.KEYWORD parenting
.FLYINGHEAD PALM IN THE HOME
.TITLE Parenting with a Palm handheld
.FEATURE
.SUMMARY Ray Rischpater believes a key element of Palm’s success as a handheld computer vendor is that it provides a robust platform that encourages developers to create new and interesting applications. In this article, he’ll show you how this variety of applications makes his Palm handheld as useful to him as a parent as it is on the job.
.AUTHOR Ray Rischpater
I’ve overslept again on what promises to be a busy day. Working out of your home has some advantages in this regard, although not as many as you might think when you share your schedule with your two-year-old son.
As my son Jarod eats, I scoop my just-synchronized Palm m505 from its cradle to check my schedule, pictured in Figure A.
.FIG A Today’s schedule promises to be busy.
Today I’m both Dad-at-home and employed—I have to finish my review for PalmPower while watching my son, because my wife is at the office.
My Date Book may have fewer meetings than it used to, but it’s just as full. That’s because I use the built-in Date Book application for almost everything that has a date, relying on the Find function to help me stay organized. For example, I use the date entry Note field for meeting notes, as shown in Figure B.
.FIG B Using the date entry Note field for meeting notes.
Meanwhile, I track the medications I may be taking using an unscheduled date entry, as shown in Figure C.
.FIG C I use the Date Book for recording information about a specific day.
Although sites such as PalmGear (at http://www.palmgear.com) have countless programs you can download to help you track your health, exercise, doctor’s appointments, budget, and virtually everything else, I find it easier to name appointments consistently and use the Note field. Later I can use Find to find things I may have forgotten. Equally important, I’m assured that all of my time stamped notes make it to my desktop calendar, where I have a permanent record, because not all the third-party applications have conduits for the Macintosh.
After reviewing my schedule (with a sideways glance at Jarod, who has yet to reach the food-scattering phase) I skim my urgent email. I don’t use my Palm handheld for all my email. Mail from a select few is forwarded to my device, as shown in Figure D. That way, I can read it when I’m away from my keyboard.
.FIG D Palm’s Mail application let’s me read my mail on-the-go.
There’s any number of ways to do this. You can use Mail’s built-in settings, shown in Figure E, to filter by sender or urgency, for example.
.FIG E You can use the Mail application settings.
For obscure reasons, my setup isn’t that simple, but it works just as well. I use procmail on our mail server to do the forwarding and have a second email account that my device uses for both synchronized email with Palm’s Mail application and anything I might receive on the road using MultiMail SE and my cell phone. At home, I use the Macintosh MultiMail conduit to get mail from this account to my Palm handheld.
I’ve found that dedicating an email address to my handheld has some advantages; I don’t accidentally lose anything, mail synchronizations (both at home and on the road) are faster, and I can easily send myself short notes from other people’s email accounts and automatically get them on my device.
As we get ready for Jarod’s playgroup, I sneak a peek at Tide Tool, at http://www.toolworks.com/bilofsky/tidetool.htm, to check out today’s tide table, pictured in Figure F.
.FIG F You can view today’s tides with Tide Tool.
Our playgroup is meeting at the beach, giving us a chance to get the kids out in the fresh air for a change. I haven’t bothered with a printed newspaper in years, so Tide Tool is handy for planning beach excursions and amazing your friends with your knowledge of the tide, phase of the moon, and sunrise and sunset times. It may not the most exciting Palm application, but it’s easy to use, well written, and free.
Speaking of newspapers, AvantGo (at http://www.avantgo.com) on any Palm OS device makes a great substitute. Using AvantGo, I mark Web sites such as PalmPower, CNET.com (at http://www.cnet.com), and the Wall Street Journal(at http://www.wsj.com), and I download their contents when I synchronize to read later. My list of AvantGo channels is pictured in Figure G.
.FIGPAIR G I’ve selected these Web sites to be viewed using AvantGo.
On my Palm m505, the channels appear as in Figure H.
.FIG H Surf the Web with AvantGo.
You can even go on-line with AvantGo and a modem or cell phone, but I find it’s faster to use Palm’s (MIK) Mobile Internet Kit and a specific query application, such as the one from Weather.com, when I need information on the go.
Heading out the door, my handheld joins my Palm Portable Keyboard and cell phone in Jarod’s bag. The added bulk of the keyboard is well worth it; if Jarod naps, I can get some work done.
The parents in Jarod’s playgroup are a mix of stay-at-home parents like myself and a few parents with flexible schedules who make our get-togethers whenever they can. It’s a social outing for the parents as well as the kids. Today, I’m quickly engrossed in a technical conversation with one of the moms about a side project we’ve been working on. At first, a stick in the sand suffices, but eventually the math gets a bit hairier than I’d like, so I take out my handheld and launch Quicksheet (at http://www.cesinc.com/quicksheet/index.html), pictured in Figure I.
.FIG I A spreadsheet is easily created with Quicksheet.
I then use Quickchart to plot a graph, as shown in Figure J.
.FIG J A graph can be drawn with Quickchart.
In college, like most other mathematics and engineering students, I always toted a programmable calculator, which was quickly relegated to the responsibility of balancing the checkbook when I graduated. There are a variety of good calculator programs for the Palm platform-my favorite is Russell Web’s RPN, at http://www.nthlab.com, shown in Figure K.
.FIG K RPN is a scientific calculator for the Palm platform.
However, for serious number crunching, nothing on a Palm handheld beats a good spreadsheet. Here, too, the platform shines, but I’ve settled on Cutting Edge Software’s QuickSheet. It packs a load of features, including an Excel conduit and charting, it uses only a modest amount of RAM, and it’s well supported by Cutting Edge Enterprises. For most of the things I’d want to do away from a computer, I’ve created simple workbooks in Excel and downloaded them to my handheld. It’s also easy enough to create small spreadsheets right on the handheld.
Later, as we leave the beach, my wife calls.
"How’s your article?" she asks.
Uh-oh. What article? Oh, yes. That article. "Fine, fine. Just a few finishing touches to do when I get home," I reply, deciding it’s time to take a detour. Looking in my rear-view mirror, I see my son is fast asleep.
Thank goodness for naps, the Palm Portable Keyboard and Blue Nomad’s WordSmith (at http://www.bluenomad.com), pictured in Figure L.
.FIG L I can work on my article using Blue Nomad’s WordSmith.
After a quick pass through a drive-through espresso caf
