Today, I’m celebrating the loss of my 50th pound. I’m sure I wouldn’t have made it without my PDA. For me, it’s become the ultimate fitness, weight-loss and entertainment tool in one. Well, maybe not quite "ultimate" yet: I still need to find a way to have it do the exercise for me.
Mobile Fanatic finalists
The following are brief summaries of Pocket PC-oriented articles which were selected as finalists in the contest:
How my Pocket PC saved Valentine’s Day. (By Hillery Schanck)
Hillary’s desire to create an extra special Valentine’s Day for his wife involved a lot of extra planning. He used JournalPro to keep track of his romantic ideas. He used Pocket Word and an external keyboard to write down the rules to a week-long scavenger hunt culminating on Valentines Day. And he found a special Valentines Day wine, a Chilean merlot with a 2001 vintage, with the help of Pocket Explorer.
Powerful small apps...brought new quality to my business life. (By "A.I.")
A.I. hates computers, but the O2 XDA Phone Edition device, a few powerful applications, and excellent GPRS coverage make him more effective in sales. He’s also addicted to alpine skiing and takes his XDA with him whenever he hits the slopes. When he takes a break, he receives faxes, sends replies, checks his e-mail, views attachments, and makes phone calls. He considers CalliGrapher a must for extremely mobile business.
My life was turned upside down when I was involved in an accident. (By Gary Bondurant)
A motorcycle accident nearly claimed Gary’s life and he went through six months of intense physical rehabilitation. During that period, his iPAQ h2215 and a number of third-party software programs became an integral part of his rehab and return to normal life. Pocket Informant helped him categorize, prioritize, and remind him of the many appointments related to his recovery and helped him remember when to take his medication. He used CalliGrapher to take notes and keep a journal of his thoughts and notes about his condition. Atomic Cannon and Age of Empires helped him pass the time and make the situation bearable.
My Pocket PC made the difference between my cat’s life and death. (By Roger Shih)
Roger, a med student, came home and found his cat severely ill. He called an emergency veterinary service, got the address of the clinic, bundled his cat into the car and promptly got lost. Fortunately, he had Microsoft Pocket Streets on his Pocket PC. The maps of Richmond, Virginia helped him find the clinic quickly, and probably saved the cat’s life.
Finishing the job and being a good dad sometimes get tricky. (By Bill Roberts)
Bill’s challenge was to take his son to a Boy Scout winter campout and help a company in Chapter 11 bankruptcy file its tax returns on time. With no room for a laptop on the campout, he loaded the company’s "butchered Excel spreadsheets" on his iPAQ Pocket PC, packed his camping gear, collected his son, and took off. He spent the weekend in a freezing tent, cutting, pasting, sorting, and saving payroll data into a Pocket Excel spreadsheet. Disposable power cells and a solar charger kept the iPAQ (and his business) running smoothly.
With 3 daughters to raise, I had to think about the future. (By Claudio Piga)
Economic crises had devastated Claudio’s home country for years and he decided to move his family to Canada. He used AvantGo to download Canadian newspapers in order to learn more about the country and the North American culture. ListPro helped him create lists of things to do when he arrived in Canada. Calc98 helped him manage his finances. Pocket Streets helped him find the location of job interviews and Quick Minutes helped him collect and organize notes about them.
In addition, the authors of the following Palm OS-related articles were selected as finalists:
My handheld should have been my best man. (By Carlos Arredondo)
This program has been invaluable in keeping my diabetes under control. (By Mark Taylor)
My PDA and software allow both deaf and hearing persons to contact me. (By Cindy Allen)
The Palm saved this person’s life, and I was hooked for life. (By Patty Huhmann)
Pocket PC magazine wants to thank Handango for encouraging users to share their experiences with each other. The lessons learned in these user profiles help all PDA and handheld users get more out of their mobile devices. We’d also like to congratulate Grand Prize winner Todd Hayes and the 10 Finalists, and thank everyone that entered Handango’s "Mobile Software Fanatics" contest for sharing their experiences with the rest of us.
Pocket Profile
LimoLiner: A Comfortable and Truly Mobile Office
by Steven Hughes
Staying ubiquitously connected in today’s world is quickly becoming a necessity for mobile business professionals. I was recently planning a trip to New York City, and the need to be connected factored greatly into my decision on how to get there. Other factors were the climbing price of gasoline, the cost of overnight parking in the city, and the time spent driving several hundred miles. I was looking for a way to travel that allowed me to spend my travel time productively and stay connected to the outside world via phone and the Internet. I had considered taking a high-speed train, but the known delays and lack of connectivity to cell phone towers and the Internet presented a problem. I also considered the air shuttle between Boston and NYC. However, the time spent in security checks, the expense of airport overnight parking, lack of access to a phone and to the Internet, and the long cab ride from the airport made it ineffective and cost prohibitive. I also looked at the cheap alternative of taking the bus, which would give me access to my cell phone. But there was no real guarantee of a seat, and I would still have to drive to the bus station in Boston, pay for parking, and take a cab to my hotel in New York.
(above) LimoLiner outside the Hilton Hotel in Midtown Manhattan.
LimoLiner: fast, comfortable, and affordable
I had heard of an alternative solution called LimoLiner (http://www.limoliner.com), a luxurious, 28-passenger, state-of-the-art shuttle bus traveling between New York and Boston. LimoLiner, the brainchild of Fergus McCann, pampers you with the utmost in comfort and business services. The front cabin is outfitted with comfortable "business-class" seats with plenty of leg room. The rear cabin includes two folding tables and room for small meetings. LimoLiner includes personal amenities, unlimited Internet access via Ethernet cable or Wi-Fi connectivity, power outlets at every seat, constant cell phone reception, and Direct TV for business and news channels. In addition, the shuttle offers five channels of digital music and a DVD movie on every trip. To top things off, there is an onboard attendant to provide snacks, beverages, and help you with rental car reservations during your trip, plus a comfortable restroom complete with fesh flowers. The LimoLiner combined all the features I was looking for in an affordable ($69 one way), fast, comfortable mode of transportation. It allowed me quality time to get some work done on the Internet as well the ability to send and receive phone calls.
Booking the trip was as simple as pointing my browser to the LimoLiner Web site and selecting a seat from their Advanced Seat Selection option. LimoLiner has three departures from Boston and from New York scheduled each day, plus one departure from each city on Saturday and two departures each on Sunday. Check their Web site for their current schedule. LimoLiner departs from the Hilton Boston Back Bay with a quick stop at the Sheraton Framingham Hotel (a MetroWest area with free parking) and arrives at the Hilton Hotel New York in Midtown Manhattan. All locations provide complimentary Wi-Fi access in their lobbies, allowing you to get work done while you wait in comfort.
Accessing Wi-Fi and connecting to the Internet
I began my LimoLiner trip by unloading my gadgets from the pockets of my Scott eVest (http://www.scottevest.com) and firing up my Wi-Fi enabled HP iPAQ 4350 Pocket PC. Broadband Wi-Fi service as well as Direct TV is provided via a satellite dish mounted on the roof of the bus. I easily picked up the Wi-Fi signal by using the Pocket PC’s built-in Wi-Fi configuration utility, but had trouble establishing a connection. I resolved this with the help of a produc
t called Pocket WinC by the Cirond Corporation (http://www.cirond.com/site/products/wifispotter.htm).
Pocket WinC (Fig. 1) has become one of my most indispensable tools, making it easier to find available access points and checking their security in my workplace and elsewhere. Pocket WinC is much easier to use than the built-in Wi-Fi configuration utility. In addition, Pocket WinC presents the access point information on a single, well organized screen—you don’t have to go through several sub-menus to get to it. With a quick tap on an icon you are able to connect to an available access point and check your e-mail or browse the Internet. Pocket WinC is a great utility for Pocket PCs with built-in or add-on Wi-Fi capability.
(above) Fig. 1: Pocket WinC is an application that finds and helps you connect to available Wi-Fi access points in your area.
Browsing the Web with the help of NetFront
I was soon surfing the Internet via my preferred browser du jour, NetFront v3.1 by Access (http://nfppc.access.co.jp/english/index.html). NetFront is designed to deliver high performance browsing in environments with limited hardware resources. NetFront supports some of the latest Internet technologies such as SSL, IPv6 and Java, CSS, and DHTML. NetFront v3.1 also offers support for plug-ins such as the Real Networks Helix DNA Client, Macromedia Flash, Adobe Reader, and SVG Viewer. NetFront includes some cool features that make this my preferred browser. One is the Smart-Fit rendering mode, which adapts the Web page data to fit the display screen width. This eliminates the need to use the horizontal scroll bar. In addition, NetFront lets you download and view multiple Web pages (Fig. 2 & 3), which is great if you are a heavy user of Google (via the built-in Google search bar) and are researching multiple sources. It also comes in handy if you like to read one page while others load in the background using the browser’s Auto-Cruise function. This has been enhanced on v3.1 to support better scheduling and caching of content. NetFront has two versions for the Windows Mobile platform: one with and one without built-in Java support. All things considered, this is a browser worth looking at.
(above) Fig. 2 & 3: NetFront is a very capable tabbed browser. This means that each time you open an additional Web page, it appears as a tab at the top of the page. You switch between pages by tapping on the tab. Netfront also allows you to resize the screen to fit the Web page and maximize viewable space by removing the top task/title bar.
A muffin and a cup of tea; hold the spam please!
Next, while enjoying a complimentary muffin and warm cup of tea on the fold down tray, I checked my e-mail using Pocket SpamFilter by PocketPCSoft (http://www.pocketpcsoft.com). This e-mail reader helps me reduce the amount of Spam downloaded to my Pocket PC, where memory always seems to be a valuable commodity. It does this by sifting e-mail through a combination of hundreds of predefined and custom filters, including blacklisted domains. A good of amount of spam gets through the default filters in Outlook and other e-mail readers. SpamFilter (Fig. 4) helps reduce the amount of unwanted and potentially dangerous e-mail before you even see it. One cool feature is its ability to "Delete by size." With this option you can delete all e-mails of a certain size from your e-mail server. For example it is known that the SoBig virus is around 100k, so you can set up a filter to delete files of sizes between 95 and 105 KB. This is a great way to delete unwanted mail as well as maximize the amount of available memory on your device.
(above) Fig. 4: Pocket SpamFilter helps you keep your e-mail account free of spam and reduce bandwidth usage by filtering your e-mails before downloading them.
Browsing newsgroups in a comfortable leather seat
The business-class leather seat, complete with foot rest, provided a comfortable place to browse the NNTP newsgroups with the help of a free reader called Qusnetsoft Newsreader for Pocket PC (http://www.newsreader.tk). This great utility allowed me to keep up with Microsoft’s Pocket PC and Smartphone Newsgroups as well as groups that require passwords for access. The Microsoft newsgroups are online forums where you can post questions and comments you have about your Windows Mobile device, as well as answer questions posted by other forum members.
Another way I keep up with the latest news is by using an RSS reader (a.k.a. "RSS news aggregator"), which allows you to subscribe to various syndicated news feeds (such as weblogs, news sites, etc.) and have news from these sites delivered right to your Pocket PC. My current favorite free Pocket PC application in this area is PocketFeed (http://www.furrygoat.com). This program connects quickly through either a Wi-Fi or Bluetooth-GSM/GPRS connection, allowing me to download the latest news and posts from my favorite sites complete with a message header for each item and—if the RSS feed is setup properly—any associated descriptive text and images (Fig. 5). To get to the actual Web page of the listed RSS feed, all that is needed is a quick tap on the linked title and your browser opens to the appropriate Web page, if you are actively connected to the Internet.
(above) Fig. 5: PocketFeed allows you to subscribe to various syndicated news feeds (such as weblogs, news sites, etc.) and have news from these sites delivered to your Pocket PC.
An active Wi-Fi connection can heavily tax your Pocket PC’s battery. Likewise, your cell phone will run out of power quickly if you use it continually. As a mobile professional, the ability to connect to a viable power source is almost as important to me as wireless connectivity. Fortunately, I didn’t have to worry about that on the LimoLiner. Located at each seat, next to an Ethernet port, is a standard 120V AC power outlet, so you don’t need one of those funny airline adapters to charge your mobile device.
As we entered NYC I heard a few people scrambling to grab their sliding laptops during the several turns the bus made while navigating through Gotham’s busy streets. I had no such problem with my Pocket PC. I sat comfortably in my fully reclined seat finishing up a few e-mails and chatting with a few colleagues via MSN Messenger. Then I packed up as we approached the Hilton. When I stepped off the LimoLiner, both I and my mobile devices were recharged and ready to go.
All the hustle without the bustle
The costs and hassle associated with travel continue to rise, but the time it requires is the real productivity killer. I found that being able to make the most of my time in a stress-free environment was well worth the cost of traveling on the LimoLiner. With each seat acting as a mini-office workstation you can easily turn your travel time into billable hours. For example, a lawyer could work on a deposition or research a patent infringement case online; a computer programmer could put the finishing touches on code that was needed yesterday; an investment analyst could keep an eye on stock prices and look for the next big thing to invest in. Simply having access to the Web and e-mail while on the go is a boon for the modern traveler.
LimoLiner is a great solution for anyone needing to get some quality work done while traveling between Boston and New York City. Let’s just hope the folks at LimoLiner will expand their market to other locations so this story about a mobile office becomes more than just A Tale of Two Cities!
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Steven Hughes is a Biomedical Engineer at the VA New England Healthcare System and has written and presented on computers, medical devices, mobile devices and wireless technology for several online sites, publications, and tradeshows for over 15 years. You may know him on various sites and forums as ‘fyiguy’. He is also a Microsoft MVP for Mobile Devices, Senior Review and News Editor for Boston Pocket PC (http://www.bostonpocketpc.com), and Co-Manager of the Boston/New England Pocket PC User Group. Steven can be contacted at [email protected].
Pocket Profile
Wi-Fi—More than a Luxury
The pragmatic usefulness of wireless networking
by Jeffrey Kurtz-Lendner
When I invest in technology, I like to purchase something that will not become obsolete after only a year or two. So, over a year ago, when investigating which Pocket PC to purchase, I came across the Toshiba e740. The replaceable battery was an important feature, but I was also attracted to the built in 802.11b wireless
capability (a.k.a. "wireless fidelity" or simply "Wi-Fi"). At the time, I had no use for that feature. But I loved the potential.
(above) The e740 was the first Toshiba Pocket PC to come with integrated Wi-Fi capability.
By the time I reviewed my e740 for Pocket PC magazine (http://www.PocketPCmag.com/nov03/rabbi.asp), I had found an actual use for the Wi-Fi capability. At my behest, we had installed a "wireless access point" to the computer network at work—the New Orleans Jewish Community Center. A couple of weeks later, we hosted a conference in our large auditorium, which did not have a wired network connection. I had no problem connecting to the network wirelessly, and I used the e740 for registration, an online Q & A session, and more. I’ve learned a lot more about Wi-Fi since then and have seen the introduction of more and more Pocket PCs with integrated Wi-Fi. I am convinced that it will soon become a necessity in the world of handheld and laptop computing.
Pocket PC magazine, October/November 2004 Page 14