By Dan Huber
Some productivity-oriented software titles that come in handy for me as a student are available from Developer One. Developer One, which seems to have a niche for productivity software, offers such things as an agenda/homework organizer, a tool to graph spreadsheet data, an advanced clipboard of sorts, and a password-protected PIM (Personal Information Manager), among other things.
Last month I discussed Developer One's ClassPro, which is great for tracking the progress of class assignments, notes, and schedules. This time, we'll look at the AutoGraph 1.5, a handy tool that lets you visualize your spreadsheets by turning them into easy-to-read graphs.
AutoGraph 1.5
The AutoGraph 1.5 is the only product of its kind that I'm aware of, and it's amazingly versatile, considering you're running it from a computer small enough to fit in your pocket. With the appropriate spreadsheet data you've composed in Pocket Excel on your H/PC, you'll be able to create graphs with many user-defined options, such as colors (or patterns for black and white screens), text labels, the types of labels displayed, legends, and more. In Figure A, I graphed some data related to a spreadsheet calculating the total cost of specific Lego parts. It gives me a good view as to which components are the most expensive.
FIGURE A
AutoGraph 1.5 makes it easy to keep track of the rising cost of Legos. (click for larger image)
Not only do you choose the options for your graphs, but also you choose the types of graphs that you want to see. To begin making a graph, launch AutoGraph. An icon appears in the tray that you'll use to build the graph. Next, build or open a spreadsheet with the desired data in Pocket Excel. Select and copy the cells of the data you intend to graph. Now, select the AutoGraph tray icon. This is the one enclosed in the box with the clock, not the one on the taskbar you use to switch between applications. This automatically pastes the data you've copied into AutoGraph.
The program will automatically recognize the capabilities of your H/PC's display and set up the appropriate method of differentiating different data in a graph. By this I mean that if you have a color display, it'll use different colors to divide the data that's graphed. In the event of a black and white screen, it'll use different patterns of black and white to split the data.
Once your graph is created and tailored to your needs, you can either save it as a bitmap file for later use or paste it into another application that supports pasting graphics. Unfortunately, Pocket Excel 2.0 on my Velo 500 doesn't allow me to paste graphs into spreadsheets, but this may have changed in Pocket Excel 3.0 on the new H/PC Professional devices. I don't really know. However, I do know that you can paste graphs into Pocket Word 2.0, as you can see in Figure B, so this may suit you just as well.
