Sorry for the terse format of these minutes -- my holiday/vacation and the consequent makeup work (!) interfered somewhat, but I wanted to get something out ASAP. Also note that geocities has been acquired by Yahoo! - but address forwarding lets us keep same page and email address.

NEWS Robin Abrams leaves Palm Division to pursue other interests - marketing guy steps in. Not sure what this means.

Rumors of Steve Jobs/Apple seeking to acquire Palm division again circulate – will we see a translucent green and white Palm??? --- I thought this was a BAD thing at the meeting [I confess to being Wintel-centric] – but now I hear that the imac notebook has a "great" 2.4gHz wireless lan setup that involve a Pccard in the imac and a transceiver that acts to allow up to 10 roaming notebooks to access an ethernet/56k modem (as a hub, although that word is apparently not in Applease). So what? Well, apparently the Apple hub is FAST for this technology (2-3mbps is the word) - available "September". Unlike long distance wireless, 2.4gHz is free of access charges – it is portable phone stuff. I can see Pccards tacked to the back of PDAs, can you? (Even if they are green and white)

Avantgo was again mentioned as a way to download net content to the Palm (here, on a Palm V). Avantgo apparently doesn’t support cut and paste – again Windows workaround of Control C/X (copy/cut) and Control-V (paste) might work on desktop in a pinch.

We had an IR capable notebook at the meeting, and we tried (unsuccessfully) to connect via IR port of TI laptop to PalmIII using Penguin Backup and the SIR setup through the BIOS settings of the TI. This merely demonstrated the need to walk through these demos before a meeting, I guess. Looking back, I think the problem was using the "IRSync+" program instead of the regular hotsync, set up for IR instead of serial port. You need the upgrade for IR from 3Com website (free) to do this. IRSync+ has nothing to do with Penguin Backup, if I read all this right. We will try again --- and Wayne --- let’s do it!

Penguin is based on a LINUX kernel and doesn’t even require a hard disk, It allows a complete backup of a compressed image of your installed programs to a single floppy (one for Penguin, one for backup). It also allows installation of single PRCs (Palm Programs) from a floppy source without a complete hotsync. These latter capabilities were demonstrated using a non-IR notebook at the meeting. Penguin continues to rate a "MUST HAVE" status in spite of our IRDA failure!

We talked briefly about database programs one frequent choice is "handbase 2.0", used for a library application by one user – who is getting close to running out of space. "Jfile" was mentioned as good for development. Perhaps one of these members would like to put together a more formal presentation?

Our favorite program of the meeting was Diddlebug. DiddleBug is like a small sketch pad on your Palm that you can easily set an alarm for. Just scribble something on the screen, then select a time from the popup list! Alarms can be shown as the alarm time or as a countdown. You can assign a hardware button to easily create a new, blank reminder for those hurried notes. DiddleBug is free to use licensed under the GNU GPL (Linux again). DiddleBug now has IntelliBooger(tm) extensions, with "pick-and-flick technology" that allows you to create entries within the built-in applications directly from within DiddleBug. (Description from PalmCentral).

If you get a chance, download and test "Abacus" spreadsheet - freeware, says it works with lotus WK1 sheets!!!!!!! Share your results with us at the next meeting.

One member indicated he had access to a VGA projector that would accept VGA port output for displaying the emulator image from the laptop for all to see -- this would be great!!!!

As always, meetings (and "membership" which implies that you are on the mail list and/or have been to at least one meeting) are free and open to the public, and any level of experience is completely welcome.

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