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Past Meetings: October 10, 2002

Date: Thursday, October 10, 2002
Time: 7:00 PM
Location: Kensington Community Church
Attendees: 37

At first we thought it was going to be a small meeting; just 17 in attendance when we started at 7:00. By 7:10, twenty more people had made their way in.

This month we reviewed three different products; two software and one hardware. This gave us extra time at the end to try out the new wireless keyboard, as well as visit with new and old friends. The products we reviewed were:

  • PhoneWatcher by MarkSpace. This product does a couple of different things, but the area we were most interested in was how it generates DTMF (dual tone multifrequency tones, or as Tracy likes to call it "Dial Tones Made Fun"). These are the pulse code tones that touch tone phones generate when you dial a phone number. What with 10-digit dialing now required in the 248 area code we thought this might be a great way to save the pain of dialing 10 digits just to call your next door neighbor. Here's what we found:
    • The product only works on handhelds with the enhnanced speaker, namely Sony CLIE models, and HandEra/TRGPros
    • When using PhoneWatcher, you have to hold your handheld's speaker in direct contact with the telephone mouthpiece for the tones to be recognized. If we had the handheld just a few inches away the tones weren't recognized.
    • You can't use PhoneWatcher with a speaker phone--the speaker phone generates too much noise and overwhelms the tones generated by the handheld.
    • You can't use PhoneWatcher on cell phones because cell phones have no dial tone.

    Phone watcher also provides area codes and country codes, although we noticed that the area codes for Michigan did not reflect the recent changes.

    PhoneWatcher costs $9.95 and is available from MarkSpace.com.

  • PocketTop wireless keyboard - this is the keyboard Rick Broida briefly showed us last June. This is a very slim and sleek wireless keyboard. Because it's wireless, it will work with any handheld , which makes it great when you upgrade to a new model, or if you have other family members with other models. When folded, the keyboard is about the size of a Palm m515, so it has a very nice form factor. The keyboard uses an infrared port to transmit typed characters to your handheld. The stand has a pop-out mirror that you place on top of your handheld so that the IR data is reflected through the mirror to the keyboard. Very cool concept. Also, for most models you can mount the handheld horizontally (eg landscape) and the keyboard driver will rotate your screen to take advantage of the different orientation. Tracy was really excited to try this out because she hasn't found a keyboard yet for her Sony T615 and was really missing not having one. However, the keyboard is so small, and the top row of keys especially are about half the size of the other keys, that it makes it difficult to use. Tracy is a touch typist, and her typing accuracy plummeted on this handheld. Also, speed dropped dramatically because she had to look at the keyboard every time she wanted to backspace, which is often! So cool concept, but if you're a touch typist used to a full sized keyboard this may not be the answer. Tracy is going to hold out for full size model compatible with her CLIE.

  • DateBk5 - still our all-time favorite application on our handheld. This is a Date Book replacement for your Palm. It uses the same database as normal DateBook, which means that if you try DateBk5 and decide you don't like it, all events you entered during your trial period will still be in your regular DateBook.

    Have you ever said any of the following:
    • "Geez, I just got a color Palm but I can't believe the lame color support in the standard Date Book?"
    • "What do you mean I can only beam one Date Book event at a time?"
    • "Why does the Address Book, To Do List, and Memo Pad all support Categories, and not the Date Book?"

    DateBk5 handles the above 3 and many other cool things you probably never thought of.... We ran through several of the great features using Views (aka Categories). There are also cool features like the ability to set an advance on an event. This will provide a count-down feature into DateBk5 for each day preceeding the event. You can also set events as floating events. This will put a little bubble next to the event. If you don't check that bubble indicating you've completed that event, then the event will be added to tomorrow's calendar as a new appointment. It's a nice way to keep things "alive" in your Palm. Sometimes we hit "OK" when our Alarm window pops up just to quiet our Palm as soon as possibile, especially when meetings. When we do this, we lose that reminder feature for that event. Yes, we know there is a snooze feature but most times we hit that big "OK" button almost out of desperation. Floats are nice ways to keep things in your Palm that don't necessarily have to be done today, but need to be done soon like "Get an oil change". DateBk5 also has some extra views that are really nice, and supports color icons that you can attach to each category.

    DateBk5 costs $24.95, and all proceeds from sales go to wildlife conservation. You can downoad a free 45 day trial evalution version from Pimlico Software.

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