December, 2002
Our December 2002 meeting was held at a very
nice coffee house in Bridgeville, PA, called
La Bella Bean. The folks there were nice
enough to let us commandeer an entire
section and use it for over two hours.
The main event was an interesting
presentation by Jim O'Farrell of Dexterra.
His company has been developing an
enterprise software/hardware solution to
"enable business interaction in the field,
ensuring that the field operative has the
right information they need at the right
time while adhering to consistent working
practice." (Quote is from Dexterra's
website
www.dexterra.com). What that means in
practice is a very well thought out system
of information management technologies that
allows Dexterra to create a Pocket PC based
application that a mobile professional (like
a service technician or other field rep) can
use to eliminate the use of forms, to access
customer and product service history, and to
generally streamline the process of service
visits to increase efficiency and reduce
costs. Jim had flown all the way from
Seattle to give a presentation to our group,
give us a demo of their initial product
(launched just last month), and get our
feedback, as real live PocketPC users. We
were very interested in his presentation,
and hopefully were able to give him some
good feedback from the ground level. Thanks
again Jim then went through the members' Holiday
gift wish lists, which included everything
from peace on earth to integrated phone pocketpc devices, to tablet pc's.
Finally, after our usual information
exchange, q&a, and handouts, we enjoyed a
delicious birthday cake, commemorating a
slightly belated second anniversary of the
founding of our club! Four of the members
from that very first meeting in November,
2000 were in attendance at this meeting.
Photo 1 below is Jim O'Farrell during his
presentation. Photo 2 is our
Commander-in-Chief Andy Ai, running a tight
ship as usual. Photo 3 is our birthday
cake!
November, 2002
The
November Meeting was held at Cutler-Hammer
Offices Again, where we found out that the
new security procedures made it a little
difficult getting in the building. Wayne
did a short presentation on the new free
Microsoft Theme Maker 2.0. The
group learned how to create and edit themes
by going thru making a theme and saving it
to an IPAQ pocket PC. Breaking with the
tradition of Pizza, Kirby picked up some
Triangle Battleship Subs and strudel for
desert. The change in food went over well.
Also the group decided to move the next
meeting to a southern location in
Bridgeville to hopefully draw in a few new
members.
September, 2002
Our September meeting was held at the
offices of Cutler Hammer near Cranberry. A
large crowd was in attendance for the
presentation by a representative of Pango
Networks. Everyone watched and learned
about proximity based systems using 802.11b
access points. Using this technology, one
can identify where people are when they
visit or are in buildings that are set up by
Pango, and transmit wireless information to
them. So far the uses are for museums and
schools, but hospitals or
other applications, where finding the
closest person to a situation is desireable, is
another possible application of the
technology. Once the person is located,
appropriate data can be streamed to the
person via the network. So for example, if
in the cafeteria, they could see the menus
pop up for today. After the presentation,
Andy awarded 2 program suites to 2 lucky
winners. Tshirts from Handango were then
given out, as well as the usual freebies
like pens and stylii.
August, 2002
Our
August meeting featured a lengthy
discussion/demo/briefing from our local Verizon
reps, regarding their new high speed wireless
internet access services, complete with a
hands-on viewing of their new Audiovox "Thera"
device. Thanks, guys. After the presentation,
we had our usual agenda, including discussions
of new software, freebie giveaways, q&a, and
general mayhem. As you can see from the photos
below (nos. 2 and 3), we had two new members at
this meeting, one packing a Symbol device we had
not seen before! Spiffy!
July, 2002
Our July
meeting was held at the offices of Cutler-Hammer
in Cranberry, Pa. We spent the first hour of
the meeting with a group shop project. We
broke out the pliers, soldering irons, and other
tools as numerous members of the group, under
the direction of Earl Sarain, fabricated
handy-dandy portable battery chargers for our
PocketPCs. Incredibly, after much head
scratching, it appeared that all of the made
units were working by the end of the session.
Kudos Earl! After our hands on session, we had
a discussion of web based and PocketPC based
energy monitoring systems used by our hosts
Cutler-Hammer, a demo of the new Toshiba e740 by
Chad Cicconi, our usual question and answer
session, our final vote on our new logo, and
some more freebie giveaways. All in all,
another great meeting!
June, 2002
This meeting
was highlighted by a complete recap of our
members' adventures at the Pocket PC Summitt in
Philadelphia. The team we sent first
distributed and displayed lots of great swag
(loot, freebies, see pic 1 below), which
included free cases from Nutshell and Rhinoskin,
free stylus pens from Microsoft, free pens from
various other companies, and loads of free and
demo software. Special thanks to the folks at
Nutshell for the great leather cases with the
Pocket PC Summitt logo. The team then gave us
all the rundown on the sessions and exhibits
they viewed, and distributed loads of software
for reviews. We then saw a slideshow of photos
our reps took at the Summit, and learned that
our boys were interviewed by the Philadelphia
Enquirer, and are now famous. All in all, the
field trip was a great success and we hope to
have more to future trade shows.
Other topics
discussed at our meeting were: (1) a product
demo of a USB keyboard (the Mini-VIK) with the
Casio E200, (2) a do-it-ourselves battery
charger project for the group for next meeting
(stay tuned to the website for a recipe list of
items to bring to the next meeting if you want
to participate and make a handy rechargeable
extra battery charger thingy for your PocketPC
-- soldering iron and instructions will be
provided), (3) a possible name change at
Microsoft's request, (4) lots of software and
how-to questions, and (5) general fun and
mayhem. Yet another great meeting was had by
all!
May, 2002
Our May meeting
was again held at InnerLink Strategic
Solutions. We talked about some exciting new
group developments, including a new logo and
newsletter. If you have any suggestions on
newsletter topics, or logo ideas, please check
out our message board! We also talked about the
upcoming PocketPC Summit in Philadelphia, PA at
the end of May. We have some free passes
available, again, check out the message board if
you are interested.
We also began a
series focused on the software that comes
bundled with the PocketPC operating system. The
topic for the May meeting was the Today screen.
We discussed what the today screen did,
third-party applications that modified the
screen, and the creation and usage of Themes in
PocketPC 2002.
We also had our
usual beaming of agenda, sign in sheets, etc.
We also had discussions on new software,
hardware, the OQO handheld, and the usual sort
of thing.
April, 2002
Yet another
great meeting! We had more people than ever
before (see the second picture below, showing
LOTS of people. The meeting was at King's
restaurant in Wexford, which was equipped with
wiring for access to the internet from the
tables. We set up a wireless LAN (with mixed
success, depending on which cards and PocketPC's
were used), and some others used wired LAN cards
to jack into the internet right from the
tables. Earl and Victor got a cross-table
instance of Microsoft Portrait going, and we
even beamed the sign in sheet all the way around
the table (it only took about an hour). The
agenda was pretty loose, because of the slightly
chaotic atmosphere, which was fun. Earl
provided the usual informative handouts, a
lenghty discussion was had about proposed logos
for the group (which will shortly be posted for
comment), Andy completed our giveaway of a copy
of Microsoft Office XP (see last photo below),
and many themes and other freebies were beamed
all around. A nice version of a today theme
with one of the proposed logos was also shown
off, piquing everyone's interest in the new logo
ideas.
March, 2002
Our March
meeting was again our best yet, and featured our
standard beaming session for the agenda and
signup sheet, a good review of our message board
questions and answers, handouts about wireless
technologies and smartphones, product reviews
from Andy and others, a discussion of our
partnerships with a couple of software
developers for beta testing, a couple game
reviews from Chad, a trivia contest, some demos
of products, handouts of products for reviews, a
great roundtable discussion of all things
pocketpc, and even a performance (via CD) of a
tune by one of our members and his band! We
also discussed some possible future events,
including a seminar series, partnerships with
local pocketpc vendors, and an upcoming meeting
(next month, perhaps) at a local restaurant that
provides ethernet connections at the tables. We
were well attended again, with almost standing
room only in the little conference room at
Innerlink (welcome new members), and look
forward to continuing growth! A few photos
follow:
February, 2002
Our February
meeting consisted of our usual agenda, as well
as an exceptional presentation by Dr. Brad Myers
of CMU, on the
"Pebbles" project at
CMU involving use of PDA's with other computers
as interface, controller, etc. He showed a
bunch of demos using the project's software. We
found it very interesting. Thanks Dr. Myers!
We also had
some verbal software and hardware reviews (Andy
Ai gave us a review of his Pharos GPS system,
and Chad gave a review of "Bustem," a new
game). We also had a very lively and lengthy
roundtable/Q&A session, with a number of great
questions posed by some new
members/attendees. Topics ranged from streaming
video to networking issues, to battery/hardware
issues, to more new games on the way.
On the
scheduling side, we discussed one or more of our
members attending the PocketPC Summitt in Philly
in May, as well as the possibility of
participating in some way in the CMU Interface
2002 event upcoming in April.
January, 2002
Our January
meeting was a great success, with 13 people,
including two newcomers, in attendance. We had
outgoing President Earl give an overview of the
features of the PocketPC2002 operating system,
as well as a hardware demo of the new Casio
E200. Incoming President Andy gave a demo of
some a cel phone cable and a beta version of a
voice command software package. Game meister
Chad gave his review of King Sol which will be
posted soon, and a plug for his new favorite
game, Rocketelite. We also had a lengthy
roundtable/q&a session, a demo of our new and
improved web page and message board, a demo of
the Casio BE300, and many other discussions and
exchanges of information. Some photos follow:
