Solo Media Coming February 1!

Okay folks, we have a semisolid live date for Solo Media. Publishing gets reinvented February 1, 2005.

We've still got some stuff to iron out in the next two months, though. Most importantly, distribution and pricing.

We're thinking 50¢ for each issue. Seems like a nice, round number and small enough that people won't hedge too much about paying it. Fictionwise makes handling micropayments easy, and we fit right in with what they're doing over there.

But what about subscriptions? We're doing serials here, and that means once you're into the story, you're not likely to skip an issue deliberately. "No, I don't need issue 11. I'll just pick up 12 when it comes out." So it would be a good idea to allow for package subscriptions as well. What's a reasonable price for that? I'd like to offer a small discount as an incentive to subscribe, maybe 12 monthly issues for the price of 11? So a year's subscription would cost $5.50 rather than the $6.00 you'd pay buying individually.

But then how does that factor in with compilations? We're also planning on repackaging each story arc as a stand-alone ebook, similar to how comics are often republished as trade paperbacks. Again, for this I was thinking about deducting the price of a single issue. If it was a seven-issue arc, we'd charge $3.00 for the ebook rather than buying the back issues individually for a total of $3.50. Would people be less likely to subscribe if they thought "I'll just catche the compilation when it comes out."

Ooh! Here's a thought. Not only is there a one issue discount for subscribing, but you also get the compilations of those issues for free. I'd have to see if the folks at FictionWise could do this, and it would be tricky when story arcs span annual boundaries (do you get the free compilation if only one issue fell within your subscription window?), but that sounds like a neat idea.

So, any thoughts? We want to make sure we get this right.

Open Standards

One of the hot topics in IT right now is open standards, using technology
that doesn't lock you down to a particular vendor. This is different than
open source, giving your actual code away to anyone that wants it. For
example, Microsoft Word 2003 isn't open source; Microsoft protects the
source code used to compile Word from anyone other than themselves.
However, Word 2003 does support saving documents as well-formed XML files,
marked-up text that is easily portable to any other platform or device.

So I started wondering, why hasn't anyone done this on PDAs? How hard would
it be to create an office suite that uses xHTML? An ebook reader that uses
Open Reader?

We've got portable devices, so how about some portable formats?

Office Blues

I've had some problems settling on an office suite for my Zodiac.

For a long time, I'd bounced between WordSmith and Documents To Go.
WordSmith was the better pure word processor, but now that I'm doing
independent consulting, I find more need for Excel and yes, even
PowerPoint. Moreover, now that I'm connected once again, the ability to
save and send files as native Office documents others can read is an
important feature; I don't want to have to go home and sync before I send a
document to someone. Kinda defeats the purpose of being mobile.

So I decided to shelve WordSmith. But before installing Documents To Go, I
tried an experiement. I installed QuickOffice.

This goes back to the Open Standards thing I just posted about. QuickOffice
seemed to have two major advantages over Documents To Go:

1. While both suites can open and save native Word and Excel documents,
Documents To Go can only open Native Powerpoint, and this only in Documents
To Go 7, which seemed in past testing to be more unstable on my Zodiac than
version 6. QuickOffice and open and save PowerPoint files.

2. QuickOffice can also save files in HTML format, the ultimate in document
portability. In a lot of ways, QuickOffice is more an HTML editor than word
processor, even giving you the ability to edit the code directly rather
than WYSIWYG.

Unfortunately, QuickOffice didn't make the grade. It installed fine, and
though the desktop component for adding files to the handheld isn't as nice
as Documents To Go, it's still far better than WordSmith's. But once I had
documents on the handheld, I noticed the formatting looked... odd.

My fiction is formatted in Word the way you'd expect fiction to look. No
open block paragraphs. First line indented, full justified. In QuickOffice,
everything just ran together. Paragraphs weren't separated a la HTML, nor
were they indented. A look at the underlying HTML showed why. QuickOffice
has essentially no paragraph formatting support at all. Or more to the
point, while it carries over style information embedded in the HTML, it
doesn't respect it. The document probably would have looked okay back on
the desktop, but it was a jumbled mess on the handheld.

If the underlying code had been good, I probably could have dealt with
that. After all, I don't need it to look pretty, I need it to be
well-structured. Well, QuickOffice falls short here, too. In a new
document, with double returns to force block paragraphs, a look at the
underlying HTML shows the document to be enclosed in one giant P tag, with
two BR tags setting off each paragraph. If I wanted HTML that bad, I'd use
Word '97.

So I'm left with Documents To Go again. No open standards (sigh) but at
least I have something that can email readable documents to others. I just
have to assume they have Office, but that's pretty safe assumption these
days. But again, a question. 6 or 7?

I crossed my fingers and installed 7. I really like the ability to read
PowerPoint documents, and the customizable toolbar. Beforehand, though, I
removed everything from my Zodiac that wasn't strictly necessary. Gone went
TealScript (I'm now forcing myself to learn Graffiti 2, southpaw-unfriendly
though it is) and gone went Fonts4OS5. PToolSet is gone. So are most of my
games. (Everything was copied to an SD card before deletion, so all that's
really gone are preference settings, should I decide to reinstall on the
road.)

And so far, no glitches. Documents To Go 7 is humming along just fine, and
I can email documents to anyone I want.

Now if DataViz would just put well-formed xHTML and CSS support in
Documents To Go 8, I'll be happy.

The last PDA I'll buy

Hi, folks,
With all apologies to Jeff and Josh, and the group, I'm sorry I haven't posted at all. I've become quite busy in lab as I push to finish my PhD. And my wife and I have been preparing for our firstborn.
However, all this "living" has at last weaned me away from gadgetry for the sake of gadgetry. I'm sure you all know what that entails; lusting, pawing, drooling over the latest and greatest. Once obtained, we spend more time fussing over features and screens to get it =just so.= And so on.
All I mean is that I'm using my gadgets as they fit into my life. I'm besotted with the Zod1. It is the perfect reading machine. I know I've said in the past the only thing I care about is pixel resolution. The Toshiba 800 and the new VGA PPCs are still out there, but it just doesn't matter to me anymore. Mostly, it's a price issue. Most of you know that as gadget fiends, we are quite willing to bleed ourselves white to buy the latest and greatest. But I realized I've turned into gagdet mortal when I became absolutely repulsed and disgusted by the high prices. I've said before that, perhaps the VGA screen is worth $400 (meaning the Dell x50v.) No more. That's way too much for a PDA. That's ultimately why I'm so happy with the Zod1 as a PDA; the half-VGA screen is actually a functional compromise for me with the feature/price ratio. It's punchy.

Realistically, though, I've at last realized that all I want a PDA to do is to let me read and write. Maybe some arithmetic (I recommend Power48 at http://www.mobilevoodoo.com/power48.htm. You can download ROMs of the HP48 series of graphing calculators for Power48 to emulate.) But that's it. Once I got past the whole gee-whiz features to actual usage ratio (I like the word "ratio", don't I?), I spat into my palm (note the small-case "p"), slapped my forehead, and made a pact with myself never again will I be fooled into thinking that PDAs are really all that different from one another, and that they are actually better than what I have now. Here's another thing I've noticed: there's no difference between PalmOS and Windows Mobile. I'll leave this statement alone for now.

I have a few other thoughts on mobile computing usage, and I promise I'll develop this theme in a few more posts (that will come sooner rather than later!)

Drivers for the Wi-Fi Card by palmOne

palmOne - Support - Drivers for the Wi-Fi Card by palmOne

Okay, T5 users! You got your bleedin' WiFi! Happy now?

HP Still Doesn't Get It

HP has finally started shipping those Bluetooth Stereo Headphones we first caught a glimpse of back in September, which are compatible with their h2200, h4100, h4300, h5100, h5500, h6300, rx3000, and hx4700 series iPAQ Pocket PCs. They’ve even built controls into the headset itself, so you don’t have to fumbling around for your Pocket PC when you want to skip a track or adjust the volume or anything, but they are serious about the headphones not working with anything except an iPAQ. A few people have reportedly tried using them with other Bluetooth-enabled Pocket PCs, to no avail.

No, guys, the whole idea of Bluetooth is interoperability. Dumbass.

Not really a bigscreen...

SlashPhone :: Phones : Samsung : Samsung "Anycall Theater": "Samsung has came out with a similar idea that allow you to dock your Samsung mobile phone on the high quality speaker and use it to watch TV or listen to MP3. 'Anycall Theater' will be available in Korea first."

Email Is For Old People

At least if you live in South Korea.

Digital Chosunilbo (English Edition) : Daily News in English About Korea: "The email era is coming to an end because replacement communication means such as Internet messengers, mini-homepages (dubbed 'one-man media'), and SMS are wielding their power. As a consequence, the stronghold of email, once the favorite of the Internet, is being shaken from its roots.

The ebbing of email is a phenomenon peculiar to Korea, an IT power. Leading the big change, unprecedented in the world, are our teens and those in their 20's. The perception that 'email is an old and formal communication means' is rapidly spreading among them. 'I use email when I send messages to elders,' said a college student by the name of Park. For 22-year-old office worker Kim, 'I use email only for receiving cellphone and credit card invoices.'

A poll conducted by Chungbuk University computer education professor Lee Ok-hwa on over 2,000 middle, high school and college students in Gyeonggi and Chungcheong provinces in October revealed that more than two-thirds of the respondents said, 'I rarely use or don't use e-mail at all.'"

Damn, and I was just getting excited about GMail working on my Zodiac...

Missing the Point: More Webmasters Need to Learn Their Craft

PPCW.Net - THOUGHT: Is browsing the Internet via PDA and GPRS a good idea?: "The outlook for the PDA-friendly 'mobile Internet on the go' appears to be mixed. At least, the evolutionary progress is on hold right now, or shall I call it consolidation? Or did the wireless carrier loose interest in the PDA-friendly web world? With respect to the number of sold Pocket PCs with GPRS modem, I wonder if they are missing something, or do I?

If my neighbor would ask me if browsing the Internet on a PDA is good idea, frankly, I would tell him no, not for what he expects, except he needs access to a few specialized sites, than yes. No doubt, it is nice to have the possibility of always accessing the Internet, as long as you are willing to pay the much higher prize. But technological limitations may often block access to the 'normal' websites for PDAs. I personally already think about getting a UMTS/GPRS card for my subnotebook in combination with a volume tariff. If you are actively browsing the Internet, you never know how much volume the next click is going to generate, with a time based tariff, you are safe with respect to the costs. And with a notebook, you always know that you can access the site of your desire."

Actually, properly coded, accessible HTML should "scale down" automatically to smaller screens. If you're a webmaster and you've never read Jakob Nielsen's Useit.com, you're doing both yourself and your users a disservice. Designing for website usability helps everyone, from PDA users to the blind. Complicated, Flashy websites might look cool (then again, they might not), but usable websites rock.

Get an Editor, or Learn to Edit?

I got to thinking recently (never a good sign). Why are writers the only artists/craftspeople that need editors? Painters, carpenters, etc. create without passing the result through the filter of someone else. Why is it not only acceptable for writers to use an editor, but assumed that they should? Heck, even film directors get to ignore the editor when they release the "director's cut" of their movie.

I think a big part of this is that most writers are horrible editors of their own work. Far too many writers assume that everything they write is gold. Mark Twain wrote some brilliant stuff and some truly horrible stuff, and supposedly really couldn't tell the difference. And as most writers get more successful, they become less edited. Why do you think Tom Clancy and J.K. Rowling publish longer and longer books as they get deeper into their careers? I love listening to Tom Clancy audiobooks, because they're abridged (edited) and the long-winded stuff has been cut out.

But is this a natural feature of writers? Is the inability to self-edit unavoidable? Other artists learn to do it. And that's the key. Editing is learned skill most writers never learn to do.

Editing isn't that hard. You just have to be able to separate yourself from your writing so you can look at it objectively. Be willing to ask yourself with each sentence, each paragraph, each chapter: is this the best I can make it? In today's world of spelling and grammar checkers, there's no excuse for typos. But after you get your manuscript technically perfect, start questioning it. Have you omitted all needless words? Is each sentence as clear as you can make it? Have you cut every adverb you can bear to part with? Do you have any unclear pronouns (I hate referring to two different "they"s in one sentence, but I do it on occasion.).

Question the big stuff, too. Are there any plot holes? Forgotten characters? Motivations that don't make sense? Look at the big picture. Is this really the story you wanted to tell?

I don't buy that writers can't edit their own stuff. You can, if you learn how and are honest with yourself about your work. Give it shot, and see if you get any better.

Battle of the Network Browsers

Now that I have a connected device, I've been looking for the best way to surf on my Zodiac. It's not a big secret that the browser that comes with the Zodiac is subpar (it's based on a very old version of NetFront, not the slick xHTML/CSS compliant NetFront that came with the last of the Clies), but what else was out there?

I tried Xiino, but it developed a nasty habit of crashing if I lauched it with anything stored in the clipboard. Couldn't figure out why, or how to stop it. Next!

AvantGo has a new beta going, and it looks promising. The problem is that it too has a tendency to crash if it tries to open a network connection on its own. It works fine if I manually connect via the Network screen in Prefs prior to opening AvantGo, but if it has to connect on its own, bam! Fatal Exception.

So I'm back to using the tired web browser that came with the Zodiac and using SnapperMail for most of my RSS feeds, via NewsGator's POP3 gateway. Anyone know of a web browser for PalmOS that actually works?

Wow! This would rock for teaching...

iGo - Pitch Duo - PS6B1V "Give presentations from your handheld device or smartphone—wirelessly. No notebook, no wires, no hassle, just a powerful presentation direct from your handheld or smartphone. Pitch Duo not only lets you get rid of the cables and weighty notebook, it also enables you to view your presentation notes on your handheld device and use it to wirelessly control, via Bluetooth, the presentation while the audience sees just the slides. One year warranty and a FREE copy of award winning Quickoffice™ Pro included."

Home Alone? How Content Aggregators Change Navigation and Control of Content

Digital Web Magazine - Home Alone? How Content Aggregators Change Navigation and Control of Content

Jason Kottke is fantastic at aggregating content. Every time I read his latest list of links on Kottke.org, I find some tidbit of information that interests me, one I probably wouldn’t have read otherwise. How does he choose content, I wonder? (Recently, his ideas and links about what Google is doing have been particularly interesting.) Some of Kottke’s links don’t interest me at all. But it’s not hard to weed those out. I scan over them quickly, and forget I ever saw them.

Every time someone makes a list, be it on a blog like Kottke’s or a list of groceries, content is aggregated. The act of aggregating content (usually content that is alike in some way) makes it more understandable. Instead of looking at a whole field of information, you choose smaller, more logical subsets of it in the hopes of understanding those. After you’ve done that, you can apply what you’ve learned to the whole, or even just a larger subset.

Should we be concerned that aggregators are increasingly allowing users to find their own ways to use our content how they see fit?

Aggregation lies at the heart of the Web. It has to, given the amount of information that the Web contains. Were it not for aggregation, all the world’s information would be on a single Web page in a single domain. Wouldn’t that be exciting? (And painful!)

Aggregated content can be viewed on a spectrum, with human-aggregated content on one end and machine-aggregated content on the other end. The difference is in the way the content is chosen, and can range from a very strict machine algorithm to the whim of a human who simply “felt like it.”

This is why I don't mind "link and dump" blogging. Sometimes I just think it's interesting to see what someone else thinks is interesting.

Spam, spam, spam, spam...

I wrote a while back about how I rarely get spammed, even though I put my email address out there pretty much everywhere. I really didn't see it as a problem. A lot of readers wrote back on that one, very angry that would dare belittle their spam hell.

Well, good news for those readers: I feel your pain. Shortly after posting that article, my spam count went up dramatically, and has continued to grow ever since. I get close to 300 spams a day now, more than 10 spams to each actual email on average. GMail does a pretty good job of filtering most of it out, but right now they're only catching 70% or so. That's 90 spams a day that still

My Next Cell Phone

I love my cell phone. I really do. Bluetooth and 1xRTT, what could be
better?

Well, let me tell you. As l've mentioned before, l see the phone as the
communications module in a Bluetooth PAN. My current phone does an
admirable job with this, but I'd love to see a phone with:

WiFi. Some cell phones already support this, and I think this will only
become more common as time goes on. Carriers are smart enough to realize
that it works to their advantage if data users don't clog up their networks
with traffic. Let them eat WiFi! So I think Motorola's v600 is just the tip
of the WiFi cell phone iceberg.

evDO. 1xRTT is nice, but evDO will be amazing. With a theoretical top speed
of 2.5 megabits per second, evDO rivals WiFi in throughput, but with
greater latency. It won't be as good as WiFi for highly interactive things
like gaming, but it will work where WiFi won't: anywhere you have cell
coverage.

Smart switching. This is crucial, and the biggest missing piece. The phone
has to be smart enough to know which data service to use. While still
hooked to your belt or in your pocket, the phone has to automatically sense
nearby hotspots and judge their quality. When an incoming data request
comes in from a paired device (be it a PDA, laptop, whatever), the phone
needs to determine the fastest available data connection and handle the
patch-through transparently. If WiFi is available, use that, and pick the
best of any available hotspots. If WiFi goes down, switch over to evDO (or
even throttle all the way down to 1xRTT) without letting the user know
there's been a problem.

Of course, great battery life. This is a given in a phone with three, maybe
even four wireless technologies. If the phone only works for a few hours,
it doesn't do a whole lot of good. This phone should stand up to a hard
day's data use and still have enough juice left over for a couple hours a
day of voice calls. While I have no problems with charging a phone every
day, it should last the day without a car charger or swapping batteries.

My ideal phone doesn't exist yet, but we're close, and there's really no
reason to believe it won't exist. All the pieces are there already, but no
one has put them all together in an acceptable package. This is the
communications module I'm waiting for. How about you?

Stepping out of shadows of WiFi

Yahoo! News - Stepping out of shadows of WiFi: "Bluetooth -- a short-range wireless technology -- is finally coming of age.

After years of standing in the shadows of WiFi, its much broader reaching wireless counterpart, Bluetooth has found its niche: a burgeoning market for wireless phones and headsets."

Nice story, but it misses the point. A Bluetooth phone and headset are only part of a PAN, Personal Area Network. Add a Bluetooth PDA, a Bluetooth high-quality camera and a Bluetooth GPS, and we're getting somewhere.

A Matter of Degrees

I've been arguing for a while now about why I not only believe that PDAs
are NOT dead, but why I think smartphones won't kill them. It comes down to
what you do with your device and what you don't bother to do with your
device.

Smartphones, even the popular Treo, are phones first and foremost. This
means that certain concessions have to be made in terms of size, screen,
etc. PDAs can be larger, have bigger screens and more features. In fact,
the very things that make a good smartphone make a poor handheld computer,
and vice versa.

I love the Treo. I've recently had the chance to fondle the 650 from Sprint
and it is absolutely beautiful. It's a gorgeous screen, the keys are
wonderful, the networking works fast. It's a great smartphone. But I could
never be happy using it as my only device. The screen, sharp as it is, is
too small. It's too small for writing, it's too small for reading, it's too
small for movies and gaming.

I don't want to live with the limitations of a phone. This is why Bluetooth
is so great. I can have a phone that's great at being a phone (my Sony
Ericsson T608) and I can have a handheld computer that offers a
no-compromises computing experience.

My Tapwave Zodiac has everything that a smartphone could never get away
with. It has a large screen, great battery life (because it doesn't have to
power the phone radio), massive internal memory and plenty of expansion
room. My Zodiac is a computer, capable of word processing, full screen web
browsing, even PowerPoint. While the Treo can do some of this, it can't do
it as well, and most "smartphones" can't handle Office documents at all.
With my PalmOne IR Keyboard, my Zodiac is as good as a miniature laptop,
only more pocketable and a LOT cheaper than a Sony VAIO U75.

Smartphones have their place. That place might be good enough for a large,
even majority portion of the folks looking for more than a "dumbphone" can
offer in mobile information management. But handheld computers aren't going
to go away, and serve a vital -- and growing -- niche of those that need
something close to a laptop experience with no compromises in portability.

The Communications Module

I've been thinking a lot about this idea that handhelds need WiFi to be
viable. I don't think that's true. (Big surprise.) But in thinking about
it, I came up with an idea that I can't believe more people don't champion.

Why is the iPod such a success? It wasn't the first MP3 player on the
market. It wasn't even the first to use a hard drive instead of flash
memory. In fact, there are lots of MP3 players out there that look better
on paper than the iPod. They have more storage for the price, support more
formats, have bigger screens capable of playing video, double as voice
recorders, have more features. So why do these devices lose to the iPod?
Because the iPod, like so much else from Apple, does what it does extremely
well, but no more.

The iPod is a perfect example of a divergent device. Instead of combining
more and more features into a do-everything box, the iPod specializes and
focuses on music storage, organization and playback. That's all it does,
but Apple has put so much thought into the design of the iPod that it's
easier and more pleasant to use than the more powerful, but more
complicated, competition.

So why is there so much outcry from the geek community towards convergent
solutions? Divergence works. Mobile devices work best when they focus on
one thing and do it really well. So why should a PDA have a GPS, or WiFi,
or a camera? It shouldn't. A PDA should have a big screen, lots of memory,
a user interface designed for pen input, strong battery and Bluetooth.
Nothing else.

Why Bluetooth but not WiFi? Because Bluetoth is what makes divergence pay
off. You can have several devices that all do their own thing perfectly,
with no compromises, and they can still borrow each others' resources when
they need them. I can use my handheld as my central "console", doing
everything with it that I'd do with a laptop, only without lugging around
the laptop. But through Bluetooth on the PDA, I can pull GPS coordinates
from a Bluetooth GPS, I can pull in images from a Bluetooth-enabled
digicam, and I can connect to the internet through a Bluetooth cell phone.

None of that is new. But this is what occurred to me that really reframed
the concept. The phone in this scenario isn't really a phone. It's the
communications module of the PAN. Sure, it does voice (preferably through a
Bluetooth headset), but in this case its role is providing the connection
to the internet. Now here's the interesting part. Some newer phones, like
the Motorola v600, support WiFi as well as cellular technology. Doesn't it
make more sense to keep the communications technology in the communications
module? Why put WiFi in the handheld, increasing the cost and complexity
while reducing battery life, if you can use a Bluetooth connection to the
phone and use WiFi to access the internet from there?

Hot television

Macleans.ca | Top Stories | Technology | Hot television: "Why is a TV executive so agitated about online pirates? Because he, like most media honchos, has seen the scary numbers indicating that the next big craze in illegal file-sharing is not music, not movies, but television. High-quality digital copies of popular shows such as Desperate Housewives, The West Wing and, well, pretty much anything else on the tube are available online a few hours after they air, many in high definition. Pirates with HD-ready TV sets can enjoy these shows in widescreen format and in better picture quality than what regular cable provides -- no need to spring for satellite feeds or specialty channels. All they need is a high-speed Internet connection, a modicum of computer know-how, a little patience -- and a willingness to risk a lawsuit. With the spread of personal video recorders like TiVo, 'people are ignoring the old notion that you watch your program at 8 o'clock when CBS or NBC decides you should be watching it,' says Mike McGuire, a digital rights expert with research company Gartner Inc. 'And they're using the Internet to do that.'"

infoSync World : Review Centre : Sprint Treo 650 - Page 2

infoSync World : Review Centre : Sprint Treo 650 - Page 2: "It is always difficult to follow on success, but palmOne's fourth generation Treo manages to do just that. It takes the already first-rate design of the Treo 600 and rounds out the feature set, adding more polish, pizazz, and tweaks to perfect the design. The memory overhead problem is the only major gaffe on the Treo 650, although the current lack of Bluetooth DUN support and out of the box voice dialing is also disappointing. On the flip side, excellent software integration, a first-rate thumbboard, good camera, and record-breaking battery life make the Treo 650 a compelling product, and one that replaces the Treo 600 as the standard-setting communicator on the market."

Finding Your Currency

Fast Company | Finding Your Currency: "If giving of yourself is crucial to building successful relationships, then the next question to answer is 'What do I have to give?'

'What if I don't have much to offer?' You know, I'm shocked and a bit sad by the number of people who ask that when I explain that to build strong relationships -- the kind that will consistently grow sales, boost your career, or just pack your social calendar -- you have to give, give, give, and not keep score .

So, I'm here to slap some of that 'not enough' thinking out of you. Everybody has a currency to give, or some capacity to help somebody else fulfill their mission or vision of themselves in some way. Trust me on this point: I've seen some pretty low thresholds for what counts as currency.

Jokes can be a currency. If you can make people laugh, you're helping them have a good time, and they'll be more up for doing business or hanging out with you. Heck, sometimes just being someone empathetic or decent to talk with is a currency in the right (or wrong) environment. Yet, I'm confident that you possess currencies much stronger and much more abundant than these simple examples. You've just got to know how to find them, something even I struggled to do for a while."

This is a really interesting article. Once you start thinking of your unique skills and attributes as currency other people value, a whole new way of thinking opens up.

Opera introduces new Fit-to-Window Technology

MobileRead Networks - Opera introduces new Fit-to-Window Technology: "Opera Software is pitching a new idea that promises to put and end to the problem of rendering Web pages effectively regardless of screen size.

A couple of days ago the company announced its new Extensible Rendering Architecture (ERA), blending together all of the company's existing rendering technologies -- including Small- and Medium-Screen Rendering (SSR/MSR) for mobile devices and TV-rendering -- to tackle the problem head on with dynamic resizing.

Opera's ERA technology enables dynamic resizing to adapt Web page content to fit any width - from projectors to mobile phones, and everything in between. Furthermore, printing Web pages will often leave out parts because the Web page is wider than the paper, and ERA can make the Web page fit the width of the paper for complete printouts."

Read/Write Web: First eBook Purchase

Read/Write Web: First eBook Purchase: "Regarding pricing, I still think eBooks need to come down in price some more in order to attract new customers. Amazon are offering the hardcover book for US$17.37, which is only a couple of dollars more than I paid for the electronic version at Fictionwise. However I would've had to pay some hefty delivery charges to buy the hardcover at Amazon (one drawback of living on the other side of the world), so the zero delivery cost of eBooks is a big plus for me.

The other factor was the immediate delivery of the book via Internet download. Being in New Zealand, typically I have to wait 3-4 weeks for Amazon deliveries. New Zealand book retailers as far as I know don't stock this book yet (and even if they did, book prices are generally significantly higher in NZ stores than on Amazon - even factoring in delivery). So eBook format is probably the only way I'd get to read Wolfe's new book before Christmas.

All up, NZ$20 isn't a bad price to pay for a brand new book I can't wait to read - so I'm happy"

The Death of Anchors = The End of One-Way News

BuzzMachine... by Jeff Jarvis: "Yes, the exit of Dan Rather, stage left, spotlight off, tail twixt legs, marks the death of the anchor, the extinction of the trusted news star.

But it's more than that. It's the toppling of journalism on a pedestal. It's the end of news as a lecture. It's the death of one-way media.

That is what anchors embodied. And that is what we, the people formerly known as viewers/listeners/readers in the audience, have rejected.

We rejected the old system of trust: If we trusted the person, it was thought, then we trusted what he said. Anchors equaled automatic authority. But no more.

Oh, trust is still important. In fact, in this new, distributed world of ours, it is even more important. Trust is our organizing principle. Trust is what makes weblogs, Technorati, eBay, Craigs List, RSS, chat, and email work: We pay attention to those we trust; we filter out the rest. We each decide whom to trust; it's no longer decided for all of us."

What does this have to do with Writing On Your Palm? One word: moBlogging.

How to Explode TV News... And Turn a Broadcast Into a Conversation

BuzzMachine... by Jeff Jarvis: "When you've done all that, you've turned news into a conversation.

You've turned the spotlight away from the anchor -- the mere personality who got you in trouble -- and you turn it onto the news itself, where it belongs.

You've engaged the people you used to call your viewers, who used to just sit there but have since started walking away, into the news.

You've made anchors what they should be: supporting players, second bananas. (And you've saved yourself a helluva lot of money along the way.)

And you've informed the public. Isn't that what news is about instead of an anchor's fame?"

Brighthand on the Treo 650

: "There's a lot more to this great improvement on the most popular smartphone ever invented, but it's going to take a few weeks to flush out all the functionality for a thorough review. For now I'll sum it up this way...

Everything that made the Treo 600 so hot is even better. The Web, messaging, the camera, the better screen, better buttons, and more powerful applications all join to make the Treo 650 the newest 'must-have' smartphone, and when I can back it up to and restore from a card it will be... dare I say it... as close to perfect as it gets in a smartphone. With the Treo 650 palmOne has once again raised the bar.

Considering that the competition has yet to reach the Treo 600's quality, reliability, feature set, and ease of use, the 650 just has to annoy every competitor in the market as much as it will delight every Treo 650 owner."

PalmAddicts: THOUGHT: Wi-Fi for T5 Coming Soon!

PalmAddicts: THOUGHT: Wi-Fi for T5 Coming Soon!: "The PalmOne WiFi card for the T5 is close. I witnessed the latest beta being loaded and run on a T5 today and it worked fine. The same driver is backward compatible with the T3 as it was also loaded on a T3 right after the T5. Although a release date was not given it appears that this beta is very stable and is close to being a final. Those with a T5 (I don't have one) hang in there as it appears the WiFi capabilities will be with you soon."

Whoa! How come no one saw this? Lawmakers OK anti-piracy czar

MSNBC - Lawmakers OK anti-piracy czar: "Buried inside the massive $388 billion spending bill Congress approved last weekend is a program that creates a federal copyright enforcement czar.

Under the program, the president can appoint a copyright law enforcement officer whose job is to coordinate law enforcement efforts aimed at stopping international copyright infringement and to oversee a federal umbrella agency responsible for administering intellectual property law."

Palm OS US Retail Lead Gains 10 Points

PalmInfocenter.com: Palm OS US Retail Lead Gains 10 Points: "Palm OS is the market share leader in the U.S. retail handheld market. Based on new data from the NPD Group, the Palm OS US Retail share grew 10 points over the year, mainly on strong sales of the palmOne Tungsten E.

Based on data released by the NPD Group, a retail sales tracking firm, U.S. unit share for Palm Powered handhelds in September 2004 was 76 percent, exceeding that of all of its competitors combined, and gaining roughly 10 points since September 2003.

According to NPD, Palm OS market share was boosted by strong sales of palmOne's wireless handheld products, particularly the Tungsten E, which accounted for 29 percent of all handheld sales in the month. Other Palm OS licensees also contributed, with the Garmin iQue 3600 standing out as the most popular handheld priced over $400 in September.

Retail sales as measured by NPD include sales through retail stores, e-commerce, and distributors. NPD tracks retail sales of handhelds through a combination of domestic retail sales reports and weekly surveys of approximately 35,000 U.S. consumers."

Batteries improving but still guilty as charged | CNET News.com

Batteries improving but still guilty as charged | CNET News.com: "During the holiday season, many wish for greater understanding between people and nations. Others just want better batteries.

Although electronics manufacturers have made substantial strides in getting their devices to eke more life out of a battery charge, one of the chief complaints among consumers remains the perceived short run time of audio players, notebooks and other devices.

'You can never be too rich, too thin or have enough battery life,' said Stephen Baker, an analyst at NPD Techworld. 'While everyone is focused on improving battery life, we still have a long way to go.'"

Wired News: A Kinder, Gentler Copyright Bill?

Wired News: A Kinder, Gentler Copyright Bill?: "The Senate passed a scaled-back version of a controversial copyright bill Saturday, keeping a provision that imposes severe penalties on people caught with camcorders in movie theaters but scrapping other provisions that copyright-reform activists had criticized.

On Saturday, the Senate met and passed the Family Entertainment and Copyright Act of 2004, or SB3021 (.pdf), a revised version of the Intellectual Property Protection Act (HR2391), which had cobbled together a handful of copyright-related bills. Now the bill heads to the House of Representatives for consideration in early December.

Digital rights groups said while there is still cause for concern in the bill, it is a vast improvement over the previous version."

The Sad State Of The Palm Economy, And Other PDA Ramblings

Kent Pribbernow has gone off on a bit of a rant about the state of the PDA industry in general, explaining why he bought a Pocket PC and why it will probably be his last PDA. I found this comment particularly interesting: "It's almost too funny to watch Palm and Pocket PC users go at each others throats without realizing that BOTH SIDES have lost the war."

Kent acknowledges that PalmOS devices lose some of their vaunted stability and ease of use when adding third party software. He also notes that Windows Mobile is a sub-par user interface and that the quality of Pocket PC hardware has been declining. But his conclusion is short sided.

Kent thinks that PDAs have become marginalized between notebooks and smartphones. I don't see it that way. I think that a PDA and a Bluetooth-enabled "dumbphone" make a better, more flexible solution than either a notebook or a smartphone, and I wouldn't trade my Zodiac for any Pocket PC, much less an unpocketable notebook. I like having a truly pocketable office that is with me all the time, and the ability to connect to the net for email, IM and web browsing anywhere. One of Kent's biggest problems with PalmOS offerings is that they generally don't offer built-in WiFi, and that's true. What Kent hasn't realized yet is that WiFi is over, that the combination of Bluetooth and a 3G cell phone makes WiFi irrevelant. Why limit myself to only connecting to the net at "hotspots"?

The sky isn't falling, and the PDA isn't dead. Nice as smartphones are, I can do things on my Zodiac/T608 combination that simply aren't possible on a Treo 650. And even if I had $2,000 to spend on one, I wouldn't try carrying a Sony VAIO U75 in my pocket. Sorry Kent, but I'll stick with my PDA and get some real work done.

NewsGator Online

NewsGator Online: "You could spend your entire day searching for information on the web. With more news, blogs and other content added every day, it gets harder and harder to sift through and track the information that’s important to you. Plus, the volume of content makes it harder to find the good stuff. With NewsGator Online and NewsGator Outllook Edition, you can quickly find all the articles, news, and topics that interest you from across the Web."

I've been using this for a couple days now, and I can't believe I'll go back to a "static" aggregator. With this I can upload an OPML file containing the feeds I read, then access those feeds anytime, anywhere. I can use my full-blown web browser at home (Firefox), I can view scaled down mobile-friendly HTML on the go or I can just download posts from all the blogs I read as email messages into SnapperMail. Mark something as read in one place, and it's read everywhere else. Never read the same article twice. This is a great way of staying on top of all the sites you read.

Tapland - Tapwave Zodiac News: Would You Like Fry's With That?

Tapland - Tapwave Zodiac News: Would You Like Fry's With That?: "Tapland has received information from Tapwave that the Zodiac is heading to the electronics retailer Fry's Electronics within the next week or so. The Sunnyvale, California-based retailer with 28 stores in 5 states will become the newest brick and mortar partner, joining CompUSA's 220 store locations and J&R Music's Manhattan showroom."

Yay! This is great news, especially since Fry's is supposed to be opening a new store here in Aurora, CO!

Tapland - Tapwave Zodiac News: Audible Player Coming Soon

Tapland - Tapwave Zodiac News: Audible Player Coming Soon: "According to sources at Tapwave, a Zodiac-enhanced and Tapwave Certified version of Audible.com's Audible Player is under development and should be available within two weeks. The Zodiac optimized version will offer exclusive features that aren't available in the standard Palm OS version including support for the highest audio quality format. The standard Audible Player for Palm OS does not currently take advantage of the Zodiac's 480X320 hi-resolution landscape display, and the dual expansion slots are not supported. The Tapwave Certified Audible Player will be a welcome improvement for Zodiac owners who are Audible Listeners."

While I certainly welcome this, I'm not sure I don't already have it. I recently downloaded the latest PalmOS 5 version of Audible and on my Zodiac, I get a full 320x480 display, support for blanking the screen and full support for both SD card slots and internal memory in both RAM and VFS forms.

Who will buy a T5?

Tom Stoneham's Palm Blog: "I work in a humanities department at a university and I can tell you that only about 30% of my colleagues know what a flash drive is. And those who do know about them see them as simple replacements for floppy disks: easier to carry and higher capacity, but essentially no different.

Now think what the T5 offers to those people: a way of carrying their files (and email and PIM data) with them which allows them to view and edit the data without a desktop. For most people, that sounds like a true alternative to a laptop. Laptops are big and heavy (especially cheaper ones with bulky PSUs), they are a fiddle to set up on a train or a plane, and unless you make it you primary computer, there is no automated synchronization of data. In contrast the T5 is small and light, has a good battery life (and a small PSU), has a bright clear screen which is perfectly adequate for quickly looking something up in a document, allows simple editing of Office files, and is automatically synchronized at the touch of a button.

To put it bluntly: the T5 could be the killer device for people who want to transfer data between home and work (or two offices) but don't want to lug around a bulky laptop. At the moment they use floppy disks (or flash drives or simple email files to themselves) and the T5 offers a significant increase in functionality for them."

The Treo 650's Achilles Heel

: "palmOne's Treo 650 is now available through Sprint, and it will be released by many other wireless carriers in the coming months. While this is an eagerly-awaited smartphone, the first people to receive them have discovered that the Treo 650 can hold fewer applications and files than they expected."

Vision: Digital Media

Vision: Digital Media: "The means of media are now in the hands of the people.

The people we used to call consumers, readers, or viewers (let's call them citizens now) will take more and more control of what we used to call media (I don't know what new name to give it, but now it's as much about conversation as it is about consumption). The elements of this upheaval:

* Control: I say the most revolutionary invention in media was not the Gutenberg press but the remote control. It and the cable box, the VCR, and the TiVo enabled us to control consumption of media -- and we took advantage of that. Bad TV died; good TV rose in the ratings; HBO was born; TV exploded; TV improved -- thanks to the good taste and newfound control of the American public.

* Creation: Now come tools that let us create media: blogging software (which is merely history's cheapest easiest publishing tool connected to history's best distribution network) and all those neat things that come with Macs today. They allow us to make text, photo, audio, and video media. And what we make has value. Jonathan Miller, head of AOL, told me that 60-70 percent of the time spent on his service is spent with content created by his audience. That's where the money is.

* Marketing: At the same time -- thanks mostly to Google and blogs turning links into assets with tangible value -- we the people have the ability to market content; we do every time we link to it. Jon Stewart's blockbuster appearance on Crossfire got a few hundred thousand viewers on CNN but ten times that online thanks to the links of Fark and bloggers.

* Distribution: And the means of distribution are getting cheaper and faster: BitTorrent shares the cost of distribution across the network; RSS automates it; broadband will soon be part of the public infrastructure like roads or even a fundamental right like voting. So look again at Stewart on Crossfire: That segment didn't need carriage on a cable network with big clearance "

The Future of Copyright?

The Gripe Line Weblog by Ed Foster: "Members of the jury, it is my sad duty today to now present the closing arguments in the prosecution's case against the defendant you know as Ms. X. I say it's sad because we all hoped that the passage of new copyright statutes last year -- popularly known as the Maintaining Mickey Mouse Mandates Act of 2010 -- would sufficiently deter crimes of this nature. As we have seen in this court, that unfortunately did not prove to the case with Ms X.

'The facts here are not in dispute. On or about a week ago last Sunday, Ms. X did willfully and illegally obtain on the Internet a pirated copy of the 2008 cartoon feature 'Cinderalla Meets the Little Mermaid.' You heard the government's expert witnesses testify that secret detection technology indicated the film was indeed subsequently played on her television set. And you heard the defendant herself freely confess that she and she alone was involved in this heinous crime.

'Naturally, some of you might suspect one or all of her three children were themselves willful participants, and that she confessed to keep her children from being the ones sitting before you today. It's true that under the MMMM Act, age is no excuse. But it also specifies that parents also bear full responsibility for any act of copyright infringement committed by their children just as if they had willfully committed the crime themselves. This court, in its infinite mercy, has chosen to accept her confession, and therefore so should you.

'As this is one of the first prosecutions under the MMMM Act, you may also not understand why the defendant is not represented by counsel. Let me just assure you that the intent of Congress in this respect was very clear. Movie piracy is a crime that threatens the very fabric of American society. There can be no defense.

'Finally, I know even the most hard-hearted of you might feel the state is going little too far in asking for the death penalty in this case. But under the MMMM Act, we in fact have no choice. If the infringement is willful, it is a capital offense.

"Members of the jury, I have every confidence that you will do your duty. And that's not only because of the fact that, if you don't, things might get a little more uncomfortable for you in your own cells. So in the matter of Ms. X versus the special U.S. prosecutorial district for Anti-Copyright-Terrorism in Guantanamo Bay, I ask you to return the only verdict you are allowed to render. Guilty as charged."

The Complete Mobile Desktop

Inspired by James over at jkOTR, I decided to find out if I could run a
complete mobile blog with pocketable equipment. Turns out it's remarkably
doable, and a whole lot of fun.

The Hardware

First up, my Tapwave Zodiac, though any Bluetooth-enabled PalmOS device
would do. I like the Zodiac because it has a huge screen (which the PalmOne
Zire 72 lacks) and a huge battery (which the PalmOne Tungsten T3 lacks).
The PalmOne Tungsten T5 would probably work as well as my Zod. Plus, the
Zod looks cooler.

Next, my phone, a Sony-Ericsson T608. This rare beauty was the first
Bluetooth CDMA phone Sprint carried, maybe the first ever. It works
wonderfully with my Zodiac and frankly, I rarely see the phone. It usually
stays in my front pants pocket and does its think invisibly.

Lastly, my keyboard, a PalmOne Universal Wireless. This is a refinement of
ThinkOutside's IR Stowaway design, adding a full number row and centering
the PDA stand. I suppose I could have gone with a Bluetooth keyboard, but
I've yet to see one in person that doesn't wobble. (ThinkOutside's
Bluetooth Stowaway is raised from a central platforms, and see-saws back
and forth if you're a ham-handed typist.)

The Software

This is where it gets tricky. Out of the box, the Zodiac doesn't really
help me. The web browser thaht comes with it is based on an old, outdated
version of NetFront (now that Sony's gone, how about licensing the new,
xHTML+CSS-compliant NetFront to other vendors, eh?), and it comes with no
mail client at all. How am I really supposed to keep in contact, stay on
top of the blogosphere?

Mail client: SnapperMail. This is the best mail client available for
PalmOS, bar none. Period, end of story. I'm still finding new and nifty
features that make things easier. Mostly, it's just well-written,
interoperates well with other PalmOS applications, and syncs flawlessly
with GMail. If you've never tried SnapperMail and use any other mail client
for PalmOS, you're missing out.

Web Browser: Web Browser, based on NetFront. I haven't changed this one
because frankly, I don't use it all that much. Most blogs are also
available as RSS feeds, a much better way to keep track of what you've read
and what you haven't.

RSS Aggregator: Hand/RSS. From StandAlone Software, this will be a gem if
they work out a few more quirks. While it's supposed to support OPML input,
I was never able to get it to work. But after I manually entered the RSS
feeds for the blogs I read regularly, this has been wonderful.

I open up Hand/RSS and update my feeds. Now I see two panes, a list of
headlines on the left and the summary for the selected headline on the
right. Depending on the blog, I can read the whole entry there, or I can
select the Open Link menu option to open the page for that post in Web
Browser. Then when I go back to Hand/RSS I'm right where I left off. Once
I've either read or decided not to read everything for a particular blog, I
tap the Mark All as Read menu option and move on to the next blog.

Let's say I run across something cool, and want to post about it on one of
my sites. I just tap the Email menu and a new message opens up
automatically in SnapperMail. The title is filled in with the post title
and the message body contains the text of the post. From here I edit
accordingly (often just putting blockquotes around the quoted text with a
shortcut-Q shortcut I've created), add my own commentary and address it to
one of the email-to-blog addresses I have for my sites that let me post by
email. Then I tap Send, the email goes out across the Bluetooth connection
to my phone and from there to the internet, and I automatically go back to
looking a Hand/RSS and start reading the next post.

Pretty cool, huh? I can also, obviously, write entire articles originally
in SnapperMail (like I've done with this one) and send it out as soon as
I'm done.

Oh, one more thing. In the background, as I do all this other stuff, I'm
run