The Sound of One Jaw Dropping

I just installed the beta of TextMaker for the Pocket PC. I'm still fiddling with the configuration settings, but OH. MY. GOD. I've yet to find something it can't do that Word 2000 for Windows can. Styles, page breaks, mail merge, real-time spell-check, the whole enchilada. Full review this weekend!

Motivation

I'd like to break from our ongoing mobility coverage to talk about one of the softer skills necessary to a mobile writer. After all, it doesn't matter if you have all the best tools and always-on communications if you aren't motivated to write in the first place.

It took me a while to realize this. I've been "ready" to start writing fiction for a while now. I haven't started actually writing yet. Why?

Simply put, I haven't made it a priority. I work long hours and when I get home, I often intend to write, but somehow watching TV or reading a good book always manage to take precedence. When push comes to shove, it always seems acceptable to delay working on the book "for just one more day."

Add up enough of those one more days, and you have months of lost productivity. Then comes the inevitable guilt. I should be working on the book, I tell myself. I feel guilty, like I've been shirking a sacred responsibility. And of course, the weight of the guilt further sags me down, and the book just seems so overwhelming, and I'm never going to finish it...

Sound familiar?

The fact is that all of the above is self-serving, whiny crap. I'm as guilty of it as anyone, but I also know that it doesn't have to be that way.

First off, no one is hurt by your failure to write but you, and you are the primary beneficiary of your writing. I was amazed how much weight that realization took off my shoulders. It would be different if you were a freelance writer with deadlines to meet, but if you're a novelist writing "on spec," you have nothing to lose by not writing but your writing. Writing is a tonic-- to me, anyway-- but it's not a necessity.

So lose the procrastination guilt. If you're not writing, you're only hurting yourself. The rest of us will literally never know what we're missing. Either write because it feels good, because you have stories you want to tell, or don't write at all. It's your call. Until you have a finished book, the rest of us don't care either way.

I find it also helps to have goals. Set your own deadlines. Now that doesn't work for a lot of people-- including me-- if the deadlines are too easy to push back, or ignore entirely. After all, writing is a private act. If you blow a self-imposed deadline, who's going to know but you?

Goals are competitions against yourself. While I'm a dyed-in-the-wool procrastinator, I'm also fiercely competitive. I hate to lose. Can't stand it. In the words of one my all-time favorite real-life heroes, "Failure is not an option." (Gene Kranz, the head of Mission Control for the Gemini and Apollo programs, for those of you that didn't see Apollo 13) I don't let myself fail.

And that's the key to meeting my own deadlines. If mentally reframe it as a race against time. If the calendar rolls around to the deadline and I don't have this scene/chapter/book finished, I lose. Might not work for everyone, but if you're hypercompetitive, it might just the sort of self-delusion you need to finish that problem-project.

Those are my secrets. What are yours? What keeps your fingers glued to the keyboard?

Patently Absurd

The Register reports that RIM has been granted a patent on a "handheld wireless email device" with a thumb keyboard. 24 hours after getting the patent, RIM filed against Handspring, claiming that the Treo is infringing technology. The language of the patent is fairly broad, and might be ultimately unenforceable, but geez. Does this mean that an iPAQ 5000 with GPRS and a SnapNType keyboard is infringing, too?

New Palms

c|net reports that Palm will release three new models in October. One will be a low-end, $100 starter PDA that Palm plans to market to retail outlets that haven't traditionally carried PDAs. One will be a Dragonball-based, OS 4.1 communicator with GSM voice and GPRS data (Palm's version of the T-Mobile?) and the last will be a completely redesigned, ARM-based, OS 5 device with Bluetooth support.

Columns

Making eBooks Work, Part 4: Audible

Okay, I have a confession to make. Not only am I a supporter of an electronic book format that requires the activation of a book to a specific device, but I'm absolutely hooked on it. I buy at least five of these books each and every month, I've been doing it for almost two years straight, and I can't stop.

Such is the power of Audible. I love ebooks, but hey, I'm a busy guy. I'm lucky most days to carve out half an hour or so for leisure reading (after digging through email and AvantGo) which means it would take forever to slog through things like Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged (a tome topping 3MB of plain ASCII text).

But like most Americans, I spend a lot of time each day in my car. (Unless you live in Manhattan, we're a very spread out country.) I also try to stay fit by walking, usually 45 minutes out of my lunch hour. That's at least two hours a day, more if traffic here in Denver gets clogged up because of something as cataclysmic as light rain showers, that reading an ebook could get me hit by a car, but also time where much of my brain could be processing a good book. So what's the solution if you want to experience a book but don't have the chance to read?

Have someone else read to you.

I've been a fan of audio books in general for a long time. I've got a decent collection of books on tape (pre-dating books on CD, though as you'll see below, we may have come full circle on that one). Like many people, I was hesitant at first to have books "read" to me, but it really works, especially in situations were your conscious mind doesn't have to focus on the matter at hand, like walking, working out or commuting. I can't listen to books at work, or even sitting at home, because my mind always moves on to other things in those situations, but when I'm on the go, I always make sure I have a good book to keep me company. I'm about 7 hours into the unabridged (50+ hour) version of Atlas Shrugged right now, and I'm enjoying it immensely, though it's a book I've never been able to make any headway into in print.

For all the advantages of audio books, they've always been somewhat cumbersome. Whether on tape or CD, an unabridged book frequently takes eight hours or more to get through. That's at least six tapes or seven CDs. Then add the bulk of a portable tape or CD player, and it becomes a not inconsiderable additional encumbrance, especially for today's mobile professionals.

Enter Audible.com, where audiobooks go digital. Audible provides audiobooks as downloadable digital files that can be played on MP3 players, laptops and PDAs. Atlas Shrugged, all 50 hours of it, would be nearly impossible to carry around as 50 CDs, but it only takes up about 100MB on a CF card the size of a matchbook. I can listen to it in Microsoft Reader on my Pocket PC, and I don't have to carry around any additional hardware that I wouldn't ordinarily have with me, other than a pair of earbuds.

Audible books come in four formats, each ideally suited for different needs. Format 1 is the smallest in term of file size, coming in at about 2MB per hour of audio. This massive compression leads the books to a somewhat synthetic sound, with noticeable digital artifacts in the audio playback. I'm okay with this, as I'm still limited to a 128MB storage card, most of which is filled with Palm Digital ebooks. For those that want a little better sound and can handle a little larger file size, Format 2 is generally the best compromise. The sound is noticeably better than Format 1 with about 50% larger files. Formats 3 and 4 are larger still with even better sound quality, Format 4 approaching both the file size and sound quality of MP3s.

The format you pick also depends on your listening device of choice. Audible supports Pocket PCs, Handspring Visors (with an Audible Springboard card) and most MP3 players for listening on the go. Not all listening devices support all formats, however. While Microsoft Reader on the desktop supports all for formats, the Pocket PC version supports only Formats 1 and 2. The Audible Otis, a digital audio player designed specifically for listening to Audible books (it also plays MP3 and WMA files) supports Formats 2 and 3, but not 1. Make sure you know what formats your device supports and don't download something you can't actually play.

While Audible provides a downloadable Player for the Pocket PC, I don't use it. I'm still limited to a 32MB device (and will remain so if I switch to the T-Mobile) and try to keep my installed third party software in RAM to a bare minimum. Audible Player is nice, but it isn't necessary. Instead, I listen to Audible books exclusively through Microsoft Reader, but with a twist. The downside to listening to Audible via Microsoft Reader is that Reader doesn't support hardware controls the same way as Audible Player, forcing you to use the stylus to make adjustments on the go. I've found that if I run Windows Media Player first, and map the up/down hardware buttons to volume and the action button to toggling the screen on and off, I can make most of the quick adjustments I need without ever reaching for the stylus or even looking at the screen. I can control the volume, rewind to catch something I missed and turn on the screen for more control with just hardware buttons.

Speaking of keeping the screen off while listening, I highly recommend this. You'll be amazed how little listening to books for hours on end affects your battery life if the screen is completely off.

Whether you listen via Audible Player or Microsoft Reader, on a Pocket PC or MP3 player, you're going to have to deal with Audible's digital rights management. Audible uses a DRM system remarkably similar to the oft-maligned DRM5 in Microsoft Reader. Every book you download is encoded with your account information, and unless your listening device is activated to the same account, the book will not play. You only have so many activations, although Audible's desktop Audible Manager program does make it fairly easy to deactivate one device before activating another. You can still run out, though, if you end up having to hard reset your Pocket PC without having a chance to deactivate it first, at which point you have to call Audible and have them reset your activations.

While I find this process odious with ebooks, for some reason it's never really bothered me with Audible. I think the reason is the ability to deactivate devices. Even though I'm down to one working activation (I think you're allowed three, and I've had two hard resets, but never bothered to have Audible reset them), I can switch at will between listening on my Jornada, my Toshiba e570 and my Audible Otis without incident or the intervention of anyone but myself. Microsoft Reader and Mobipocket don't make the process as easy for ebooks. While I'd still prefer no DRM at all or consumer-trusting DRM like Palm Digital's, device-locked DRM can be tolerable if the user is allowed to manage his own devices.

That said, you don't even need a digital media player to liste to Audible books if you don't want to. Most of Audible's books support a relatively new featuure in Audible Manager to allow the burning of books to audio CDs that can be played in any CD player. That's right, if you have a CD player in your car and primarily listen to audiobooks while commuting, you can just burn them to CD and not worry about all the activation nonsense. This takes us back full circle to the old days of audiobooks on CD, but at least it saves you a trip to the bookstore. By the way, if you're going to do this, Format 4 sounds the best.

In addition to saving a trip to the bookstore, listening to audiobooks from Audible could save you money, whether you burn them to CD or not. If you expect to listen to at least one audiobook every month, Audible provides Frequent Listener subscription programs that allow you to download one or two books a month for a flat price. Want the new Stephen King unabridged for $12.95 instead of $24.95? This is the way to do it. I've been a Frequent Listener member for almost two years, and I've always come out ahead, getting more listening material out of Audible than the $19.95 they charge me would have bought outright.

If you already own a Pocket PC or MP3 player, Audible puts to rest once and for all the excuse, "I don't have time to read." And never forget that writers get better as much by reading widely as writing constantly. Writers, you owe it to your craft to read more, so listen.

T-Mobile First Look

I dropped by my local CompUSA today to get a hands-on with the new T-Mobile Pocket PC Phone Edition. I lucked out, as there happened to be not only a rep from VoiceStream/T-Mobile, but a product manager as well. I seized the opportunity to glean as much info as I could.

First off, the T-Mobile is much smaller than I expected. It feels a good 15% smaller than the iPAQ, with similar rounded styling (big surprise, as Taiwan's HTC designed both devices). Like the iPAQ, there are no side controls. Unlike the iPAQ, the back of the device is textured to give it a sure grip in your hand.

Construction felt solid enough, with no creaking or flexing. The casing is a titanium-colored plastic (a refreshing change from silver) with chromed buttons. The directional pad is a little small, but response was good. It better be, with no jog wheel.

Okay, on to the important stuff. ClearType looks great on the T-Mobile, crisp and black. The Screen settings applet has the checkbox to enable ClearType system-wide. This will be a great device for ebooks.

Expansion is via a single SD slot on the bottom edge of the device, just behind the sync connector. This would be awkward, especially while using an as-yet-unreleased folding keyboard, if you had an SDIO device that protrudes from the slot, like the Bluetooth SD card or the recently-announced SD camera. As it turns out, this isn't a problem. Why? Because the T-Mobile doesn't support SDIO. Memory cards only, but there is a silver lining. VoiceStream tells me the SD slot is a 4-bit slot, so it should be much faster than the 1-bit "not so much SD as oversized MMC" slots on many Pocket PCs.

The lack of SDIO or a CF or PC Card sleeve has a more disturbing consequence. There is no way whatsoever to enable Bluetooth or 802.11b on the T-Mobile. You'd better like GPRS, because it's the only networking you're going to get.

GPRS works really well, as it turns out. There's an indicator on the title bar showing signal strength and the status of the data connection. (I'm already weaning myself off WISbar...) Speed is adequate, roughly 56k modem speed (the product manager was nice enough to let me borrow her SIM card) but T-Mobile provides an "accelerator" proxy service that strips out extraneous code to decrease both download time and GPRS kilobytes. T-Mobile offers a number of rate plans, but 20MB for 40 bucks a month will probably be the most popular. Between T-Mobile's proxy and Pocket PC Phone Edition's tendency to be as data-frugal as possible, 20MB should go a long way even for data-hogs like me.

The T-Mobile is $724 at CompUSA, but VoiceStream offers discounts and rebates to cut that down to a price more competitive with other 32MB, 206MHz Pocket PCs. Check your local shops for the specifics.

While VoiceStream is really excited about the Pocket PC Phone Edition, the product manager hadn't heard of Microsoft's SmartPhone 2002 platform. She agreed that it would probably be more popular with the masses than Phone Edition, but VoiceStream doesn't have any plans yet to partner with Sendo, Texas Instruments or other SmartPhone 2002 makers.

The T-Mobile looks like my next device, folks. It's small, sleek, readable and neatly avoids the foolishness of many of the XScale devices an the market. But more importantly, I've come to realize that my next device has to have anywhere, anytime Internet connectivity. Stand-alone PDAs were okay a year ago, but now they're as much communications devices as information reference. The ability to get up-to-the-second email, easy text messaging and access to the whole World Wide Web (as opposed to just what I sync to AvantGo ahead of time) makes my Pocket PC orders of magnitude more useful to me. It's one thing to be able to write an article while seated in my favorite restaurant, but it's quite another to be able to post it to the site before I pay the check.

Opening My Mouth and Removing All Doubt...

Be it shyness or shame I have unwittingly fallen into the roll of the "silent partner" of this rag-tag team of misfits. But given my creative frustrations over the past few weeks I felt it was finally time to share some of my secrets for skillfully avoiding the muse when there is a bounty on your head. With the past four weeks resulting in no less that seven false starts on various projects I am now an expert at dodging the bullet.

Reading & Research: Countless hours can be squandered in responding to important emails, "researching" a minimum of four web-boards, and re-reading those favorites by a specific author in order to "get a grasp on their style." My greatest tip? Randomly pick a subject or hobby and start an spontaneous search to learn as much as you can in a specific amount of time. Start a frantic web-search to find an old friend or lover without paying a dime. My greatest search? One night I set out to find a picture of Homer J. Simpson in the guise of "Mr. X." Five hours later I finally had my avatar for all of the Pocket PC web-boards.

Reading & Re-reading: Far and above ebooks have to be the greatest aid to nursing writer's block ever created. 300MB of ebooks and etexts easily provide a bottomless pit of time wasting diversions for the those of us afflicted with the Block. Old favorites, those classic you never were able to read in school, and for the brave there are always those from writer's you have never heard of. Unlike the paper book which may be in the living room when you're locked in your writing room/dungeon, the ebook is always a few taps away in your PDA which never leaves your side. Long books with long soliloquies are the best of all; I once spent an entire week reading "John Galt's" radio speech.

Journaling: The total time wasted by filling you journal with those useless thoughts can be astounding. Careful though as every once in a while a great idea will spring forth and you will be forced to do some real writing. If you have the will power you can fight the temptation to really work. Ride it out and you can quickly get back to complaining about how many more gray hairs you have today than were there last week.

And the number one way to avoid actually writing...
Fixate on the problem: Moan, lament, and complain about your affliction to yourself and any unsuspecting family member who wanders too close. Even random strangers are great targets for sharing your woe with. Use a random number generator to provide you with a phone number; call them and just start to ramble...

Follow my simple and proven steps and in 2 weeks you'll be not writing just like me. ;-)

What the Heck?

I'm seriously thinking about taking up Voicestream/T-Mobile on their GPRS data service. $40/month for 20MB doesn't seem so bad, especially with Pocket PC Phone Edition set to be as data frugal as possible. Pity those Handspring Treo 300 customers stuck with Sprint's PCS Vision, their version of the CDMA 1xRTT standard. Sprint wants $45/month for 2MB, with about $20/MB after that. Anyone care to explain why the CDMA packet data network is ten times more expensive than the GSM packet data network?

And another thing...

While I'm keeping the WOYP forum on pocketnow.com going since some people prefer web-based forums, I'm hoping the duplication of postings on the Yahoo Group will also encourage discussion on that group. I, like many others, prefer to maintain discussions via email (easier to participate via the Pocket PC) and now email participants will have the same opportunity to respond to each posting that web-forum types have via the [Discuss] link at the end of each post. So join in everyone, web or email!

So Much for Making Money on the Internet...

Okay, I get the picture. Since I started offering an email subscription to WOYP for a whopping 83 cents a month, absolutely no one has taken me up on it. At the same time, I've come under fire from some readers for letting the WOYP Yahoo Group languish. So here's what I'm going to do.

Every posting on the site will be rebroadcast to the standard WOYP Yahoo Group. The subscription program is kaput. I'll still gleefully accept donations to keep the site going via the button in the upper right corner, but all the content will be available for free in whatever form in which you wish to read it.