.KEYWORD mypalm0901
.FLYINGHEAD PRODUCT REVIEW
.TITLE Group features of the MyPalm portal
.FEATURE
.SUMMARY With the MyPalm portal, Palm is closing the loop between Internet-based calendar services and personal information devices. In his second article on the MyPalm portal, Ray Rischpater delves deeper into its functionality, covering synchronization, sharing, groups, RSVP, and the Publish feature. He also takes a look at the MyPalm Web clipping application that lets you take your Internet-based PIM on the road.
.AUTHOR Ray Rischpater
In the first installment of this series (at http://www.palmpower.com/issues/issue200108/mypalm001.html), I introduced you to the MyPalm portal, an Internet portal with services that will help many of you get more from your Palm OS handhelds using the Internet. It’s found at http://my.palm.com. This month, we’ll go deeper into the functionality of this useful service.
.H1 Synchronization
MyPalm’s synchronization is fast and it works. However, I was somewhat disappointed with the user interface, which lacks the polish one expects from Palm. Palm uses Extended System’s XTNDConnect PC to support synchronization between your Palm handheld and your PC.
As you see in Figure A, the desktop synchronization tool doesn’t resemble typical Palm applications that run on the desktop.
.FIGPAIR A This is a screenshot of the MyPalm desktop synchronization application.
Configuration is a bit obtuse as well, as seen in Figure B.
.FIGPAIR B Configuring the MyPalm desktop synchronization application is obtuse.
Fortunately, most users don’t have to configure the application at all. Nonetheless, in the process of writing this review I was able to obfuscate my settings badly enough that I repeatedly lost my MyPalm portal data and had to re-synchronize the portal databases with the information from my PC. Because synchronization is fast, this isn’t as grievous as it sounds, but it is disturbing. Moreover, it leads to a fundamental question: why is the configuration application so obtuse to begin with? HotSync certainly isn’t.
As near as I can tell, XTNDConnect PC is a general-purpose application, and most of the configuration options let you use a variety of other PIM products with both your Palm handheld and the MyPalm portal, something that’s not clear from the MyPalm documentation.
Synchronization itself is fast and painless. Unlike the HotSync application, synchronization itself doesn’t occur between your Palm OS handheld and the MyPalm portal. Instead, the MyPalm portal synchronization application appears to rifle through the Palm Desktop application running on your PC, using the records that reside on the PC directly. Regardless of how it works, synchronization is very fast. The only time you have to intervene in the synchronization process is if you change or delete a record on both the MyPalm portal and on the desktop between synchronizations. As you’d expect, you have to select what action you want the synchronization application to take in this case.
Unfortunately, there’s a lack of Macintosh support. As with the lack of Mac OS X support for Palm Desktop, the MyPalm portal (and AnyDay before it) has promised Macintosh support for some time. I am fortunate in that I have a spare PC in our home office that I can dedicate as a home HotSync application server for our family’s Palm OS-based devices, so using the MyPalm portal is no problem.
.H2 Sharing with others
Key to Palm’s vision for MyPalm’s success is how easy it is for you to share data with others. Through a group, you can share calendar information, request that others share views of the free time in their calendars with you, and exchange simple messages. You can also publish calendars based on your personal calendar for others to view.
.H2 Groups
A MyPalm group is simply a group of MyPalm users that share a calendar and contacts. Figure C shows the home page for my family’s group.
.FIGPAIR C Here’s a MyPalm group home page.
Each member of a group can have one of three kinds of access: viewer, contributor, or editor. A viewer may view entries and invite new members. A contributor can do everything a viewer can do, plus create new entries and modify her own entries. An editor can do anything that a contributor can do, as well as modify any entry and delete members. As you might imagine, a group must have at least one editor in order to maintain the group.
Once you create a group, it’s easy to invite new members. You can go to the group and click on Invite New Members. Then you fill out the form presented by the portal. This form is where you select the email address of the new member to invite, write the invitation, and select the access level for the member you’re inviting. The portal then emails the person you invited, telling him how to sign up for the MyPalm portal and what to do to join your group. From there, he can access your group’s calendar and contacts.
It’s easy for group members to add events to a group’s calendars. When you view or add an event to another calendar, simply edit the event on your calendar and press the Select Calendars button. From there, you’ll see a popup window that lets you select all of the calendars you have, including the calendars from any groups to which you belong and can contribute to. You can insert events into the calendar of any groups for which you are either a contributor or an editor, making it easy to share your events with other calendars, such as club meetings, doctors appointments, or the like, while keeping your private information private.
This is so useful that I wonder why MyPalm doesn’t let you do this with other information, such as a To Do item, contact, or even a note. In fact, I was disappointed that the MyPalm portal doesn’t let you store notes on the portal at all. It would be much better if you could network all the basic information on your handheld with your fellow collaborators. Meeting minutes, notes, ideas, and to do items could all be shared seamlessly, much as you now can do with corporate enterprise systems such as Lotus Notes or Microsoft Exchange.
.H2 RSVP
For years, I’ve had this convoluted half-electronic, half-manual mechanism for managing RSVP’s for parties. We have six or seven fairly big parties a year, big enough that it’s worth tracking how many people come so we know if have enough food or need to call ahead to the restaurant. Usually, I’d use email to send the invitations and either use my Palm Memo Pad or a spreadsheet (ugh!) to maintain the final tally. Recently, friends have been urging me to use one of the Web-based RSVP programs, but I just didn’t see the point. Until now, that is.
MyPalm has a nice RSVP tool that lets you create a Web-based invitation to send to email addresses in your contact list. Once you send the invitation, MyPalm adds the event to your calendar (synchronizing it to your Palm handheld, of course) and, as people reply via the RSVP form, it maintains a list of the people who have replied. At any time, you can check the RSVP list to see an accurate count of who will attend the event.
The RSVP tool can include text and numeric questions, such as the number of guests an invitee will bring or any dietary constraints an invitee has, in addition to an image and details of the event.
A nice touch is that you can look at all your pending or past RSVPs and see the status of a specific RSVP, or you can open an RSVP and obtain the information about a specific invitee. If you think this is overkill, consider the harried office administrator responsible for managing office parties on behalf of a large group!
You can use the RSVP feature with everyone, regardless of whether or not they’re MyPalm members. You need only provide their email addresses, and MyPalm mails them a URL that they can use to access the RSVP. In turn, the MyPalm portal serves a Web page with the RSVP, recording the response for your later review. This works well because it doesn’t force you to encourage everyone you know to run out and sign up for the MyPalm portal just so you can invite them to your next gathering.
.H2 Publish
A final feature for groups that doesn’t require your friends to have MyPalm accounts is the MyPalm Calendar Publish feature. Using Publish, you can select events from one or more of your calendars and publish them on an open or password-protected Web page served by the MyPalm portal for others to see (as shown in Figure D).
.FIGPAIR D This is an example of a MyPalm published calendar.
As you add new appointments to your calendars, you can select which events are shown in which published calendars.
The difference between a group’s calendar and a published calendar is subtle but important. A group’s calendar is available to MyPalm users that are members of a specific group. Group members with the appropriate authorization can add and even edit events in a calendar. A published calendar, on the other hand, is a static Web page available to users outside the MyPalm portal that have the password to access the calendar. Groups are better for when you want to organize a dynamic group of people like a club, while publishing a static calendar is best when you want to offer others, like your friends or extended family, a static snapshot of a subset of your activities over time.
.H2 Using the MyPalm Portal on the road
As if all this weren’t enough, you can access some of these features on the road. The MyPalm portal is available as a Web clipping application for the Palm VII, Palm VIIx, and other Palm handhelds using the Mobile Internet Kit. The MyPalm portal includes access to traditional portal content, such as news, finance, and other portals-replacing individual Web clipping applications in the process-as well as access to select MyPalm content including Events, Free Time Viewer, and MyInfo. You can also download other Web clipping applications, purchase products from Palm, and check your email.
The home page of the MyPalm portal is an interesting mix of links to built-in applications like iMessenger and the Date Book, third-party content such as news and other portal content, and true MyPalm content. Disappointingly, a great deal of the content isn’t as well-optimized for Palm handhelds as it ought to be; many of the pages include the obligatory two exclamation points indicating a page that’s a large download. While not a grave failing, it’s annoying, especially given that the wireless portal is from Palm, and so many third-party developers have successfully produced good Web clipping applications while keeping pages brief.
For example, Figure E shows the MyPalm Portal’s Events screen. This corresponds to the desktop page I discussed earlier.
.FIG E This is what the MyPalm Event screen looks like on a Palm handheld.
It works well, letting me search for an event over a range of dates into the future. Figure F shows a sample search result, giving me both show times and theaters for a movie I’d like to watch in my area.
.FIG F You can access movie show times and theaters.
Once I get the information I want, I can easily download a desired show time directly to my calendar.
The MyPalm wireless Free Time Viewer works in a similar fashion, as you can see in Figure G.
.FIG G The MyPalm Free Time viewer helps you to locate free time.
You enter a desired chunk of free time (say, for a meeting), select people from the list of those with whom you’ve arranged to share free time schedules, and then you can see whether or not you’ll be able to meet with those people.
Despite the convenience of these features, these three screen shots all demonstrate simple, yet key, flaws in Palm’s user interface design. First, the pages are just too big. In fact, the entire Web clipping application portal is too big in my opinion, consuming a hefty 120K, which is too much space for many first-generation Palm VII users trying to fit all their applications into a 2MB device. If you’re watching your wireless consumption–either using the Palm.net service or via your cellular phone–you may find you can’t get much use from the portal. Second, the pages often require you to scroll to reach critical interface controls, simply because the MyPalm banner consumes so much space across the top of the display. While these features are useful, they lack the elegance and simplicity of many third-party Web clipping applications and the elegance of the built-in Palm applications themselves, making the portal feel clunky and awkward to use.
.H2 A new feature called MyInfo
As I sign into MyPalm and settle down to write this, MyPalm invites me to try MyInfo, a new feature that’s a joint effort with Yodlee (at http://www.yodlee.com) that will help me access and manage my personal accounts. I’ll tell you more about MyPalm and MyInfo in an upcoming issue of PalmPower.
.H2 Summary
The MyPalm portal shows a lot of promise, but it has a lot of rough edges as well. There are few true bugs, but there are a lot of usability issues that need to be resolved before I’d consider it ready for prime time. It’s certainly usable, but it’s awkward in a lot of places, making it frustrating for neophytes, and tiring even for skilled users who rely on it regularly.
Equally important, although far more subtle, is what I perceive to be a rather hit-and-miss approach in Palm’s strategy in rolling out features and enhancements to the portal as a whole. I’ve pointed out examples throughout this review, including the hit-and-miss integration between the Palm.net service pages, lack of Macintosh support for synchronization, Note Pad synchronization and sharing, and Contact synchronization and sharing. Other issues include the lack of true portal information such as news, financial data, and other information common to other portals on the desktop version of the MyPalm page. MyPalm just doesn’t seem to deserve to be called a portal without access to news somewhere.
Despite these flaws, MyPalm deserves your attention, especially if you’re looking for a way to share your calendar on the Web with others. Its synchronization software on Windows is better than many of the mainstream portals such as Yahoo! or Excite, and it’s backed by the company that brought you your Palm handheld’s operating system. Why not give it a try?
.BEGIN_SIDEBAR
.H1 Product availability and resources
For more information on the MyPalm portal, visit http://my.palm.com.
For more information on Yodlee, visit http://www.yodlee.com.
For more information about Palm computers, visit http://www.palm.com.
.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
.DISCUSS http://powerboards.zatz.com/cgi-bin/webx?50@@.ee6f87c
