Tapping the
screen quickly on the train home from work, I was collecting my
thoughts for this article. Switching back and forth between the
Palm VII's keyboard feature and Graffiti function, I jotted my
thoughts into the Memo Pad as quickly as they came up.
As the
houses flew by outside the train car window, I faced the task
before me: write a useful article about the Palm VII not only for a
PDA web site, but for a site visited by lawyers! I scanned the apps
on the screen, and I cursed the tiny 2 MEG memory of the Palm VII.
It made me wish I had kept the Palm Vx that I had originally bought
with its spacious 8 MEG. In only three months I had filled up all
the Palm VII memory with applets. I had fallen for the clever Palm
marketing that it would hold 6,000 addresses; little did I know it
would be the apps, not my address book, that would consume all the
memory.
At least I
reclaimed some real estate using a neat program called Cobweb
(which I downloaded from http://www.palm.com/resources/shareware.html on
the Web). It scans the Palm VII's memory for cached web clippings,
from sites such as Weather, BigCharts and ABCNews and deletes them.
The cached files are listed by topic, date and size so I can decide
which ones to delete. To heck with it, I decided, I'll delete them
all; tap and 3K were recovered.
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ABCNEWS.com | |
My train stop
was coming up soon and I checked by battery power level. Oops -- it
was getting low. A drawback to the Palm VII is that you have to
change batteries. No problem, as I always carry a stash of AAA
batteries in my briefcase. I can swap out the batteries in 20
seconds or less, kind of like a combat-trained Marine can
re-assemble his weapon in combat in the dark, I thought to
myself.
I like my
Palm VII. I had seen the wireless "Blackberry" that a friend used,
and watched him with pity as he typed out an e-mail message using
his thumbs on the tiny keys. Heck, at least I have the choice of a
tappable keyboard or Graffiti with my Palm. And wireless e-mails
are easy.
I love being
the first to beam another Palm user my business card. I repeatedly
discover Palm users that have not used this feature. My friend
ubermarketer Curtis Linder has turned his electronic business card
into a viral marketing tactic. Linder, the Managing Director of
Salem Legal Staffing in Chicago, used the custom fields to add a
description of his services, favorite Palm download site, and rates
for his services. Very smart.
But you can
overdo it. Curtis recounted a cautionary tale of a man who put his
home address, social security number, bank PINs, date of birth and
wife's cell phone number on his business card -- and then beamed
it. In the wrong hands, this information would make it easy for a
malcontent to hijack the man's identity. This made me decide to
delete my home phone number from my Palm business card.
My train stop
grew closer yet. Using the pull-down menu, I tapped "select all"
and copied my notes, opened the iMessenger applet, and pasted my
notes into the body of an e-mail. Then I tapped in my home e-mail
address and sent it to myself from the moving train. Like a cell
phone, you don't need to be standing still to send a wireless
e-mail. I would be able to print out my notes later in my home
office.
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MapQuest | |
As passengers
stood up to collect their coats, I tapped into my collection of
stock information resources for the Palm VII. I have so many stock
apps that I even created a separate category for them. First I
checked ABCNews and found a story on Cisco Systems, Inc., the
networking corporation. Sure enough they reported quarterly
earnings -- one penny per share ahead of expectations -- once
again. I cut and pasted this excellent news and sent a wireless
e-mail to friend who had also invested in CSCO. We were a couple of
geniuses, I thought, at least today. I should have bought more of
CSCO.
Then I tapped
on BigCharts, which I had downloaded from the Web and compared the
1-day and 6-month stock price charts on CSCO. Today the best time
to buy the stock was at 11 AM, when it dipped to 61. Looking at the
2-month chart, I was reminded that an even better day to buy it was
April 14 when it closed at 57. My next Palm stop was to DLJdirect,
so I could wirelessly check my entire portfolio. The NASDAQ has
been down lately, and I'm not enjoying much of that "wealth effect"
that Alan Greenspan is so concerned about. But at least I knew how
my retirement investments were doing in real time.
For insight
and analysis I tapped on The Street.Com to wirelessly seek more
late news on the market. I read the article, "Stocks Keep on
Sliding as Hewlett-Packard, Wal-Mart Weigh Dow." It was written
only 2 hours ago. Kewl.
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DLJdirect.com | |
Suddenly I
realize I've been tapping away for some time now. I look up, to see
if anyone is staring at me. No one is, so I relax. In the seat
across the aisle I notice a woman reading a
newspaper, and hear her comment about the weather predicted for the
next few days. Of course this made me tap on The Weather Channel
applet to find the forecast for my zip code. I realize while she is
reading a late-edition paper that was probably written 12 hours
ago, I'm getting a real-time forecast. This is very useful in
Chicago, where there's a saying, "if you don't like the weather,
just wait an hour."
It made me
realize that probably my favorite Palm VII app is MapQuest. All I
need to do is type in a street, city and state and get directions
immediately. This actually came in quite handy one night when I was
riding in a cab and suspected I was being taken "the long way" to
assure a higher fare. I glimpsed the street signs at an
intersection, tapped in my location as well as my destination and
got directions in under a minute. As it turned out, the cab driver
was taking me on the prescribed route. I was not being ripped off
and could relax on the ride.
Then there
was the time I was picking up my son and suggested that we go to a
movie. He asked, "what's playing?" but neither of us had a
newspaper handy. So I pulled out my Palm VII and called up
Moviefone, tapped in our zip code and got a list of nearby cinemas.
I tapped on our favorite theater with stadium seating, and got a
list of movie and the show times for the day. I could even select
another theater with the "back" button.
Looking out
the window I could see the familiar parking lot, White Hen pantry
and Dodge Intrepid that would take me home. I was in my home town.
Time to put away the Palm VII and just freelance for a while. After
all, a fella can't be totally organized all the time.
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