handX weblog for Palm OS: Blogging from a Palm Handheld

During the Palm OS era, before smartphones put a full web browser and a always-on connection in everyone's pocket, a small handful of developers tried to answer a simple question: how do you write a blog post on a device with no keyboard and, usually, no internet connection at all? handX weblog (rendered "handX webLog" on the developer's own site and on its PalmGear listing) was one of the earliest and most specific answers — a standalone Palm OS application built for exactly one job: composing weblog entries on a Palm handheld and publishing them to a website once the handheld was next connected to a desktop PC.

PalmGear catalogued the software under product ID 13621, at the historical URL http://www.palmgear.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=software.showsoftware&prodID=13621. This restored page documents what survives about handX weblog: its developer, its versions, how its publishing model actually worked, and how it compared to the other Palm blogging tools of its day. The software itself, and the company behind it, no longer exist in any active form — everything below is reconstructed from archived copies of the developer's own site (handx.net), the archived PalmGear listing, and PalmSource's "Weblogging" Expert Guide.

What Was handX weblog?

handX weblog was a dedicated, standalone Palm OS blogging application — not a general-purpose HTML editor pressed into blogging service, and not a wireless client that posted directly over the air. The developer's own site described it plainly: "webLog for Palm OS allows you to use your Palm OS device to create webLog (blog) entries for a web site. The inherent portability of Palm devices means that you can jot down entries for your weblog practically anywhere. The included conduit allows you to upload the entries you've created to your web server when you return to your PC."

PalmSource's own "Weblogging" Expert Guide, an article written by Palm user and blogger John Winstanley and hosted on palmsource.com/interests/weblogging/ (archived March 17, 2004), placed handX weblog in a category of its own among "Dedicated Palm OS Blogging Applications": "handX weblog is a 'stand alone' application for the writing and publishing of weblogs directly on and from the Palm OS. It is not limited to a single form of blog — the developer supplies several scripting templates for you to upload to your blog server. The one downside to this application is that your new blog entries are not uploaded to your site until you next sync your Palm Powered handheld to a desktop PC. There is no option for direct FTP-ing from the Palm OS."

Note on capitalization: Sources disagree slightly on how the product name was styled. handX software's own site and its PalmGear listing consistently render it "handX webLog" (capital W and L, no space), and the PalmGear page title reads "handX webLog 1.0." PalmSource's Weblogging guide instead writes "handX weblog" (lowercase). This article follows the brief's slug and PalmSource's usage for the primary heading, but "handX webLog" is the developer's own preferred styling and is used verbatim in quoted material below.

Blogging Before Smartphones: The Historical Context

handX weblog's first public release (version 0.5) dates to March 30, 2001, according to its PalmGear submission date. That places it firmly in the pre-smartphone era of mobile computing: the iPhone was six years away, and even the more connected Palm devices of the day (the Palm VII and Palm i705, with their proprietary wireless networks) were expensive, slow, and far from universal. Most Palm OS users in 2001 carried a handheld that had no network connection of its own and relied entirely on HotSync — a cable or cradle connection to a desktop PC — to move data on and off the device.

Writing a blog post "on the go" in this environment meant something different than it does today. It meant composing text offline on a small screen, using Graffiti handwriting recognition or a stowaway keyboard, with no way to preview how the post would look on the actual site and no way to publish it until the handheld was reunited with its desktop cradle. handX weblog was built squarely for that reality, and its design choices — store-and-forward publishing, desktop-mediated uploads, no live network dependency on the Palm itself — only make sense in that context.

The Developer: handX software

handX weblog was made by a company that called itself simply "handX software," operating from the domain handx.net. Archived snapshots of the site's "About Us" page (captured June 30, 2002) give a short statement of the company's philosophy rather than any biographical or corporate detail: "A few people who really care about what they do can accomplish more than a staff of hundreds of clockers. No computer is too small. HandHeld computing is the inevitable path of computer technology. There are not enough applications that intelligently connect your handheld computer to the rest of your world. Someone has to fill the gap. We just might be that someone." No individual developer's name, company registration details, or location are given anywhere in the surviving pages found for this article.

handX software's site described webLog as its flagship: "handX software develops software for handheld computers. Our premiere product is webLog, the first web publishing tool designed for the Palm OS." Alongside webLog, the company's product line (per its archived "products" page) included:

News items on the handx.net homepage (archived November 2002) show the company was still active as a small Palm OS software shop at least into late 2002, releasing Conduit Installer Wizard and hXpICS (pInstaller Construction Set 2) around that time. No evidence was found in this research of the company continuing to actively develop or support handX weblog beyond its version 1.0 release in mid-2001; see What Happened to handX weblog below.

handX weblog on PalmGear (Product ID 13621)

The archived PalmGear listing (captured multiple times between 2004 and 2007, with the fullest snapshot from April 10, 2004) provides the most complete single-page summary of the product as PalmGear itself catalogued it:

The PalmGear listing's own description matches the developer's: "handX webLog allows you to create weblog (blog) entries on your palm and update your website via the included conduit. The conduit can use FTP or SCP to copy the files to your site. Some scripting is needed for your site to use your entries. You can vist http://www.handx.net for a PHP, ASP, or Perl sample." (typo "vist" as printed on the original page.)

Version History

handX software published a detailed version history for both the Palm application and the desktop HotSync conduit on its own site (archived March 5, 2002). The application side moved through six public releases before reaching 1.0:

The desktop conduit had its own parallel version history, progressing from primitive error handling in 0.5 through to a stable 1.0 that (per the notes) fixed two release-blocking bugs in 0.9: failure to synchronize more than one entry at a time, and an error thrown when all records were deleted. The PalmGear listing's "Updated Description" summarizes the 1.0 release succinctly: "1.0 (7/11/01) – Finally, webLog moves out of beta. We've also updated the sample sites (PHP, ASP and Perl), so you might want to grab those." No evidence was found of any release beyond 1.0; the FAQ (see below) speaks hopefully of features planned for "version 2," which does not appear to have shipped.

System Requirements

handX software's own system requirements page listed the following:

• A Palm device running Palm OS 2.0 or later.
• A Windows PC running HotSync Manager, connected to the internet.
• FTP or SCP access to a web server.
• A web host running PHP, ASP, or Perl — or enough scripting knowledge to write a custom page to receive the uploaded entries.

The PalmGear listing separately records a minimum handheld of the original PalmPilot Professional and a minimum desktop spec of a 486 processor running Windows 98 — consistent with software aimed at the installed base of 1999–2001 Palm devices. No mention of Mac OS support for the desktop conduit was found anywhere in the surviving documentation; the requirement is stated only in terms of "a Windows PC running HotSync Manager."

Regarding Palm OS 5 (released in 2002, after handX weblog's last recorded update in July 2001): no statement of Palm OS 5 compatibility, testing, or support was found in any surviving handX software or PalmGear material. Given the software's last update predates Palm OS 5's release, and no later version was found, Palm OS 5 compatibility should be considered unconfirmed rather than assumed.

How handX weblog Worked: Compose Offline, Publish via HotSync

The defining characteristic of handX weblog — and the detail PalmSource's guide singled out — is that it never sent anything to the internet from the Palm device itself. Publishing was a two-stage, store-and-forward process:

1. The user wrote an entry on the Palm handheld, entirely offline, using the built-in text entry field of the webLog application.
2. The next time the Palm was HotSynced to its paired desktop PC, a custom HotSync conduit installed alongside webLog picked up any new entries and uploaded them to the user's web server using FTP or, optionally, SCP.

PalmSource's guide stated this limitation directly: entries were "not uploaded to your site until you next sync your Palm Powered handheld to a desktop PC," and "there is no option for direct FTP-ing from the Palm OS." handX software's own documentation confirms and elaborates on the same workflow, describing the "Five basic steps" as: download and install handX webLog; download and install the matching server samples; configure the HotSync conduit with server and account details; create an entry on the Palm; then "HotSync your Palm to publish the entry to your site."

The HotSync Conduit

Configuration of the conduit happened entirely on the desktop side, through the standard HotSync Manager "Custom" dialog. According to handX's step-by-step documentation, the handX webLog Conduit Configuration dialog exposed the following settings:

The documentation also notes that remote synchronization was possible using a standard or wireless modem, per the Palm device's own modem HotSync support — meaning a determined user could, in principle, publish "from the road" without a physical PC nearby, so long as a dial-in HotSync to some desktop machine was available.

The Palm OS Application

On the handheld side, webLog presented a simple main screen listing existing entries, with a dropdown to filter by date and an Options menu for font, preferences, and Palm OS security settings. New entries could be started either by tapping a "New" button or by simply beginning to write in the Graffiti input area. The entry screen let a user set the date and time of the entry, mark it "Private" (subject to the device's own security/privacy settings), and use standard Palm OS text editing (cut, copy, paste). If an entry had already been synced and the user had enabled "Preserve Entries after Sync," it became read-only and was marked "Uploaded" rather than being deleted.

Configurable Palm-side preferences included: Enable AutoCaps (auto-capitalization in the entry field); Preserve Entries after Sync (keep a read-only copy on the device instead of deleting after upload); Do not sync entries before date (hold back future-dated entries); and Show on Open (whether the app opened to the current date, the last-viewed date, or all entries).

Notably, there was no rich-text or WYSIWYG formatting in the entry screen. Any HTML a user wanted inside a post — links, bold text, and so on — had to be typed by hand into the plain entry field, the same way the optional "categories" workaround described in the FAQ required manually typing HTML into each entry, since there was no dedicated categories feature.

Scripting Templates: PHP, Perl, and ASP Server Samples

Because handX weblog uploaded raw entry files rather than posting to any specific blogging platform's API, the receiving website needed server-side code to turn those uploaded files into an actual weblog page. handX software addressed this by publishing free, downloadable "server samples" — ready-made scripts in three languages, distributed as separate zip files from a dedicated "webLogServerSamples" section of handx.net:

• PHP sample (php_sample_site_rev1.zip)
• Perl sample (perl_sample_site_rev1.zip) — documented as tested under mod_perl on Apache/Red Hat Linux and under ActiveState Perl on Windows 2000/IIS 5
• ASP sample (asp_sample_site_rev1.zip)

Each sample site was configurable through a small set of variables at the top of its main script — for example, the PHP sample exposed $entriesDir, $stylesDir, $monthView, $includeJumpList, $archiveCount, $archiveTimeFormat, and $dropDownDateFormat; the ASP and Perl samples exposed equivalent settings in their own syntax. All three sample sites shared the same set of four editable include files for customization: links.inc (a "Sites of Note" link list), media.inc (a media/reading list, described as suited to Amazon.com-style links), meta.inc (page title and search-engine meta tags), and footer.inc (a site-wide footer navigation bar).

This is the mechanism PalmSource's guide referred to when it said handX weblog "is not limited to a single form of blog — the developer supplies several scripting templates for you to upload to your blog server." It did not mean handX weblog integrated with any named blogging platform such as Blogger or Movable Type; it meant the user (or their web host) ran one of these three self-contained scripts to render the uploaded entry files as a blog. handX weblog's own FAQ was explicit that users whose host supported none of PHP, ASP, or Perl were on their own: "If your host supports another scripting language, you can always write your own scripts to support the entries that handX webLog creates. We hope to support SSI (which most servers support) in a future version." No evidence was found that SSI support, or any other new scripting target, was ever added.

Setting Up handX weblog: The Five-Step Process

handX software's step-by-step documentation walked through the full setup in order:

1. Set up the website first. Choose PHP, ASP, or Perl based on what the host supported, download the matching sample, unzip it, and upload it via FTP — being careful to create the entries folder and upload the included sample entry, since "the script relies on the presence of an entry to work properly."
2. Install handX webLog on the desktop and Palm. Running the downloaded installer set up the desktop conduit; a subsequent HotSync installed the application itself onto the Palm OS device.
3. Configure the HotSync conduit via the HotSync Manager's Custom dialog, entering FTP/SCP server details and upload settings as described above.
4. Configure Palm-side preferences (AutoCaps, Preserve Entries after Sync, sync date cutoff, Show on Open) from the application's own Preferences form.
5. Write and publish. Create an entry on the Palm, then HotSync to upload it to the configured server.

The documentation closes with a reference appendix of external resources (php.net, perl.com, perl.apache.org, activestate.com, microsoft.com, and palm.com) and a full table of Delphi-style date/time format codes for customizing the "Additional Entry Text" placeholder — strongly suggesting the desktop conduit was itself written in Delphi/Pascal, though this is an inference from the format codes rather than a directly stated fact.

handX weblog vs. Torpedo and PHTML

PalmSource's Weblogging guide grouped Palm mobile-publishing tools into three distinct categories, and handX weblog's category was deliberately different from tools like Torpedo (PalmGear product 14277, covered in a companion article on this site) and PHTML (PalmGear product 29015):

The practical difference: Torpedo and PHTML were hand-coding tools — you wrote raw HTML yourself and used a bundled FTP client (LFtp, or VFSFTP for expansion-card uploads) to push whatever file you'd built straight from the Palm to a server, with no restriction on what that file contained or where it went. handX weblog instead gave you a structured entry form (text, date, time, private flag) with no direct-from-Palm upload at all; the actual page rendering was delegated to one of the three server-side scripting templates, and the upload itself only happened via the desktop HotSync conduit, never straight from the handheld.

handX weblog vs. Vagablog

Vagablog (PalmGear product 51902) sat in the same "dedicated Palm OS blogging application" category as handX weblog, and PalmSource's guide draws the comparison directly: "Similar implementation to handX weblog — however Vagablog supports file transfer from the Palm OS directly to the blog server. Supports Blogger.com, Journalspace.com, MovableType and Wordpress. The developer provides excellent step-by-step guides to getting Vagablog up and running on your own particular blog setup."

In short: both were purpose-built Palm blogging apps rather than general HTML/FTP tools, but they differed on exactly the axis PalmSource flagged — handX weblog's entries always waited for the next HotSync, while Vagablog could reportedly transfer directly from the Palm to the server and worked out of the box with named, popular blog services rather than requiring the user to install a matching server-side script. This article does not independently verify Vagablog's feature set beyond what PalmSource's guide states; readers researching Vagablog specifically should treat the comparison above as PalmSource's characterization, not independently confirmed fact.

Limitations and User Feedback

handX weblog's own FAQ page was candid about its constraints. Asked why it didn't support "popular web based blogging products," the developer answered: "We hope to partner with other services in the future to allow for this in future versions. If you're really interested in doing this, there are two things you can do to help. One) contact us @ feedback@handx.net and let us know. Two) Contact your weblog service provider or vendor and ask them to contact us with the information we need to interface with their services." No evidence was found that such a partnership ever happened.

Other FAQ-confirmed limitations of version 1.0:

• No post editing after sync for entries already uploaded — per the FAQ, updating a published entry required manually downloading the day's file from the server, editing it by hand, and re-uploading it.
• No categories. "For now, you would have to add the HTML to support this in each entry. Category support may make it into a future version of handX webLog" — a future version that does not appear to have shipped.
• No multi-site support. "Sorry, not in this version."

Four user reviews survive on the archived PalmGear listing, dated between July 2001 and March 2003, averaging 4 out of 5 stars. Several independently echo the same friction point — needing scripting access most free/cheap web hosts of the era didn't offer:

• Gabriel Seah (July 2001) called it "great prog... in principle," but noted "lots of people aren't able to get permissions for scripting on their websites... like me!" and specifically wished for Geocities and Blogger.com support.
• Mike A. (July 2001) praised the interface as "simple to understand" with a conduit that "works very nicely," but reported being unable to use the software fully without Perl, ASP, or PHP access, and wondered whether handX would add BlogSpot support.
• Julie Zerbe (December 2002) reported successfully getting the PHP sample running, including syncing from a Treo 300 and a Palm m505.
• Thomas Tuttle (March 2003) noted that NetFirms.com and Tripod.com both offered Perl scripting suitable for running the sample site.

What Happened to handX weblog

Archived snapshots of handx.net show the company remained active with other Palm OS developer tools (Conduit Installer Wizard, pInstaller, hXpICS) at least into 2002, but no evidence was found of a handX weblog release beyond version 1.0 (July 2001), and no later version is mentioned in any surviving handx.net or PalmGear page found for this research. Wayback Machine captures show handx.net itself changing hands and repurposing over the following years — by the mid-2000s the domain's content had shifted away from Palm OS software entirely, and by 2013 it was redirecting elsewhere. The domain has since been reused for unrelated content unconnected to the original handX software or its Palm OS products; nothing about that later use reflects on or was produced by the original developer.

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