By Steve Niles
"Bad news hits hard. Only The Indigestible punches back." This is the motto of what creator Warren Ockrassa believes to be the only Weblog in the world written on a Palm PDA. The Indigestible is found at http://www.the-indigestible.com, and it's the PalmPower Site of the Month for August.
The Indigestible is a platform on which Ockrassa manages to express his unique worldview by deconstructing the news of the day with " vitriolic commentary and sarcasm."
His views and opinions may not sit comfortably with everyone, but from a technical standpoint his site is definitely worthy of note as it's entirely written and edited on his Palm V. You can take a look at an example of his work in Figure A.
FIGURE A
Completely written on a Palm V, The Indigestible presents Warren Ockrassa's singular take on the news of the day. (click for larger image)
The process
Ockrassa begins the process by using AvantGo to download news channels onto his Palm V. Then, in his SmartDoc editor, he composes the text for his Weblog. The entire composition is done using the Graffiti handwriting recognition system.
"Given the fact that I have always been most comfortable with handwriting my copy--I don't even really like typewriters--this is a wonderful tool for me to have," Ockrassa says on the site. "With Graffiti I am able to do about 20 WPM (three nanobots per liter metric, five monemes in Canadian funds, or about as fast as I can write on paper)."
Once he's finished writing, Ockrassa performs a HotSync, transferring his content to his desktop computer where the Doc files are converted to plain text. He then copies and pastes the information into Netscape's desktop HTML editor for "linking and prettification."
Ockrassa admits the process sounds convoluted, but he says the system is beneficial because it frees him from his most common source of spelling errors, namely mis-struck keys.
PDA-optimized
Of further interest is the fact that Ockrassa provides a PDA-optimized version of the site. It's at http://www.the-indigestible.com/pda/ and can be downloaded to your Palm device using AvantGo. Ockrassa says once it's run through AvantGo's filters, it will only take up around 7 to 9KB on your device.
If you don't mind a healthy dosage of caustic commentary, be sure to check out The Indigestible. It demonstrates another very cool use of the versatile Palm device.
Your site can earn this special banner
Do you run a special site, one that provides a great resource for Palm device users? If so, your site may be eligible for consideration as the PalmPower Site of the Month. If chosen, you'll even be entitled to display the snazzy banner shown in Figure B.
FIGURE B
Is your site cool enough to be the PalmPower Site of the Month?
If you'd like your site to be considered for the PalmPower Site of the Month, send email to heather@palmpower.com. Please specify "PALMPOWER COOLSITE" in the subject field of your email, and include a paragraph or two about what makes your site special.
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