Revolution In Hand: SinPalm.com Offers Porno for Palmtops

Kathryn Hudson founded her adult Web company, PK Entertainment, in 1998. "We [Hudson and husband Paul Frey, the company's chief technical officer] launched our first handheld Website back in July of 2000. We'd been doing regular adult Websites - we started with a links page - back in November of '98. SinLinks.com was the first Website we started," Hudson remembers. "When I started the Website, I actually didn't have visions of a handheld adult site; I just really wanted a Palm Pilot (or a Pocket PC), and Paul said, 'You know, you should find some way to make it profitable.'"

According to her bio, "Kathryn keeps her eye on the fast-moving changes that are happening on the Internet, especially the new wireless Internet. She created the first adult entertainment portal for handheld computers, SinPalm.com, and is working on several related projects." With approximately 21,000 users, SinPalm.com has been a subscription site since July, charging $7.95 a month for daily content updates. CCBill is the billing company.

Hudson started SinPalm.com after she and her husband purchased a couple of the handheld computers (his a Palm Pilot, hers a Pocket PC) last year. "I said, 'I'll bet we could fit our Website on one of these little machines,'" she says. "So I was looking around, and there were a few people [on the Net] who served erotic stories for download onto PDAs [Personal Digital Assistants] but nothing else, and I thought, 'There's certainly opportunity for much more here than just stories.'"

PDA aficionados can access SinPalm.com's services a few ways. "There's a company called AvantGo.com," Hudson says. "Anybody can do a channel through AvantGo.com. They will not publish adult channels publicly, but you can make your own private adult channel and, you know, do all the advertising about it you want - they just won't list you in their public directory.

"One of our goals over the next year to two years is to eventually set up our own adult AvantGo.com, so that anybody who has adult-oriented handheld Web channels will be able to publish and will be able to list them through our service and use our own servers as a conduit. Because AvantGo.com is a mainstream corporate company, they're like anybody else. They're afraid of adult affiliation."

Because of mainstream restrictions, Hudson's gotten word out about SinPalm.com in some not-so-obvious ways. "A lot of the people who become aware of us - before I found different avenues through which to advertise my business or at least get publicity out of it - I get through newsgroups. There are a lot of newsgroups that are oriented to Palm Pilot/Pocket PC/handheld computer-palmtop owners; and I post regularly."

This allows Hudson to exercise another component of her acumen. "My personal philosophy is that this is a big world, there's plenty of money for everybody, I don't have to own a monopoly on this business or on this type of business. I also feel a sense of gratitude because when we were first starting our business, it was so hard to get information. I feel like - with a lot of things in this world, but especially the adult entertainment industry - it's like this great mystery. You have to find the right code to unlock it. And I met so many nice people with such big companies who helped me.

"[So] I try to spend some time," Hudson says, "if I know an answer to a problem for somebody else - because there are a lot of people who just post their problems - I will try to find a solution for them.

"I'm part of that community," she continues, "so I think I get respect in that way because I don't look like, you know, a blatant advertiser just trying to drum up business. I'm there because I learn a lot from these newsgroups, and I try to help as much as I can, to contribute as much as I can."

Seekers of adult fun for the handheld have several SinPalm.com offerings to choose from, according to Hudson. "We have three categories that we serve a story a day for: gay, straight, and lesbian. We're probably going to be adding fetish and bondage, although we'll have to further define fetish because there are so many of them.

"We also serve pictures every day," Hudson says. "Right now we have gay and straight, lesbian, and fetish. We're working on something just to serve to women that will not have gay content necessarily, but will be... good for girls.

"We have newsfeeds," Hudson adds. "We have a gay newsfeed and a straight newsfeed of mostly sexually oriented stories. We also offer daily sex and romance tips."

PK Entertainment plans even more benefits for the PDA user. "We're developing an instant messaging system that's based on the Linux server technology. We have sort of a basic one now that we call 'Sinstant Messaging.'

"The next step for us is a pay channel," Hudson concludes. "We'll be offering video. Something else we're developing, both an adult side and a mainstream side: We're doing a channel called 'Pocket Personals,'" which was expected to go live in October 2001. "[It's] a personals service set up online through which you can post video clips, see your potential dates' picture, and be able to download descriptions and bios, do a search, take it with you, find love anywhere. Our tagline is, 'Love is in the air... everywhere,'" she says.

Hudson is well aware that the palmtop market will only get bigger - in part due to ventures like SinPalm.com. "I'll hear people say, 'I had a few offers of a Palm Pilot for Christmas - now I'm getting one,'" she laughs; "like, 'I didn't think I'd have fun with it, but now I want one.'

"I know it's helped a lot of people, just helped them enjoy life more," Hudson says, "And I like taking it with me, myself. I've got my naked boys to look at!

"A lot of people have really embraced it. It's exciting for me, because it was such a wacky little idea in the beginning."