BeamBooks Tutorial

1. Introduction

BeamBooks is about creating books to share with other people. Anyone can update the books on their organizer, and the books get synced with other people by infrared beaming between organizers. A book is a shared document. People collaborate on writing the pages in the books and keeping them up to date. Each book has a title, a short description, and a bunch of pages. Each page has a title and the pages are kept in alphabetic order. You can make your own books on any subject you choose, and you can discover new books other people have made when you BeamSync with them.

Anyone who has a copy of a book can add new pages, change existing pages, or delete pages. When you BeamSync with someone else, any books you have in common will be synced: each person's changes will be copied to the other person's book. After that, your changes will spread to everyone those people later BeamSync with. Eventually everyone will get your change. In this way, each person's changes spread to everyone who has a copy of the book.

2. Books I Have

When you run BeamBooks for the first time, you'll see an empty list of Books I Have. There are several ways to get books. You can: We'll consider each of these in detail in later sections of the tutorial. Regardless of how you got the books, they'll all appear in the list in alphabetic order. If you've got lots of books, you may find it helpful to enter a character or two in the lookup field to jump down in the list.

3. Books I Can Get

When viewing the list of Books I Have, tapping on Books I Have in the top right corner of the screen will let you choose Books I Can Get. You can switch back and forth between these two lists of books any time you want. If you give BeamBooks a button (such as the far right Memo Pad button), pressing this button is another convenient way to switch between the two lists of books.

BeamBooks is always on the lookout for new books you can get. When it finds one, it's added to the list. Whenever you like, you can look over this list for books you want. It's like spending time in a bookstore! The list is kept in alphabetic order. You may find it helpful to enter a character or two in the lookup field. To find out what a book is about, tap on it. You'll get a short description of the book. If you decide you want it, check the I want this book box. The next time you BeamSync with someone who has this book, you'll get a copy. If you want the book right away, tap on the Details button to see a short list of people who have this book, look for someone you know, and BeamSync with them.

Only public books appear in the list of books you can get, so the only way to get a private book is by having someone beam it to you. You'll learn more about public and private books later.

4. Beaming Books

While looking at a book you have, you can choose the Beam Book command from the menu. Beaming a book works very much like beaming an Address Book entry, except that it won't work if the receiving organizer already has the book. Beaming a book is one way to give it to someone who doesn't have it. However, if you want to give someone several books, it's easier to use BeamSync, since it transfers all the books at once. The one time you really have to use the Beam Book command is to give someone a copy of a private book. You'll learn more about public and private books later.

5. BeamSync

To BeamSync with someone, you simply point your organizers at each other and press a button, much like you would to beam something, except that both of you press the button. To start a BeamSync, go to the list of books you have or books you can get, and press the BeamSync button. If you give BeamBooks a button (such as the far right Memo Pad button), holding this button for a second or two is another convenient way to start a BeamSync.

Once it gets started, BeamSync works very much like HotSync. When you BeamSync with someone, pages you created appear on their organizer, and pages they created appear on yours. If you edited a page, the changes will be made on their organizer too. If you both changed a page, both versions will be kept, and one of you will need to delete one of them, possibly after including the other's changes. This is very much like the way HotSync handles changes made to the same record on both the organizer and the desktop. BeamSync safely handles any number of people changing the same book, while ensuring that no one's changes are ever lost. It's always safe to BeamSync with anyone, and the more often you BeamSync the better!

BeamSync also updates the list of books you can get to include any public books the other person has. If you find a book you want, check the I want this book box, and BeamSync again to get it.

6. Creating New Books

You'll want to create a book when you can't find a book on the topic you want. To create a new book, go to the list of books you have or books you can get, and choose the New Book... menu item. When making a new book, the most important things to remember are:

Choosing an appropriate scale

It might be tempting to make a book called "Italian Restaurants", but such a book doesn't have an appropriate scale. It would be unreasonable to have one book with listings of Italian restaurants all over the world. Such a book would grow to many thousands of pages, and become so large that no one would want to keep it on their organizer.

Instead, if you live in Miami, you might make a book of "Miami Italian Restaurants"; this is a more manageable scale. Each page can list one recommended restaurant in the area and give a review of the restaurant. This book will probably stay a manageable size, and people who live or work in Miami and like Italian food would more likely keep the book and use it.

In general, a manageable book size is 200 pages or less. Although a book can contain any number of pages, once it gets over 200 it gets a little difficult to find pages or browse through the book. So, try to create books that have a reasonable scale to their topic.

Describing the scope

When you make a book, it's important to give it a title that accurately describes the scope of the book, so people can easily decide if they want the book. When you make a book, you give it both a title and a short abstract describing the book and its intended scope.

For example if you made a book of "San Francisco Thai Restaurants" you might give it the following description:

Recommended Thai restaurants in the city of San Francisco. Each page lists a different restaurant along with a description of the restaurant, it's address, and directions. The title of each page should start with the area of the city followed by the name of the restaurant, for example "Noe Valley: Bangkok Cuisine". Restaurants in other parts of the SF Bay Area should be listed in other books. Please add new pages for restaurants you recommend, delete pages for restaurants that close, and update pages as necessary.
Notice how this description describes an appropriate scope and scale for the book, and invites people to add to and update the book in a consistent manner.

7. Public or Private?

Books are either public or private. When you create a book, you can decide to mark it Private by choosing Details... from the menu. If you don't, it's public. This determines how the book is distributed.

Public Books

Whenever you BeamSync with another person, BeamBooks remembers a list of public books the person had. This way, you can discover books you might want to get from them. If you indicate you want a book, you'll get it the next time you BeamSync with someone who has it.

Private Books

If a book is private, other people won't find out about it when you BeamSync with them. A private book never appears in anyone else's list of books they can get, so no one can get a copy of the book unless you explicitly beam it to them. By marking a book private, you can easily keep it private to yourself or a trusted group of people. Only the creator of a book can change whether its public or private, so you don't have to worry about your private book appearing over the place. You do have to trust that everyone you give the book to will keep it private to your group. Private books are appropriate for things you want to keep secret to yourself and for propriatary company data.

8. Reading a Book

To read a book, tap on it in the list of Books I Have. All the pages of the book will be listed in alphabetic order. To quickly scroll down to a specific letter, enter it in the lookup field. Tap on a page to read it. You won't have any lines to distract you from what you're reading, and you can choose any font you like to read pages comfortably. You can use the scroll buttons to scroll through a page, and once you reach the bottom of the page, to jump to the start of the next page. You can read the entire book without using the stylus!

To read the description of the book, choose the Book Cover... menu item while viewing the list of pages in the book, or just tap on the book title. This is the text that people read to decide whether they want the book. Only the person who created the book can edit this description.

When you're done reading the book, tap the Done button to go back to the list of books.

9. Working with Pages

Anyone who has a copy of a book can add new pages. The new pages will spread to everyone who has the book as people BeamSync with one another. To add a page, press the New Page button while viewing the list of pages. Enter the title as you want it to appear in the list of pages, and enter any text you like for the page in the area below the title. Don't worry about getting everything entered right away; you can always go back and edit the page later. When you're done, tap the Done button.

Anyone who has a copy of a book can edit pages. The changes will spread to everyone who has the book as people BeamSync with one another. To edit a page, tap on the Edit button, or anywhere on the title or text. Edit the title or text as you like, then tap the Done button.

Anyone who has a copy of a book can delete pages. The page will be removed from everyone's copy of the book as people BeamSync with one another, so don't delete a page just because it doesn't interest you. To delete a page, choose the Delete Page... menu item when viewing the page.

10. Exporting Books

If you want to give a copy of a book to a friend, and they don't live near you, you can't very well beam the book to them or BeamSync with them. You can email the book to them, and they can install it on their organizer. You can also put a book on your web site, so anyone can download and install the book or their organizer. Here's how to do it:
  1. Choose the Export Book menu command for each book you want to email, and write down the filenames shown in the dialog. Always use this command, since it prepares the book for export.
  2. HotSync your organizer with your desktop computer, allowing HotSync to backup all your books to your desktop machine. If you've turned off your HotSync "Backup Conduit", you'll have to turn it back on.
  3. The files you want to email can now be found in your HotSync backup folder, with the names you wrote down earlier.
  4. If you like, you can copy the files and rename the copies as you like, but keep the .pdb extension.
  5. You may also want to compress the files into a .zip or .sit archive.
  6. Email the files to your friend as an attachment, or upload them to your web site.
Before installing a book you downloaded from a web site or got in an email attachment, remember to check whether you already have the book on your organizer. Installing a book when you already have it can cause data loss, and you won't be warned. Once you've made sure it's safe to install a book, follow the same steps you use to install any Palm application. After installing all the books you want, HotSync to get the books onto your organizer. The process of exporting and importing books will be improved in future versions of BeamBooks.