22 January 2005 ... Palm Programs

I don't think I've lately expressed how much I enjoy my handheld. True, I mostly just read books on it... but that's what I bought it for, after all.

My handheld is a Palm Tungsten T2, it has 32megs of memory (of which I am currently using about half), Palm OS 5. I bought a 128meg expansion card, for my MP3s. And a Games expansion card, on which I usually just play the pinball game and ignore the SimCity.

(all links open in a new window) (as usual)

The reading thing all started with DropBook, a cute little application for the computer to change TXT files into PDB files to be read by PalmReader. DropBook no longer exists, sighs... (these days you'll have to buy a copy of Ebook Studio, which is probably worth the money simply because it is assumedly user friendly). Anyway, you have to do your own Markup with DropBook, but so far I've made and read 33 eBooks...

via Gutenberg, of course.

And then came BookBag, a readers database. I've got about 200 books inputted... and I have yet to go through my storage boxes.

Adobe Acrobat Reader for Palm OS to read converted PDFs on the handheld. The program is there... kind of. It's difficult to register, it's buggy, and it's not supported so don't bother them with your stupid questions when the software doesn't work. haha. yeah.

I had to draw, so here's HandPainter Pro. Works great, tho getting my oh-so-fine artwork from handheld to computer is a bit of a chore. eh.

In a effort to amelorate the "chore", I got some Screen Shot software. convienent!

And now, I've gone and joined FictionWise.com for their scifi eBooks, not to mention their Nebula short story nominees. And I've downloaded a copy of MobiPocket Reader, because you can't have too many "readers" on one handheld.

But, yeah, mostly I've just used my handheld for reading classic copyright-free books. This past week I've been delighted with Colette's Barks and Purrs. (... eagerly awaiting the English translation of her Chéri *smiles* ) and with The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling.

eh. Sometimes I think about creating an online readers journal. But none of the ones already in existance have appealed to me. So I put it off for another day.