If you would like to contribute or send in an article please do- hopefully I will be able to produce versions that run on your PDA over time. Doc and iSilo versions will be available for each article and you will be able to read them direct from the web site but it would be nice to bundle them together in a PDA friendly format so that you can carry articles with you. PS. Watch out for my book 'PDA' which will be released soon. Thanks Shaun McGill
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left to view the archived articles Basic Human Needs by Jeffrey D Shaffer (16/12/03)
It is often said that there are three basic human needs: food, clothing, and shelter. Unarguably this is true, but I contend that there are other needs as well, perhaps not as basic, but just as important: the need for love, the need for acceptance, and the need to continually improve.
Our need for acceptance and our need to improve is part of what keeps capitalism in motion. I want to be "one of the gang", so I eat this brand food and smoke that brand cigars. I want to better myself, so I buy a new car every couple years, because, hey, if IT'S better, than that makes ME better, right?
Well, imagine my horror when I noticed that my trusty Clie of 10 months is starting to show signs of wear! The corners are rubbing off, the keyboard's dirty, and the little damn sticker on the back came off, leaving the beautifully laser printed barcode unguarded against harsh scratches and cruel maiming! I was in shock, pure and unfetted distress.
Actually, it was more like, "Oh." And I decided I needed a new PDA.
I took to "window shopping" via the internet, I read reviews and customer feedback, I read comparisons and price lists, my evening walks became long strolls down the isles of my local electronics store, but search as I might I simply could not find a suitable replacement.
The problem is not that I'm picky, but that alongside my need for acceptance and my need to improve, I've also developed a nagging, irreproachable need to be practical and it's ruining my polished technophile spirit. I now count my monthly computer store escapades in minutes in stead of hours. I scour Yahoo! Shopping and Froogle less than an hour a month in stead of hours a week.
It's dreadful, completely dreaful.
My PDA has now suffered the wrath of my practicality. The barcode is protected by a piece of *gasp* scotch tape! And the dirty keyboard gets picked at with my fingernails. The worn edges are ignored as best as possible with little turnabouts such as, "That just means it's well used!" or "Wow, I'm surprised it's lasted this long!" But still somewhere inside I know that I want something new, I must get something new because I NEED to better myself.
And impress my friends. :-)
PDAs for the Under-Fives by Andrew (15/12/03)
So what can you do with an old PDA? Use it as a doorstop? Take it apart to find out what it looks like inside and never get it back together again? Or give it to your small child. What? Am I crazy? I know, I know, to most of you the idea of giving an expensive piece of techno gadgetry to a small child seems a ridiculous idea, but believe me it can be a rewarding experience for both of you.
My daughter (Natalia) has had a Palm (M505) for a year, since she was just two and a half. She has very little trouble operating it and playing on it. Of course I would like to think it is because she is a child genius, but really if you just take a few precautions setting it up, spend some time with your child as he or she gets used to it and the stylus, then you should have few problems. The only thing that can really go wrong is that small matter of child frustration. i.e. child goes crazy and either stabs the machine with nearest metal object or hurls it across the room.
So first thing to do, is to explain to your child that this new gadget will never work again if it is subject to violence. Maybe, this is easier with girls than boys, but my daughter seemed to understand this quite quickly, and she has not subjected her Palm too much more than the odd severe stylus beating. Best to be on hand for the first few signs of frustration so you can calm your child down before they do hurl it out the window though. I did put the 505 in a plastic padded case just in case, but its been more to protect the screen when not in use.
So how do you set up your Palm for hours of hassle free fun?
Well first set up just two categories for your programs, one for your child's stuff (see list of programs below) and another for any system stuff. I found a useful program called 505Light which enabled me to set the backlight to always be on for a Palm505. This is only an issue with some PDAs, but without it a Palm505 can quite often come on without the backlight. You may want to set the auto-off to a short time (e.g. 1 minute or 30 seconds) as your child probably won't turn the machine off themselves.
Next, set up all the buttons on the PDA to different programs that you have found your child likes. You can leave the home button as it is, so your child can access their menu of all programs.
Now bring child and PDA together! Try and teach your child two things: they can start the machine up by pressing one of the hard buttons, and it will immediately start a program (they will very quickly learn which program is started by which button). And secondly, that by pressing the home they can access the menu of programs and choose any.
That's about it. Above all, have confidence in your child! Children are very bright, and VERY quick learners. They will soon get the hang of the programs, the stylus and the menu. Spend sometime supervising at the start, and you will be fine. Even if they access the system programs and press everything in sight, not much can go wrong, in simple terms PDAs seem to be to be quite reliable. I think the worst I have had to do is a soft reset. Finally, apart from the above mentioned child frustration you have to watch out for, just keep an eye on the battery life, you will need to monitor how much battery is left and recharge it when necessary.
And that's it. No need to hotsync again, just hours of fun for your child.
Here's a list of programs (all free or trial!) we have found good:
Alphabet
Anger Buster
Baby Melody
Digi-Guppie
Harmony
Kidz Pak
Match Game
NekoCat
Static Chicken
TotTutor
Zhines
Chronicles of a PDA Addict by Rhino (14/12/03)
Warning! The following is somewhat disturbing and certainly not for the technologically faint of heart. It is the account of a gadget geek, an addict. This is my story.
Day One The leather binding on my day planner is wearing thin. Its pages are chicken scratched to death, full of phone numbers and addresses, notes, doodles and the general inkblots of a life less organized. My life in a book. Pages of it.
It's a nice size, relatively small, certainly not the behemoth others lug around, veritable attache cases of 7 hole binder pages, pens and skinny calculators, but also, nowhere near pocket-able. I'm tired of carrying it, sticking it in shopping carts and doing near everything with one hand because my other is forced to carry the damn thing. It is wearing me down.
Day Two My fingers twitch over the keyboard, Internet search engines and names like Palm, Clie and Handspring flash across the computer screen. I have already read everything, which isn't enough.
Day Three I browse through nearby electronic superstores, writing a few final notes in my worn planner. I spend the day happily in gizmo dream-land, salesmen and women chattering in my ear, a constant buzz of hope and false specs.
Day Four Today I convinced my wife (poor thing, no idea what's coming) that this purchase is necessary and that I need this. She questions, but not deeply and soon we are back, looking at handhelds. I know what I want, not the most expensive, only because I can't afford it, but enough to do what I wish. A credit card swipe, a happy salesman and a receipt later I have a small green box in my possession. The words Sony, Clie and S320 shine up at me. I'm hooked, though I don't know it yet.
Days Five through Nine I'm getting to know the little creature that resides in my pocket. The first bit of this time I spent transferring data from leather bound paper to bits and bytes. I discovered games, quickly and play Bejeweled often now. I've installed several programs from a CD of shareware and freeware products I purchased clearance at a local retailer. I've spent far too much time on the device, but what do you expect, it's a new toy!
Two Weeks My wife has decided that this is a useful gadget and purchases her own. I load software, set a couple of things up for her and she quickly bests my high score at bejeweled. I spend the next week trying to beat her. I'm able to, but only until she plays again.
Three Weeks My Clie is feeling naked. I'm afraid I'll drop and break it. I have yet to find that most PDA accessories are better on the Internet so I hit the local electronic stores again to find a case. $40 later I now have a sleek black clie case that is supposed to fit my $180 PDA like a glove. With some trepidation I scar the back of the device with the included velcro and settle the Clie into its new home. I'm uncomfortable with the velcro and open sides. It's a terrible case, but I don't know better.
I still spend far too much time playing with this. Shouldn't the newness be wearing off?
One Month I've run out of space. My paltry 8 MB is not enough. Another trip to the superstore and I hold a purple stick of gum, or memory stick as Sony likes to call it. It's only 16 more Megabytes, but, I reason, it's twice the memory I had before and so much smaller than a floppy disk.
Three Months I've discovered books. Not for the first time, but it is the first time I've read an e-book. There's thousands of them. My 16 MB is hard pressed to keep up with the books and games and other programs I keep just in case. I see a good deal on a 64 MB memory stick and grab it. I tell my wife it's all the memory I'll ever need. I'm not lying, honest!
My wife's handheld's battery is dead. It lies in a drawer, lifeless, covered in underwear and socks. I rescue it from time to time, charge it up for another round of bejeweled. It's sad really. All that potential.
Four Months Graffiti is slow, I'd like to enter text faster. I now have WordSmith (wonderful) but might as well still use Memo since I can only plod away with single stroke letters. Luckily, for a mere $99, ThinkOutside comes to the rescue with a snazzy folding keyboard that is easy to touch-type with.
If anything, I'm now spending more time. I've read several books and find that I actually would rather have an e-book than a paper one. Paper is more fulfilling... having 10 books in my pocket is convenient.
Six Months My screen is greyscale. Ugly and Low resolution. There are other, better handhelds, and the price is falling. MP3 playability is not expensive anymore. I've developed a nervous twitch and a fast way of talking. My little handheld isn't enough. I need more.
Seven to Nine Months I spend alot of time on PDA websites. Refreshing every 30 min to see if there is new information. There usually isn't, but I look anyway. I have read every review I can find of every handheld. My fingers now fall naturally into the pattern of keystrokes that end in various .com's, it's habit, like riding a bike, or breathing. Just as a good soldier can dismantle a weapon, clean it and re-assemble in less than a minute, I can just as easily, whip off the stylus, spin off the back and hit the reset button, replacing the stylus in it's slot in a single, continuous blur. I do this often, I have installed every hack known to man and some only to the Japanese. For some reason I never complain about "stability" it's the price of being "cutting edge."
Ten Months I have a secret. I'm buying a new handheld. Shhh! I've not told my wife yet, but I can't take it any longer. I'm tired of having a IIIc flashed in my face. 'See,' they say. 'Colour.' 'Oh yeah?! Well I have PacMan.' Triumphant on the outside... small and jealous inside.
Eleven Months I've done it. A Yahoo auction. I'm crazy, but I did it. Sent money to Romania for a new t665. It's color and has hi-res screen. It plays MP3's, vibrates when an alarm goes off. It has a bad battery life, or so I've heard, but I can always charge it. I'm scared though. My need got the better of me. Why did I send that money across the world?
Oh, and speaking of bad battery life... my little S320 is worn out. I've managed to wear the battery thin in under a year. Which is within warranty. With my new baby on it's merry way, I send the original to Sony. They kindly replace the battery and buttons and send it back. I'm waiting for my t665.
Eleven and a Half Months It's here. Thank the international gods of commerce. There's a little brown package on my doorstep. It's not tied up with string, but I'm still very happy. I open it. It's shiny, silver, the aluminum feels funny after the magnesium housing of the S320. The scroll wheel is in the wrong place, too low, but the screen is gorgeous, the buttons small and useless and it's snappy, compared to my first. It plays music. It's been two days, I haven't set it down except to charge. The battery life sucks. But it has a remote control. That is real fun.
Twelve Months I sold my old handheld, keyboard case and the one 16 mb memory stick. I have now outfitted the new one. 64 MB, Pah! I've got music now, need more than that. Found a 128 MB stick on Amazon.com. It's on it's way.
I look harder this time and end up buying the mother of all cases. Two pockets and a belt clip, one for money and the PDA the other for a keyboard, headphones and anything else I can cram in there. It's nearly as big as my old planner and thicker, but I need to carry it all right? Wait a minute, didn't I buy the original because my planner was too big?
Fifteen Months The new handheld is showing signs of use the original never had. Aluminum is easily dented when dropped, the corner is now bent in. There are scratches and I think I may see peeling chrome around the stylus. Works great, though. I had to buy a battery extender to keep it going. I tend to run it down every day. Sony (courtesy of ThinkOutside) has made available my new keyboard. I'll be purchasing it soon.
Sixteen Months The keyboard has arrived, shiny, silver and generally the same as my old one. Within 5 minutes my 2 year old son tries to close it, bending the rails and popping off several keys. I'm not mad. He's only two. Aarrrgghh! Luckily I'm able to put everything back more or less where it came from. It works great.
I find myself refreshing Shaun's site (I believe Clieplanet.com at the moment?) over and over again, even though it's only updated once a day. Sorry for the bandwidth hit Mr. McGill... I can't help myself.
Twenty Months It's been some time since my last entry. My handheld no longer resembles simplicity. I've loaded it with launchers, file managers and a spreadsheet application (handy thing that, even though I don't do spreadsheets for work.) There are many games, most freeware, but I play Scrabble allot. The Zen of Palm has become the Obsession of Rhino. If it's got a pop-up hack, I've got it. Palm OS doesn't multi-task. Mine can, more or less. I even watch Simpson's episodes from the card. Oh, and I bought another memory stick. I now have two 64's and a 128. Never can get enough. I want a new one. OS 5 is out, and Sony has camera's built in.
Hang on a moment, need to refresh PDANEWS24.com
Twenty-Two Months I wish I was a gadgeteer. Those girls get everything. I wish I was a gadgeteer.
Twenty-Three Months My wife keeps saying no whenever we walk by a PDA display. It's automatic now, she doesn't even think about it.
Twenty-Five Months - The Present I'm maneuvering to buy now. I'm eyeing everything I own for ebay resell-ability. My wife hides when I approach, I think she's worried about her kidneys... Wait a minute... I only need one, right? I'm twitching again. I've developed a nervous twitch and a fast way of speaking. My fingers are skittering over the keyboard, browsing PDA sites.
Refreshing PDA247.com now...
The Real Zen of Palm by Kathleen (03/12/03)
Q: How many Zen buddhists does it take to develop a PDA?
A: Three -- one to change it,
one to not-change it and
one to both change- and not-change it.
I bought my first PDA this summer. My trusty old laptop, which I'd kept from my student days, had finally packed in. It ran on Windows 3.1 and had its own idiosyncratic faults but it was my place for my poetry writing and my journal. I wasn't shelling out lots of money on another laptop. That's when I recalled the term "palmtop" (which I'd always thought of as a glorified filofax) but then I found out you could link it up with word on the PC. A few weeks later I changed my 13-year-old laptop for a nice new budget PDA.
I just wanted it for writing, but I couldn't believe all the things you could do. This was a real enlightenment for me. For as long as I can remember I've bought loads of notebooks for different things: diary, journal, scrapbook, sketching. I'd also been looking for small computer chess game and an mp3 player. And here they were with much more besides. No more filling a rucksack with all my stuff - I just needed my PDA which can go wherever you go - such a simple but powerful solution.
I wouldn't want a laptop now although I realise they serve a very different purpose. However I do wonder if there are lots of people who want a pda but just don't know it. I know that pda sales have steadily declined, and I guess that's because people are buying smartphones instead. It even looks like the Microsoft Pocket PCs are being overlooked in favour of smartphone technology.
I'm really hoping that PDAs (particularly Palm OS) are here to stay - call me old-fashioned, but I don't really want to use my mobile phone to be creative or play games. I know we're heading in the direction of wireless, bluetooth and wifi technology, so pdas have to change. But I also want them to not-change. There's something quite elegant about the handheld. It's not a laptop, it's not a mobile phone, its not a games console. It just is what it is. And for me, that's the real zen of Palm.
Using a Mobile Website to Your Advantage by Jesse Silver (13/12/03)
With all the mobile web browsers out there now, there are also mobile websites coming out, but not many look good visually really. With such a low resolution (for regular web sites), how could you possibly make it look good? There a few guidelines to go by when trying to start on one. Which I will talk about later.
Why do we want a mobile website anyways? It's too much of an inconvience of editing everything twice, so what you need SSI. Server Side Includes. It allows you to do one thing and put it many places. If you make all content as SSI pages (just the content) then you could put it on multiple pages and have many styles and layouts to one website. This inlcludes if you want all your content on a mobile version of your site.
There are three types of mobile websites.
1: Full Mobile Website
This is the rarest one to see. Rarest to not even being available. This is mostly because people who already have websites would not having any content in SSI. Meaning they would have to spend a ton of time make a full mobile websites. There is only one full mobile website out, and it's made by me to test wheter it would work. It does completely but for it to not be a hassle, it needs to be made from the ground up.
ie: Clie Mobile Dome - http://twz.cnh-online.net
2: Mobile News Website
These might not look as well, but they give their news SSI from their normal site to a mobile page. The problem is it's one page, and will have no real layout due to it only having one page and no real need for a layout.
ie: PDA News 24 - Mobile - http://clieuk.co.uk/cwmobile.shtml
3: Unformatted
These are the worst looking of the three. These have no formatting because it couldn't be any other way on low resolution devices. Started with avantgo really, it consists of a top image, and just text. That's all pretty much.
Out of these three, you can pick the resolution, or put it to 100%, as far as the page could go for it. This brings me to another list. The guidelines to building a mobile website for yourself.
Guidelines to building:
1: Width of the site must be 300 pixels or less.
Very important here. Nobody wants to side-scroll on any website. It's a big enough inconvience already that we don't have a d-pad on clies, so people who have clies have no chance of easy sidescrolling. Basically, we're stuck unless we have some good, well made sites with no chance of sidescrolling.
2: The top image must be a background
To have a great top image working on a regular desktop resolution and have no sidescrolling, you need to make part of the top image 300 or less, and the rest a background. This will make the viewing of it fine in any resolution, because backgrounds do not increase the size of this house.
3: Limit things that take up width, but keep a nice layout
Keep a nice "real-site" layout. Have a navigation, information, and content. If you have any toolbars, make the width smaller, but you cannot have two toolbars in the width because of my "300" rule.
4: Keep it simple stupid!
When things get too complex in a mobile website, things start to go wrong. The pages load too long or not at all, and you're left with a mobile webpage a mobile device cannot even fully read, and nobody wants that. It's even good to make two versions, one for unlimited gprs/bluetooth/wifi and one for limited gprs. With limited gprs you don't want many kb up, meaning you need to use compressed images that still look good, and still have the same layout. Since you have SSI, you can make these styles.
Enough of these lists anyways. Why go through the trouble anyways? Well, it's ease of use and if you have SSI set up, go for it, it wouldn't hurt to have more visitors coming all the time, especially wirelessly. If you listen to these guidelines, it should be pretty easy to make a mobile version of your existing site, or new site you're planning on making.
If you have a PDA website, why not? It will help PDA users by having many easier ways to surf the internet. If a PDA is going to have the internet and a full internet browser shouldn't it be able to browse many websites and information without having to sidescroll? Without many websites formatted for it looking and feeling like a full website, having internet would pretty much be limited to email and instant messaging. With full mobile websites, surfing on a palm would be the same use as surfing on the computer in terms of navigation and ease of use. Try surfing on a website formatted for use on 800x600 on your handheld, you wouldn't think the web browser on it would be much good. Then try my test mobile website on your handheld, Clie Mobile Dome (http://twz.cnh-online.net). You would then see first hand how easy navigating and surfing websites can be on a handheld, you would just need a site formatted for that resolution.
Then there are full mobile websites that take many shapes at once. Using percentages as widths and keeping table and image widths down, you can easily get a site that can be formed to being full desktop screen resolution or pda 320x320 high resolution. Once you get a good mix, you could make one site into many resolution-compatible versions at once. This could add to the capability of the wide-resolution plus (wi-res+, 480x320) or new VGA resolution (680x480, 480x640), thus using the extra screen space to their advantage. Even if you do this for your full site, you would still need to keep it simple, the graphics don't have to be, but overall it should be. A few small toolbars, one in the width, a top bar, and the content. That should be it for any mobile website, you can improvise on this into your website stylings, but basically, this is the structure you should take when building a site which can work on many resolutions, including mobile resolutions. Don't go table or image heavy, but still make it look good and full, even on a standard 1024x768 desktop. This should make your website look the best it could be, adding in the ability of it being fully mobile.
Once you get down to it, doing it this way is actually easier than making a regular website. The problem goes down to your graphics, that's how it's going to look good on the device. Just take into consisderation that only some PDA browsers will have full table support, so don't use them as much as you would like to. The only browser I have seen with full table and background support. Web Pro 3 supports tables fully in normal mode, but goes fairly slowly and has little-to-no background support. Most other browsers on Palm OS will not support tables much, or at all, so beware of that aspect when making your mobile web site. Also, don't use styles or css when making the site mostly, use other methods directly. This will add to the speed of your mobile site. To make it as speedy as it can be, compress your images as much as you can without losing image quality. This will really help out the people on gprs (56k) and limited gprs needing less and less memory per page.
On the user side, play around with settings, turning CSS off will make things a bit faster too. Mostly everything will work out fine if the person creating the mobile web page followed these steps. The reason we have mobile websites starting to rise is that we're having higher resolution screens all the time, have the power for high-speed full capable internet and don't want to go through the overly simple unformatted webpages which look like they were made for colour WAP. We're not using WAP, we are using full internet, and everybody making a mobile website should acknowledge that. Stay Mobile, Stay Connected, and keep all the Quality.
This Digital Life: Boon or Bane? by Jeffrey D Shaffer (13/12/03)
For many years now I have found myself torn: torn between pencil and stylus, paper and digitizer, digital and analog. I love computers and technology. I love information -- an infinite amount of information available at my fingertips, an entire planet of knowledge spanning both scope and history. But despite this love, I have a nagging fear, a doubt of mind that we, the digizens are losing in ability what we have gained in knowledge.
Consider this. Many schools today use computers in the classroom to teach history, to help in word processing, to teach science and math.
Today's students see and head much and so will come to understand much of the world around them, but at what price? Can a High Schooler write his paper by hand? Has he learned to organize and ponder his words carefully before ever he touches pen or pencil? How about when talking with his friends? Does he even think about what he wants to say or how he should say it? Can a college student perform calculus with just a pencil, or a High Schooler solve a geometry problem in his head? Can the average teacher add two numbers in their head? How about subtract? Multiply? While calculus and geometry have little bearing in the daily lives of many, simple math and organization skills do, but how many of these simple skills are now being lost and glossed over under the guise of "technological advancement?"
I am not sitting here upon on a white horse for I, too, am guilty of embracing technology. I am a computer animator by trade, I write home-pages and use photoshop every day. I drag my Clie NX70V around with me everywhere I go and I turn it on at least 20 times a day. I have 2 laptops and a desktop at home, and a 23 inch LCD monitor at work. But these things only lead me to think more and to wonder. When I open up my Clie and look at all the software I have, many timesI stop and think, "I wish I could just do that in my head!" So, two weeks ago, I tested myself.
For a research project I was working on, I needed to sum over 3,000 pairs of numbers, most of them under less than 2 digits each. I looked at the daunting task and did the fist 20 with a calculator -- slow going at best. Then I thought that maybe doing them in my head would be faster (but likely less accurate!), so I set about solving the last 2,980-some numbers mentally. And to my surprise, as I went along, it got easier and faster and soon became a challenge to myself -- how quickly can I add two digits in my head? I had always seen myself as "bad" at doing math in my head, but what I realized was that I was not BAD at math, but had always relied on a calculator, and therefore simply lacked experience and practice.
So, perhaps if I stopped using my Clie for scheduling, do to lists, memos, and phone numbers the practice and experience will sharpen my memory. But I wonder, will I really be able to do it all in my head? Or will I always be reliant upon my little PDA?
Arguably there's enjoyment and beauty in accomplishing something for yourself. There's a difference between making a birthday cake from scratch and from a box. Likewise, I'd wager, there's a difference between painting with oils and with photoshop, or between modeling a panther in 3DS-Max or carving one in Bass wood. Why not draft reports in your head? Why not unplug and see the world around you, the rich tapestry nature weaves with plants and trees and the blending details of the world? Again, I am guilty as charged. I read books and web-pages on my Clie while riding the train. But 3 weeks ago I couldn't find the book I wanted to read in digital form, so I was forced to go paperback, and the result is, when I get tired or reading, I look up and through the windows across from me I see Osaka, its city lights flickering then streak across the darkness, mesmerizing neon signs, and cars trailing off to the distant horizon in spotty lines of white and red.
For many years now I have found myself torn, torn between the digital and the natural, between knowledge and ability, between absorbing and living.
But today, today the sun is shining, and the holiday spirit is upon me.
Today I feel I can choose.
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