Give the toast. Don’t read it.
PalmCue turns a toast, a church talk or a eulogy into cue cards you can read at arm’s length, with the next card under your thumb. Phone at your side or flat on the podium, one press moves you on and your eyes stay on the room.
Coming to iPhone and Android. $0.99 once. No ads, no subscription.
For anyone who hasn’t met me, I’m Ben. Dave and I have been friends since the sixth grade.
Click the deck, then the arrow keys move it. On a phone that supports it, this buzzes. On a laptop the card flashes instead.
A best man’s toast, cut the way PalmCue cuts one. Step through it with the buttons or the arrow keys. Linger, and the bar catches up with you and taps. A web page can’t read the volume buttons, so here the arrow keys stand in for them. In the app the same move is a tap on the card, the volume rocker on Android, or a clicker in your other hand.
Why reading a speech off your phone goes wrong
Nobody plans to read it out. It happens because of how the words got to the front of the room with you.
- 01
The whole speech on one screen
Every word is right there, so you say every word. Your chin drops, your voice goes flat, and the room can tell you’re reading.
- 02
A teleprompter that scrolls
It runs at a speed you picked before you knew how the night would go. One laugh, one long pause, and you’re chasing a line you already said.
- 03
A note in your notes app
Small grey text in one block. You lose your place every time you look up, and the two or three seconds it takes to find it again are silence.
Why I built this
I’ve spoken in public a lot, mostly at church, and I’ve never liked how I come across.
Reading off a paper is the worst of it. The whole point of standing up there is to connect with the people in front of you, and reading at them does the opposite. You can feel the disconnect while it’s happening.
So I stopped carrying the script. I write the talk out, cut it down to about ten lines to remember, and let those ten lines guide the whole thing.
It’s better. It’s still not good. I look down, find my place, and then work out what that line was supposed to remind me of. Two jobs at once, and the room waits through both.
PalmCue is for that last part. One line at a time, big enough to catch in a glance, with the next one already under your thumb. I’m building it because I still need it.
Joel PettigrewPettigrew Lab, building this for the next time I have to speak at church
Your speech, cut into cue cards
Paste what you wrote. PalmCue cuts it at your line breaks and bullets, one thought a card, and sets the type as big as each card will hold.
- 01
Paste the talk
Out of your notes, a doc, an email to yourself. Every line break starts a new card, bullets stay bullets, and nothing gets reworded.
Story: the camping trip. He drove four hours to get me.
- 02
Say the parts that have to be exact
A name, a date, the line you worked on for an hour: put it on its own card, word for word, and read that one.
Then he met Maria.
- 03
Star the cards you can’t miss
The thank you, the punchline, the ask. A starred card carries a bright edge you can spot in one glance.
Maria, thank you for that last one especially.
- 04
Run it once out loud
PalmCue times the run and tells you how long you really take. Drafts run longer out loud than they look on the page, and this is where you find that out, while there’s still time to cut.
0:008 cards, 1:20 out loud. The toast was meant to be a minute.
No draft yet? Start from the shape of the talk
Pick the kind of talk you’re giving and start from the cards it usually takes. Every card says what goes on it. You type over the prompt, and the words stay yours.
Wedding toast
about 3 minutes- Who I am, and how I know them
- One story that shows who they are
- Then they met [name]
- What I wish for them
- Raise the glass
Church talk
10 to 15 minutes- The topic I was given
- Why it matters to me
- The scripture, word for word
- Something that happened to me
- What I would ask you to try
- How I close
Eulogy
about 5 minutes- Who they were to me
- The one story only I can tell
- What they taught without saying it
- What we carry from here
- Thank you for being here
Introducing someone
90 seconds- Why this matters today
- Their name and title, exactly
- The one thing they are here to say
- Please welcome [name]
Team update
about 5 minutes- The headline in one line
- What changed since last time
- What happens next
- What I need from you
A template is a starting deck, not a mode. The cards it gives you are yours to cut, join, star or throw away, and from the second card on it behaves like any other talk.
The next card is under your thumb
Move a card without looking at the phone, and without a second hand. There’s more than one way to do that, and the two phones don’t allow the same ones.
- Tap anywhere on the card to go on, the left edge to go back. Works on every phone, and works blind.
- On Android, the volume buttons move the cards while the deck is open, and the volume stays where you left it.
- On iPhone, a small Bluetooth clicker in your other hand does the same job, and so does any presenter remote you already own.
- Hold anywhere to jump to the next card you starred, for when the thread goes.
Blind advancing is the whole point: the phone at your side, flat on the podium, or held low in one hand while the other holds a glass. Apple doesn’t give any app the volume buttons, so PalmCue doesn’t pretend otherwise on iPhone.
A clock you feel instead of check
Tell PalmCue how long you have. It watches the clock against the cards you’ve got left, and taps your palm only when there’s something to do about it.
- A tap
- The clock is further along than you are in the cards. Pick it up, or drop the story you can live without.
- One long buzz
- You’re at time. Land the thought you’re on and raise the glass. Nobody else hears or sees a thing.
Two signals and no more, on purpose. A pulse that doesn’t ask you to do anything teaches you to ignore the ones that do, and a halfway marker is a number you could have glanced at anyway. Falling behind is the thing you’d never notice on your own.
On a podium, it doesn’t buzz
A phone vibrating on hard wood is loud, and you can’t feel it anyway. Tell PalmCue the phone is on a stand and the pulses become a quiet fill along the edge of the card. No flash, no movement, nothing a camera catches.
The pulses are CoreHaptics patterns on iPhone and VibrationEffect compositions on Android. A short tap against a long buzz is also the one contrast every phone can render, down to the cheapest vibration motor, so the signal doesn’t depend on what you’re holding.
No glare on your face
Warm white on near black, with its own brightness, so the phone doesn’t light you from below in a dim reception hall or a chapel.
- Nothing moves on its own
- No scroll, no flashing, no animation under your chin for every camera in the room to catch.
- It stays awake
- The screen holds for the whole talk, and holds its brightness where you set it.
- It stays the right way up
- Rotation locks while the deck is open, so a phone held low at your side doesn’t turn the card sideways.
- Readable at arm’s length
- Type sized for the card, not for a paragraph, so a glance is enough to pick the line back up.
One screen before you stand up
Open it while they’re introducing you. It checks the handful of things that quietly ruin this, and sets the ones your phone lets an app set.
Leaving the deck puts your phone back the way it was. If a call comes in, you come back to the card you were on, not the top.
Battery, and Low Power Mode off
Low Power Mode turns the haptics off, and nobody notices until the pulse that never comes.
Haptics on, with a test pulse
Feel it once, right now, rather than wondering at the podium whether it’s working.
Focus on, screen awake
Android can switch Focus on for you. iPhone only lets an app look, so PalmCue tells you and hands you the switch. Either way the screen stays lit until you’re done.
Your clicker, if you brought one
Paired, connected, and with battery left in it.
The deck against the clock
Twenty two cards, a three minute target, and your run came in at three twenty.
In your hand, or on a stand
The one question that decides whether the pacing taps you or lights the edge of the card.
Your words stay on your phone
- The talk stays on the device
- What you paste in is saved on your phone. It isn’t uploaded, and there’s nothing on my side to read.
- No account, no ads
- Nothing to sign up for, nothing to log into, and nobody selling anything on the screen you’re speaking from.
- One price, once
- $0.99, paid once. No subscription, and no part of it held back for a monthly fee.
Questions before you speak
- How do I remember a speech without memorizing it?
- Don’t try to hold the whole thing. Write it out once, cut it to one thought a card, and let the card carry the line. All you have to remember is what each card is reminding you of, and a glance does that.
- What’s the difference between cue cards and note cards?
- People use both for the same thing. When there is a difference, note cards hold a chunk of your outline and cue cards hold one prompt each, big enough to catch in a glance. PalmCue makes the second kind, on your phone.
- Should I write out the whole speech, or just notes?
- Write the whole thing first, because that’s where you figure out what you’re saying. Then paste it in. Every line break becomes a card, so short lines make good cues, and a line that has to be exact can sit on its own card word for word.
- Is PalmCue a teleprompter app?
- Not the scrolling kind. Nothing moves until you move it, because the pauses are yours: the laugh you wait out, the breath before the last line.
- Do the volume buttons work on iPhone?
- No, and not in any app. Apple keeps those buttons for the system. On iPhone you tap the card, or use a Bluetooth clicker. On Android the volume buttons move the cards and the volume stays put.
- How does it know when to buzz?
- It compares the clock to how far through the cards you are. One tap if the clock gets ahead of you, one long buzz at time, and nothing else. Either one can be switched off.
- I get nervous. Does this help?
- It won’t make the nerves go away. What it does is take a couple of jobs off your plate: you’re not watching a clock or hunting for your place, so there’s less to hold in your head while you’re already nervous.
- Do the templates write my speech for me?
- No. A template is the shape a talk like yours usually takes: a card that says what goes there, and you type over it. Nothing you say out loud came from the app.
- Will anyone notice I’m using it?
- The pulses are silent and the screen is dark and still. From six feet away it’s a phone in somebody’s hand. On a stand it doesn’t buzz at all.
- How long should a toast or a talk be?
- A wedding toast that lands is usually two to three minutes. Most drafts run longer than they read, which is why PalmCue times your run and gives you the number while you can still do something about it.
- What if I go blank?
- Hold the card and it jumps to the next line you starred, which is where the names and the ask live. Swipe down and you get the whole talk as plain text, at the spot you were on.
- Does it need wifi?
- No. Everything happens on the phone, so it works in a basement reception hall with no bars.
- What is it for besides wedding toasts?
- Church talks, eulogies, award introductions, standups, conference talks, sales presentations. Anywhere you have to be a person and not a reader.
- Does it work in other languages?
- Your talk can be in almost any language. Spanish, Chinese, Japanese, Arabic, Hindi and more all cut into cards the same way, and Arabic and Hebrew read right to left like they should. The buttons are in English for now.
Speaking somewhere soon?
PalmCue is being built now, iPhone and Android together. Send a quick note and I’ll write back when it ships, and sooner than that if you want to try it early.