A friend of mine bought another PDA when her Zire 22 wouldn’t charge. I asked her why didn’t she tell me as the solution could be an easy one. Nonetheless, I told her to try a soft reset and then a hard reset. She said she was charging the new one and then was going to put the new one into the old one’s cradle to see if it charges. Good idea, but I’d try the reset first.

Info on resets: Before doing any kind of reset, backup the device, if possible. A soft reset compares to rebooting a computer. Doing a reset doesn’t erase the data.

Most devices come with a small hole on the back. The tip of your stylus might be able to press it. If not, get a paperclip and straighten it. This works most, if not all, the time. Just insert the clip or stylus into the hole until you see the welcome screen appear. Some devices don’t have the reset button in an obvious place like the Tungsten T3 requires sliding it open to access the hole or the Treo 650 that has its reset button behind the battery door.

A hard reset erases all the data and returns the device to the way it was when you two first met. Again (can’t remind folks too many times), back up your data before doing a hard reset. Put the paper clip or stylus into the hole on the back of the device and hold it down while you press the power button until you see the screen appear with either a message asking if you want to erase the data, or the device’s default welcome screen. Also, check your device’s documentation because the hard reset process could be different — but this one is common.

After doing a hard reset, sync your device with the computer to restore the data. Before doing this, check the device’s documentation on restoring data. For instance, Palm OS users need to open HotSync and select Custom. Select the Conduit and click Change to “change the action to Desktop overwrites handheld.” Windows Mobile users open ActiveSync, click on Tools and then Backup/Restore. Select the Restore tab and click on the Restore Now button.

The Treo takes up one whole chapter of this book plus references in the communication-related. Still although the Treo is a popular PalmOS-based device, it rightfully doesn’t dominate the book. After all, many owners of PalmOS devices don’t need or want to have a powerful device like the Treo.

In spite of “hacks” in its name, the book isn’t as geeky or technical as it sounds. A hack is also known as a trick or add-on for adding more power to a program or system. However, not all of the tips are technically hacks because they provide how-to advice: annotate everything, find anything, get the most out of the date book, how to become a better student, and so on.

One caveat, when the book references another hack or figures, the light gray text barely appears and it is difficult to read. MacHaffie also refers to third-party software as a way to add more options, games, and functionality to the PalmOS device. It’s tough to please people with varying interests. It might’ve been better to refer to places where you can find and download software. Many people would appreciate these discoveries.

The games section, for example, has references to quite a few role-playing games (RPG) in comparison to other types of games. Most of the sections only take a few pages, so it’s not a big waste if the topic doesn’t catch your eye. Again, it’s tough to address a wide audience and there wouldn’t be enough material to create a separate book addressing only PalmOS games, student tips, and advice for business users.

Roughly about a fourth of the book covers communications, phone PDA hybrid tips, and multimedia. So those who have basic PDAs without any connections still get a bulk of information they can use. The 55 tips are listed in the table of contents listed on the book’s Web page (http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/palmtreohks/toc.html) and checking it out should give you a good idea if you’ll find the book useful or not.

You won’t find much tech jargon so the hacks are easy to understand. The book has tips for beginners, moderate users, and experts and each hack is represented by thermometer’s temperature (high for expert and low for easy) for quick reference. Very few hacks are at the expert level, so beginners and moderates should have no trouble applying most or all of the hacks.

Title: Palm and Treo Hacks
Author: Scott MacHaffie
Publisher: O’Reilly
ISBN: 059610054X
Date: October 2005
Format: Paperback
Pages: 234
Cover Price: USD: $24.95 Amazon: $16.47

If you run a weblog using Movable Type, then you can easily make it available for PDA readers. It takes under 30 minutes to set it up.

Select the weblog to convert to PDA format. Click on LIST & EDIT TEMPLATES > CREATE NEW INDEX TEMPLATE (just above the gray boxed area that lists your existing templates) .

In the NAME box, enter a name for the weblog. Mine says, “Portable meryl’s notes.”

In the OUTPUT FILE box, enter a name for the file with a .html extension. Here I enter, “pdanotes.html.”

Copy and paste the following and change the <TITLE> and the <DIV> right after the <BODY> tag.

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN"
"DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;
charset=iso-8859-1" />
<TITLE>meryl's notes on the go!</TITLE>
<style type="text/css">
<!--
body {
	color:#333;
	background-color:white;
	margin:20px;
	padding:0px;
	font:11px verdana, arial, helvetica, sans-serif;
	leftMargin=0
}
h1 {
	font:bold 12px/12px verdana, arial, helvetica,
                       sans-serif;
	margin:0px 0px 0px 0px;
	padding:0px;
}
p {
	font:11px verdana, arial, helvetica, sans-serif;
	color:#333333;
	margin:0px 0px 0px 0px;
	padding:0px;
}
.Content>p {margin:0px;}
.Content>p+p {text-indent:0px;}
.tinyfont { font:8px verdana, arial, helvetica, sans-serif; }
.smallfont { font:9px verdana, arial, helvetica, sans-serif; }
.titlefont { font:14px verdana, arial, helvetica, sans-serif; }
a {
	color:#000000;
	font-family:verdana, arial, helvetica, sans-serif;
	text-decoration:none;
}
A:link { color: #09c; TEXT-DECORATION: none }
A:visited { color: #07a; TEXT-DECORATION: none }
A:active { TEXT-DECORATION: none }
A:hover {
	FONT-WEIGHT: normal; FONT-STYLE: normal
	BACKGROUND: #eee;
}
#Header {
	margin:50px 0px 10px 0px;
	padding:17px 0px 0px 20px;
	/* For IE5/Win's benefit height = [correct height] +
[top padding] + [top and bottom border widths] */
	height:33px; /* 14px + 17px + 2px = 33px */
	border-style:solid;
	border-color:black;
	border-width:1px 0px; /* top and bottom borders: 1px;
left and right borders: 0px */
	line-height:11px;
	background-color:#eee;
/* Here is the ugly brilliant hack that protects IE5/Win
from its own stupidity. Thanks to Tantek Celik for the
hack and to Eric Costello for publicizing it. IE5/Win
incorrectly parses the ""}"" value, prematurely
closing the style declaration. The incorrect IE5/Win
value is above, while  the correct value is below. See
http://glish.com/css/hacks.asp for details. */
	voice-family: ""}"";
	voice-family:inherit;
	height:14px; /* the correct height */
}
/* I've heard this called the "be nice to Opera 5" rule.
Basically, it feeds correct length values to user agents
that exhibit the parsing error exploited above yet get
the CSS box model right and understand the CSS2
parent-child selector. ALWAYS include a "be nice to
Opera 5" rule every time you use the Tantek Celik
hack (above). */
body>#Header {height:14px;}
.Content {
	margin:5px 5px 5px 5px;
	padding:2px;
}
.dateheader {
	position:relative;
	width:auto;
	min-width:120px;
	margin:0px 0px 0px 0px;
	padding:5px;
	z-index:3;
}
-->
</style>
</HEAD>
<BODY>
<DIV id=Header>... meryl's notes on the go!</DIV>
<div align="left">
<MTEntries lastn="15">
<MTDateHeader>
<div class="dateheader"><H1><$MTEntryDate format="%A, %B %e,
%Y"$></H1></DIV>
</MTDateHeader>
<br>
<DIV class="content">
<span class="titlefont"><i><$MTEntryTitle$></i>
(<$MTEntryDate format="%I:%M%p"$>)<br /></span>
<$MTEntryBody$>
<MTEntryIfExtended>
<p><$MTEntryMore$></p>
</MTEntryIfExtended>
<MTEntryIfAllowComments>
<p>:: Comments left behind ::</p>
<MTComments>
<$MTCommentBody$>
<span class="smallfont">:: <$MTCommentAuthorLink$>
<$MTCommentDate$></span><br /><br />
</MTComments>
</MTEntryIfAllowComments>
</div>
</MTEntries>
</div>
<HR width="75%">
<P CLASS="tinyfont" align="center">
<a href="http://www.movabletype.org">Powered by
MovableType</a></P>
</body>
</html>

Hit SAVE and do a REBUILD.

That’s it for the Movable Type portion. Next step is to go to AvantGo and log in.

Click on MY ACCOUNT (upper right side of the screen) > CREATE CUSTOM CHANNEL WIZARD > in CHANNEL LOCATION, enter the URL to your new .html file that you just created. For this, it is: http://www.meryl.net/blog/pdanotes.html.

Click on VIEW to make sure it takes you to the .html page you created to verify it is the correct URL. Once confirmed, close the window and you’re back at AvantGo.

Proceed through the Channel Wizard. It has instructions for each screen so you can determine what you’d like to do. Remember, PDAs holds various amounts of data depending on the user’s PDA. Some are as small as 2 MB and others have 32 MB.

Click NEXT > Enter a CHANNEL TITLE (meryl.net articles) > Enter the CHANNEL MAX SIZE based on reading the instructions > NEXT > Select YES or NO for FOLLOW OFFSITE LINKS based on instructions > NEXT > Determine CHANNEL LINK DEPTH upon reading instructions > NEXT > Select YES OR NO for INCLUDING IMAGES (I recommend NO) > NEXT > FINISH (or go BACK if you need to revise something).

You’ll return to the MY CHANNELS screen. Select EXPORT CHANNELS. COPY the new channel you just have created by highlighting the entire URL and pressing CTRL-C. PASTE it in an email or word processor by pressing CTRL-V. This is the URL you give to others or put in your Web site for others to access your pages through the PDA.

Consider yourself portablized!