September Meeting Topic - Contact Managers

Talking with a few different TAPIT members over the past few days, I thought we'd once again visit the subject of contact management softwre. A new contender Contacts 4 - joins powerful rivals SuperNames and Agendus. All three have at least 15 day demos, so checking them out shouldn't be a problem. They each also use your existing Addressbook's data file, so you may want to do a hotsync or two, and lay one of those aside somewhere before you start running them back to back. Although, that warning being given, I've yet to have a problem going back and forth between these very stable and well-written programs. I still find myself wondering, however.... What happened to Contacts 1 - 3?????

We'll be meeting at the Bear Rock Cafe, our new favorite spot. Word is their espresso machine is fixed now. (Priorities must be kept, right?)

Speaking of meeting places (what a segue!), I stopped into our former multi-year domain a few weeks back and they now have WiFi! They have become, along with several other regional Borders stores, part of the t-mobile syndicate. Um, club. Well, you know. I found a coupon code on some Tungsten|C board (yahoo groups, maybe?) that gives you 300 minutes free for 30 days. I've used it a little, and would like to have that type of account, but, alas, they don't offer that type plan. The only ones they offer are buy an hour +, or buy the next 24 hours. ('Course, they'll sell you an all you can eat package for $30 or so a month, but who needs a second ISP, when I'm not in enough t-mobile places to need that?) Go figure.

See you folks tonight, ready to have a contact-management war!

Smythe

August Meeting Report

About a dozen hearty souls ventured into the great unknown of the Bear Rock Cafe in CrossRoads Shopping Center on 18 August. Most bought provisions from their array of sandwiches and salads. Some (this writer included) mourned the passing of their espresso machine, and pray for a speedy recovery or replacement of same. (Why aren't there emergency espresso repair trucks?!? Don't they realize people DEPEND on this stuff!?!?!?!)

OK, leaving that for the moment, the other news of the day was - WiFi! Not just okay signal, but wall-to-wall high bandwidth. We had several laptops and at least two Palm Tungsten|C's online pretty much the entire time. We were joined by Chris Owen who had no transportation, but IM'd in to create our first remotely broadcast TAPIT meeting! Several folks joined up behind the screen as he entered his comments, suggesting pithy repartès and suggesting questionable comments. In general, a free-for-all.

There was some order at several points during the meeting. Alan shared a TELNET/SSH tool (ptelnet) for PalmOS and we shelled into several Unix hosts at various locations, just because we could. I asked about a RSS client for Palm, and although there were many interested looks and suggestions, no true solutions were found. I'm still interested, by the way, and feel that I can get this used in a rapidly growing operation at several universities, if we can make it work easily. (Check out the configuration of Syndirella on PC or NetNewsWire on the Mac. That's how easy it needs to be!)

This led us onto the topic of websites that were specially formatted for mobile devices. Several were mentioned, and a list was later posted to our yahoogroup site. It is reproduced below. (We encourage you to join and participate in the listserv. It's a great place to ask questions, share your experiences, and find out about FREE espresso! OK, not really, but I can dream, can't I???)

Mobile Web Sites (from http://www.pdaportal.com)

AccuWeather - http://www.accuweather.com/pda/pda_5dy.asp?
CNN QuickNews - http://wireless.cnn.com/avantgo/cnn/index.html
compu2go - http://www.compu2go.com/mobile/news.html
Computer World - http://www.computerworld.com/avantgo
Geek.com Daily News - http://geek.com/portable/index.htm
Gizmo Gadget News - http://www.gizmodo.net
infoSync - http://www.infosync.no/pda/epoc/
MovieMinder - http://www.movieminder.com/palm/index.html
Palm Infocenter - http://www.palminfocenter.com/palm/
Pocket PC Life - http://www.pocketpclife.co.uk/mindex.asp
PocketPC Throughts - http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/mobile/index.php
pocketPCpassion - http://www.pocketpcpassion.com/mobile.htm
Techbargains - http://www.techbargains.com/pocket/index.html
USA Today News - http://pocket.usatoday.com/avantgo/index.html
WRAL - http://www.wral.com/mobile/?type=palm
Writing on Your Palm - http://www.writingonyourpalm.net/index.htm

The links below are much older, and there are some dead ones, I'm sure. But I'm just going to throw them up here and let the reader sort it out, 'cause it's late and I'm going to bed. Maybe this wekend, I'll find time to mark them up as links like those above, but don't hold your breath!


Bible
Study......................www.vii.com/~bowserd/bible/palm/index.html
CNNfn............................www.cnnfn.com/services/fntogo/avantgo/chann
el.html
Cruisin News.....................home.stlnet.com/~cruisin/palm/index.htm
Fort Wayne News Sentinel.........www.news-sentinel.com/ns/avantgo
Harbus Online - Palm Edition.....www.harbus.org/PalmEdition/palm.cfm
Mercury Center...................ww5.mercurycenter.com/breaking/avantgo/
Palm Stuff at Studio
Nibble......www.studio-nibble.com/palmpilot/index.html
Pen
Computing....................www.pencomputing.com/palm/avantgo/palmmain.html
PioneerPlanet News...............www.pioneerplanet.com/avantgo/news/
Showbiz Scoop Mobile.............www.showbizscoop.com/mobile/index.html
Star
Tribune.....................www.startribune.com/stonline/html/palm/palm.shtm
l
The Economist - Mobile
Edition...select.economist.com/partners/avantgo/current/
The
Net..........................www.spe.sony.com/tv/shows/thenet/pda/index.html
The Sun News.....................www.myrtlebeachaccess.com/AvantGo/
USA Today........................www.usatoday.com/palm
WRAL OnLine......................www.wral-tv.com/handheld
Yated Ne'eman....................www.teleport.com/~baruch/palm/News-I.htm
ZDNN
Business....................www.zdnet.com/zdnn/feeds/palmpilot/business
ZDNN
Computing...................www.zdnet.com/zdnn/feeds/palmpilot/computing
ZDNN
Internet....................www.zdnet.com/zdnn/feeds/palmpilot/internet
ZDNN Rumors & Comment............www.zdnet.com/zdnn/feeds/palmpilot/rumors
ZDNN PalmPilot Software..........www.zdnet.com/swlib/avantgo/index.html
ZDNN Top
Stories.................www.zdnet.com/zdnn/feeds/palmpilot/pageone