be spill- and stain- proof.

According to its web site, the firm plans models "for Pocket PC (iPAQ) and for Palm (m125, m130, m500, m505, m515, and i705)." No more details were provided as to which iPAQ/PPC models would be supported.

The flat, flexible, shrunken-by-25%, keyboard is expected to be in stores in about a month and sell for $60USD.

You can sign up for email notification of its release on the company's web site.

Palm's Leaked "Oslo" Prototype: Images, Rumors, Speculation

For about a month, pictures of a rumored new Palm model, code-named "Oslo", originally found at a Thai Palm Users' Group website, have been floating around, and people have been saying all sorts of things about it. This slightly odd-looking device is the first PalmOS 5 PDA I've seen, and seems to introduce a number of interesting features. Since I'm awake, I might as well try to aggregate the rumors from several message boards into one place, and make a few of my own guesses based on the pictures. Bear in mind that this is all rumor, guesses, and opinion, and none of it is guaranteed to be true.

First of all, the image seems to be either "the real deal" or close enough that Palm felt threatened; as the admin of PocketPC Thoughts explained in an edit of his posting, a Palm executive contacted him and asked him to take the images down. Not that this seems to have done much good in stopping their spread.

Some posters were still skeptical, claiming that the image showed signs of Photoshop work—in particular, pointing to the blur at the upper left, on the Oslo logo; others pointed out that this was where the serial numbers that uniquely identified the owner of this prototype had been blurred out for his protection. (It doesn't seem to have helped much; at one of the other sites hosting the image, it is shown with all the numbers intact.)

As to Oslo's features, let's start with what seems to be plainly visible in the photo. Most obviously (from looking at the text fonts in the image), the unit has a Clie-like high-resolution color screen, making it the first non-Sony Palm PDA to do so. Instead of the up/down arrows, there is either a four-directional "gamepad" with a select button in the center (a la the Diamond Rio MP3 player) or a miniature track-ball in a housing (it's hard to tell from the picture); at the upper right are holes for a speaker (according to posts on Palm Info Center, it's a cellphone speaker, the LED at top left is the cell's activation light, and the microphone is concealed in the "gamepad"). And, finally, the bottom part of the Oslo slides up over the graffiti pad, like the Nokia cellphone from The Matrix, so the unit is more compact for pocket carrying. (And someone has even photoshopped the image for an "artist's conception" of what it would look like.)

Speaking of the graffiti pad, there has been a slight cosmetic change there, too: the Home, Menu, and Find silkscreen buttons are there as before, as are the clock and contrast minibuttons at the upper left and right corners of the graffiti area, but the calculator icon has been replaced with a star icon. (Apparently the m705 has this icon, also.) Guesses on the rumor sites suggest that it is either a "favorite app" icon or else it has something to do with wireless/phone applications.

And one last visible feature that has been pointed out: the Oslo seems to be sitting in an m505 sync cradle.

As for features that are less visible, an anonymous poster to Palm Station who claimed to have handed a prototype revealed that the power button was on the top left, the unit has a CompactFlash slot in the top middle, and it also features Bluetooth.

An anonymous poster to Palm Info Center suggests that the Oslo's CPU will be a 175 mHZ Texas Instruments OMAP1510, which combines an 175 MHz ARM-compliant processor with a 200 MHz DSP for multimedia capabilities. A poster to the Bargain PDA discussion (page down to the bottom) goes into more detail on this processor.

Moving from the likely to the interesting, more anonymous posters with claims to Secret Knowledge suggest that the production version of the device will be called the "Fargo," will have 16 megabytes of onboard RAM, will retail at $499, and will ship around October. This seems to be a bit pricey, but not out of line with what one might expect for a color high-res Palm with wireless capabilities, especially being the first of the new faster OS 5 generation.

Other impressions from the discussion boards: some posters were doubtful about the device sliding shut, thinking that instead perhaps it slid further open to reveal a thumb keyboard. Others thought that perhaps a thumb board could snap into place while the unit is open instead (or that it didn't even close at all). There were also repeated complaints that the Oslo did not have the virtual graffiti area of the HandEra and the Clie NR70.

Why the directional pad? Starting with the Palm M series, which had a little clock that could be accessed even when the lid was closed, Palm seems to have been trying to make their devices useful even without fully opening them. My guess is that the pad is partly intended as a two-dimensional version of Sony's jog dial—to allow the user to select screen options without using the stylus. This would make the Oslo (or Fargo) a lot more useful when closed, perhaps even allowing running most minor applications without having to take the stylus out.

Bearing in mind that all of this is rumor, and may be true, partly true, or mostly false, Palm seems to have a nice set of features on their first OS 5 model. Will it be enough to maintain their lead position in the PDA market? That will depend on what Sony and Handspring's OS 5 offerings look like.

Columns

Planning with Agenda Fusion

5 August 2002

It's all Jeff Mitchell's fault, really. I was so spoiled by the organizational perfection of Shadow on PalmOS that none of the Pocket PC outliners I've tried quite measures up. ADB Idea is fast, but lacks project management features. Pocket Mindmap is better for brainstorming and general planning, but exporting to Pocket Outlook is a slow, tedious and manual process. Streamliner has great project management features, but doesn't integrate with Pocket Outlook at all, making it impossible to see your action items in "daytimer" apps like Agenda Fusion or Dashboard.

Slowly, it's sunk in on my thick skull why none of these "two-body" solutions work for me as well on the Pocket PC as they did on PalmOS. Prepare to groan, loyal readers, but it comes down to my paradigm.

On PalmOS, it's normal to use different apps to enter different data. Even apps like Shadow and Arranger that make heavy use of data from the stock applications are pretty much stand-alone apps in actual use. I frequently had one hardware button mapped to DateBk4 and another mapped to Shadow.

On the Pocket PC, I've grown accustomed to creating data without directly running the programs to whom that data belongs. I make heavy use of the New menu on the Pocket PC, which allows me to create new items from pretty much anywhere in the system. If I need to create a new appointment while I'm writing in Pocket Word, I can do it and go back to my document without missing a beat.

There is no effective way I've been able to find to use this system with outliners or planning tools. If I create a task from the New menu, this task doesn't fit into my plan. It's just floating out there completely independent of my outline. ADB Idea makes it much easier than Pocket Mindmap to add tasks into your outline after the fact, but that's still extra work I don't need. The point of planning is to make me more efficient and effective, not take up more of my increasingly scarce time.

So outliners on the Pocket PC platform fall short because they don't integrate tightly enough into an already tightly integrated system, what's the answer? Something that pulls that data together even tighter: a SuperPIM.

I reviewed the two Pocket PC heavyweights a while back, and you can't miss with either of them for PIM use. That said, I think Agenda Fusion has the edge in planning, so we'll focus on that one here. There are also other new promising contenders on the horizon, so stay open, stay flexible and try out new things. The competition is just making everyone's software better.

For those of you that aren't familiar with Agenda Fusion, it's basically a replacement for Pocket Outlook that gives you a more comprehensive interface to your Outlook data. If you enter a task in Agenda Fusion, it will show up in Pocket Outlook's Tasks and on the desktop. The big strength that it gives you over the stock applications is integration. You can not only see appointments and tasks on the same screen, but also get to contacts and some notes within the same application.

I've found that Agenda Fusion is also pretty darn good for long-term planning, both as a result of inherent Pocket Outlook features and features unique to Agenda Fusion itself. The first key to using Agenda Fusion for planning is categories.

For people like me that cut their teeth on PalmOS PDAs, it takes a little mental stretching to fully make use of categories on the Pocket PC. On PalmOS, you only get 15 categories per application, categories aren't shared between the Datebook, Address Book and To Do List, and records can only be assigned to one category at a time. On the Pocket PC, this is not the case. You can have as many categories as you want, you can create a category for a contact and then use the same category for an appointment with that contact, and you can assign as many categories as you want to any record.

As with PalmOS, the Pocket PC starts you off with the basic categories of Business and Personal. While I recommend you keep these as blanket categories, they don't offer much granularity, and that's what you need for effective planning. I have categories for every major project, as well as general activities like Writing and Fitness. I assign as many categories as are applicable to each new event, contact or task I create. For example, a appointment to add new content to Writing On Your Palm would be assigned to the categories: Business, Jeff Kirvin Enterprises (the parent corporation that owns Writing On Your Palm), Writing On Your Palm, Web/PC, and Writing.

Why assign so many categories? Filtering and grouping.

Agenda Fusion's Task view lets you group tasks by priority, due date, start date, all kinds of stuff... including category. I find the category grouping by far the most useful, as it allows me to see all the tasks that fall into each category. This is similar to using an outliner, as it shows you a meaningful breakout of your data.

Let me give you an example. My Business category currently has 35 items in it. This shows me all my business-related tasks, no matter which "sub-category" they're in. Of those 35 tasks, 21 also appear in the Jeff Kirvin Enterprises category, and 10 of those also appear in the Writing On Your Palm category. It's a "flatter" view of your data than a hierarchical outline, but it's also more flexible in that you can see a task grouped under each and every category to which it is assigned.

Filters make categories worth the trouble to set them up. I have a number of filters I use all the time. I can filter on Business just to show the business-oriented tasks, appointments and contacts while I'm at the office. I can use the Personal filter on weekends to just show me my own stuff. But filters are far more powerful than that. By far my biggest use of filters is not what to show me, but what not to show me.

(By the way, one feature Agenda Fusion doesn't have that Pocket Informant does is Saved Views. This makes it easy to predefine and name filters and view settings so they're faster and easier to recall later.)

I have one category that I rarely want to see, and usually keep hidden in my Today and Agenda views. This category is called Goals, and although I rarely see it, it's the most important category on my device. Tasks in the Goals category aren't really tasks so much as outcomes I want to work towards. They're still assigned to other relevant categories, but if I have the Goals category hidden, I won't see them even if the other categories are visible.

One of my goals is to publish the fourth edition of Writing On Your Palm, the long-awaited and oft-delayed ground-up rewrite of my popular ebook. The due-date for this is December 1, 2002. I don't see that in my daily agenda, because it's a goal. But working backwards from that, I know that I have to have the outline written by August 11, and the first draft written by October 15. Those are tasks in my Business, Writing, and Writing On Your Palm categories with start dates and due dates. Those tasks will appear in my agenda as they become active.

While this "flat" view of my goals and sub-tasks works, it would be very difficult to manage if it weren't for one other feature of Agenda Fusion: linking. For each goal, I set a hyperlink to each sub-task. A small chain link icon appears next to each task on either side of the link. I can click on the icon next to a goal to see and edit all the sub-tasks that make up that goal, or I can click on the icon next to a normal task to see the goal to which it contributes. Linking in Agenda Fusion is as simple as clicking on a tab in the task details form and checking checkboxes for the other tasks (or appointments, contacts or files) to which you wish to link.

I also have another "hidden" category, but it doesn't have anything to do with goals. This is my Master Task List, a term blatantly stolen from the Franklin Covey planners. In this category are tasks that I have no intention of doing, at least not in the foreseeable future. For example, I have a number of commemorative sports t-shirts hanging in my closet from championships my favorite teams have won. I never wear these shirts-- I rarely wear any shirt with a logo or design on it-- but I want to keep them around. Rather than hiding them in my closet, I'd like to put each of them in a nice frame and hang them on my wall. I have a task for this, but I know I'm not going to get around to it for a while-- I'm very busy-- so in addition to the Personal category, this task is also in the Master Task List category. This ensures that the intention to perform the task is recorded, but it doesn't clutter up my agenda until I'm ready to do it.

If you find yourself with more and more tasks banished to the Master Task List, you might consider giving them "due" dates, maybe three months or so in the future. When you see a task in the Master Task List go "overdue," either move it to your main task list or delete it as something you'll never actually do.

This all sounds like a lot of work, doesn't it? Maybe more trouble than it's worth? It might be, but there's one more feature of Agenda Fusion that ties it all together, that makes creating new appointments, tasks, even contacts will all the requisite categories and other info with just a few taps. Say hello to templates.

Any time you create an appointment or a task in Agenda Fusion, you can save that item as a template. This allows you quickly recreate similar objects later, with the same subjects, times, alarm settings, and categories. About the only glaring omission in Agenda Fusion's implementation of categories is that links don't make the transition, so you'll have to re-link tasks to parent goals. Not ideal, perhaps, but it will still save you a ton of work.

So let's take a look at putting all this together in practice. I have a project I need to plan out, the aforementioned rewrite of Writing On Your Palm. How do I use Agenda Fusion to plan this project?

First, I want to create a new category for it, so I can see only items relevant to this project if necessary. So I tap on the Fusion menu (the little hurricane-looking icon on the menu bar) then Manage, then Categories. Here I add a category called WOYP4, since this will be the fourth edition of the book.

Now I want to create a template for all tasks that will be part of this project. I create a new task in Agenda Fusion (it doesn't really matter how) and start filling in the particulars. I set the subject to "WOYP4 task" and check off the appropriate categories: Business, Jeff Kirvin Enterprises, Kirvin Media Group, Writing, Writing On Your Palm, WOYP4. While I don't need notes for this, templates are a great place to set up forms or stationary for common activities. For example, you could include the structure of your meeting minutes in the notes for business meeting template.

When I'm finished, I tap on the Tools menu in the task settings, then Save As Template... This saves the task in my list of templates, allowing me to quickly select it instead of a blank task the next time I create a task in Agenda Fusion.

Okay, enough prep work, now to start planning in earnest.

I start with a goal. In the Task view of Agenda Fusion, I filter on just the WOYP4 category. Then I create a task from my template. I call this "Publish WOYP4" and I set the due date as 1 December, 2002. I also add Goals to the categories that it's a member of.

Now I start brainstorming, coming up with all the component steps I'll need to complete in order to reach my goal, or at least as many as I can think of right now (there's always going to be more later once you wade into the project itself). Quickly my task list starts to look like this:

• Publish WOYP4 (the initial goal)



• Outline WOYP4



• Complete first draft



• Revise WOYP4



• Proofread WOYP4



• WOYP4 ebook conversion



• Market WOYP4

Each of these, except the goal, will be linked to the goal. Most will also be broken down into sub-tasks that will in turn be linked to the parent tasks. Start dates and due dates will be assigned to each, working backwards from the goal (this is a case where Agenda Fusion's ability to group by due date could come in handy). This would be a little easier if links could be pre-set by the template, but this gives us all something to pester Developer One about for the next version, doesn't it?

Once a week or so, go through each project category and add new tasks and update due dates. Keep things current and don't be afraid of using the Master Task List category to keep optional, unessential tasks from cluttering your list.

Every morning, take a look at the Today view in Agenda Fusion. I tend to keep the filter on this view set to show everything except the Goals and Master Task List categories. You want to see a realistic look at all your commitments for the day. Take note of where you have blocks of free time. Starting with your highest priority tasks, begin converting them to appointments by tapping and holding on the task, the selecting "Save as Appointment" from the pop-up menu. Assign the appointment the appropriate amount of time needed to accomplish the task in an open time slot. Once I have a task scheduled as an appointment, I generally check off the task itself as complete so it doesn't appear in two places on my agenda.

I have Agenda Fusion set up so that it sets alarms by default for all appointments 5 minutes before the event. While this works, Agenda Fusion benefits from a little help. Whittaker Moore's SuperAlert adds the ability to make alarms repeat indefinitely, and at a volume (I prefer maximum for alarms) independent of the overall system volume. It's well worth the ten bucks for registration.

The end result is that I have all my goals broken down into easily organized tasks, I have time blocked out to ensure that I actually get around to doing them, and have my Jornada acting like a tiny personal trainer (okay, a drill sergeant) shepherding me through the day. I not only know what I have to do, I actually get it done.

Is the system perfect? Of course not. In fact, I can name a few features right off the top of my head that Developer One could add to make it better:

• Floating Events. This is still an unique feature of Pimlico Software's DateBk line, but I wish others would adopt it. I mentioned before that I prefer to change tasks into appointments to ensure that I actually have time to do them, but what happens when I don't? Hey, life's unpredictable, no battle plan survives contact with the enemy. Agenda Fusion would be even better if I could "check off" task-oriented appointments when I do them and have incomplete appointments automatically move forward to the next day.



• As I mentioned before, templates really need to preserve link information. Links really tie subtasks to parent goals (although categories help) and it's a pain to set these up manually for each task.



• Speaking of links, the dialog for selecting linked tasks needs to allow filtering by category. If you have a lot of tasks-- and you will-- it's a pain to scroll through all of them to find the one you're looking for.



• Gantt charts (just kidding!).

Overall, though, Agenda Fusion does a darn fine job of handling project planning from start to finish, even if it does work a bit differently than the outliners you may be used to. Give it a try, and you might just find it's the only planning tool you need.

"Impressive. Most impressive."

Got my first hands-on look at the new Sony SL-10 today, and I really liked it.

The first thing you'll notice about the SL-10 is the size. All the "unnecessary" vertical space from the T series Clies is gone, leaving a device that's mostly screen, Graffiti area and-- unlike the T series-- good-size buttons.

The screen is the standard Sony 320x320, monochrome. Unlike the dim monochrome screen of the ill-fated T-415, the screen on the SL-10 is bright and easy to read. The background is a light silvery gray rather than the pea-soup green of monochrome Palm or Handspring devices. The backlight is a green "Indiglo" style, keeping the text black against the lighted background. The backlight toggles on and off by pressing and holding the power button, which is easy to reach on the top edge of the device.

The SL-10 runs on two AAA batteries like many of the older monochrome PalmOS devices. The battery compartment gives the SL-10 an odd "hump" on the back, given that the rest of the device is about Palm V-thin, but you don't notice it after a while. I don't know what the battery life on the SL-10 is like, but it's reassuring to know you can use cheap rechargeables or alkalines that you can buy anywhere.

Like all Sony PDAs, the SL-10 sports a Memory Stick slot, Jog wheel and a back button. The controls feel solid, as do most Sony components, and the wheel/back button combo makes the Sony unusally adept a far as PalmOS PDAs go in one-handed use. The controls are positioned well, the overall small size of the device making it equally well-suited to righties and southpaws alike.

Perhaps the most impressive feature of the SL-10 is the price, a paltry $150. This puts the SL-10 at the lower end of the "entry level" spectrum, one of the cheapest PDAs available. And at that price you still get a jog wheel, card expansion and a great 320x320 screen.

Is the SL-10 the best entry-level PDA? Sony makes a compelling argument. I can't find anything not to like about it, especially for the price. If you know anyone on the fence about getting a PDA, this could be the device for them. A great user experience at a price that minimizes "buyer's remorse."

Whither the PDA D&D?

Amid the explosion of fiction, nonfiction, reference, religious, and textbook e-books that have been appearing on palmtops over the last few years, one category of books seems to be conspicuously absent: the roleplaying game. I don't mean the computer roleplaying games like Neverwinter Nights or Diablo, but the books that preceded them: games of social interaction that are played with pencil and paper and dice and, most importantly, imagination.

Although some companies have been releasing electronic versions of their roleplaying game books, none of these have been what I think of as "e-books" in the fullest sense of the word. Either they are desktop applications with the text of a book inside (as with the recent Vampire: Revised CD-ROM), or else they are Adobe Acrobat (PDF) files—suitable for printing but not really for reading on-screen…or for putting on a PDA.

At first look, roleplaying games might not even seem ideally suited to palmtop use. Number-intensive games such as Dungeons & Dragons often contain wide or tall charts, which could not be displayed on most PDAs' screens without scrolling or panning. Moreover, gamemasters often flip back and forth through their paper books faster than they could jump to sections on even the handiest PDA.

However, a roleplaying game e-book would not have to replace its paper version to be useful. Gamers are accustomed to using roleplaying aids, such as quick reference cards or screens, in addition to their physical books. An e-book, with its search feature, could serve as a sort of "ultimate reference card". For instance, if a gamer needs to know how many hit points a Gelatinous Cube has, entering "gelat" in a search box will probably find the information at least as quickly as thumbing through the Monster Manual to the "G" section—especially when it turns out that Gelatinous Cubes are actually filed under "O" for "Ooze".

Players who game at someone else's house might find an e-book a useful pocket reference, trading less convenience in flipping pages for more convenience in not having to carry full-sized books around. Likewise, people who play in LARP (Live Action Roleplaying) games usually have to do without any reference books at all—just imagine trying to run around in the character of a vampire or werewolf while carrying several pounds of paper! But an e-book takes up very little extra weight or space, especially if one is already carrying a PDA for use in task resolution.

And, of course, a poor substitute for a paper book still is a substitute, and better than no book at all. With game books and a die-rolling program on his PDA, a few pieces of paper, and willing players, a talented gamemaster could run a game literally anywhere, at any time.

A roleplaying game PDA e-book would share with the Acrobat e-book the lower fixed costs of production…no setting up and running printing presses necessary, but just creating a formatted electronic file and setting it up for download. The price could be set a few bucks lower than the physical book, to reflect that cost decrease and lure more people into buying it.

So why hasn't anybody tried a more portable roleplaying e-book yet?

The reasons are a little complicated.

To begin with, roleplaying is no longer the fad market it was in the early to mid 1980s. There are still a few publishers (such as Wizards of the Coast, Palladium, and White Wolf) who can move vast quantities, but for most presses, a book is considered quite successful if it sells even 1,000-2,000 copies.

Due to economies of scale, books produced at this lower volume cost more to print, and have to be more expensive to buy, than equivalent-sized mass-market books. These books often have a very thin margin of profit, shaved as close as the publisher can make it and still hope to stay in business. (This is also why some RPG books are published only as PDFs—they cost much less and are less risky to publish than a paper book that might not even sell out its first print run. It is largely assumed that the buyer will be printing it out and binding it himself; thus a PDF is not so much an e-book as it is the "ghost" of a printed book that the purchaser will then provide with a body.)

However, among some gamers there is a perception that these high prices are gouging on the part of greedy publishers. Some of these even proclaim loudly via newsgroups and bulletin boards that if games are going to cost so much, they'd rather download them from KaZaa or get copies from their friends than pay for them.

In a market as small as roleplaying games', losing even a handful of sales to unauthorized copying can make the difference between black or red ink, and there is a fear that some of the complainers will be hostile enough to start passing around copies simply for the heck of it. The game publishers with whom I have spoken recognize that printed pages can be illicitly scanned whether the book is also published electronically or not, but at the same time do not want to make it any easier for malfeasants by publishing in HTML or some other unencrypted form. With the market for full-fledged gaming e-books as yet untested, it seems like too much of a risk to release them without adequate protection.

An outside observer might look at the success Baen has had boosting print sales with its unencrypted Free Library and Webscriptions e-books, and prognosticate that gaming companies could do the same thing and reap the same benefits. Yet, the RPG publishing industry is very different from the mass-market publishing industry.

As mentioned before, individual sales are very important in keeping RPG publishers afloat, and they cannot risk anything that might jeopardize even a few. In contrast, the much-larger fiction publishing companies can afford to chance losing some here and there. Heck, most large publishing companies can actually afford to recall and destroy copies of their books that did not sell! You'd never see a gaming publisher do that.

Furthermore, novelists—and especially the kind of science-fiction/fantasy novelists who write for Baen—have many enthusiastic fans, most of whom would never dream of doing anything to hurt the objects of their affection. (Quite a few Baen fans will conscientiously buy print copies of anything they get free, and some will even buy extra e-copies when the free e-books are sold for money elsewhere, such as through Fictionwise!) But gaming companies enjoy a strange kind of love-hate relationship with their customers, some of whom will openly declare their love for the game yet turn right around and Gnutella it because they think the price is too high.

One gaming company actually did try an open-format release. The now-defunct FASA bundled its first-edition Earthdawn game onto an HTML CD-ROM, and gave it away free in collectible-card-game magazines. (And, thanks to iSilo, I have it on my Clié's memory card even now.) It was hoped that this release would spark more interest in Earthdawn, which was not selling as well as FASA's other lines. Although Earthdawn did experience a spike in sales, the effect was only temporary. FASA later sold the line to another company.

Is it likely we will ever see roleplaying game e-books on our Palms or PocketPCs? Perhaps. As more and more people in the main gaming demographic (college students and older) acquire PDAs and start using them for other things related to roleplaying, perhaps the demand will make itself known. There is a way that publishers could provide PDA-compatible e-books and not risk their content falling into the wrong hands: by using a secured PDA format, with Digital Rights Management (DRM) built in.

There are several secure PDA e-book formats, but I feel the best is Palm Digital Media (formerly Peanut Press)'s Palm Reader. PDM's markup language provides emphasis (such as italics or bold), formatting, odd ASCII characters, tables of contents, and limited image display—and also includes unobtrusive yet effective DRM. Each Palm book is locked to its purchaser's credit card number—a key he will probably not want to give out to other people.

Palm Reader has versions for PalmOS and Windows CE PDAs, as well as Windows and Macintosh desktops. There is no limit on the number of copies a user can have active; the e-book could serve as his desktop reference at home, and be used remotely on his PDA or tablet PC.

It seems possible that a PDA roleplaying game e-book might lead to more sales of both the e-book and the "tree-book": people who already have the paper book might want a convenient reference version for the Palm, and people who try a less expensive e-copy on the Palm might decide they like it enough to buy the paper version, too. It might also bring in e-book site customers who have never been exposed to roleplaying games before.

Of course, it is also possible I might have my head in the clouds and there would be almost no demand at all. I don't think so, but it is possible. But even so, it does not seem like much of a risk to try—it would still be more economical to format an e-book that doesn't sell than to print a book that doesn't sell.

Gamers, e-book afficionados, what do you think? Let me know in the YahooGroup or the discussion forum.

Calling and Writing on Your PDA?

Josh Taylor over at ZD Net shares his experiences using the brand spanking new Pocket PC Phone Edition from T-Mobile (the phone company formerly known as VoiceStream and Deutsche Telekom). It's the first-to-market cell phone/PDA combo with Microsoft's new phone-enabled handheld operating system.

His take: "It's still more Pocket PC than phone. And that, for me, means it can be simply maddening."

This Post Brought To You By...

Now that there's so many voices on the site, I changed the layout a bit to make it obvious who wrote what. Does it work? Does it look stupid? Let me know!

Stylish Stylus?

If you input text into your PDA the old-fashioned way, checkout Marlof Bregonje's great thread over at PocketPCThoughts on Pen/Stylus devices.

When it comes to searching for the ultimate Pen/stylus combo, I find myself doing the Goldilocks--not too small, not too large...

In places such as Staples, too many of the too few options are untouchably sealed in display packages designed to hang in the store--not let you sample the wares.

And I hate plunking down big bucks for a pen that I may well not like, or even if I do, lose anyway!

I liked the feel of the Dr. Grip with stylus but it disappeared on a walk one day when the clip broke off for reasons unknown. I returned from my cardio workout with the clip down my shirt but the pen was never seen again! (At least not by me.) And I've since not been able to find that model at my local Staples stores.

The quest continues!

What the Dreamcast and the iPaq Have in Common

Slashdot is linking to an article about a creative use for the Sega Dreamcast…hacking into corporate networks from the inside. What makes this "on-your-Palm" is that the same folks also wrote such internal-intrusion software for the iPaq. Essentially, any small computing device—including handhelds—with the ability to connect to Ethernet can run software of this kind: hook it up to an internal port and leave it, and it will tunnel out to connect to a host's machine.

Beware of strange iPaqs plugged into your network.