[From California Lawyer (March 2000). Posted with
permission from California Lawyer. This file cannot be downloaded
from this page.]
All the Data That Fits Palm handheld
devices to run your practice and organize your
life
Now,
let's see, where was I? Last month I explored the basic Palm
handheld miniature computer and its siblings: palm-size gadgets
with efficient, easy-to-use built-in programs such as your address
book, calendar, to-do list, and memo pad, along with a program that
synchronizes your handheld and your desktop calendar, phone book,
etc. with the click of a button. Get one of these things and throw
away your heavy paper phone books. (See "The Power of the Hand,"
February 2000, for reviews of the various models and
manufacturers.)
The programs
that come installed on the Palm work fine. However, after a while
one always wants more, right? I used the built-in address book,
calendar, and to-do list for years, and I was quite satisfied.
However, I had to test a bunch of enhancement programs while
researching this article, and I discovered two that are so helpful
I could never turn back.
Palm designed
the calendar, address book, to-do list, and memo pad features as
four separate programs. After a while, however, I get tired of
clicking between, say, the calendar program and the address book
program to create a new entry. Both Iambic's Action Names and
Pimlico Software's Datebk4 take the standard Palm
applications and combine them so that you see both on the same
screen. Just that alone is worth the price of admission. Better
yet, this involves only some re-sorting and relinking - your
actual data doesn't change at all; it remains pristine for
your desktop calendar and phone-book program. In addition, with
either one, you may create an appointment and link it to a name in
your phone book with one click. Both programs provide a library of
icons you attach to key events or names so you can find and sort
them more easily. Both permit you to log any action - a call, a
meeting, a memo, whatever - to the Notes field in the operative
person's address-book record. The primary difference between
them is one of interface and emphasis. Action Names organizes your
calendar and to-dos around your contacts list, whereas Datebk4
shows your calendar and to-dos and contacts all in one crowded
screen. Action Names's display is cleaner and more elegant,
but Datebk4's is faster and has more powerful scheduling. For
example, you can tell it what time zone any given appointment
should take place in. I use this feature when I must remember
ongoing meetings at my office while I'm setting up other
meetings halfway across the globe. Datebk4 also links with your
memo pad, should you wish, so you have access to all four of the
main Palm programs on one screen.
Also, when
I'm using Datebk4 I can take any appointment I want and, with
one click, turn it into a template for future entries. You can link
contacts to appointments in Datebk4 by tapping on a linking button.
On the other hand, Action Names offers a few more types of entries
(such as Meeting and Call) and provides a more elegant journal
feature. Also, when using Action Names I can enter a new
appointment on the Palm, and when, for example, I need to fill in
the attendees at a meeting, I just write in the first letters of
their names and the program uses my phone-book program to
auto-complete each name. In Datebk4 I have to intentionally link
the names. What's more, I found assigning icons to entries in
Action Names easier than in Datebk4. In fact, Datebk4 is, overall,
a little more complicated to use, but with that complexity comes a
great deal of power. Finally, Iambic's tech support is better
than what many software companies offer, but Pimlico's tech
support is unusually quick to respond. Its president, C. E. Steuart
Dewar, answers every query almost immediately and in ample detail.
And all proceeds from Pimlico's shareware products go to
support wildlife conservation projects funded by the Dewar Wildlife
Trust. (Handspring, by the way, ships a customized version of this
program with every Handspring Visor, another brand of handheld
using the Palm operating system.)
Every Palm
handheld has the potential for doing a whole lot more than just
tracking your daily activities. It can store references you need to
carry with you, convert currencies so you don't need a
separate travel calculator, tell you the time anywhere in the
world, give you public transportation schedules and routes, and a
whole lot more.
Let's
start with references, word processing documents, and spreadsheets.
First, you'll need a so-called doc reader, a small program
that enables the Palm to make that book or all that U.S. Code you
downloaded readable on your handheld. (If you have good eyes and a
lot of patience, you can download for free and read just about any
book in the public domain, from Shakespeare to Mark Twain and
hundreds more. There are also Web sites that offer current books in
Palm format, but the prices just about match those of a hardbound
copy - ridiculous!)
For a doc
reader, I recommend iSilo free (www.isilo.com) and AportisDoc
Mobile Edition (www.aportis.com), which costs $30. For the books,
check out MemoWare (www.memoware.com) for thousands of titles in
just about any field imaginable. This site is an incredible library
of mostly free books, factoids, constitutions, and more, all
formatted to be read on the Palm. A few months ago, for reasons I
don't even understand myself, I downloaded A Tale of
Honorable Poverty by Osamu Dazai, Adventures of Richard Harding
Davis by Richard Harding Davis, the Glycemic Index (GI) and Satiety
Index (SI) for Various Foods (for a diabetic friend), Singapore
Police Stations and NPPs, and U.S. Social Security Numbers by
State.
There is
another way, however, to transfer word processing and spreadsheet
files, as well as PowerPoint and Adobe Acrobat files, to your Palm.
BackupBuddy Software, in Redwood City, offers InstallBuddy, a big
improvement on Palm's standard installer because using it not
only installs Palm-formatted files but also converts non-Palm files
and then installs them, all in one step.
If you need
to edit your spreadsheets or create new ones on the handheld, go
for Cutting Edge Software's Quicksheet. This is one
complicated program. It provides 48 built-in functions, including
many for scientific, financial, date/time, and statistical
calculations, as well as a bunch of cell formatting and editing
functions. And it syncs smoothly with Microsoft Excel - it even
adds a Quicksheet menu to the Excel menu bar so you can convert
your documents while still inside Excel.
However, I
was stymied by the 50-character limit per cell: If a cell in your
spreadsheet has more than 50 characters, and you don't want
to alter your spreadsheet with one workaround or another, the whole
conversion process fails.
As long as
you're prowling BackupBuddy Software's site, shell out
a few more bucks for BackupBuddy itself. It keeps a record of
everything you install or remove from your handheld so that in the
event of theft or in case, heaven forbid, your Palm crashes, you
can restore your programs and data onto a new or restarted gadget
with the click of an icon. This small, elegantly designed program
is also almost completely customizable. It backs up programs no
other program will. And it works if you have more than one Palm
gadget to sync up to your desktop or more than one desktop computer
you sync your handheld to.
The Briefcase
If you use
one of the popular case-management systems, and you get hooked on
your handheld, you'll wish you had a link (they're
called conduits in Palm-speak) between the gadget and your desktop
manager. And you can. AbacusLaw provides its Palm Pilot Link
(www.abacuslaw.com/products/abacus_law.html) so you can carry your
calendar, contact, and case information with you anywhere. Amicus
Attorney Advanced Edition also offers Palm support
(www.amicus.ca/products/advanced.html). Data.txt Corporation
provides a Palm Connected Organizer link for its Time Matters case
management program, so that your Palm will show the schedules of
multiple staff as well as tie case or matter or project references
for your calendar, contacts, and to-do lists.
Handheld
devices are also useful for logging time and expenses in a form
that's transferable to the time-and-billing software on your
mother computer. TimeReporter 2000, made by iambic, uses its own
time-and-billing program, both on the desktop computer and on the
handheld, and records time for each client or case, in addition to
your expenses and automobile mileage. Files may be exported to
Microsoft Excel, Intuit's Quicken, and Intuit's
Quickbooks Pro, among others. Versions of TimeReporter link to
Sage's Carpe Diem Electronic Time Sheet or to Sage's
Timeslips system.
PalmLaw
(www.palmlaw.com), run by Joseph Kornowski, associate executive
director and general counsel of the Los Angeles County Bar
Association, is the best starting point for any Palm-using lawyer.
In addition to the links to manufacturers and most other
law-focused Web sites, Kornowski offers articles and reviews,
surveys of what lawyers use and what they wish they could use if
only someone would provide it, and an invaluable compendium of
downloadable Palm-formatted documents specifically for litigators
and transactional lawyers. As of press time, he also offers
shortcuts for writing 120 legal terms and phrases, plus five
so-called Web-clipping programs, little applications that
wireless-equipped Palms use to provide information from Web sites
of professional interest to lawyers - searchable U.S. Code, Los
Angeles County court district locator by zip code, Expert4Law (an
experts and consultants search), POPClocks (United States and world
populations estimates from the United States Census Bureau), and
U.S. Time (official time for every U.S. time zone from the National
Institute of Standards and Technology and the United States Naval
Observatory).
At the end of
last year Lexis announced Law-on-the-Go legal research over the
GoAmerica wireless network. I couldn't test it before this
article went to press, but it appears that both of the Big Two
research services have realized that to be completely useful to
lawyers Lexis and Westlaw must be available on the Palm platform.
That in itself says the legal market has embraced the
Palm.
The Tool Box
Here are a
few Palm utilities you really shouldn't leave home
without.
Remember the
Newton, Apple's attempt to market the first handheld that
used handwriting recognition? It was so ridiculed it even made it
into Doonesbury. Newton's legacy was one of the major battles
Palm waged during its first year of distribution, but it succeeded
in convincing consumers that the Palm's built-in Graffiti
handwriting recognition program was easy to learn and highly
accurate. (Now it's got to convince a court that it
hasn't infringed on Xerox's handwriting recognition
software patent.) Unfortunately, yes, you do have to learn to write
a partially new alphabet. You form an A as an upside down V, you
write a V backward because if you write it normally, Graffiti
interprets it as a U. I found this new alphabet very quick to learn
and now enjoy the fact that I can write without looking down at the
screen. However, if you hate Graffiti and you want to print your
letters more in accordance with the lessons of your first-grade
teacher, or if you want to be able to write all over the screen
instead of just on the bottom Graffiti area, try Communication
Intelligence Corporation's (CIC) Jot. Not only do you use a
natural character set with Jot, but you don't have to bring
up supplemental keyboard screens to write symbols and accent marks.
(Here's a contest: Send me your entries for company names
that are more pompous than CIC's. Prize for the winner is
...your name in print in a future issue of California
lawyer.)
If you
don't want to write at all - computers, after all, are
for typing - then tap out your messages on the screen using the
Palm's pictorial keyboard. If that's not good enough,
look for Think Outside's Stowaway Portable Keyboard, folding
keyboards for the Palm and Visor, debuting just about the time you
read this. When folded, they are roughly the same size as a Palm
device. When unfolded, they are full-size keyboards. I personally
don't want to write all that much on my Palm - data entry
is just a whole lot faster and much easier on the hands and eyes
with my desktop computer - but for the lawyer who claims to
have written an entire book on his Palm, this might speed things up
a bit. (Note: These devices were not available for testing at press
time. Palm planned to release the Palm version under its own brand,
but Handspring will offer the keyboard under the Think Outside
name.)
Too
frequently, you find multiple identical records have crept into
your address book, date book, to-dos, or memos. Stevens Creek
Software's UnDupe examines every record and gets rid of the
duplicates. Without UnDupe, you might spend an entire plane ride
from Los Angeles to New York removing each dupe one by
one.
Stevens Creek
also sells PalmPrint, with which you can disgorge any information
on your handheld into an HP, Epson-compatible, or PostScript
printer (including the Canon portable BJC-50 and 80). You beam the
data from the Palm by aiming its infrared device at the infrared
window on your printer. (No infrared on your printer? You can also
rig some special cables, available through Stevens Creek, to
connect the handheld to the printer, but you'd have to be
pretty determined to to use this setup to print from your Palm.) It
comes with SnailMailer and Mail/P so you can also print envelopes,
labels, address book entries, and e-mail messages.
The Suitcase
I used to
think foreign-currency calculators were uncool. I'd work out
formulas and equivalents for the currency at hand and stand in
front of each storekeeper thinking, "3 into 14 is 4, carry the 2... " Now, as long as I'm carrying a Palm, why not use
it in my favorite London antiques store (don't I wish) to
calculate the price in U.S. dollars of that cunning little
19th-century brass microscope? The best all-in-one travel program
is Abroad by Y. Kanai. For a mere $20 you get a dual-time clock, a
measurement converter that includes North American, European, and
Japanese measurements for length, mass, area, volume, temperature,
clothes, and shoes. You also get a few screenfuls of information on
each country - capital, currency, time zone, telephone
codes - and said currency converter for any two currencies in
the world. (Download the exchange rates right before you leave from
http://sub.nu/~inferno/palm/ or from
www.oanda.com/converter/classic.)
The Visor
ships with CityTime, a nifty little program that displays for you
the time in any four cities in the world, as well as a map to tell
you whether it's night or day there (in case you don't
understand 24-hour time). Should you want it for a Palm- or
TRG-manufactured device, you'll find it at
www.codecity.com.au.
The best Palm
program for public transportation routes for just about every
transit system in the world (I counted 119), and perhaps the
biggest bargain on the World Wide Web, is MetrO. It's updated
and fact-checked every few weeks, and it's free. I consider
Patrice Bernard and friends a new order of saints. Some of the
commercial travel guides available for the Palm aren't this
accurate. Laura Watts's wwPlug provides pictures of every
sort of electrical plug used in various parts of the world. Ms.
Watts also offers 2xCalc, an attractive calculator and currency
converter, extremely useful if you don't use Abroad. She
provides free updates for exchange rates every month. These and
hundreds of other free or shareware programs, costing in the range
of $10 to $30 with a few exceptions, are available from Palm Gear
H.Q. (www. palm gear.com) or the former PilotZone, now part of
Tucows PDA (http://pda.tucows.com/).
For real
hard-core information on a given country, try the pricey eCalendar
Companion from on board info. You'll find everything, such as
the national and religious holidays of many countries, reference
data from the Economist, including measurements (abbreviations,
conversions, international clothing sizes, metric system, numbers,
U.K. measurements, U.S. measurements, wine vintages, wines and
spirits) science (chemistry, computer glossary, time, geometric
formulas), economics (regions, world primary products, country
statistics, international organizations), and time, travel, and
communications (country code and currency conversions, U.S.A.
telephone codes, world time zones, direct air distances,
international direct dialing codes, an identical black-and-white
version of the London underground map poster plastered in every
tube station). Pick and choose what you need to conserve memory.
Purchase price includes a one-year subscription to weekly
updates.
The Toy Chest
For me, the
best toys are gadgets, but I'm sure most of our readers have
guessed that already. Precision Navigation, manufacturer of some
amazing compasses, has produced two attachments for all
Palm-manufactured models except the Palm V series. Download maps
from the Web, install them on your Palm, and then watch the
superimposed picture of a compass tell you what direction
you're heading in. Using this thing takes not a single brain
cell - it's that simple. Weatherguide is only a bit more
complex. Snap on the sensor and it tells you the temperature,
barometric pressure, and, if you can't see through your
windows, whether it's sunny or cloudy outside. Use it
frequently during its first 24 hours out of the box to help it
acclimate, and you will also learn from it whether it's
likely to rain or not. It works with all Palm-branded devices
except the Palm V because the Palm V uses differently shaped
connectors.
Should you
want to use this with the Palm V series, snap on a Palmdock from
Solvepoint. This one-ounce shim enables you to fit not only the
PalmNavigator and the Weatherguide onto a Palm V but also Palm III
cradles and modems and other add-on hardware you may have lying
around from previous Palm devices. (The cradle attachment connects
your Palm to your desktop.)
I'm not
sure how I would have survived some of the tedious plane
connections I've endured in the past three years without the
games on my handheld. It's amazing how enthralling an
ordinary game of Klondike solitaire ($12 to $17) can be at 3 A.M.
in Shanghai's airport. Golf is engrossing too - the
handheld version of solitaire, not the stroll with the little ball.
Mille Bourne (called Rally 1000 for the Palm operating
system - free) also works fairly well on the tiny screen, but
the Palm opposition doesn't yell at me the way my family
does. PictureLogic puzzles look like crossword puzzles without the
black squares. You use logic and deduction to fill in the grid to
reproduce the correct picture. Lawyers seem especially to like
DopeWars (free), in which you, the drug dealer, must buy and sell
various illicit commodities to make huge profits within 30 days,
all the while trying to avoid arrest by the cops or knee-capping by
the loan shark. For the nostalgia buffs, 9-Ball Pinball (scheduled
for release sometime before summer) puts some of the thrills and
all of the tilts at your thumbtips. These games are available
either from Palm Gear H.Q. or Tucows PDA (http://pda.tucows. com/),
and sometimes both.
High-Profile Case
Many
companies make fitted cases for every version of every Palm-based
gadget yet invented. Almost all of these cases give you access to
the Palm's various features: the stylus you use for tapping
and writing on the Palm's touch-sensitive screen, the
hot-sync cradle, and, usually, the infrared port that beams
information to other Palms. Some are brightly colored neoprene
(should you need to surf with it); some are conservative black
leather. Some are soft. Some are firm. The choice is primarily a
matter of taste, so check out www.palm.com for links to case
manufacturers.
Before you do
that, however, permit me to introduce you to the two
top-of-the-line cases, each aimed at a very particular
user.
For the
ultimate in luxury - the case that will impress anyone paying
attention - slip Ondata's hand-sewn and numbered Italian
leather case over your Palm. The leather is so fine, the finish so
smooth, and the details so unobtrusive I find myself stroking it in
odd moments. Go for the subdued, conservative black or burgundy
case, or get yourself a flaming red, Christmas green, or vivid blue
case - they're all elegant and worth every cent of their
$120 price tag.
For the
high-tech, L.A. look, the case that says you are younger and hipper
than you look (or at least than I am), opt for RhinoSkin's
Titanium Slider Hardcase for Visor and Palm models. This metal
rectangle provides abundant cushioning inside the case. I sat on it
and stepped on it without the slightest injury to the handheld
inside. When I tried the drop test, the gadget and the case emerged
undamaged, but the floor got a big dent in it. The cover swings
underneath the back of the case to give complete access to the
device's controls and stylus.
Making the Case
This year,
the technology for PDAs and wireless connectivity - and the
co-mingling of the two - is going to explode. We're
already seeing programs that use the Palm to download traffic
reports, stock market results, and flight information so you can
learn, from your office chair, whether your afternoon flight will
be delayed. Already your Palm sends and receives e-mail and faxes,
surfs the Web, and even plays your voice mail messages for you.
Soon enough there will be a wireless telephone integrated into the
handheld so you can return those telephone messages without having
to pick up another piece of equipment. (Nokia has made alliances
with Palm that will most likely lead to the Palm operating system
on a series of its wireless telephones.) Add-on devices record your
dictation (to transfer later to your desktop computer) and play
your MP3 music. (Sony plans to release Sony-branded Palm platform
consumer devices, probably this summer, with souped-up sound,
wireless audio, and downloadable music and video.)
Last month
Palm released its first color model, the Palm IIIc. A color display
is easier to read and also permits us to distinguish more easily
among items. Imagine, for example, that all of your deadline items
turn red as they approach their due dates. And that the PowerPoint
slides on your Palm show up in full color, as do the map to the
Paris Metro and the clubs and hearts in blackjack.
Even Apple,
despite its experience with the Newton, has jumped on the bandwagon
with a Palm-based color handheld due out, supposedly, in
May.
One last
note: My prediction for a handheld killer app is moolah, as in
money. Imagine paying for your purchase simply by aiming your
Palm's (or smart phone's) infrared port at a receiver
on the merchant's cash register. Or repaying a debt to a
friend by beaming her the cash. PayPal is doing this today. Open an
account (probably using your credit card) and then go shopping at
the mall or online. Your account is debited. The store's is
credited. The Palm keeps a record of your balance and every
transaction so you later can upload them into your computer's
copy of Quicken.
Action Names,
$19.95; TimeReporter 2000, $149; TimeReporter for Carpe Diem,
$129.95; TimeReporter for Timeslips, $119.95. iambic Software,
800/730-5370
Datebk4, $25.
Pimlico
Software
AportisDoc
Mobile Edition, $30. Aportis Technologies, 888/276-7847
Quicksheet,
$49.95. Cutting
Edge Software, 800/991-7360
InstallBuddy,
$29.95; BackupBuddy, $29.95; BackupBuddy Software
Jot, $39.
Communication Intelligence Corporation, 800/888-8242
www.cic.com
Stowaway Portable
Keyboard, $99.95 for Handspring unit; Palm unit price not
available at press time.
Think Outside, 858/793-2900 (www.thinkoutside.com).
UnDupe,
$7.95; PalmPrint, $39.95; SnailMailer, $19.95. Stevens
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