PDA buffs go back to basics

Web designer Mike Rohde was a certifiable Palm fanatic. He had the original PalmPilot 1000 , then a Sony Clié , then a Tungsten E, and several more all the way up to the Zire 72 . His monthly newsletter vetting the newest models went out to 10,000 subscribers. But when his PDA turned up missing two months ago, Rohde's quick fix wasn't the latest Treo.

He picked up a notebook and drew a calendar.

``The Palm started to become a creature. It demanded things from me. It demanded me to recharge it every couple days or I'd have to make back ups," he said. ``I wanted to see what it would be like if I went to paper."

After years of cracked screens, battery outages, and wiped hard drives, technophiles fed up with a litany of glitches from PDAs are turning to a new -- or rather old -- source of comfort: pen and paper. It's called ``going analog" and for some, chucking the ``Crackberry" has been a conversion of almost religious proportions.

So far, Rohde hasn't had any cravings to go back to his digital ways. On his blog, he's documented the move to an ``analog task management system" (read: his notebook) with feverish detail. Checked circles show completed tasks, sticky tabs are for an easily accessible to-do list, and week numbers mark every upper right-hand corner.

``So Analog!!!" read one of the comments. ``Very cool mod. *two thumbs up*" read another.

Other former devotees of personal digital assistants have taken it a step further, giving instructions on the Web on how to go retro. Software programmer Chad Adams developed PocketMod.com after being inspired by Viking map-folding techniques. It's a Flash program that spits out an eight-part planner on a single sheet of paper. With one cut and three creases, it becomes a booklet with easily flippable pages. Users choose their own templates from lined paper to Sudoku, math equations, or Benjamin Franklin's 13 virtues. He now gets about 27,000 hits a day, after launching it a year ago.

In a more tongue-in-cheek variation, Merlin Mann , who went through several PDAs, created the ``Hipster PDA," a stack of index cards held together by a binder clip. Others riffed on his homemade invention, making a ``Ductster PDA" from duct tape.

``Strangely enough, it's mainly a revolt of tech lovers against their favorite toys, junkies eschewing their drug of choice," wrote multimedia project manager Douglas Johnston in an essay on the blog Communication Nation. ``It's painful, it's heart-wrenching, it flies in the face of our own self-identities, and it makes all our high-tech podium-thumping and evangelizing suddenly look hollow."

Johnston runs DIYplanner.com, which stands for ``Do It Yourself" planner. The site houses more than 400 templates for making grocery lists, managing glucose levels, and even tracking Weight Watchers points. After his PalmPilot crashed, Johnston designed the site when he saw that planner forms could cost more than $2 a sheet. So he made his own and let users submit designs. His basic kit has been downloaded close to 700,000 times.

He said the pushback is meant to reclaim human space in an increasingly digital world. For techies who have always relied on PDAs to manage their time, suddenly switching to paper can be a ``Zen-like experience."

``It's just as much a novelty to us as it is for analog folks trying digital the first time," he said. ``It's casting out all the gunk and junk you've accumulated over the years and suddenly approaching something with an open mind or a blank page. You're able to focus for the first time."

Though regular notebooks will do, an analog cult favorite for scheduling and keeping contacts is the Moleskine notebook, reputed to be the right-hand companion of Vincent van Gogh and Ernest Hemingway. For techies the Moleskine's sleek binding, thick pages, and built-in bookmark are the antithesis to the souped-up PDA. And they never crash, don't come with a hefty owner's manual, and can be kept as long as people like.

Moleskines went out of print two decades ago, but Italian publisher Modo & Modo revived the little black book in 1998. The notebook's sales are expected to reach 3 million worldwide this year, up from 2 million last year, according to Modo & Modo. Meanwhile, PDA sales have slumped to 7.6 million last year from 11.6 million in 2002, according to International Data Corp . But analysts say this reflects a shift to smartphones, which are cell phones like the Treo that have adopted the PDA's functionality.

Christian Lindholm , vice president of global mobile products for Yahoo!, used a Moleskine to go analog this February for brainstorming and taking notes. He now carries around a Moleskine reporter-style notebook and uses it sideways, or as he puts it, in ``landscape" format.

``I needed an instant portable solution that I could have with me all the time, which doesn't run out of batteries, has high resolution and is ergonomic to write on," he said. ``I'm actually quite pleased. I'm already in my second generation, almost third."

But the wave of recent converts isn't necessarily a revolt in the techie world.

``We don't really even evangelize. We're not asking people to cross over," said Armand Frasco , who runs Moleskinerie .com , a site that has various ``hacks" to modify the notebook along with photos of Moleskine sightings from around the world.

Instead, ``going analog" is about making wiser choices about how people use technology, not cutting PDAs cold turkey, Mann said.

``I'm not against Palms or iPods. You can't get mad at a tool. That's crazy," Mann said. ``The problem in my view is that people are adopting a lot of this stuff mindlessly."

He said that people should choose what works best for them, regardless of whether it's the latest must-have gadget, a scrap of paper or something in between. For Adams of PocketMod.com, it's definitely paper.

``I really hate PDAs. The people I see using them are always fiddling with them. They seem to take a lot of time, and they're $600," Adams said.

``So what I do is I fold a piece of paper and stick it in my pocket. And when I need information, I unfold it."

Kim-Mai Cutler can be reached at kcutler@globe.com.