Best of Both Worlds

Palm Reader Desktop

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We Interrupt This Channel for a Special Announcement

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

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

Mark My Words

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Writing Done Right

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

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

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

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

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