Getting "Spare Change" From My Spare Time

It has been my habit – one I am breaking myself of – to print article after article from the web and carry them along in my hopelessly overloaded brief case. I did this in case I might have a few minutes here or there to pull one out and read it.

Then there was the issue of what to do with all the paper copies when I was finished.

The alternative was to read them in electronic form on my PC screen. I found that to be a difficult assignment. It might be okay for short articles, but for multi-page pieces or even book-length writings, like those found at www.freebooks.com, much too cumbersome. It is also not nearly portable enough.

What to do? For years, I have been a handheld user (a Palm, in my case.) I have used my handheld for many things, but never as a document reader. I have recently begun to change that. I decided to download a couple of free programs to get me started.

One program runs on the PC and is called Clipboarddoc. It converts information from many PC-accessible sources (web pages, word processing files, pdf files, for instance) into a form that can be uploaded to the handheld.

The generic name for these files is “DOC” files. These are not the same as the “.doc” files produced by Microsoft Word compatible word processors. The similarity of names is an unfortunate source of confusion.

Clipboarddoc can be found here .

It also requires a free Java runtime to be installed on the PC. There is a link for that download on the website.

The other program runs on the Palm handheld. It's generic name is called doc reader. There are several to choose from. I chose to use one called TiBR. This program allows me to open any “DOC” files on the handheld and read, put bookmarks in the text and much more.

TiBR can be found here.

I have begun creating a library of handheld readable versions of many things I want to read, including the complete volumes 1 and 2 of Jay Abraham’s Incredible Case Studies, a number of the Reality Check archives and many other articles of interest.

So far, I have been pleased with my test drive. It is much easier on my brief case, my arm and my limited filing space. I would urge anyone who has a handheld that is not being used for this purpose to give it a try.