This application allows you to quickly and easily set the Owner Information on a Pocket PC device. One or more Owner Information profiles can be stored on a desktop machine and applied to a Pocket PC any time the two are connected.
$5.00
Use With: Desktop PC, P/PC, P/PC 2002, and Windows Mobile 2003
Srego, Inc.
www.srego.com
[email protected]
T9 Config Utility
T9 Config Utility allows different phone and T9 language settings.
$Free
Use With: Smartphone
Zimmermann Software
www.zimac.de/cestuff.htm
[email protected]
VITO SystemTools
A collection of system tools for the Pocket PC that includes button mapping, a task launcher, a task switcher, a system-info Today screen plug-in, and a "minimize" button.
$19.95
Use With: P/PC 2002 and Windows Mobile 2003
VITO Technology
www.VitoTechnology.com
[email protected]
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Task Management
OzMiniBar
A program which displays information about the battery and memory state of your Pocket PC and provides quick access to the various settings. Can also act as a program launcher and running programs manager.
$24.99
Use With: P/PC, P/PC 2002, and Windows Mobile 2003
carrot4free Software Co.
www.ebwfoto.com
[email protected]
Power Minimize
A task manager that allow you to close, minimize (tap OK), and switch between running applications. You can also turn off (shutdown), restart (reboot), and close all running applications.
$1.95
Use With: P/PC, and P/PC 2002
DeepNight Org
www.deepnight.org
[email protected]
PPX Application Navigator
A graphical file/folder navigator and program launcher that includes forward and backward navigation. Uses either the native Pocket PC icons, one of several icon sets that are bundled with the application, or your own custom icons and images for folder icons and backgrounds. Additonal icons can be downloaded from their site.
$Free
Use With: P/PC ARM, P/PC 2002, and Windows Mobile 2003
PPX3k
www.ppx3k.com
[email protected]
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Time and Expenses
CarRec
Software that helps you keep automotive records including fuel expenses, fuel economy, repair expenses, and scheduled maintenance. It provides you with an up-to-date look at how much you spend on your cars and integrates with Microsoft Pocket Outlook to remind you of important maintenance items.
$14.95
Use With: Windows Mobile 2003
Epimedia, Inc.
www.epimedia.com
[email protected]
Enterprise Editor’s Message
Doug Mackey
Editor, Pocket PC Enterprise Solutions
[email protected]
Don’t Mind the Times
“The End of the PDA as We Know It”: This somewhat alarming title of Jeff Wales’ article evokes for me the R.E.M. song, “It’s the End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine).” After all, in the computer industry, change is the only constant. If this is a problem for you, there are maybe some other less stressful, less rapidly changing segments of the economy with which you should join. Although, I don’t want to hazard a guess what those would be!
Not the law enforcement profession, certainly. As Jeremy Straub points out, the jobs of our hard-working policemen and women would be much easier if they each had their own GPS-enabled Pocket PC, just like Denzel Washington in Out of Time. How else are they supposed to stay a step ahead of the bad guys, who no doubt are wielding the latest and greatest in high-tech gear? At least they always are in the movies.
Every industry is trying to integrate technological changes as fast as it can. And that means mobility. Take oil well inspectors. They used to have to tote massive clipboards of paper forms around to the various sites, and they probably got oil all over them. Now instead they can whip out their Pocket PCs and, hey, if a little oil spills on the screen, it wipes right off, no biggie.
But let’s get serious for a moment, because we’re going to talk about doctors. Here’s a profession where a large percentage use PDAs and no one regulates them. Oops! Turns out there’s a little law called HIPAA, which requires every device to be secured so that people’s medical histories don’t get intercepted by terrorists, posted on the Internet, and ultimately read by your insurance company. Nathan Clevenger is hip to HIPAA and explains how the healthcare industry needs to be, too.
Other healthcare-related articles in this issue include Ed Zabrek’s review of ARTbeat’s Pocket PC medical references, and his interview with Bill Keay of Microsoft’s healthcare group. Didn’t know they had a healthcare group? Silly. They have groups for everything. Everything.
Yes, security is still a hot button in these insecure times. In this issue a security expert, Tom Goodman of Bluefire, defines corporate best practices in this area.
Also in this issue: Chris De Herrera has a wish list of features he would like to see in the next version of Windows Mobile. Developers, check out the article by Russ Nemhauser on creating an application with .NET Compact Framework.
And remember, if you don’t like what we’ve got today, everything will change tomorrow. Like the weather here in Iowa.
The End of the PDA As We Know It
Exciting new technologies and pervasive computing means smaller and lighter devices
Jeffrey Wales, Ph.D.
The primary purpose of the personal digital assistant has changed several times in its relatively brief history. It started as a convenient electronic calendar and address book. As the power of the hardware and software increased, it changed into a general purpose computer with nearly all the features of a well-equipped desktop computer. It appears that its purpose is on the verge of changing once again. With the rise of inexpensive sensors to monitor the environment and transmit data to networks, the PDA is likely to become a specialized device that behaves as both a server and a client in large “pervasive” computing environments. The present trend to continually increase the power and functionality of the PDA could be replaced by one to make it smaller, less expensive, more functionally specialized, and disposable.
The PDA isn’t going away although sales have leveled off, due in part to the rising popularity of smartphones, the new constantly connected PDAs should provide a bright future. These new PDAs will look decidedly different than today’s handhelds. The full-featured, palm-sized unit with a small screen and a stylus for entering data will likely morph into a variety of form factors designed for vertical markets and specialized uses. Already we see PDA functionality in cell phones using Microsoft, Palm, and Symbian operating systems. Many confirmed PDA users are switching to the smart cell phone as a convenient way to have both personal organizer and phone functions in one easy-to-carry device. This convergence of cell phones and PDAs will likely continue unabated for the foreseeable future. But, this is but a preview of things to come.
A PDA in the future will be defined more as a set of services than as a piece of hardware. What the consumer will want is his contacts, schedule, calendar, monitoring information, and other PDA-type data presented to him on whatever device he has at that moment from whatever source that contains the data. Communications will be provided by a vast network of wireless and wire-line services. Hardware components found in current PDAs will be separated from each other and will communicate wirelessly via Bluetooth and other standards.
Present-day wearable computers are not typically used for PDA functions but they could be. Such specialized computers exemplify the separation of components from each other. The screen is a small piece of glass or plastic held in front of
the eye by a boom connected to one’s glasses; the hard disk is a small unit worn on the belt, and the server is on a traditional network. The data and programs travel among the physically separated components wirelessly. As the components become ever smaller and less obtrusive, one’s personal information will be made available at all times, in all places, with others barely aware of the presence of the device. By contrast, data on the present day PDA is not always available and, for the most part, only data that can be stored on the device itself is readily viewable.
The small screen of the PDA, a feature that has long constricted the widespread adoption of handhelds by the consumer, will get significantly larger soon, and likely be separated from other hardware components. Working flexible displays are already in existence, and soon they will be foldable and rollable (see Jeffrey Wales, “Large, Flexible, Lower-Power Displays Coming to the Pocket PC,” Pocket PC magazine, July 2003, http://www.PocketPCmag.com/jul03/e_screens.asp).
Some components that provide PDA functions will be in the network rather than on the user. The user will have a “thin” client that downloads programs, services, and data on an as-needed basis, and pay monthly fees set by what services are purchased. These thin PDA clients will be smaller, lighter, and less power-hungry than today’s handhelds. Also, because of their lower cost, they will become disposable. With technical advances, personal computing components are being woven into clothing (see below). Such unobtrusive, convenient personal computing power will further redefine the form, cost, and function of future PDAs.
RFID tags—pervasive sensors
What will drive the development of a variety of specialized PDAs is the ever-expanding use of small, inexpensive sensors and other computing devices in large numbers distributed throughout the environment. One example of such sensors is Radio Frequency IDentification (RFID) tags (Fig. 1). Their primary use, so far, is in retailing to identify products for shipping and inventory. They consist of silicon chips and an antenna that can transmit data about a product, such as its weight, size, and manufacturing date, to a wireless receiver that could be a PDA or smartphone. Their tiny size and low price allows them to be placed in each shipping carton or even in each product in the carton. Their use will likely expand quickly. New generations will be less expensive and more powerful in that they will be able to sense, store, and transmit ever more data about whatever it is to which they are attached. In a recent article in BusinessWeek (“Tech Wave 2: The Sensor Revolution,” Aug. 25, 2003), the authors state “that within five years, these sensor computers could be shrunk to the size of a grain of sand and deployed over much of the globe, resulting in thousands of new networks. This means such networks can cover every single thing that moves, grows, makes noise, or heats up. Potentially, much of the world will be bugged. Moreover, those bugs will be doing most of the work.”
Fig. 1. The RFIDs are the two black spots on the finger tip and the three black spots on the blue fabric. The white objects on the fabric are grains of rice. This new style of RFID with the embedded antenna makes it possible to insert them into nearly any object, including paper objects such as checks and plane tickets. (Credit: Hitachi, Ltd.)
There will be so many devices communicating wirelessly about so many aspects of our daily lives that we will truly be in a “pervasive” computing environment. The term “pervasive” is becoming more common in computing, but is still widely misunderstood. In general it refers to an environment in which there are embedded sensors that gather information about who or what is present and convey these data to devices such as PDAs and smart cell phones that, in turn, alter their own behavior or the behavior of other devices that they control. As Scott Stemberger of Etensity put it, “active and passive transactions are simultaneously executed based on user preferences, user location, and other designated data points that define what information should be presented to the user at precise times and locations” (www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/wireless/library/wi-wear.html).
There are already products available in the marketplace to allow current PDAs to read and process data from RFIDs. Figure 2 shows an iPAQ with Omron RFID reader.
Fig. 2. A Compaq iPAQ equipped with an Omron V720-HMF01 RFID reader module in the Type II CF slot.
Here are a few examples from various fields to demonstrate the new pervasive computing trend and how it could affect the design and use of PDAs and smart cell phones.
Context-aware PDAs for better health care
At the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, there is an interesting project to develop “memory glasses” (http://www.media.met.edu/wearables/mithril/memory-glasses.html). The goal of these context-aware glasses is to deliver reminders, a kind of to-do list, to the wearer in a “situation-appropriate” way. Information would be delivered based on the context in which the wearer found himself. Though anyone could benefit from such assistance, it is expected that the best implementation would be for those with medical needs. MIT researchers suggest that those with amnesia, agnosia (people unable to recognize objects through the senses), and anomia (an impairment in naming and word choice) would benefit the most. However, even those without impairments could benefit from a system that provides a benefit beyond that provided by innate memory alone.
One could argue that today’s PDAs are devices that record and present to-do lists and reminders, but there is a difference. The current PDA is “deaf and blind.” It doesn’t know anything about the situation of the user—his context. As a result, the PDA is “little more than an incremental improvement over the paper scheduler.” It might well be that future PDAs themselves will become, like the memory glasses, context-aware, proactive, and perceptive. These new PDAs will monitor input from sensors in the environment, process the data, and activate various programs and services appropriate to the context of the user. They will become both clients and servers in ad hoc wireless networks.
Scientists at the University of Karlsruhe in Germany are working on a demonstration Personal Health Monitoring System for monitoring vital signs that consists of a wearable ECG-sensor with communication abilities, a PDA acting as a mobile base station, and a Bluetooth cell phone for connecting to the Internet. (C. Kunze and others, “Application of Ubiquitous Computing in Personal Health Monitoring Systems,” www-ibt.etec.uni-karlsruhe.de/bmt2002/paper/1199.pdf). The PDA base station communicates wirelessly with the sensors, acts as the user interface to the system, and is connected to the Internet for communications with various databases and network services.
Communications among these devices are categorized into the following network types: the Body Area Network (BAN) for communication among sensors on the patient, the Personal Area Network (PAN) for communication in the patient’s personal environment, and the Wide Area Network (WAN) for the connection to distant information services. Novel approaches are being developed for communications within and among each of these network types. IBM and others are working on using the body’s own nervous system for communicating within the BAN (a technique that helps prevent eavesdropping). Communications within the PAN can be accomplished with wearable networks, so-called “smart clothing.” New technologies for the WAN include 3G and cellular communications. The most likely medium of communication among these network types will be via Bluetooth.
Scott Stemberger describes work being done by Israeli scientists to develop a DNA computer. It is so minute “that a trillion of them could be combined to perform a billion operations per second.” These computers might be able to operate within human cells as monitors to detect disease and evaluate the effect of drug therapies.
Coming changes in telecommunications
Another project at MIT is to develop context-aware cell phones (http://www.media.mit.edu/wearables/mithril/phone.html). Cell phones can be a distraction when they ring at inappropriate times and in inappropriate places. Indeed, there is a national discussion underway about the role cell phones play in automobile crashes. As with today’s PDAs, cell phones are deaf and dumb—not context-aware. �
�If it were possible to build a phone that could determine the user’s circumstances or context, this information could be used to change the phone’s behavior in useful ways. Such a context-aware phone could automatically switch profiles when the user enters a restaurant, sits in the driver’s seat of a car, etc.” MIT researchers foresee a number of devices that would work with the phone to cause it to be context-sensitive and change its profile depending on what is sensed. These devices include GPS receivers, IR tag readers and IR active tags, microphones, and accelerometers (devices that provide information about the user’s activity state such as walking or standing).
In the not-too-distant future, it could well be that PDAs and cell phones will be significant nodes in vast sensor-rich networks that change their behaviors on the basis of what is learned from the environment. With more computing power located in the network, the PDAs and cell phones should become smaller, lighter, more specialized, and expendable. Battery requirements and processing power are likely to be reduced.
Smart clothing— wear your computer
A recent article in the IEEE Spectrum magazine (“Ready to Ware,” October, 2003) surveys the latest “smart clothing.” With smart clothing, the garment itself becomes the device. Conductive fibers in the fabric carry power to sensors, actuators, and microcontrollers (Fig. 3). Software controls communication on the fabric-based network and can send radio signals via Bluetooth or Wi-Fi to PDAs or PCs over the Internet.
Pocket PC magazine, Apr/May 2004 Page 15