.FLYINGHEAD WIRELESS MESSAGING
.TITLE Pager Card for the PalmPilot
.OTHER
.SUMMARY There’s an important add-on coming for your PalmPilot: the Pager Card. At PalmPower we like to bring you articles by the key people involved in important projects. We’ve scored another coup. Steve Shapiro, a senior manager on the Pager Card team at Motorola tells us all about the Pager Card and how it will help you stay connected no matter where you are.
.AUTHOR Steve Shapiro
In late 1997, Motorola (the hardware developers), PageMart (the pager service provider), The Windward Group (the software developers), and 3Com announced an exciting new product: the Pager Card for the PalmPilot. We are pleased to report that the Pager Card for the PalmPilot is now undergoing Beta testing with approximately 100 PalmPilot users across the country, and as soon as we complete these tests, Motorola will begin full production of the Pager Card so you can have the top two requested enhancements for the PalmPilot.
The top TWO requested enhancements? That’s correct. In 1996, PageMart and Palm Computing Inc. conducted market research regarding enhancements for the PalmPilot. The addition of paging capability and more memory were the most often requested enhancements. Additional research in 1997 indicated that over 50% of PalmPilot users were also pager users and these people desired a combination of products. That is, the ability to combine two devices they use everyday, into one device: their pagers and their PalmPilots.
When Motorola, PageMart, The Windward Group, and 3Com began planning this product, we knew that we could not take away one of the most important attributes of the PalmPilot: it’s "shirt pocketability". So the decision was made to incorporate the Pager Card for the PalmPilot "into" the PalmPilot so you would not find the size to be objectionable. Although we had to add a small bump to the back of the unit, many of you have told us that you like what we’ve done. But we didn’t stop there, we added new features.
.H1 New features
The most significant feature is more memory. In fact, every Pager Card for the PalmPilot comes with 2MB of memory. On top of that, you get the Operating System and new Paging Application stored in FLASH memory. In other words, the Paging Application doesn’t consume valuable RAM space. Rather, the RAM is for all data in the PalmPilot. All resident PalmPilot data such as the Date Book and Address List as well as the paging data are stored in the 2MB of RAM. And there’s more.
.CALLOUT Every Pager Card for the PalmPilot comes with Palm OS 3.0–the same version that ships with the latest connected organizer from Palm Computing, Palm III.
Every Pager Card for the PalmPilot comes with Palm OS 3.0–the same version that ships with the latest connected organizer from Palm Computing, Palm III. The Pager Card for the PalmPilot provides every PalmPilot user with the opportunity to upgrade the unit’s memory and Operating System. Therefore it doesn’t matter whether you have Pilot 1000, Pilot 5000, PalmPilot Personal Edition or a PalmPilot Pro Edition. With the addition of the Pager Card for the PalmPilot, you will have all software related features of the new Palm III. All for an expected street price of only $169! That means you get paging, more memory and a new Operating System and PC Desktop for a very reasonable cost.
Of course the real value of this addition to your PalmPilot is the support for wireless messaging integrated into your personal organizer. With paging service from PageMart Wireless, you can receive word messages up to 300 characters long. Business associates, family and friends can send you information when you are traveling. Your word messaging service includes an email address from PageMart; email header information can be forwarded to you so that you don’t have to worry about finding a phone jack somewhere just to see if you have email waiting. Instead, you can wirelessly receive the information and determine the importance of the message.
The Pager Card for the PalmPilot also offers you another great feature called SENDER ID. With Sender ID, if someone sends you a numeric page, you need not try to guess who that number represents. The Pager Application automatically cross references phone numbers to your Address List in the PalmPilot as shown in Figure A.
.FIG A Sender ID automatically cross references the phone number to PageMart Wireless. Also shown is the time and date the message was received.
Not only do you see the cross referenced phone number to the data in the Telephone Directory (i.e., PageMart Wireless) but you see the time and date the message was received as well as a "message sequence number". The message sequence number is a system where every personal message is preceded by a number. The reason for this is so that if you miss a message while traveling on a plane, the paging application will tell you that you’ve missed messages once you receive your next message. For example, if you receive message 25 and the last message received was 23, you will receive a notice that you’ve missed a message. If that occurs, a toll-free call to PageMart’s message retrieval service allows you to retransmit the text message or messages to your PalmPilot. Numeric messages are read back to you over the telephone or can be retransmitted.
.H1 Developers kits
Although the resident Pager Application has some great features, Motorola, PageMart, the Windward Group and 3Com want to encourage developers to develop "cool" features that will utilize the paging technology. As a user of the PalmPilot, you’ve probably already added some great applications, utilities or games to your PalmPilot. To encourage third party development, Motorola will be selling a Developers Kit to support the development community. If you are a PalmPilot developer, then you will find the new Developers Kit easy to use. The kits will be available at the same time the Pager Card for the PalmPilot becomes available, which is about a month away.
If you are a developer, I’m sure some of you are asking; "why can’t I get the SDK (software developers kit) now so I can develop the applications before the product hits the street?" To develop applications for the Pager Card, you need hardware too. Specifically, the new Pager Card. You will need the Pager Card to receive a message and test your applications and Motorola wants you to have a Pager Card that represents production product with the ability to receive a message as reliably as a regular pager. Therefore we have to wait until our Pager Card Beta testing is completed.
In just a few more weeks, we expect to turn on full production of the Pager Card and the Developers Kits and begin fulfilling the demand for the hottest new addition to the PalmPilot family of products. It’s backwards compatible to all PalmPilot models.
.H1 What about the Palm III?
Unfortunately, the mechanical design of the new Palm III precludes the addition of the Pager Card inside the unit. We are considering future designs of the Pager Card for the Palm III models as well as exploring the possibility of creating a card for two-way paging. Motorola, PageMart, The Windward Group, and 3Com are continually working together to look at new ways to enhance the PalmPilot family of products and are very excited about our latest development, the Pager Card for the PalmPilot.
.BEGIN_SIDEBAR
.H1 Product availability
For further information on Pager Card availability, please contact PageMart Wireless Inc. at 888-318-2010. Or contact the following web sites: http://www.mot.com/pagercard or http://www.pagemart.com.
For more information on Pager Card features, please contact Blair Ciecko at bciecko@edelman.com
.END_SIDEBAR
.BIO Steve Shapiro is Sr. Marketing Manager for Motorola’s FLEX Architecture Solutions Division. He has 20 years of wireless experience with Motorola and works with OEMs and integrators to assist them in adding wireless capability to their products.
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