This post is long overdue. For many months, we have slid by with just one or two folks attending. Some have suggested privately that I disband the group. I started this out of a love for community and for mobile technology. It was a heady time, back in 2000. The Palm platform was taking off, nurtured with the ashes of the Newton community. Air travel was relatively painless. There was venture capital flowing like water through Silicon Valley, which brought vendors bearing swag to our doors with astonishing regularity.
Those days are long since passed, but we have kept meeting, milking the ether for scraps of topical interest. On June 29th, I bought an iPhone, and I see my need for the Palm waning more by the day. I still carry it, still have sentimental attachment to it, but, functionally it is dead to me.
TAPIT is effecting a change today to the Triangle Advocates of Portable Information Technology. We've been moving this way for some time, but with a formal change in our focus, I think we can capitalize on the excitement in the air resulting from Apple's re-entry into this market. There is much going on around portable technology, and for whatever reason, Palm is now more of a bit player than ever before. Yes, it's sad, but it's been their market to lose and they have done an excellent job of it. Apple has long been a leader in portable computing, but there is some stuff of interest from across the aisle.
