PalmPilot: The Ultimate Guide, 2nd Edition Mastering Palm Organizers from Pilot 1000 to Palm VII By David Pogue 2nd Edition June 1999 1-56592-600-5, Order Number: 6005 624 pages, $29.95, Includes CD-ROM

Sample Chapter 11.
The Secret Multimedia World

Considering that it lacks color, stereo speakers, or CD-ROM drive, you might wonder how the PalmPilot could possibly be mentioned in the same sentence with the word "multimedia." Clearly, the PalmPilot was designed to be fast, stingy with batteries, and expert at sucking textual information out of your desktop computer--but to play music, show graphics, and play animations? Never.

Indeed, the average PalmPilot purchaser probably never suspects what this palmtop is capable of; no sound or graphics programs came with it. But with the right shareware add-ons, the PalmPilot can do a creditable job of putting a cultural studio in your pocket.

Photos on the PalmPilot

Here's a shocking fact about the Palm screen: it isn't black-and-white! It's actually capable of displaying 4 or 16 different shades of gray, much like an inexpensive laptop. So, how come you've never seen this feature? Because, except for a few Palm VII Web applets (see Chapter 16, Palm VII: Wireless Email, Wireless Web), the built-in software doesn't take advantage of the screen's grayscale abilities. The add-on software described in this chapter, however, does; see Figure 11-1 to see what's possible.

Figure 11-1. You might not suspect that your PalmPilot can display photos --more or less. (The Palm IIIx and Palm V can show up to 16 shades of gray, as shown at left.)

To view grayscale photos in this way, you need a program called ImageViewer; or a free program called TinyViewer; to create grayscale photos, you need a Windows program called ImageConverter. Both programs are included with this book. (If you have a Macintosh, see the sidebar "Creating Image Viewer files on the Macintosh.")

And why would you even want photos on your PalmPilot? Some PalmPiloteers simply like to carry around a digital photo of their loved ones. Others load up with work-related diagrams, such as the medical painting shown in Figure 11-1. The Web is increasingly full of ImageViewer documents portraying maps of various cities, subway systems, and famous buildings.

Getting a Photo Ready for the PalmPilot Using ImageConverter

ImageConverter lets you grab images from any of three sources: something you're seeing on the screen, something you've copied to the clipboard, or a graphic file sitting on your hard drive (see Figure 11-2).

Figure 11-2. ImageConverter turns any graphic into a 4- or 16-shade grayscale image, ready for the PalmPilot.

Suppose there's a graphic file on your hard drive that you'd like to transfer to the PalmPilot. Most PalmPilot models are capable of displaying only four shades: black, dark gray, light gray, and "white" (the color of the screen background). The IIIx, V, and related models can display 16 shades. For best results, then, do some processing manually in a program like Photoshop: change your image to grayscale mode, for example, and fiddle with the brightness and contrast. To get a preview of how the photo will look on the PalmPilot, use Photoshop's Posterize command, and specify 4 or 16 levels of gray. (This is all optional, but it's designed to let you control how the final image appears-- otherwise, ImageConverter will simply use its own inflexible conversion scheme.) When you're finished experimenting, save your graphic in one of these file formats: GIF, JPG, PCX, DIB, RLE, or TGA.

Now launch ImageConverter and click the Open button (see Figure 11-2). Locate the image file on your hard drive; double-click it; in the Image Title box, name the graphic as you'd like it to show up on the PalmPilot. Use the Auto-Install pop-up menu to specify whose PalmPilot this file should be installed onto.

Before you wrap things up, click the Preview tab to see what the PalmPilot is about to do to your lovely photo. You'll probably discover that turning on both the Grayscale and the Dithering options (on the Conversion tab) produces the best results, as shown in Figure 11-3 and Figure 11-4.

Figure 11-3. The Preview tab lets you see the original photo (left) as compared with the four-gray Palm version (right). Better yet is the dithered four-gray Palm version, shown in Figure 11-4.

Figure 11-4. Tap the name of a picture (left) to view it (right).

When you click the Conversion tab and click Convert, your image is instantly placed into the Install folder (inside your user-named folder, in the Palm folder), ready for HotSyncing.

After the HotSync, tap Applications ➝ TinyViewer (or ImageViewer) on your PalmPilot. Now you're shown a list of the graphics you've installed; tap one to see it in all its 160-pixel-square glory (Figure 11-4). If the image is larger than the PalmPilot's screen, scroll it by dragging with your finger or stylus--right in the middle of the image-- or press the four rounded application-launching buttons to scroll the page in each direction. (ImageViewer lets you view pictures up to 640 by 400--about three or four times the size of the PalmPilot's own screen.) When you want to open a different image, tap the Menu icon.

Once you're viewing the image, ImageViewer lets you adjust the darkness of the gray levels, which can often dramatically improve the clarity of your images. To do so, return to the file-list screen, if you haven't already (by tapping the Menu icon). Tap Menu ➝ Options ➝ Adjust Colors. In this dialog box, you can tap the arrows above or below each gray block to change its darkness.

TIP: In TinyVewer, if the image is too large to fit on a single screen, press one of the plastic scroll buttons on the PalmPilot. After a moment of computing, you're shown the original graphic at half its size. To zoom in again, press the scroll button again.

To rename, delete, or annotate an image-- or to flag it with a category label--tap the Image Details button on ImageViewer's main listing screen, and then tap one of the images in the list. The resulting dialog box offers Rename, Delete, Note, and Private buttons, plus a readout of size and memory statistics for the graphic you tapped. (In TinyVewer, tap the Info or Delete button on the main listing screen, and then tap the name of an image.)

Creating ImageVewer Files on the Macintosh

The Image Converter application described in this chapter works in Windows only. On the Macintosh, you need the ImageVewer Plug-in, which comes on this book's CD-ROM, and the shareware graphics program called GraphicConverter. (You can get GraphicConverter from http://www.shareware.com or any similar web site.)

To set up this plug-in, put it into the Plug-ins folder, which is inside the GraphicConverter folder. Launch GraphicConverter, choose File ➝ Preferences ➝ Plug-ins ➝ Set Folder, locate the Plug-ins folder, click it once and click Select "Plug-ins." Click OK. Quit GraphicConverter.

When you're actually ready to convert a graphic to ImageVewer formats, open it in GraphicConverter. Use the Picture ➝ Grayscale ➝ 4 Grays command to reduce it to PalmPilot-ready, four-shades-of-gray mode. Follow-up with the Picture ➝ Brightness/Contrast command, which can help a great deal with the clarity of the photo. Resize the photo as desired, using the Picture ➝ Size ➝ Scale command. (The picture doesn't have to be 160 pixels square, like the PalmPilot's screen, but 160 pixels square is as much of the photo as you'll see on the palmtop without scrolling or zooming.)

Finally, choose File ➝ Save As. In the resulting dialog box, choose Format ➝ ImageVewer. Save the new file into your Palm ➝ Users ➝ [your name] ➝ Files To Install folder, making sure to add the suffix .pdb to the filename.

At the next HotSync, your photo will appear in the TinyViewer or ImageVewer photo list on the PalmPilot!

(You'll find that GraphicConverter can now open ImageVewer files on the Mac, to -- just use the File ➝ Open command as usual.)

Painting and Drawing

There are two ways to create graphics on a computer: by painting or by drawing. The difference has to do with how the computer thinks of your art. In the case of painting programs, the PalmPilot thinks in one-dot units. To display a "painting" (such as a photo), the PalmPilot must memorize the exact status--black, white, or one of the gray shades--of each pixel (screen dot) on its screen. In other words, it stores a map of your screen. Painting programs, it's therefore said, generate bitmapped graphics.

When you lay down some "paint," you turn white pixels some other color. You can erase them, but you can't change the original shape you painted--a circle, say, or a letter of the alphabet--because the PalmPilot no longer thinks of them as a circle or a letter of the alphabet. On the other hand, you have control over each individual dot.

Drawing programs, on the other hand, create what are called object-oriented graphics (sometimes called vector drawings). When you draw a circle in one of these programs, the PalmPilot doesn't store it as a map of black dots; instead, it remembers that you drew a circle of a fixed shading and size. In a drawing program, objects remain objects; after you draw a circle, you can return to it later and move it by dragging it. You can overlap another object on top of it--and later change your mind. You can change a circle's shading long after you drew it.

Both kinds of programs are available on the PalmPilot; here are some of the best.

Getting Your Art on Paper

On desktop computers, drawing programs have a gigantic advantage over painting programs: their printouts. A printout from a painting program looks every bit as jagged on paper as it did on the screen. But when you print from a drawing program, the PalmPilot doesn't tell the printer "three black dots, then a white one . . . . " Instead it says, "A square, one inch tall." The printer can now put on the page a square, one inch tall, at its (the printer's) much higher image quality.

You're probably protesting that the PalmPilot can't print at all, so what's the point? Actually, the PalmPilot's premiere drawing program, PenDraw, can print if you hook up a standard printer to the HotSync cradle (or cable). See Chapter 15, Paging, Faxing, Printing, and Beaming, for details on printing. And your paintings can be transferred to Windows and printed from there.

Painting Programs

The world hasn't been the same since DinkyPad debuted. DinkyPad introduced the simple concept of drawing on the PalmPilot's surface as though it were a penny pad, exactly as you can on the Apple Newton (which costs four times more than the PalmPilot). Today, the world is crowded with painting programs. For example:

DinkyPad

The first sketchpad program. Offers pen, circle, line, rectangle, and eraser tools in five different line thicknesses. By pressing the PalmPilot's scroll buttons, you can actually draw on a much taller "virtual canvas" than fits on a single screen, as Figure 11-5 illustrates. The home-page index view shows a thumbnail of all the different drawings on your palmtop and lets you name and add a note to each drawing. This program uses 23K on the PalmPilot. The companion program, DinkyPad Conduit, transfers your finished artwork to a Windows 95 PC or Macintosh.

Figure 11-5. DinkyPad (upper left) makes quick sketches possible on the PalmPilot, including these examples posted on the Web by Nathan Black (lower left) and Steven Lue (right).

Doodle

This 25K sketching program has only two tools, a pencil and an eraser; without straight lines and rectangles, it's harder to draw, say, maps than in rival DinkyPad. Doodle also cries out for an index "home-page" view, as DinkyPad has; you can move from one drawing to the next only by choosing Next or Previous from a menu. However, Doodle offers many different pen thicknesses and "nib" shapes, a selection of ink "colors" (various shading patterns), and makes possible sketching styles that would be impossible in DinkyPad.

TealPaint

By far the most complete and professional painting program for the PalmPilot. (It's $18 shareware.) TealPaint is the only one, for example, to offer a "marquee" tool (for selecting portions of the drawing and dragging them around), Undo and Revert commands, a "fat bits" super-zoom-in mode for detail work, and even a screen-capture command that takes pictures of other Palm programs. Pop-up menus let you choose from 16 fill patterns, 12 different brush shapes, and 16 drawing tools (including a text tool with choice of typefaces).

To make life easier, you can work on a canvas larger than the actual screen; a thumbnail "index" view lets you choose from among your finished works; incredibly enough, an Anim menu lets you create cel-based animations that play right on the screen; and it all fits in 50K (see Figure 11-6). A utility program for converting HotSynced TealPaint artwork into standard Windows 95 .BMP graphics is included.

Capturing the Uncapturable

Many of the screenshot illustrations in this book never existed on a PalmPilot at all. Instead, they were captured from a Macintosh or Windows program called POSE (Palm OS emulator), available from this book's CD-ROM. It's a Palm emulator, allowing Palm programs to run right on the PC (in a window shaped like the PalmPilot itself ), where it's a simple matter to capture the screen image.

Some programs, however, crash Palm OS Emulator. Others use special graphics routines that don't show up on the emulator-- only on a real PalmPilot. And software that requires dialing into the Internet, such as the email and web programs described in this book, sometimes can't be captured from POSE. How are you supposed to take pictures of such software for use in, for example, books about the PalmPilot?

Three clever solutions are available (and included with this book): first, there's the free program Snapshot. It creates ImageVewer files, as described in the beginning of this chapter, that depict whatever was on the screen at a precise moment. The program lets you specify how many seconds you want to elapse before the photo is taken, much like the self-timer on cameras. The resulting ImageVewer file will then be HotSynced to your Windows PC or Mac, where you can view and edit.

The second solution, TealPaint, also offers a time-delay screen-grab feature; it gives you 10, 20, 30, or 40 seconds before capturing the Palm screen. After the countdown, if you return to TealPaint, you'll see your newly created painting document, which perfectly resembles the PalmPilot's screen at the designated moment.

Getting this picture onto your computer is another matter. When you HotSync, a new file (by default called Pictures) is placed into the Palm ➝ your name ➝ Backup folder. Using a supplementary Windows 95 utility program -- included with TealPaint -- called Paintmgr, you can open and display the TealPaint database of pictures, at which point you can export them as Windows .bmp files.

If sitting around and waiting for the countdown to elapse is too boring or too imprecise for you, install ScreenShot Hack instead. As described in Appendix A, 100 Programs Worth Knowing About, this program is a HackMaster file, meaning that it also requires the HackMaster utility program (included with this book). To set the program up, launch HackMaster, turn on the ScreenShot checkbox, and tap the tiny + symbol to the right of its name. Here you're offered the choice of two ways to capture a Palm screen image: you can write a certain Graffiti symbol, or you can tap the dot beneath the "1 2 3" at the lower-right corner of the Graffiti area. Either way, whatever is on the screen at that instant is captured as a graphic. Once the graphic is HotSynced to your Windows PC, you can use the accompanying ScreenShot2BMP application to convert the captured images into standard Windows .bmp files.

Then you'll be ready to illustrate your own PalmPilot book.

PenDraw

Despite the name, PenDraw is for painting, not drawing--and it's great. Weighing in at only 15K, PenDraw's clever interface offers pop-up icons that offer eight shading patterns, eight brushes, seven painting tools, and an Undo command. There's no index page, but a click on the Previous or Next arrows scrolls your other drawings into view (see Figure 11-6).

Pocket Paint

A clever $10 shareware hybrid program that both creates simple sketches, especially maps and diagrams, and displays its own grayscale photo format. Macintosh fans will especially appreciate the accompanying PPaint for Mac application, which lets you turn any standard Macintosh graphics file into a grayscale Palm graphic, much like the GraphicConverter plug-in described earlier in this chapter.

QPaint

The companion to Qdraw, described in the next section. Features a similar interface; in 17K, all the essentials are here-- eight painting tools, eight shading patterns, three line-widths, and a choice of two text styles--but not much in the way of bells and whistles.

HDSketch

Like TealPaint, this one includes a text tool, an Undo command, a virtual canvas, and a thumbnail "index" view. It also includes a converter program for Windows and, remarkably, a two-way conduit that keeps your graphics collection constantly updated via normal HotSyncs.

ScratchPad

With no choice of tools or line thicknesses, the minimalist ScratchPad would be barely worth mentioning except for its tiny RAM appetite: 5K. (Similarly: Scribble, which is even barer-bones.)

SketchPad Palm

Very Palmesque, complete with home-page index view, category and Private options, a menu command to display the PalmPilot's keyboard, and so on (see Figure 11-6). The actual drawing tools, however, are minimal: one pencil, one width, plus an eraser. SketchPad consumes 17K of RAM, but feels far more professional than its Spartan rival ScratchPad.

Figure 11-6. Heirs to DinkyPad include the impressive TealPaint (left) and SketchPad (middle). At right, PenDraw's unique Spyrograph tool lets you create geometrical designs that would be impossible in other programs.

Drawing Programs

You don't find paintbrush, pencil, and eraser tools in a drawing program; instead, lines, circles, and rectangles are the primary tools. As noted earlier, however, the advantages are considerable: you can change any shape you've drawn at any time. Drawing programs, with their solid, straight lines, free from human shakiness, are perfect for maps, electrical diagrams, architectural drawings, and so on.

At this writing, there are only two drawing programs for the PalmPilot: PalmDraw and QDraw (see Figure 11-7).

PalmDraw

True to its breed, PalmDraw features an arrow tool that lets you adjust the size or position of any line, arc, circle, rectangle, or text block you've drawn. You'll wind up wishing the program let you change line thicknesses or shading patterns--but then again, you can always export your work as a PostScript or EPS file to your computer, and touch it up there. (PalmDraw comes with an accompanying utility program that converts PalmDraw pictures to Windows Metafiles (WMF) or Enhanced Windows Metafiles (EMF) formats.)

PalmDraw even lets you print directly to a PostScript printer with a standard serial port; just connect your HotSync cradle to it directly and use PalmDraw's Print to Serial command.

Although PalmDraw isn't quite MiniCad, in some respects it represents an impressive feat in Palm programming and hints at the promise of the next generation of pocket-sized graphics software.

Figure 11-7. QDraw lets you make crisp architectural drawings. Tap a drawing on the index page (left) to open it (right). Tap an object to show its handles, which you can drag to reshape or resize.

QDraw

A muscular, full-featured drawing program that manages to squeeze four menus into the PalmPilot's tiny menu bar. These menus offer such standard drawing-program commands as Group, Ungroup, Send to Back, and Bring to Front, along with Cut, Copy, Paste, and Duplicate. The pop-up tool icons feature the usual arrow, circle, rectangle, and text tools, along with a rounded-rectangle tool whose degree of roundedness you can actually change. Another palette lets you change the fill pattern of any shape (which is lacking from PalmDraw). You can zoom in and zoom out, turn the "snap to grid" option on or off, and view a thumbnail index of all drawings (see Figure 11-7). Not bad for 28K.

Palm Animation Software

The notion of creating the next Fantasia or The Little Mermaid on your palmtop may strike some as taking the PalmPilot can-do attitude just a hair too far. And yet several useful programs prove that, in fact, this computer is as good as any for creating simple animations.

TealPaint

TealPaint is much more than a painting program, as described earlier in this chapter; it can actually create smooth full-screen animations. Start by drawing the first frame of your cartoon. Tap Menu ➝ Anim ➝ Replicate Frame to create a second frame -- a duplicate of the first, which you can now edit slightly to show movement of the first frame's elements. Continue using the Replicate Frame command, each time moving, adding, or distorting the elements to indicate their progress.

When you're finished with this hard part, Menu ➝ Anim ➝ Go Play to enjoy the playback of your little cartoon. The PalmPilot musters only a few frames per second (compared with the 24 frames per second of a real movie), but it beats drawing successive frames on the margins of your high-school math book.

Flip

This $10 shareware item doesn't pretend to be a sophisticated painting program -- it has only one drawing tool, a pen in your choice of three thicknesses. Instead, Flip is designed solely for creating flip-book animations (see Figure 11-8). Several of its features are borrowed from more expensive computer animation software, such as the handy first frame/previous frame/next frame/last frame navigation arrows and the Trace button (which lets you see, in ghosted form, what was on the previous frame).

PalmSmear

If you've ever used the goofy, bizarre Mac or Windows program called Kai's Power Goo, you already understand the concept behind PalmSmear. You start by converting a photo under Windows PC into PalmSmear format, using an included converter program. Once the photo is on your PalmPilot, you drag your stylus on the screen to twist and distort the image as though it's printed on a sheet of Silly Putty (see Figure 11-8). Then, after having turned the image of your favorite movie star or relative into a hideous gargoyle, a tap on the Play button creates a smooth animation, morphing the original photo slowly and smoothly into the finished monster. Finally, you can beam the whole affair into another PalmPilot.

Only you can decide whether the novelty value of this bizarre and astounding little program is worth the massive 223K of RAM consumed on your palmtop.

Figure 11-8. You can animate either your own drawings (using Flip, left) or a photo of someone you love or loathe (using PalmSmear, right).

Music on the PalmPilot

You might think that the PalmPilot's chirpy little speaker would nip this palmtop's musical future in the bud. Actually, though, the music software for the PalmPilot excels at many musical tasks: serving as a tuning fork, metronome, ear-training instructor, or simple tape recorder for composers, for example. Here's a rundown:

PalmPiano

Features an attractive four-octave piano keyboard and easy-to-use Record, Stop, and Play commands (see Figure 11-9). The good news: yes, you can actually record your own little melodies by tapping them out on the piano keyboard. The bad news: at this writing, the program remembers only the pitches you play, not the rhythms. You can record as slowly as you like, but everything plays back at a standard speed, without regard to the timings you used (every note gets the same rhythmic value). That's no problem if you're recording the fast part of "Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring" or "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star" (there is a "rest" button to insert a silent beat), but "What's Love Got to Do With It?" is out of the question. If the next version records note rhythms as well as pitches, PalmPiano will be a knockout program.

PocketSynth

A terrific little songwriter's tool that lets you record and play back single-line melodies (see Figure 11-9). You specify the pitch by tapping piano keys and the rhythm by choosing from a row of note values (quarter note, half note, dot, etc.). The program uses its own textual notation for recording your melody: C22, for example, means to play the note C in the second octave for a quarter note--but all of this is generated automatically. It's useful to understand the notation, though, in case you want to compose a longer masterpiece by simply writing into, say, the Memo Pad.

The onscreen piano shows only about an octave, but the Octave button gives you access to three more octaves. There's even a Tempo slider to control the playback speed. As a bonus, the Metronome feature turns your PalmPilot into an outstanding visual and sonic electronic metronome-- essential to performers, conductors, and composers. It can even accent the downbeat of each measure, no matter what the meter, and you can turn off the sound if you want.)

Figure 11-9. At left, PalmPiano, which looks better but doesn't record note rhythms --only their pitches. At right, PocketSynth, which does a great job of recording and playing back melodies.

TIP: If you repeatedly tap the plastic Scroll Up button at the bottom of the PalmPilot while using PocketSynth's metronome mode, an amazing thing happens: the program actually calculates your tempo, displaying the numerical metronome marking for the rate you're tapping. (This feature alone adds about $50 to the cost of the electronic metronomes on sale at your local music store at this very moment.)

EbonyIvory

Tap on the piano keyboard to hear a note and see it represented on the musical staff. What's it for? "If you are in the middle of nowhere and inspired with a tune, EbonyIvory helps you lock down the notes," says the Read Me file. Also good, it says, for "Impressing young children." Seriously, though, EbonyIvory works best as an interactive flash card program: for learning the relationships between the way notes sound, the key on the piano that produces them, and the way they look when notated on sheet music.

FretBoard

If you're a guitarist, this free program is indispensable. FretBoard displays the correct fingerings for any note, scale, or chord. Actually, any musician can benefit from FretBoard; just being able to listen to the cleanly played chords and scales is great ear-training practice. Have somebody change the pop-up menus, and see if you can identify the key, chord, or scale being played. A polished piece of work for real musicians.

McChords

This free program closely resembles FretBoard -- its purpose is to show and play the notes of any chord type you select -- except that it's designed for pianists. It plays and shows the chords on a graphic piano keyboard instead of the guitar fretboard.

Metronome

A simple but effective electronic metronome, much like the Metronome feature of PocketSynth (see Figure 11-9). This program has two advantages: a big, easy-to-use, idiotproof interface (including a scrollbar to adjust the tempo) and a readout of the musical marking (such as Allegro or Andante) that corresponds to the current tempo setting. (Best in-joke yet: if you drag the scrollbar all the way to the bottom, you learn that you're playing "Mucha too slow-issimo!") Metronome lets you turn on the visual flashing and the audio beeping simultaneously, but lacks PocketSynth's accented downbeat, selectable beep pitch, and auto-tempo calculator.

Tuning Fork

For serious musicians only: serves as an electronic tuner for your tunable instrument. As shown in Figure 11-10, this program does only one thing: plays an A--but lets you adjust to various hertz settings, letting you tune to A-440, A-442, or whatever your orchestra settles on.

Figure 11-10. The PalmPilot is the perfect toolkit for the performing musician, serving splendidly as either a tuning fork (left) or a visual/audio metronome (right).

M-Tools

This superb, all-in-one program includes three modules. Two closely resemble Metronome and Tuning Fork; the third is a handy reference that instantly displays the key signature for each key you tap in a graphic Circle of Fifths.

PocketBeat

Although you'll never mistake it for Phil Collins, this program is a drum machine, producing various drum sounds by making a surprising variety of different speaker sounds. Make up your own patterns, adjust tempo, switch between preset tempos by hitting a scroll button, and more. Neatest feature: you can specify the tempo by tapping.yo

Where to Get More Art and Music

The Internet and this book's CD are good starting points for building up your PalmPilot's collection of images and music. The database on this book's CD-ROM lists the applications included here; on the Web, visit the Pilot Entertainment Zone, http://ns1.fidalgo.net/~ram/indexreg.html, for plenty of both ImageViewer and PocketSynth documents. The PocketSynth documents come as Doc files, described in Chapter 10, PalmPilot: The Electronic Book ; you're supposed to copy the textual music information out of the Doc file, switch to PocketSynth, and paste it into the Compose area. (Caution: Some of the Pilot Entertainment Zone offerings are rated R.)

TIP: The future of music with the Palm platform is looking bright. Although there's no visible sign, the music and sound features in the Palm III and later models have been quietly enhanced. For example, the speaker is still the piezo-style chirper found on previous models, but it's louder. You now get a choice of seven built-in alarm sounds--and programmers can add more to its repertoire.

But by far the most tantalizing new feature of the recent models is the ability to play back standard (one-track, format 0) MIDI files, which are something like text files for music. Such files, distributed by the thousands on the Internet, are tiny in size, but contain the complete computer instructions for playing prepared melodies.

Already one Palm program has surfaced that actually plays these MIDI files through the Palm speaker--PlayIt, included with this book. It surely won't belong before the armies of "road coders"--Palm programmers of the Net--write even more polished programs that can harness this new built-in technology.

Executive Tip Summary

• Unbeknownst to almost everyone, the PalmPilot is not, technically speaking, a black-and-white computer. Its screen is actually capable of displaying up to 16 shades of gray. Programs like ImageViewer can therefore bring half-decent photos to your palmtop.
• Try TealPaint for a surprisingly complete painting program, QDraw for drawing, and PocketSynth as a musician's song-noodling tool.

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