.KEYWORD superproductivity
.FLYINGHEAD INCREASING YOUR PRODUCTIVITY
.TITLE Super productivity: it’s in the Palm of your hand
.OTHER
.SUMMARY Go ahead, admit it — your Palm organizer can be FUN. It’s great for games, or for tracking your favorite sports teams. However, the purpose of this article isn’t to tell you how to have fun with your Palm organizer. The purpose of this article is to help you realize the potential of what your Palm organizer is really all about — greatly enhancing your business-related productivity. Here Samuel Brandwein tells you how to increase your productivity on your Palm device, and still enjoy it.
.AUTHOR Samuel Brandwein
I’ll be the first to admit that the Palm organizer can be FUN. It’s great for games (I really enjoy backgammon on my Palm device) or tracking your favorite sports teams. However, the purpose of this article isn’t to tell you how to have fun with your Palm organizer. Its purpose is to help you realize the potential of what your Palm organizer is really all about — greatly enhancing your business-related productivity.
Under this topic, I’m going to cover three sub-topics. The first will be a few tips for making your Palm organizer more useful right out of the box. Second, I’ll discuss an add-on application that I’ve found to be a tremendous productivity-enhancing tool. And finally, for those of you who have the new Palm VII, I’ll give you some tips for useful add-on PQAs (Palm Query Applications).
.H1 Shortcuts — a great time saver
One of the great things about Palm devices is that they’re so intuitively easy to use. That makes it tempting to dive right in and start using your new organizer without reading the manual. Unfortunately, in doing this, there’s a good chance you’ll overlook some of the more subtle tools within your Palm device.
For starters, if you didn’t read the manual, you’re probably not aware of the shortcuts feature. What are shortcuts? Well, let’s say you have a client named Richard Cunningham. If you meet with or speak to Richard on a regular basis, you probably wish he had a shorter name every time you write that long name into your Palm device. As an alternative, wouldn’t it save time if you could just write his initials (you don’t even have to bother with capitalization), and Richard Cunningham would pop up on the screen?
How do you create, and then invoke, shortcuts? When you turn on your Palm device, you should see an application icon that says Prefs (short for preferences). Select Prefs and then ShortCuts from the pop-up menu at the upper-right corner of the Prefs screen. At this point, you’ll see a list of a few pre-loaded shortcuts, as well as any shortcuts that you’ve created.
So how do you create a shortcut for Richard Cunningham? First, select New. Then, write in rc where it says ShortCut Name, and then write in Richard Cunningham where it says ShortCut Text. Then you’ll tap OK. Now, whenever you need to write Richard Cunningham in your Palm device, you’ll just need to write lrc (the symbol to invoke shortcuts looks like a cursive lowercase L).
By the way, Palm Computing has pre-loaded three very useful shortcuts into your Palm device. If you’re writing something that you’d like to be time-stamped, the shortcut is lts. If you’d like something date-stamped, the shortcut is lds. And, if you’d like something time- and date-stamped, the shortcut is ldts.
.H1 May I beam you my card?
You don’t need to open your manual to realize that at the top of your of your Palm device is a beaming window, which can be used to beam data to any other Palm device that has a beaming window. Older Palm devices, prior to the Palm III, don’t have a beaming window unless a special upgrade has been installed. What you may not be aware of, however, is the business card feature and the one-step process for beaming it.
What you’ll first need to do is create an entry for yourself in the address book. Bear in mind that if you already have an entry for yourself that has personal information that you don’t want to share with the world, you’ll need to create a new, second entry for yourself with the same information that’s on your business card. You’ll now select the menu button (the lower left silkscreen button), and from there you should choose Select Business Card. This will designate the current address book entry as your business card. You should notice you now have a picture of a Rolodex-type card above your name.
Okay, so now you’re at a convention and someone who also has a Palm organizer asks for your business card. All you need to do is point the two Palm devices at each other (about one foot apart, beaming windows facing each other) and hold down the plastic address book button (the plastic button with the telephone on it) for three seconds. Voila! You’ve just beamed your business card to the other person’s Palm device.
.H1 Seize the day!
There’s an expression, Carpe Diem…seize the day. And that’s exactly how I’d sum up the application Action Names. Action Names, by Iambic Software (which you can find at http://www.iambic.com/), really allows you to take control of your days. When I started using my Palm device a couple of years ago, one thing I missed from a paper-type planner was the ability to view datebook activities and to-dos at the same time.
Action Names, among the many other things it does, solves that problem by creating a split screen that allows you to view datebook activities on the top half of the screen and to-dos on the bottom. The screen’s fully active, allowing you to edit or delete. Creating a new entry, whether a datebook activity or a to-do activity, is a snap.
There are a few different options for the weekly view with Action Names. The one I generally use allows you to see not only the date and time of an entry, but a description as well. There’s a two-week view, a couple of monthly views, and, for long-range planning, a quarterly view. The quarterly view uses 75 percent of the screen to show you three months, and the other 25 percent of the screen to give you active view/edit control for any one day that you choose.
Action Names allows you to attach icons (like a fork and knife for a dinner meeting) to entries, which is extremely helpful when you’re in the weekly or monthly views. Action Names can be purchased online for $19.95, which I think is extremely reasonable, considering all of the enhanced functionality. I purchased Action Names a few versions ago (they’re currently on 4.02), and I’ve had no problem upgrading (at no charge, by the way) each time a new version comes out. There’s one caveat, though. The current version of Action Names uses 260 KB of Palm memory. That should be no problem if you have a Palm IIIx or Vx, but is definitely something to consider if you have a Palm III, V, or VII.
.H1 Turbo charge your wireless wonder
I think the Palm VII is a technical marvel and a wonderful tool, despite some flaws (like only coming with two MB of memory). However, a conversation on the pros and cons of the Palm VII is beyond the scope of what I want to cover for this article. Rather, let’s assume you already own (or are thinking of buying) a Palm VII. Right out of the box, you’ll find about 25 PQAs (Palm Query Applications) loaded on your Palm VII. For example, one PQA will retrieve news from ABC, one will retrieve sports scores from ESPN, another will retrieve flight schedules from Travelocity, etc. However, there are dozens of other PQAs that can be installed from the Web. To the best of my knowledge, all of these PQAs are available at no charge to install on your Palm VII.
Where do you find all of these Palm VII applications? All you do is go to the Palm.Net Web site, which you can find at http://www.palm.net, using your regular computer, and select Web Clipping Applications. You’ll see that the makers of Palm devices have assembled a whole library of PQAs. So which applications have I found to be the most productive?
.H1 Shop from anywhere
One of the most amazing abilities of the Palm VII is its ability to facilitate ecommerce, right in the palm of your hand. I’ve been in several meetings where someone said that a particular book was a must-read. Using the Amazon.com Web clipping application, you can run a search by title, author, or keyword. You’ll then see a full description of the book. You can even access reviews. If you want to buy the book, you can use Amazon.com’s one-click method (you need to first set up an account with Amazon using your regular computer).
Once you select the one-click purchase option, you’ll receive a message saying, "Yes it was that easy. A copy of so-and-so will be on its way to you shortly." One time I purchased a book, while waiting on line to board a plane, in less than 45 seconds. Talk about leveraging your time! One other note — I once purchased a book that, after several hours, I decided I no longer wanted. Amazon had said that there’d be no problem canceling an order placed on the Palm VII, as long as it hadn’t yet been shipped. I definitely found that to be the case — it was very easy to cancel my order, although I did have to do it through my regular computer.
.H1 What limitations?
Detractors of the Palm VII have stated that it has a number of limitations. First and foremost of these claims is that the Palm VII can’t browse the entire Web, only what’s available via the PQAs. Even if that were the case, I’d say the Palm VII is still an incredibly useful tool. However, almost as soon as the Palm VII was released, some clever developers created PQAs that were essentially Web browsers for the Palm VII, allowing you to browse virtually the entire Web.
Although I applaud all these developers for their inventiveness, the first group of browsers available for installation on Palm.Net were quite limited in their usefulness. However, about a month ago I installed a PQA called DP Web. If I could only have one PQA on my Palm VII, DP Web would be it. You can go anywhere on the Web with this PQA, and it’s a joy to use. The text from a Web site is wrapped to fit the Palm screen perfectly. Furthermore, graphics are stripped out to minimize the amount of data that needs to be downloaded.
DP Web allows you to specify how much data to download, and it gives you full access to hyperlinks. As much as I like DP Web, though, I must add a big caveat. I wouldn’t think of putting DP Web on a Palm VII unless I was on Palm.Net’s expanded pricing plan. Although it costs nothing to install DP Web on your Palm VII, DP Web gives you access to so much information you’ll burn through your Palm.Net wireless download allotment, as the saying goes, in a heartbeat, on any other pricing plan.
In summary, the Palm Organizer can be an absolutely tremendous tool for enhancing your business-related productivity — even if, every now and then, you do use it to play a few games.
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.H1 Product availability and resources
Find out more about Action Names by Iambic Software at http://www.iambic.com.
To check out other great PQAs for your Palm device, check out http://www.palm.net.
To download DP Web, go to http://beta.palm.net/apps/users/download/1,1051,764,00.html.
.H1 Bulk reprints
Bulk reprints of this article (in quantities of 100 or more) are available for a fee from Reprint Services, a ZATZ business partner. Contact them at reprints@zatz.com or by calling 1-800-217-7874.
.END_SIDEBAR
.BIO Samuel Brandwein is a Regional Sales Vice President with a national financial services firm. He can be contacted via e-mail at sb401@earthlink.net. Sam has been an avid user of the Palm Organizer for over two years.
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