QSL Card Gallery

One of the traditions of the shortwave/ham radio hobby was something called the "QSL card." "QSL" is the radiotelegraph code abbreviation for "I acknowledge receipt of your message," and QSL cards were 1) sent by stations to listeners who correctly reported reception of the station, and 2) exchanged between two ham radio stations who had established contact with each other. In effect, they were souvenirs-----much like the picture postcards you'd collect on a car vacation with Mom and Dad----of having heard or contacted a radio station.

Okay, so it sounds silly. And it was. But it was also fun. I loved getting those envelopes from distant lands with their exotic stamps; inside would be a colorful card and other materials like program guides. I collected QSL cards the way some people collected baseball cards.

Take a look at this beauty, all the way from the small African nation of Togo. Ever heard of Togo? Thanks to shortwave radio, I had an outrageous knowledge of world geography:


Some QSL cards commemorated historic events, like this one issued by Germany's Deutsche Welle broadcaster two decades ago to celebrate the reunification of West and East Germany:


A historic QSL card I managed to snag was for the first test of digital AM broadcasting back in 1995. The test was conducted in Las Vegas during the annual National Association of Broadcasters convention, and it was easy to hear from my then-location in San Diego:


In the mid-1990s, the AM broadcast band expanded to include 1610 to 1700 kHz. I carefully looked for stations in that range, and was lucky enough to catch KXBT, Vallejo, CA-----the second station authorized for the new frequency range-----on its first night of transmitter testing:


Before the 1610-1700 kHz range became populated by broadcast stations, it was often used by low power traveler information stations at airports, etc. The QSL card below represents a really difficult reception; the Dallas/Fort Worth Airport operated a 60 watt information station on 1680 kHz, and I managed to hear it in Solana Beach, CA. That's quite a haul for such low power, but I was using some highly advanced radio equipment (the Drake R8B receiver):


I also swapped QSLs with hams all over the world when I established contact with them, as shown below. I received QSL cards from hams in various countries----like Czechoslovakia, East Germany, the Soviet Union, etc.----that no longer exist:


Some shortwave stations in Latin America would also send out colorful cloth or paper pennants with their QSL cards, like this one:


The practice of sending out QSLs declined as shortwave listening declined in the late 1990s with the rise of the internet. Printing and mailing QSLs is expensive, and declining broadcaster funding and staffing has caused many stations to stop sending out QSLs. And the situation has been exacerbated by the closing of many shortwave broadcasters.

The QSL era is now in its final stages; soon QSLing and QSL cards will be quaint historical artifacts, much like boarding passes and menus for trans-Atlantic passenger ships or cross-country steam locomotives.

But it was fun while it lasted, and I'm glad I had a chance to be part of it. Sadly, I don't look forward to the mailman's arrival each day like I once did. . . . . . . .

The iPhone As An eBook Publishing Platform

Back in early 2005, I started a blog titled "Future of Radio" in which I discussed the coming revolution in radio and communications technology. One of my topic labels was "cellphonecasting," which was a term I coined to refer to phones with wireless broadband capability that could be used to receive internet radio and video streaming. Eventually, that morphed into my conclusion that one day we would carry around a sort of "universal communications device" that would be your mobile phone, have your MP3 and video files for entertainment, allow you to store photos, contact information, and other files, and would finally provide wireless broadband access to the internet.

I discontinued the "Future of Radio" after getting sick, but I was pleased to see the original iPhone validated the notion of "cellphonecasting" and a pocket-sized "universal communications device."

Elsevier gave me an iPod Touch last year after I left my consulting gig, and it was a revelation to use. I was struck by the clarity and resolution of the small screen, and had no trouble reading any of the web pages I accessed on it via WiFi. I mentioned to some of my friends in the publishing business that I thought something like the iPod Touch or iPhone could become an eBook platform. I also felt dedicated eBook platforms like Amazon's Kindle were not the way to go because most of us are looking to carry around fewer items, not more; multifunction devices like the iPod Touch/iPhone struck me as the way of the future.

That's why I found this post from Joe Wikert about his experiences with the iPhone 3G as an eBook platform very interesting. Note how his commenters are also reporting their positive experiences with the iPhone 3G as an eBook reader.

So what would I do if I were 30 and in the print publishing or terrestrial/satellite radio businesses? I would be preparing for a future in which almost everyone has something like the iPhone 3G and gets "publications" and "radio" through it.

For a lot of big, established media players, this is going to be a painful, perhaps fatal, transition. For budding entrepreneurs with energy, imagination, and boldness, it's going to be the opportunity to make a lot of money. . . . . . and I mean a LOT of money.

Given the current gloom and doom about the economy, that might sound a little crazy. But two of the greatest business success stories of the last 50 years, Apple and Microsoft, were started in the mid-1970s, in a similarly hostile-----if not worse-----economic environment. Anybody remember gasoline lines? A prime interest rate of over 20%? Double-digit inflation? It wasn't fun back then, boys and girls, but Steve Jobs and Bill Gates recognized what was on the horizon, took action, and won big. Heck, we started LLH/HighText back in 1990, and the economy wasn't exactly great then. But that's the best time to start something new because many of your potential competitors will be fearfully huddled in their caves, waiting for the storm to pass.

The same is possible today, and brains and the willingness to take a chance will be a lot more important than money and connections.

If I could be reasonably confident of being around two years from now, I'd be getting my ass into high gear to exploit these opportunities. As it is, I am going to make my next book, currently being written, available for the iPhone. If you're in publishing or broadcasting and are reading these words, what are you waiting for?

Whatever you do, or dream, begin it now. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it. Begin it now.----Goethe

Fact-Checking Harry Helms

Well, somebody's gotta do it, so it might as well be me.

I do searches for my name on engines like Google, Yahoo, etc., and just a couple of days ago discovered a "prediction" page I created back in 1999 is still up and active. It's my "farewell address" upon selling a web site I created, DXing.com, to Universal Radio back in 1999. As you can see, the site dealt with topics in shortwave and ham radio as well as general personal communications topics.

The page that is the subject of this post can be found here. So how accurate were my predictions, given the hindsight afforded by nine years and four months? I'll address each using the same heading ("WHAT," etc.) that I used back in 1999.

WHAT: Pretty much self-explanatory, and Fred Osterman and the gang at Universal have done a terrific job with the site.

WHY: Things took a different turn than I projected here as my role with LLH proved more time-consuming than I expected. It also proved more lucrative than expected; we moved into the RF/wireless market at exactly the right time with such titles as Short Range Wireless Communications and RF Engineering for Wireless Networks. Not only did these sell well, they attracted the attention of Elsevier and culminated in our acquisition by them in August, 2001. I never got beyond a prototype for the hobby electronics site, and my plans to self-publish my own books under the Trephination Media imprint were postponed indefinitely due to LLH demands. After we were acquired, I have to admit I lost a good bit of my drive and need to constantly be doing stuff; it was like I had climbed my mountain and didn't feel like I had to prove anything more to myself or others. I was burned out from all the 60+ hour weeks, and the cash from the sale meant I could coast for a while. All that is a roundabout way of admitting I got lazy for a couple of years after the sale to Elsevier! But hey, that's why I have all these cool ghost town, etc., photos on this blog; instead of working on a book or web site, I went looking for stuff in the Big Empty of the American west. There is something to be said for taking a couple of years off from the rat race and simply pursuing your interests, wherever they may lead you. I'm glad I did!

HOW DID IT DO: Yes, DXing.com was actually a profitable site for me. It would probably be even more profitable today through such programs as Google's Adwords, etc.

WHY UNIVERSAL: Let me add that Universal is the only place I would buy a high end (say, over $300) item of shortwave or ham radio gear. I've been a happy customer of theirs since the 1980s.

MY THANKS TO: Yes, those people I cited were instrumental in the success of DXing.com. I am still grateful to them. And, yes, there was really someone in the "Office of the POTUS" (president of the United States) who was a regular visitor to the site! I had originating domain resolution software installed on my server, and the "Office of the POTUS" domain meant that visitor was using a computer in the White House, New Executive Office Building, or Old Executive Office Building. So who was it???

SHORTWAVE RADIO AND THE CALIFORNIA RAILROAD MUSEUM: My prediction here have largely been borne out, although satellite radio certainly has not taken off outside the U.S./Canada as I expected. The announcement a couple of weeks ago that Radio Netherlands is ending its English broadcasting to North America is just the latest nail in the coffin of international shortwave broadcasting to developed countries. One thing I totally missed was how rapidly wireless broadband has grown and become relatively commonplace and not that expensive; that is going to be the real "killer app' replacing terrestrial radio, not satellite radio.

WILL SHORTWAVE RADIO DIE SOON? No it didn't, but it is still doing a prolonged fade into irrelevance. It will never totally disappear, much like movies did not totally replace live theater, but it will become a very niche medium with only a fraction of the audience it had in the 1960s and 1970s.

PRIVATE SHORTWAVE BROADCASTING IN THE UNITED STATES: They are secular religious fanatics, and, like religious religious fanatics, are beyond the reach of logic or reason. There is even a moonbat idea circulating to use the 26 MHz band for digital broadcasting in the United States. Whatever. . . . .

WHAT ABOUT HAM RADIO? Despite removing all Morse code requirements for any class of ham license, growth essentially remains stalled. Since ham licenses are issued for ten years and a one year grace period for renewal following expiration, I suspect the total number of living hams, as opposed to "active" licenses, might be declining!

WHAT ABOUT PIRATE RADIO? It's over, and has been for some time. It's interesting to hear a pirate station from a strictly DXing perspective, but really creative people are developing programs for delivery via internet streaming, not shortwave.

THE Y2K STUFF: Did I nail that or what? But such hysterias are a constant part of American life, as witnessed by the supposed financial apocalypse of the past two weeks. Here's a hint, boys and girls; it was all a fraud concocted by financial institutions to get you-----that's right, you, the average taxpaying schlub-----to bail them out of a lot of terrible lending decisions over the past decade. In fact, it was almost like Joe Hill arrived on Wall Street and organized a strike: give us $700 billion, or we banks won't lend you any more money! And, of course, the assorted mountebanks and jackasses that overrun Washington, including presidents-to-be John "Grandpa Rambo" McCain and Barrack Obama, went along with this nonsense. Screw it all, says I; sell the country to the Chinese and let's get it over with.

But here's one more prediction on the communications front: a decade from now, most of us will be using something very similar to today's iPhone, a sort of mobile universal communications device. It will be a telephone, have wireless broadband internet access, be a MP3 and video player, and will store your contacts, photos, home video clips, etc., and maybe even have some sort of improved text/eBook reader. And every car will have a docking station for it. This is already starting to happen; our new Scion Xd has a built-in iPod port that not only plays music from an iPod/iPhone but also recharges it (I've tested it with my iPod Touch and it works great). These devices will be the killing blows for much of terrestrial and satellite radio, especially for U.S. broadcasting. For decades, their business model has been premised on government-sanctioned scarcity-----only so many radio stations can broadcast in a given area, and if you don't like what's on the dial locally in, say, New York you didn't have the alternative of listening to stations in Los Angeles. That's all going to change once these mobile universal communications devices become commonplace. Indeed, new "radio stations" will not use "radio" but instead rely on IP streaming via the internet. Anyone anywhere in the world with a PC, the appropriate software, and a broadband connection will be in the broadcasting business. This shift is already underway with the growth of internet radio listening at fixed locations like home and work, but when wireless broadband becomes common, and listening can move to cars and mobile devices, it will really rocket into the stratosphere. It's going to be an interesting "radio" world in another decade!

Anyway, bookmark this post and check back in 2017 to see how I did!

The Eton E5 Versus The Sony ICF-7600GR

I've owned numerous shortwave radios over the last 45 years, ranging from the very simple (like a three tube Hallicrafters S-119) to professional-grade units costing well over $1000 (like the Drake R8B, the best shortwave receiver I have ever owned). It's amazing how much performance can now be packed into a compact unit at a small price, as I noted a few months ago when I wrote about the Eton E5 shortwave radio. Much to my surprise, I soon found myself using the E5 for most of my listening due to its outstanding audio quality, sensitivity to weak signals, ease of use, and small size.

The best shortwave portable I have ever owned was the Sony ICF-2010, which I purchased back in 2000. Recently my unit started to develop a little "stickiness" in the frequency tuning knob, which told me the frequency encoder unit was starting to fail. Repairing/replacing that would have been a real pain in the nether regions, so I put my ICF-2010 for sale on eBay (with a full disclosure of the problem, of course!). Soon it was on its way to its new owner, and for the first time since 1982 I was without a Sony portable shortwave radio. I felt compelled to fill that void!

I began looking around for a replacement for the ICF-2010. I considered the Eton E1, but its quality control issues and size gave me pause. I did want a unit with good single sideband reception capability and synchronous AM detection, and the only unit fitting that bill other than the E1 was Sony's ICF-7600GR receiver. That and the Eton E5 are generally considered the best of the "compact" class of portable shortwave radios, and thus I was soon the proud owner of both models! In the photo below, the Sony is at the left and the Eton is at right:


Both of these radios are small. The Eton E5 (at right) measures 6.68x4.125x1.125 inches while the Sony ICF-7600GR to its left is 7.5x4.75x1.25 inches. Both are powered by 4 "AA" batteries and have AC "wall wart" power supplies. Each also has a built-in telescoping whip antenna and input jacks for external antennas. The "street price" of the ICF-7600GR is about $135-$150 while the E5 goes for $100-$125.

Both the ICF-7600GR and E5 tune from 150 kHz to 30 MHz, longwave through shortwave, in 1 kHz tuning steps. Both also tune the FM broadcast band in 10 kHz steps. Tuning in 1 kHz increments means its is not possible to "fine tune" frequencies-----if a station is operating on 3986.7 kHz, then 3987 kHz is as close as you can tune it-----but I have frankly not found that to be much of a bother when tuning AM mode broadcast signals. Each radio has a tunable beat-frequency oscillator (BFO) for tuning sideband signals, and the selectivity of both is such that tuning CW Morse code signals is no problem with the 1 kHz tuning step. Yes, some fetishists might argue it's essential to be able to tune to at least the nearest 100 Hz, but it's no big deal for 99% of listeners. Both models allow frequencies to be entered from the front panel keypads, much like entering a phone number.

Most reviews (like the one found in Passport to World Band Radio) rate the ICF-7600GR as being better than the E5. Both are fine receivers and I think most listeners would be very happy with either, but I prefer the E5 for most listening situations.

Why? The E5 is slightly more sensitive that the ICF-7600GR throughout its frequency range, except for a curious "blip" between 1800-3000 kHz where the Sony is significantly more sensitive; I have no idea whether this is a design flaw in the E5 or an anomaly peculiar to my unit. The internal noise level is slightly lower on the E5 than the ICF-7600GR (and both are noticeably quieter than the ICF-2010). While audio quality is very subjective, I feel the E5's audio is crisper and "cleaner" than on the ICF-7600GR. This difference goes beyond "it sounds nicer"-----weak signals are easier for me to understand on the E5 due to the better audio.

The E5 has two selectivity bandwidths, and the narrower bandwidth is a real help when, for example, listening to stations on 6175 and 6185 kHz when Cuba's powerhouse signal on 6180 is on the air. The same is true when tuning the ham bands on 75 and 40 meters, as the narrow bandwidth helps dig out stations covered by interference on the Sony. However, the Sony's one bandwidth is fully adequate for most reception situations.

On FM, there is no real contest between the two-----the Eton blows away the Sony. For example, I can hear KONO-101.1 in San Antonio most days with no trouble on the E5. On the the ICF-7600GR, 101.1 is covered by interference from a local Corpus Christi station on 101.3.

Where the ICF-7600GR has a clear advantage over the E5 is in single sideband reception. The Sony has selectable upper and lower sideband positions and a sideband fine tuning control. The result is sideband reception as good as that on the ICF-2010; it is stable and produces very impressive audio. If I were looking for a receiver to use with a low power (QRP) ham transmitter, the ICF-7600GR would definitely be my choice. The E5 can also receive sideband signals well, but the BFO tuning knob is very "touchy" and you have to readjust it every few minutes due to "drift" in the BFO circuit.

I am not impressed with the synchro AM detection circuit in the ICF-7600GR; it is much less capable than the one in the ICF-2010 (or Drake R8B). It works well, and improves the audio quality, when AM signals are relatively free of interference. However, it loses "lock" easily on signal fades and tends to get "confused" when more than one signal is on a frequency (such as on the AM broadcast band), producing "whooshing" sounds as it tries to decide which carrier to lock on to. It's a nice feature and I'm glad the ICF-7600GR has it, but it's not as useful as I had hoped. Because of the improved audio it produces, I normally leave the synchro detection on when tuning for AM signals but switch it off if it is having trouble keeping "lock" on a station's carrier.

The E5 has a tuning knob in addition to the keypad and "slewing" buttons for changing frequency. In contrast, the ICF-7600GR has 10 KHz and 1 kHz slewing buttons in addition to the keypad. I know it's just my personal preference, but I really like the tuning knob on the E5. I can sweep through a frequency band much faster with it than with the slewing keys on the ICF-7600GR.

Both units appear well made. I prefer the "stiffer" buttons on the E5. Only very light pressure is required to activate a button on the Sony, making it too easy to accidentally change frequency or a control setting. The controls on the E5 seem a little more intuitive to me than those of the ICF-7600GR. For example, to enter a frequency from the E5 keypad you simply enter the frequency and then press one button. But with the ICF-7600GR, you must first press a "Direct" button, then enter the frequency, and finally press an "Exe" button.

If top-notch single sideband reception is important to you, the ICF-7600GR is the way to go. Otherwise, I recommend the smaller and less expensive E5. You can't go wrong with either; I've done side-by-side reception comparisons and there was never a case where a signal audible on one wasn't audible on the other. I'm glad to own both!

Howard Hughes, Ham Radio Operator

I haven't blogged for about a week because 1) I took a needed break from writing after finishing my latest book, and 2) I went on a buying rampage at my local Barnes & Noble and have since been in a reading frenzy.

Last night, I started a new book by Donald L. Barlett and James B. Steele titled Howard Hughes: His Life and Madness. This is shaping up as the best biography of Hughes I have ever read, with some original insights into how his personality was shaped by his overprotective mother and the death of both parents before his eighteenth birthday. Like Elvis, you get the sense Hughes died the day his mother died; he was never the same afterwards.

But what I'm blogging about today is the information that Howard Hughes was a ham radio operator in his youth. I knew from other Hughes biographies that Hughes was interested in electricity and built radio sets as a youth in Houston, but Barlett and Steele provide more details in this description of him at age twelve:

Howard's room was on the second floor, facing north. There he assembled his shortwave radio equipment and, using his call number 5CY, spent hours flashing messages to amateur operators all over the country and to ships at sea. With fellow radio enthusiasts, he formed the Radio Relay League, a local organization of young amateurs like himself. Since Howard had the latest equipment, the boys usually met in his room.

Zowie! This was news to me. I did a Google search and managed to come up with just one link mentioning Hughes's ham radio exploits. That link confirms the 5CY call sign, which means it could be verified by checking call books of the 1918-19 era. (Unfortunately, I don't have access to any.)

Enough for now; I've got stuff to read. . . . . . . . .

Thoughts About Shortwave Radio

I have trouble sleeping through the night these days (it’s normal for late Stage IV cancer patients). I often find myself awake two or three times during the night, sometimes for more than an hour. Until I get sleepy again, I grab the Eton E5 portable shortwave radio I keep on my nightstand, put on headphones so I won’t disturb Di, and tune around to see what I can hear.

Why do I do that instead of, for example, listening to my iPod?

Since 1963, I’ve been obsessed with snagging all manner of “non-standard” radio signals. Those include AM and FM broadcast stations from hundreds and thousands of miles away, shortwave broadcasts from foreign countries, communications from ships and airplanes traveling around the globe, military transmissions, ham radio operators-----if it can be tuned on a shortwave radio receiver, I want to hear it. I’ve owned over three dozen different shortwave radios (some of which cost over $1000), numerous accessories (like antenna tuners and audio filters), and specialized antennas (like amplified loops for receiving distant AM band stations). I’ve belonged to numerous radio listening clubs. The first books I wrote were about shortwave listening.

Again, why?? What is it that keeps me searching the airwaves for something distant and unusual?

Part of it is pure nostalgia. Unless you were of sentient age in 1963, you can’t imagine how constricted the flow of information was and how distant the rest of the world seemed back then. The internet was just a theoretical concept and communications satellites were in their infancy. Video of events in foreign nations had to be flown into the United States for broadcast, and magazines and newspapers from outside the United States took weeks to arrive via ship mail. Trying to be aware of the outside world back then was frustrating, like trying to figure out what was going on in a room by peeking through the keyhole.

I wrote in the introduction to my Shortwave Listening Guidebook that I considered my first shortwave radio to be a “magic box.” And indeed it was. Strange languages and exotic music gushed from the speaker of my simple Hallicrafters radio. Cities like Moscow, London, Quito, Melbourne, and Tokyo were in my bedroom with me. I eavesdropped on ship-to-shore telephone calls and communications from airplanes flying routes across the Atlantic. And there were also the dits and dahs of Morse code, the “beedle-beedle” of radioteletype stations, and all sorts of other bewildering noises. I even found myself entranced by station WWV, then in Maryland, and its precise time signals, one beep exactly each second.

When I got my first shortwave radio, it was like that moment in The Wizard of Oz when the movie abruptly changes from black and white to color; the world suddenly seemed smaller and more real to me. I couldn’t visit all those distant foreign places, but they could visit me. And I still get that feeling after 45 years of shortwave. Even though my world is media saturated, with the internet and 150 TV channels available to me, there remains something special about connecting to a distant place via shortwave radio.

Another attraction is the “DXing” aspect of radio. DXing is the art of trying to receive rarely-heard stations on various frequencies. To those not interested in DXing, this must seem like a ridiculous activity, and I suppose it is. But I get a feeling of accomplishment bordering on exhilaration when I manage to identify a weak, unusual radio signal through heavy interference. Maybe the best analogy I can make is to fishing. You never know what’s going to happen when you cast a line into the water, and you never what you’ll hear when you turn the dial of a shortwave radio. Whenever I hear a faint signal barely above the background noise, I am almost forced to stop and try to identify it. It’s as if the station is keeping a secret from me----its identity----and I want to learn that secret. To solve the mystery, I have to battle fading, interference, noise, and distortion. My shortwave radio becomes like a musical instrument in my hands. By manipulating its tuning knob and controls, I can coax weak signals to become more intelligible and, when the gods of the ionosphere cooperate, those faint signals will yield their secrets to me and I am briefly, almost mystically, connected to some distant place. My desire for connections to distant places was probably my biggest motivation for getting a ham radio license.

And when I speak of the “secrets” of shortwave, I often mean it literally instead of metaphorically. I have always been fascinated with unusual and “outlaw” radio stations, such as “pirate” and clandestine radio broadcasters, covert government and military communications, and coded message to espionage agents. The latter were known as “numbers stations” because the messages, usually read by a woman, were in groups of four of five digits. I heard these in English, Spanish, German, and other languages all over the shortwave bands; the signals endlessly fascinated me. When the first pirate----stations operating illegally without a government license----shortwave radio stations took to the air in the late 1970s, they immediately grabbed my attention and I still stumble across them late on Friday and Saturday nights. My fascination with “shortwave secrets” led to my current interest in all types of government secrets, as reflected in my last two books, Inside the Shadow Government and Top Secret Tourism.

However, the era of shortwave radio and DXing is drawing to an end. The internet and communications satellites now carry a lot of the communications that once went via shortwave, and many nations have discontinued shortwave broadcasts entirely. Nations such as Colombia and the Dominican Republic once had numerous active shortwave stations but now only a fraction remain active. While this saddens me in many ways, I also realize the internet and communications satellites have exponentially increased access to information from foreign sources; I can hear far more foreign radio stations via internet audio streaming than I ever could via shortwave radio. Frankly, there’s no need to own a shortwave radio today in order to hear radio stations from around the United States and the world. This upsets some other shortwave fans. One group of them denies the reality of what is happening----to them, the internet is just some passing fad----while another group of listeners raises quasi-survivalist fears of “internet interdiction” by a future American government, leaving the lucky owners of shortwave radios as the only ones able to get information without government censorship. (Sadly, I think many of the latter are actually serious in their belief.)

But I’m less concerned about the possibility of a fascist American state than I am about the possibility there is something interesting zipping through the airwaves and I'm not hearing it. That’s why I keep that Eton E5 within reach at night. The E5 is the sort of shortwave radio I could only dream about four decades ago-----about the size of a paperback book, digital frequency readout, sensitivity and selectivity equivalent to Drake and Hammarlund radios of that era-----and costs only $125 today. Holding it, I have the whole world in one hand. I really wish I could have had something like three or four decades ago, back when there was so much more interesting stuff to hear. But I'm glad I have it now.

I suppose I never did answer why I have been so fascinated by shortwave radio for so long, and that's because I really don't know myself. All I know is that it's a big part of my life, and no one can understand me without understanding the role it has played, and continues to play, in my life.

I Have Seen The Future, And It Fits In My Pocket

Because of my health situation, I did not renew my Elsevier consulting agreement when it expired at the end of September. It was a great six year association with Elsevier after they acquired LLH on August 24, 2001; I had the opportunity to work with some really great people and I miss them already.

Demonstrating what a terrific bunch of people work there, Elsevier sent me an unexpected going-away present in early October: an 8 gig Apple iPod Touch.

My reaction to it is similar to my reaction when I saw the Apple Lisa (the precursor to the Macintosh) demonstrated in January, 1983: this is the future.

In many ways, the Lisa was a clunker (its operating system was written in Pascal, fer crissakes!). It was painfully slow and did endless read/write operations to its hard drive (a whopping 10 megs!) for even the simplest tasks. But it had a graphical interface almost like the Macintosh. You could change fonts on text documents or insert graphics into them. It had a mouse, a trash can icon, and organized files into folders. The monitor resolution was high enough to accommodate graphics and used black on a white background instead of the green on a black background then common. If you had a half a brain, you knew that one day all computers were going to be. . . . . . no, had to be like the Lisa and be that simple, that intuitive to use.

And one day all pocket devices----MP3 players, mobile phones, etc.----are going to be like the iPod Touch.

The iPod Touch is like the iPhone without the telephone. And like the Lisa, its genius lies in its interface. The "touch" refers to its full color touchscreen interface. You can "flip" through lists of songs or artists, or photos, as simply and naturally as flipping through a stack of CDs or photos. Setting volume, equalization, screen brightness, etc., is all done by touching the screen. Want to zoom in on a photo? Double-tap the screen. Want to zoom out? Double-tap again. In addition to audio and photos, it also plays video, but I haven't used it for that yet. It also comes with a calculator, scheduling calendar, and "digital Roledex." In a lot of ways, the iPod Touch is what the first PDAs (like the Apple Newton or Dell Axim) were supposed to be but never quite became because of memory and power consumption issues.

But what really blows me away is that it comes equipped with WiFi and Apple's Safari browser. In other words, this is a wireless internet access device that's not much larger, or thicker, than a credit card. Yesterday I got my oil changed, and it was mind boggling to pull out the iPod Touch and check my Yahoo e-mail in the waiting room. Yes, it comes with a touchscreen "keyboard" for writing e-mails, and you access it with----yes!----a screen touch.

Many in publishing have been waiting for the right platform for eBooks to emerge before investing heavily in eBook publishing. Well, that platform is here----it will be something like the iPod Touch. I wouldn't be too surprised to see iTunes start offering eBooks before too long.

Because of its 8 gigs of memory, I went back and re-ripped/re-encoded many of my CDs at 256 kbps instead of the 128 kbps I used with prior MP3 players to conserve memory. The result is startling; I suppose someone with "golden ears" might be able to discern the difference compared to a CD, but I can't. It is so wonderful to listen to Jimi Hendrix's Band of Gypsys in full fidelity as I scoop the horse poop up from our pasture!

Apple plans to release a software developer kit for the iPod Touch (and iPhone) in January so independent third-part applications can be created. I hope an early application is one allowing streaming audio through Safari, followed by an eBook reader platform. (I bet Adobe will develop a version of Acrobat Reader for the platform.)

It's been a long time since I've been this excited over a new product.