Palm User Group - St Louis (PUGSL)
Meeting Notes - February, 2000.
Our main meeting was held at "The Daily Bread" on February 19, 2000. A 'pre-meeting', due to some scheduling errors, was also held one week before at the Library location.
A new member at the 'pre-meeting' had just purchased a PalmIIIx and was happy to work through the 'beaming' steps with us. He also had a question about the 'Memo' application, specifically, that when you scribe a graffiti character, it opens a new memo, unlike the 'Address' application, which scrolls to address entries starting with that character. His suggestion of an added function in a 'Memo'-like application to allow scrolling to a memo entry starting with a letter you scribe in the graffiti area sounds like a good one. He does have some programming background, and we may be able to dissect out the memo and address source code with him to do this.
We had an excellent turnout at the regular meeting, and it was nice to be able to snack and relax with a bakery product and latte from The Daily Bread. We plan to go there again sometime.
A new member asked about syncronization problems with Act3.0, and we recalled a similar question and answer from July, 1999 meeting notes.
We again used beambox for file transfers.
MAKEDOC is a program to convert text files to "DOC" PRCs - a reference to a downloadable local copy appears in the October, 1999 meeting notes. This program runs in a DOS box.
The August, 1999 meeting notes include a web reference to a site that converts a web page to DOC format.
February 22, 2000 is the official date for announcing the Color Palm IIIc.
PalmPix is a digital camera attachment for the PalmIII - color 640x480 resolution, no flash, own batteries, $170. See the ZDTV "Fresh Gear" episode of Feb 22, 2000 for a review of this and the similar product for the Handspring Visor.
We had a brief demo of Pay Pal, reviewed in this month's TAP magazine as well, which is a program with PHENOMENAL POTENTIAL! This program allows anyone to conduct a cashless transaction linked to credit cards, and provides a glimpse of a cashless future. Check it out in TAP.
John P. shared a PRC file that contains the "unavailable characters" that have ASCII equivalents (like the Heart, Diamond, etc.). He created this using CBASpad on the Palm and capturing the output. He uses the Memo app to cut a specific character and associates it with a shortcut key (by pasting it). This is a cool trick -- the PRC file will be linked HERE for download.
As our conversation turned to programming, we again stressed that this is a Beginner's Group and as some of us turn to more advanced topics, like programming, we do not intend to lose our focus on Basics. We plan to address programming topics later in each meeting, and from a very fundamental perspective. Last month's (January, 2000) meeting notes will contain references to programming resources (
http://www.wademan.com ; http://www.palm.com/devzone ; http://www.metrowerks.com for instance).We agreed to start a "wish list" of features or applications that might be programmable by us.
We discussed some administrative matters, such as further publicity and obtaining Betas or Demos from manufacturers.
The web page is fairly stable at present, and we plan to incorporate a topical index to meeting notes as soon as manpower is available to do the work.
Thanks.