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Welcome
User Tips Development Tips New Tools Related Events Subscribe, Unsubscribe, Comments |
Welcome
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I would like to welcome you to our
2nd quarter newsletter. We have some new tools to announce,
some tips to help you to use your Palm Pilots differently, and a
new Development Tool section. We welcome any comments that you
may have to improve this newsletter and to focus it more on your
needs. Let us know whether you would prefer more technical or
more user-oriented content.
Please feel free to submit requests or ideas through the links at the bottom of this page; where you will also find removal and subscription information. Thank you, 
Bill Shadish, Principal |
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DOC conversions If you work with entering text into your Pilot (and are ready for something a little more robust than memopad) you may already be using DOC processing Palm tools such as WordSmith or Docs-to-Go. It can sometimes be difficult to get text that was entered into a DOC format Palm file back into simple text (memopad) again. This is something that you might want to do to get the information into a Windows program on the PC. The good news is, that there are a lot of document conversion tools, or tools that can convert from memopad to doc format and back again. For a relatively complete list of these tools, including locations where you can download them, take a look at this site: http://www.memoware.com/mw-helpm.htm m505 If you were waiting on the next wave of color Palm devices to buy, here is a nice review of the new Palm m505 color handheld. (http://www.mapalad.org/review_m505.htm) that discusses everything from the new screens to their look and feel. Another m505 review can be found at http://www.palminfocenter.com/view_Story.asp?ID=1867. If you weren't waiting for the new Palms - and just want a great price on a new Palm IIIC, look here: http://www.compu-america.com/searchform.html?Keywords=IIIC Pilot News and Information One of the most informative user mailing lists for Palm pilots, with tips and news is the Pilot PDA list. To subscribe to the digest version (you get one email per day, with all of the previous day's activity in it), send an email to: pilot-pda-digest-subscribe@freeside.ultraviolet.org To post information or questions to the list, send an e-mail to: pilot-pda@freeside.ultraviolet.org Finally, for a nice ongoing list of user-tips, including ways to reduce the time it takes to draw characters in graffiti, see this site: http://www.nearlymobile.com/hintstips/index.htm. |
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How do I begin choosing a Palm database
platform? What a good question! When we (FO) were asked that question recently, we took a good hard look at the playing field. In this section, we will examine what we found and provide some insight on how the choice of database may affect your organization. In general, there are two types of database platforms; relational and non-relational. Non-relational databases range in format from simple text based file systems to proprietary structures. There are a great many benefits to using a non-relational engine, such as independence (more detail in a minute). However, in this world of enterprise applications, we focused on some of the "well known" vendor offerings. "What's out there?" There are three major vendors in the world of Palm database engines. The list looks like this:
As one might expect, each one of the vendors above have similar architectures for communicating to and from the Palm platform. Each product requires a form of synchronization server for the Palm application to talk to. To be more specific, the Palm database schema must be created from an existing database on an Enterprise database server. As you can imagine, this leaves little room for change. However, you may have no plans for change and (for example) love Oracle. For more information on any of the above database platforms, follow the below links. DB2 Everyplace http://www-4.ibm.com/software/data/db2/everyplace/ Oracle Lite http://www.oracle.com/ip/deploy/database/8i/8ilite/index.html?content.html Sybase UltraLite http://manuals.sybase.com/onlinebooks/group-aw/awg0602e/dbulen6/@Generic__BookView/622;cs=default;ts=default Anyway, that is the short list in the world of Palm based relational database platforms. In future articles we will take a closer look at some of the vendors above and maybe even some new ones (hopefully). We will begin by reviewing the architecture of the above three on a one by one basis. If you have any questions or comments about the world of Palm databases, send an e-mail to Joe Barnes at joeb@fo.com. |
 
On April 30th, we released foBrochure; a Users' Palm-pilot Brochure tool. foBrochure has three components. First, there is a Windows PC tool, that allows you to create the initial brochure for your company. This "brochure" can be anything that contains pages, images and text. A Palm Pilot-based brochure editor accompanies this. The Palm editor allows you to change the brochure while on the road. The brochures you create can be used yourself, to show points, or passed to the client directly; as a "leave behind". This has many uses - including being able to easily customize a sales brochure for individual clients while At the client. You can even do things like adding in the thoughts to illustrate a point right before a meeting, based on a client conversation held over lunch or dinner. Finally, there is a free reader; that is used to pass (beam) your brochure to other Palm Pilot users. Your client can then beam your brochure to other Palm users as well. Examples of brochures created with this tool are below. See our web site for more.
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We have opened our internal Graphics Design process and now offer this as an additional consulting service; for our clients. Our intention is to not only help with the normal corporate identity, branding, logo, icon and brochure creation aspects of graphical design; but also to enhance our deliverables in two significant ways. First - is the notion of Perception Graphics™ . The size of graphics has been a concern for the last several years as web site developers struggle to create sites that will download within our lifetimes. This becomes especially important when considering devices such as handhelds, where you may have only black and white and even more limited space to work with. We are working with tools and a process that helps our clients to develop handheld graphics that a user easily perceives to be the same as the original yet fits within the confines of the respective hardware platform it is viewed on. For example, consider the following 1 Mb Eagles Youth Partnership Program logo, and the version that we rendered to be shown on a monochrome Palm Pilot. The effect is retained - while Greatly reducing the size of the associated graphic.
Secondly - and possibly more importantly - we have created a mixture where traditional design approaches are supplemented with our rapid application development style. This provides for better, faster and more encompassing answers than our clients have experienced in the past. If you are interested in our new design services, contact our creative director at design@fo.com. |
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