PDA brings digital future within grasp

PDA brings digital future within grasp

By Endy M. Bayuni

JAKARTA (JP): At the recent Comdex, the annual trade show
where state-of-the-art computers and the future are presented,
Bill Gates proudly unveiled a prototype of Microsoft's TabletPC,
a full-fledged PC pad-like device which allows you to write and
read with ease because of its portability.

The message that Gates sent out in Las Vegas was that once
this product comes on the market, which it is expected to in
about two years time, it will revolutionize the way people read
and write.

A desktop PC or a laptop PC has done that to some extent, but
because they are not portable, most people still prefer to read
daily newspapers, magazines and books the way they have for over
100 years: On printed paper.

Microsoft's TabletPC will soon change all that.

But for the few thousand people in the world who are making
full use of their personal digital assistants, or PDAs, the
future that Gates envisions is already here with us. The
portability of PDAs has virtually put the future of the digital
world within our grasp.

Thanks to PDAs, some of us are reading our favorite
periodicals and books digitally on a far regular basis through
the comfort of a machine which is tiny enough to fit in a shirt
pocket, but not too small to discomfort the eyes when reading.

PDAs, at times referred to as Palms (the name exclusively used
for the world's leading PDA brand), and at other times as
handhelds or pocket PCs, are quietly revolutionizing the way we
obtain our daily intake of information, digitally and without
paper.

Microsoft TabletPC, when it becomes available, will only make
the format slightly bigger and a little bit more reader-friendly
than PDAs. The Tablet may also offer a few more gadgets than what
we have in our PDAs, but the essence will be the same: A shift
away from printed to digital data.

When the Internet became a fad about 10 years ago, allowing
data to be transmitted digitally, many people predicted that the
demise of newspapers, magazines and books was just around the
corner. They were proven wrong because the digital data could
only be accessed if you sat all day in front of your desktop PC.

Now, with the portability of PDAs, and in two years time
Microsoft's TabletPC, speculation about the demise of printed
publications will no doubt become in vogue again. This time, it
will probably be harder to dismiss the speculation.

Thanks to PDAs and soon to TabletPC, computers will be the way
everyone obtains their reading material, or certainly most of it.

The wonderful thing about reading digitally is that there is a
plentiful supply of material available to download, for free,
through the Internet. There are more than 1,000 websites of major
periodicals which offer information for free in a format adjusted
to PDAs. And there are dozens of websites offering ebooks either
for free in the case of classics, or for a lot less than you
would pay for newer printed books.

Currently, my collection of reading material which I regularly
download on my PDA includes the BBC News and Fox News, parts of
The New York Times (including its famous book review and front
page sections), lead articles from The Economist weekly, the
daily political columns of The Washington Post, and the daily
postings of Business Week and Forbes. The Wall Street Journal
also offers its brief business stories from around the world and
one opinion piece and one leisure piece every day, and, as a
bonus, an article from Barron's Online.

For my personal amusement, I also download the Joke a Day
package, which includes two jokes every day (one mature joke and
one G/PG joke). The package includes "Babe a Day" and "Hunk a
Day", so whatever your sexual preference, you have no choice but
to take both. For good measure, I also obtain regularly updated
articles from RollingStones.com.

And as I write this article, my PDA's library has no less than
10 titles, again all obtained for free. The books I'm currently
reading include classical titles, such as Charles Dickens' Great
Expectations, Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Ernest and
Frederick Douglass's My Bondage and My Freedom.

PDAs have been leading the changes in our reading habits with
little fanfare. But for some unexplained reason, the feature that
allows you to read your periodicals (dailies, magazines and news
websites) or your favorite books digitally has been the least
touted, and probably underestimated feature of PDAs.

Typically, the makers tout this as one of the minor, standard
features of their products. This is probably because every PDA
brand available on the market offers the same features to read
periodicals and books, or at least allows you to download this
feature with ease. Instead, the makers are highlighting the
technical advantages of their wonderful little machines.

Words like interconnectivity, wireless applications and other
technical features may lure the tech-savvy, but they can be
intimidating to tech-phobies. If only PDA makers were to
emphasize more on what these features can mean to users, and less
on the technical jargon, more and more people would probably be
convinced that a PDA is something they would sooner or later have
to have, for their comfort and convenience.

For me personally, as a reporter, writer and avid reader, my
iPAQ H3630 pocket PC has become very much a part of my life,
something I never want to be caught without at any time. My PDA,
one of the pocket PC models churned out by Compaq this year, has
plenty of features which have changed my life for the better
since I bought the machine two months ago.

I have to admit that my life, both at work and at home, is now
far better organized because of the organizer features on the
PDA. There is no longer any excuse for missing, or for forgetting
an appointment, since my loyal assistant is constantly with me to
remind me of my next meeting in a timely fashion.

Palm, which first introduced the PDA, developed the pocket PC
around the concept of a digital organizer, the little basic
computing machine popular in the early 1990s.

A diary, a list of appointments and tasks and an
address/phone/e-mail book are now standard features on a PDA. But
with the increase of computing capability, these organizers have
evolved over time to allow you to do much more with them.

Some are pure gadgets that do not necessarily enhance the
quality of life. Unless you are in the film industry, for
example, I cannot think of any real use for having a movie player
on your PDA which lets you watch one or two-minute movie clips.
The recorder that comes with my PDA is great for journalists to
record interviews or thoughts, but not necessarily for people in
other professions. The MP3 player on the PDA is also a gadget,
but it is an entertaining one since you can work and listen to
your favorite music at the same time.

There is no doubt that the best part of the PDA, at least for
me personally, is the feature that allows me to read my favorite
periodicals and books digitally, anywhere and at anytime. For my
money, this is certainly a better feature than the WAP facility
that telecommunications companies have been trying to develop to
incorporate information in cellular phones.

Most standard PDAs come with an Internet browser as well as an
e-mail facility that allows you to read and write letters away
from your desktop PC. A portable modem is optional but as long as
you have frequent access to a desktop PC throughout the day, at
home or office, then you do not need a modem.

What you have to do is "synchronize" your pocket PC with your
desktop PC, whether at home or office, regularly during the day
to get the latest updates of the various periodicals you
subscribe to. Updating periodicals, which in my case is from more
than 10 different sites, is completed in a matter of a few
minutes.

Most pocket computers allow you to connect through the
Internet with AvantGo, a website which offers you the facility to
access hundreds of periodicals to cater to everyone's taste which
has been formatted specially for your handhelds. You use your
Internet browser to read the periodicals like you would on a
desktop PC, but the contents have been formatted in such a way
that makes reading easy through your pocket PC.

Even if your favorite news sites are not on AvantGo's list,
you are able to personally format their content to fit your PDA.
Do not just take my word on it though, because I have not been
able to work this one out yet.

For books, there are many sites that offer ebooks. Most
classic books, including a large collection of Shakespeare and
Jane Austen for example, are available for free. Barnes & Nobles
and Amazon.com also offer a huge collection of new ebooks at
their e-stores. They have also started offering audible books and
you can download the audible program that will read the books for
you. For me personally, having someone read things to me takes
away the fun and enjoyment of reading.

Reading books using your PDA is not only fun, but, because it
is so portable, it is much more convenient than if you have to
carry the actual book, or if you are like me and you read more
than one book at any one time, of having to carry several books.

You read your ebooks through the Microsoft Reader program. It
is already installed in some PDAs, but if not, you can download
it for free from Microsoft sites. The program allows you to
bookmark, highlight or make notes on the margins just like you
would in a real book. Plus, if you are reading more than one book
at a time, you can store as many titles as the memory in your PDA
allows (which is 32MB for my iPAQ H3630).

If you think this is revolutionary, then consider this.
Bestselling horror writer Stephen King is offering his latest
work in digital form, directly to his fans. At a mere cost of
US$1 a session, you are entitled to download his novel The Plant
as each chapter is completed and becomes available to the public
from his website. By going digital and selling directly to his
fans, King has cut out the role (and therefore the profit margin)
of the publisher and eliminated the cost of paper and print.

The pocket computer, which allows you to read King's books
anywhere and anytime you want to, complements this development.

The trend, or more appropriately the revolution in the
information industry, is likely to continue, and with it the
demise of printed publications is becoming a real prospect.

Without having to wait for Bill Gates to complete his TabletPC
for a couple more years or so, the thousands of people who are
using their PDAs to read periodicals and books are already
entering the future of a truly digital world.

For most others, digital reading will come very soon.

The writer is a senior journalist at The Jakarta Post.