Blogging Anywhere

Part of my reason for purchasing Radio is to experiment with PDA Blogging. Hardly a fresh idea for me, during my ex-pat period I posted several blog entries from moving trains using a Palm Vx and Avantgo. With a Nokia 7110 or 8890 providing connectivity and a Stowaway keyboard, it had a Rube Goldberg feel to it. Workable but not exactly practical.

Recent interest in wireless blogging seems to revolve around SMS. Essentially this is e-mail blogging from a cellular phone using an SMS to E-mail gateway. From my perspective, SMS is less usable for blogging than the Palm / Cellular method. SMS messages are limited to 160 characters total, and using a phone keypad to type more than a few words is far more painful than writing with Graffiti.

RIM-style devices seem like a better method for wireless blogging, but I haven't seen any discussion of that. Maybe nobody has thought of that yet (yeah, right). Perhaps e-mail blogging using a dedicated wireless e-mail device is too obvious to merit discussion.

Today I want to talk about wireless blogging over the Internet with modern PDAs. For the most part I will be ignoring Palm OS devices because they are generally not well suited to Internet activities, and 1xRTT because I firmly believe that GSM (and hence, GPRS) will have the most world-wide availability.

Evolving Technology

The state of the art has evolved. Today there are powerful PDAs with thumb-sized keyboard attachments, and one that has a built-in keyboard (more on that later). Wireless connectivity via 802.11b can be provided by unobtrusive Compact Flash cards from a number of vendors. CPDP has been available in Compact Flash form for a while. GPRS is readily available, Bluetooth PDAs have arrived in the US and phones are forthcoming. Nokia is selling a PCMCIA card that supports all of the GSM high-speed data standards, and I am hopeful that a Compact Flash implementation will come. And finally, Microsoft's ever-changing "Stinger" platform looks like it will actually ship this time around.

PDA Blogging Today

For experimentation purposes I have recently purchased two new PDAs. The first was a Zaurus SL-5000D, a beta/developer version of the upcoming Zaurus SL-5500, which I've had for about two months. The second was an Audiovox Maestro, purchased from CompUSA this past weekend for a mere $300. I also ordered an SMC 802.11b Compact Flash card from CDW, which arrived yesterday.

This morning I made some Radio posts from both PDAs. I'll get into the particulars of the devices later, right now I just want to discuss the two browsers offered, as they are of primary interest to blogging.

The Maestro is a Pocket PC 2002 device and provides Pocket Internet Explorer for web browsing. According to this, PIE is derived from IE 3.02. This is a step back to the stone ages of the web, but it does work surprisingly well. Most of the "three-column table-based layout" sites that I have viewed wind up with a middle column of just the right size for the tiny PDA screen. The most glaring issue from my perspective is the complete lack of CSS support.

The Zaurus SL-5000D is a Linux device that offers up Opera for web browsing. It appears to be quite full-featured, including CSS support. I like it better for general surfing as I feel that it's scaling options are better implemented than PIE's. The CSS support may be a mixed blessing for "fluid" three-column designs where the side columns have specified widths while that the main content box is of unspecified width (ie: this site). As this is not a common implementation of CSS boxing, it should not be an issue for general surfing or blogging activities.

Deciding

As a "Blogging Device", the Zaurus beats the Maestro hands-down. The browser is a significant advantage, but the "Ace in the hole" is it's built-in keyboard. Other devices have available keyboard attachments, but many are clumsy devices that you won't use (or even carry) all of the time. Having the keyboard always there is a great feature.

That said, I'm leaning towards the Maestro as my interim full-time PDA. My intent is to create PDA applications for offline blogging, and quite simply I am a Microsoft Geek. Linux is unfamiliar territory and it will take me many months to become a productive developer on the Zaurus. Targeting Pocket PC devices I can be productive immediately. Besides which, the "classic PDA apps" are sub-par on the Zaurus.

Hopefully a smart Pocket PC vendor will see that the buzz on the Zaurus in PDA circles has more to do with the keyboard than the OS, and offer a similar device.

What is Offline Blogging?

In the next section I will cover the available options for Online Blogging, that is, blogging live over a wireless connection. Offline Blogging would be creating blog entries on a PDA that is not presently connected to the Internet, but will be later.

If you want Offline Blogging today, your primary options are to create the posts using your PDA's "Notepad" application and migrate them to the web manually, or use an E-mail to Blog gateway. The e-mail option works fairly well if you are using software that supports it (for Radio, you need to be able to dedicate a POP e-mail address to that purpose).

As I see things, dedicated Offline Blogging applications are the next step for PDAs among the blogging crowd. Wireless is neat, but even if you spend every moment of your life in Silicon Valley and have a PDA with every available wireless option, you still wouldn't be assured of connectivity everywhere. Using an E-mail application is a kludge (albeit minor), and doesn't take advantage of the PDA platform.

What we need are tools for managing blogs on a disconnected PDA. I see three varieties of wireless blogging applications for PDAs:

1. Batch Posting Tools. Simple applications that allow you to create blog entries offline and will post them automatically via XML-RPC once connectivity become available.
2. Blog Management Tools. Imagine a version of Radio Userland for your PDA that can synchronize with your desktop installation.
3. Comprehensive Thought Management. There are many PDA applications for keeping a journal or diary, and several integrate the existing contact, task, and scheduling systems. Extend that concept to the web by having it use XML-RPC to automatically publish certain classes of data when connectivity is available.

I will probably begin work on a PPC application of the first variety over the next few days. It would seem that I am not the first to see the need for such an application. Googling on PDA+weblog this evening lead me to "handX weblog for Palm OS." It is a very rudimentary program that depends on the desktop machine to move data from PDA to Web, but that is quite reasonable for a program running within the constraints of Palm OS.

Assemble Your Own Blog-Ready Wireless PDA Platform, Today

Firstly, decide how you intend to get connectivity. Present options are: Regular cellular, GPRS cellular, Bluetooth, CPDP, and 802.11b. Each of these options is generally available for every PDA platform, but not necessarily every model. Do the research before you buy.

Regular Cellular: Using a regular cell phone involves the least amount of expense for many people. Most GSM phones provides an Infrared port, and they all have some sort of built-in modem (usually 9600bps analog). It is not a good solution for general web surfing, but for updating your own blog it can be perfectly reasonable (works best if you have control over what appears on the posting page and can make it very-low-bandwidth friendly). GSM carriers usually provide a dial-up system that you can use for no additional charge, saving you the cost of a dial-up account with an ISP if you do not already have one. Sometimes this is referred to as CSD (Circuit Switch Data), and you will want to make sure that your phone is compatible beforehand. I use Voicestream, and they only offer Digital CSD which is limited to certain Motorola phones. Unfortunately for me, I have a Nokia 8890 and 8210.

GPRS Cellular: The latest and greatest for the GSM world (1xRTT is comparable for the CDMA crowd). The vendor hype is that it gets you up to 144kbps, but the reality is more like moderate-to-fast dial-up speeds. Voicestream sells GPRS as "iStream", Cingular calls it "Wireless Internet Express." Supposedly AT&T Wireless offers GPRS, but I've never managed to find it.

Bluetooth: Designed for short-range communications (a few feet) at high-speed. In the "Wireless Blogging" context, Bluetooth is a natural way to connect a PDA to a GPRS phone. Bluetooth could also be used to get online directly through a Bluetooth Access Point or a desktop PC with a Bluetooth adapter, but this is much less useful for live blogging. The iPaq H3870 PDA has built-in Bluetooth, for other PDAs there are a variety of Bluetooth add-ons. For phones, there is the Ericson T-68 (not available in the US) and the forthcoming Motorola i280.

CDPD: It's like GPRS for the analog cellular network. Speeds top out at 19.2kbps, but it has a wide coverage area in the US and flat-rate service is usually available for $50/month or so. Go America is one CDPD provider.

802.11b: Also known as WiFi, 802.11b provides an 11Mbps wireless Ethernet connection. If you aren't already in the know, Glenn's 802.11b site is a good place to start. 802.11b gear is cheap and readily available at retail establishments, but except for certain areas with large concentrations of technology workers you will not find coverage outside of your home or office.

It is perfectly reasonable to pick more than one of these options. For instance, you might use an 802.11b Compact Flash card while near the home or office, and a regular cell phone when on the road. Or you might use Bluetooth to talk to your desktop computer at home and a GPRS cellular phone when out and about.

Now, let's talk PDAs. I am only going to discuss PDAs that resemble the classic Palm form-factor. Handheld PCs from HP and NEC are in a totally different class, and are quite large.

Palm OS: The first truly successful PDA platform, designed to be an informational display device as opposed to a handheld computer. In my opinion, the Palm platform is not well suited to Internet activities. The processor is slow. The displays are horrible. However, the Treo 180 from Handspring does stand out. This device is a GSM phone, Palm OS PDA, and thumb keyboard all rolled into one compact device. Supposedly there will be a software update to make it GPRS-capable. Palm OS devices have the largest software base, and a large variety of third-party peripherals, just make sure that your chosen device supports the peripherals you intend to use. Palm, Handspring, and Sony are the major vendors for Palm OS devices. Palm has announced that the next version of Palm OS will support Intel's XScale processors, which should allow for better Internet features.

Linux: There have been a number of Linux-based PDA attempts, none have achieved much success. The upcoming Zaurus SL-5500 from Sharp will change that. It will have a color screen, the now-industry-standard 206MHz StrongArm CPU, 64MB of memory, a Type II Compact Flash slot, an SD/MMC slot, and a built-in thumb keyboard. If you are a Linux junkie, this is the PDA for you. If your blog is maintained through Perl scripts, you could actually manage the entire thing on the Zaurus by running the Boa web server and building a script to upstream the static files to your public web server when connectivity is available. For the rest of us non-Linux geeks, it's too early to say. The current "classic PDA applications" are lacking compared to the more established platforms, and it's doubtful that Linux PDAs will ever achieve broad developer support.

Pocket PC: The 800lb Gorilla, Microsoft's ever-evolving PDA operating system. The current incarnation is Pocket PC 2002, and it only runs on StrongArm-based devices (and soon, XScale). PPC offers better integration with Microsoft Outlook on Windows than any other PDA. If that is important to you, this is your PDA. If you run Linux or Mac OS, you may be better off with a different PDA platform. If you want to develop, Microsoft's Embedded Visual Tools and Pocket PC SDKs are available for free download, but you will need to purchase Visual Studio.NET if you want to target the .NET Compact Framework. Audiovox, Casio, Compaq, HP, and Toshiba are the present hardware vendors in the US market.

Here is a run-down of the current PPC 2002 devices:

Audiovox Maestro: This is the PPC that I purchased, and it is at the bottom of the barrel. It only has 32MB of memory, while the rest of the current generation of PPCs have 64MB. Battery life is equal to the previous generation of iPaqs, which is to say that it is poor. Noteworthy is that it has a Type II Compact Flash slot as well as an SD/MMC slot, and supposedly it's weight is below average for the current crop of PPC devices. For the price it cannot be beat, my purchase was with the intent of replacing it with the first X-Scale PPC to arrive with a built-in keyboard.

Casio E-200: My favored PPC device, it has 64MB of memory, Type II CF, SD/MMC, and USB Host functionality (so far this is a unique feature for PPCs). It is generally available at retail. No thumb keyboard attachments yet, but I expect that it's features will attract decent sales, and therefore third-party interest.

Compaq iPaq: Compaq had first-mover advantage in the StrongArm-based Microsoft PDA realm, and that advantage has yet to fade. Due to their popularity, iPaqs have the most peripherals available. Unfortunately, iPaqs also offer the least amount of internal expansion. The latest models finally have an SD/MMC slot, but for Compact Flash you still have to buy a sleeve. The iPaq of choice right now is the H3870, which has Bluetooth and SD/MMC. A variety of "sleeve" expansion devices are available from Compaq, with a tri-band GSM with GPRS unit due any day now, and of course, keyboards. For connectivity the iPaq cannot be beat, but good luck finding the newest units at retail.

HP Jornada: My roommate is running HP's new Jornada 568. 64MB, no SD/MMC, and the CF slot is Type I (ick!). HP offers a "backpack" attachment that provides an extra battery, an SD/MMC slot, and a Type II PCMCIA slot (usable as a Type II CF slot with the proper adapter). HP also has a "cover" attachment that has a thumb keyboard. Both can be attached at the same time. My roommate combined all of that with a PCMCIA 802.11b card, supposedly he has run wireless all day at work without running out of power. The combination is quite thick, however. A smidge thicker than my Zaurus and Maestro combined.

Toshiba e570: The Maestro is actually manufactured by Toshiba, and their e570 is exactly the same device but with 64MB and a better battery. Toshiba is aiming for the enterprise market, so you cannot find it at retail. A thumb keyboard attachment is not yet available for either device, but given the target market it seems likely that Toshiba will contract with someone to provide an add-on.

the