Writing On Your Palm

Credit Where Credit Is Due Dept: I bought some ebooks from Barnes & Noble yesterday, and I'm reading them on my Pocket PC! Yep, you read that right. Seems that not all of the ebooks on BN.com use the DRM5 encryption that renders them unusable on existing Pocket PCs. Reader actually supports three types of DRM: none at all (what I use), DRM5 or "owner exclusive" and a third form that does not require "activation" but just brands the book with your name. This is almost identical to the way Peanut Press does it, except that the branding is burned in to the book itself, and you don't have to remember your card number to unlock it later. Currently there's no easy way of telling exactly which books will work with the Pocket PC (you have to click on each book and see if the description reads "This eBook is available for only your desktop or laptop computer." or "This eBook can be read on your Pocket PC, as well as on your desktop or laptop computer."), but they are in there somewhere. I picked up Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, Teachings of the Buddha, Teachings of Zen, and Meditation in Action, but I saw Pocket PC readable books in every category. Check it out, and email Barnes and Noble to support more Pocket PC readable ebooks and an easier way to find them!
posted by Jeff Kirvin at 8:08 AM

Killing the Goose Dept: I saw an interesting article on ZDNet today about the copy protection being built into Microsoft software. Microsoft is now enforcing the edict that you can only install one copy of office on a maximum of two machines (generally a PC and a laptop). If you need more copies you have to shell out $450 a pop for them. The article makes the interesting point that Microsoft's hegemony in the office suite market was built on "shared" copies, and that had it used copy protection years ago Lotus and WordPerfect might still be with us. More interesting is the idea that we've reached a point in PC software now that new features just don't make a compelling upgrade anymore, certainly not at the prices Microsoft is charging. If Microsoft is intent on saddling users with copy protection, and still wants to charge a small fortune for each copy, then users are likely to decide to just make do with what they have. Rather than seeing revenues go up as people start paying for all those pirated copies, they'll see revenue plummet as people just refuse to upgrade.

The really interesting part of this is the parallel to ebooks, pricing and DRM. Think about it. You want to buy a book, a novel to read in your leisure time. You don't want a hardcover, because you want it light and portable enough to take with you everywhere, and you don't want to lug around audio tapes either. That leaves two choices. You can buy a paperback or an ebook. If you get the paperback, it's small enough to be pocketable (assuming it's not a King or Clancy novel), costs about seven bucks, and you can do whatever you want with it. You can resell it, loan it to friends, even rip pages out of it if you want. And paper, even on a cheap paperback, is a fairly high-resolution medium. If you get an ebook, you frequently have to deal with copy protection restrictions, you can't lend or resell it and in most cases it isn't as easy to read as paper (MS Reader on a Jornada is an exception, as the ClearType font rendering on that device must be seen to be believed). And in most cases the ebook costs more than the paperback! So where's the incentive for the average Joe to pick the ebook over the paperback? Until publishers ditch goofy DRM and start pricing ebooks cheaper than paper, ebooks will remain a niche market. Don't get me wrong; I still believe ebooks are a superior medium to pulp in a lot of ways, but they're going to be a hard sell until publishers get with the program.
posted by Jeff Kirvin at 8:24 AM

They Screw You With DRM Dept:

To quote Leo Goetz in the "Lethal Weapon" movies, they screw you with DRM.

Latest installment, Audible.com. Now don't get me wrong. On the whole, I'm a pretty happy Audible customer. I've found it very easy to purchase and download content from them, and their frequent listener program is a great deal. But they use the same owner restrictive DRM as Reader, where you have to "activate" your device to actually access your content.

So here's my problem. I tried to install an update to Audible Manager 3.0. Something went wrong, and now Audible Manager crashes every time I start it. I can't even get the main window to show up. Every time I try to reinstall Audible Manager, it tries to run Audible Manager as part of the install, which of course then crashes. So I figured I'd just uninstall it and reinstall it. I went to Control Panel and ran Add/Remove Programs, and tried to uninstall Audible Manager. Then it warns me that if I remove Audible Manager without first deactivating my PC, I won't be able to add a new activation when I reinstall, because I'll be out of activations. It suggested I run Audible Manager and deactivate it, but if I could run Audible Manager, I wouldn't be trying to remove it in the first place.

I decided to call Audible and discuss this with them. As I write this, it's Sunday night. I've heard that the online chat on Audible.com is the best way to get in touch with support staff, so I started with that. A javascript window popped up, and sat there blank before displaying an SQL timeout error. I knew email would take forever to get a response, so I called the 888 number listed on the website. An automated voice answered and told me my call might be recorded for quality assurance, then I sat there and listened to silence for a few minutes before realizing that either the system had "lost" my call or that no one was going to pick up the phone.

So I'm screwed. There's content I've paid good money to have access to, but I'm completely unable to access it.

I've said before that all this DRM really does is screw the customer. They probably have it right there in the business plan: "Step 5: Screw the customer." Probably makes the investors go wild. Here I've been a good Audible customer, talked them up at every opportunity, and now I can't run Audible Manager, can't access content I've rightfully purchased, can't get in touch with customer support and I've been left high and dry. Let me say it again: because of technical problems with their customer-hostile DRM, I can't access content I've already paid for.

Unfortunately, Audible is the only legal source for contemporary digital audio books. If you want to play within the rules, you have to put up with this crap. But, I have noticed a lot of audiobooks in MP3 format showing up on Napster and Usenet. Unfortunately, the seventeen year old yahoos ripping it tend to sample it at 192 kbps, resulting in file sizes way too big for mobile devices. (Why do people rip MP3s at 192 anyway, even for music? The CD itself only stores data 128 kbps, so anything above that is just recording empty bits...)

Once people figure out that spoken work audio still sounds okay at 8-16 kbps and start ripping at that rate, MP3 and WMA audiobooks should be acceptable for mobile listening. Maybe after Audible no longer has a monopoly on mobile digital audio, they'll quit screwing their loyal customers.
posted by Jeff Kirvin at 9:34 AM

The Anti-Web Dept: I just saw a Wired article detailing iCopyright.com, a company that allows publishers to charge for links. That's right, they want you to pay for the right to put a hyperlink on your site that points to a page on their site. This is just sad and wrong on so many levels:

1. Charging for links goes completely against everything the web was meant to do. Freely connected information, remember? I don't know about you, but if it came down to paying $50 for the right to link to a news article, I'll just summarize the damn thing in my own words and keep the money. And then how will the news publisher get traffic? Mark my words. This sort of short-sighted foolishness will kill many websites. Especially now that many newspapers are going digital.


2. What about search engines? I can pretty much guarantee Lycos and Yahoo aren't going to pay $50 a pop just because some moron thinks he can charge for what every sane person on the planet gives away. And again, what do you think will happen to the hit counts of the sites that charge?


3. This all got started because many periodicals charge for reprints. This makes sense, since reprints, by definition, must be printed and shipped. But once you go digital, the old rules no longer apply (regular readers: how sick are you of hearing me say this?). Treating a hyperlink as the same thing as a reprint is lunacy, and it shows a fatal misunderstanding of how the web works. After all this time, some people still don't get it.


4. Worse, the agreement you have to sign when you purchase the link forces you to agree to make no derogatory comments about the site, the writer, or those depicted in the document. If you linked to a newspaper article about the presidential election, bam! You're prohibited from criticizing Dubya. Do I have to go into why this is wrong?

Thanks to Mike Cane for the pointer to this. I'm just flabergasted.

posted by Jeff Kirvin at 7:29 AM

Wow Dept: I finally beat my Hotsync problem on the Visor and I'm reviewing Blue Nomad's Wordsmith. This is a heck of a word processor, let me tell you. I'll have a comprehensive review up soon, but if you haven't looked at this, wow. Check it out.
posted by Jeff Kirvin at 7:14 AM

Amateur Efforts Dept: One of my readers recently told me that he didn't like my pricing column. He told me that I'm not an expert on pricing (duh), and that amateur efforts in that area would only decrease writers' income.

Setting aside for the moment that I just love being called an amateur (the word literally means "one who loves", and is intended to convey someone who does something only for the love of it rather than just for money; it has absolutely zero bearing on competence), I've worked the math over and over in my head, and I just don't get it. The system I worked out would garner a flat $2/copy to the author, regardless of the format of the book. Given that most authors are published only in paperback, and currently make between six and ten cents per copy, I just don't see how this is a bad thing. I really don't.

Anyone care to explain how getting two bucks is worse than getting one dime? I realize the assumptions on production and distribution costs are ballpark guesstimates, but I don't think I'm that far off...
posted by Jeff Kirvin at 2:40 PM

People Who Should Know Better Still Don't Get It Dept: While reading the forums at WritersDigest.com, I ran across some truly disturbing commentary by fellow writers. The question was an old one, "will ebooks take off"? Here's a typical answer.
---
Written By: Diana L. Silva
Subject: E-Trends
Winter is here and my favorite pastime is to snuggle close to the fire with a steaming mug and a good novel. I live on the coast and in the winter months we often lose power due to high winds. Snuggling under a goose down comforter with a novel and reading by candle and oil lamp is worth the effort.
To fire up the gas generator to read an e-book doesn't thrill me.

In the summer, to relax, I hit the beach with a towel, a SoBe and a book. My computer just doesn't fit in the picture.

A novel equals relaxation, my computer equals WORK.
Some things in life are meant to stay simple.
Thank you.
---

How many times do I have to tell people that ebooks aren't just for desktop PCs? In fact, I'd say that they're not for desktops at all. I read more ebooks than anyone I know, and I never read on a desktop. Ebooks, when read on a Palm, Pocket PC or (shudder) a REB, are just as portable as pbooks. Am I the only one that realizes this?
posted by Jeff Kirvin at 1:25 PM

No, I'm Not Dead Dept: Been a while since I've updated this. I've posted two new columns (An Open Letter to Microsoft and A Year of Palmtop Punditry) and I've released a new book, a Dave Barry-esque compilation of my first year's worth of columns. It will be published on Free-ePress.com eventually, but for now you can find it here.
posted by Jeff Kirvin at 8:01 AM

White Rabbit Dept: I know, I'm late. I'm working on something special for this week's column, so please be patient. I'll have it up as soon as I can.
posted by Jeff Kirvin at 10:51 AM

Indecision 2000 Dept: I've posted a new poll on my eGroup about how I should approach the fourth edition of Writing On Your Palm. My initial plan was to combine coverage of both the Palm and the Pocket PC, and maybe even Psion (if I can get S3 to give me a Mako) into a comprehensive look at using palmtops for ultra-mobile writing. But given some of the comments I've seen lately, I'm not sure such a book would be welcomed. My Palm readers seem to resent anything Pocket PC-oriented, and my Pocket PC readers likewise don't care about the Palm (and the Psion readers are tired of being left out of the whole thing). So maybe writing this book will be a waste of my time and yours. Instead, I could update WOYP v4 to still include Palm-only content and write a completely different book on writing with the Pocket PC. This would take longer, and frankly, WOYP v4 would be pushed back in favor of writing the Pocket PC book (pipe down, you Palm guys already have three editions). I don't know. So go vote and tell me what you think. I'm not using punch cards, so this vote should go off without a hitch. :^)
posted by Jeff Kirvin at 9:30 AM

Eureka! Dept: I finally figured out why Writing On Your Palm 3.1 wasn't viewable in the Pocket PC version of Reader. Turns out I had one small section in HTML preformat tags and Word interpreted that style by hardcoding the tab spaces. Once I removed the tab settings for that style, the book compiled fine into Reader for the Pocket PC. The zip file now includes XHTML and Reader format files. Download away!
posted by Jeff Kirvin at 9:07 AM

Palm Coverage Dept: While there have been several Pocket PC-oriented columns recently, there has also been a review of Documents To Go and columns on ebooks (as there were before). But I put it to you, my readers: What do you want to see? Let me know what Palm topics you want covered, and I'll do my best to cover them. I haven't abandoned the Palm as a valid mobile computing platform for writers, but I've covered it in such depth that it will take a lot of Pocket PC columns for the site to swing towards being Pocket PC heavy. There are 30 Palm-related columns, 17 ebook columns and only 4 (count 'em, four) Pocket PC columns. Since I'm using the Pocket PC daily, and my ire with Palm's lack of direction has been clearly documented (I'll tell you flat out, I feel betrayed by Palm; it's OS/2 all over again), naturally I'm going to come up with more Pocket PC ideas myself. But if you have something you want to see,

Let Me Know!

I'll consider all suggestions. I'm here to help you, regardless what platform you use. I want to help mobile writers do their job. Help me help you. Let me know what you want to see. I'll do my best to report on it faithfully and honestly.
posted by Jeff Kirvin at 9:45 PM

The Ultimate Pocket PC Dept: Rumor has it that HP is brewing a very special Christmas present: the new Jornada 550. If the rumors are true, it will have a Casio-like 16-bit screen and an iPaq-like 206MHz XScale processor, all in the same slim Jornada form factor we know and love. Pocket PC owners: if this device actually materializes, would it be compelling enough for you to switch? Vote here.
posted by Jeff Kirvin at 8:38 AM

Oops Dept: In this week's column, I erroneously mentioned the Handspring Prism as being $499 rather than $449. This has been corrected.
posted by Jeff Kirvin at 8:29 AM

Informed Christmas Shopping Dept: Just posted a new column, Pocket PC Buyer's Guide. If you're looking into buying a Pocket PC, this might help you decide which one is right for you.
posted by Jeff Kirvin at 6:27 PM

Bezos' Not Gonna Like This Dept: In an article on MSNBC, it seems that Random House is going to start offering their Modern Library classics as ebooks directly to the consumer, bypassing Amazon and BN.com.
posted by Jeff Kirvin at 8:27 AM

And Now For A Word Dept: Just posted this week's column, Documents a Go Go. It's a review of Documents To Go from DataViz, the new version of which allows full-format editing on the Palm. We finally have full featured word processing on the Palm. Or do we?
posted by Jeff Kirvin at 3:15 PM