So what’s the big whoop-dee-doo about the HPDA?

First of all, what is it? Here’s Merlin Mann’s original post: Introducing the Hipster PDA. For more details, including lots of permutations, there’s the wiki.43folders.com Hipster PDA entry. A couple of favorites, the Guest Check PDA and the Zipster. The Hipster Mini — using business cards instead of index cards — also deserves a mention.

The PDA acronym has been expanded in various ways, the most popular being the obvious “Personal Digital Assistant,” but its original meaning was actually “Parietal Disgorgement Aid.”

Merlin’s progeny has hit the big time lately, with articles in Wired and the Washington Post. Pretty spiffy for the lowly binder clip and index card. :)

A favorite quote: “The number of gadgets folks lug around is creeping ever upward, but do you really need to carry $1,000 worth of equipment to have coffee with friends and be able to write down what albums you should check out?” Sounds like a moment of Zen Pockets to me. Speaking of pockets, the HPDA fits perfectly in the back pockets of my cycling jersey and works well while I’m out hiking, too.

Anyhow, what’s the big deal? HPDA fans around the web (check out Flickr, Technorati, and del.icio.us for lots and lots) are not uniform in their reasons for using it, but they seem to share a desire for simplicity in something that should be simple — recording and recovering information in a super-portable manner. Dropping it on the ground might at worst scuff or bend a card. Replacing a lost or filled HPDA is pretty easy. Oh, and the lack of batteries is pretty damn cool.

For once, an Internet meme is useful in real life. Fancy that.