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PALMPOWER SITE OF THE MONTH
Xena Fan Fiction for your Palm device
By Heather McDaniel
Xena Fan Fiction is run by Dany Byrne, a self-described Xena fan and dedicated Palm computing enthusiast. She says that she started the Web site once she realized how easy it was to read stories on her Palm device. She started out by just converting stories she found on the Internet and reading them during her daily commute. Then, she thought it would be cool to put the converted files online. She asked a few writers for permission to use their stories. The Web page just grew from there.
Xena Fan Fiction is actually a fairly big enterprise on the Net. Dany gets stories that are usually posted somewhere else on the Internet in HTML format. Some writers send her their stories directly, usually as MS Word documents. Other writers let Dany grab them off a certain page. These come as HTML documents. Then she translates them into Palm device .DOC files.
About the files, Dany says "My big contribution here (aside from offering a single download location so you don't have to go chasing around looking for stuff) is in the formatting. I make sure that the lines wrap neatly. This is important because HTML stories often have hard returns which can be quite annoying on a Palm device. If a story's posted in lots of little parts (each chapter of a novel might be a separate file hyperlinked to the next chapter), I combine them into one, or sometimes more, good-sized .DOC files. This makes for smoother reading on a Palm device."
If you have some fan fiction to submit, you can email Dany to either offer your stories or to suggest she add someone else's writing.
To download a story, simply click on a link and a .PDB file should be on it's way. The site has a "What's New" section on the first page listing daily updates. The titles are all hyperlinks that will take you either directly to the download or to the page from which the story can be downloaded. Every author also has his or her own page, with a list of all his or her available stories. Click on a title to download a story.
Finally, there's an alphabetical list of all stories archived on the site. Click on any title to get the story. Longer stories are zipped and need to be unzipped before performing a HotSync operation. Most short stories are downloaded as .PDB files, all ready for installation at your next HotSync.
Another cool feature about the site is that you can also customize your Palm device with Xena Logo Screens if you have HackMaster and LogoHack installed. Hackmaster can be downloaded from http://www.daggerware.com/hackmstr.htm. LogoHack - PalmOS is available at http://www.palmgear.com. Figure A shows the different Xena-related Logo Screens you can display on your Palm organizer.
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