By Gregory Lea
I, like most Pocket PC users, find myself greatly outnumbered in the World of PDAs. I don't mind until those users of competing OS devices start beaming stuff back and forth. Then I feel like Rudolf when the other reindeer start playing their reindeer games. They can share notes, contact information, and appointments through their infrared (IR) ports. Traditionally, Windows CE didn't have that feature inherent in its system, but now Pocket PC does. However, Pocket PC only allows beaming to other Pocket PCs, so you still get left out of most of the action.
There are several solutions to the beaming problem. In fact, a few months ago I wrote an article for Pocket PC Life (then called Windows CE Power Magazine) on SyncTalk. You can find the article at http://www.pocketpclife.com/issues/issue200005/cesynctalk001.html. It was the first program to allow Windows CE, Palm (including Handspring), and Epoc PDAs to communicate using the infrared port.
Since then, I've continued to use the program, but the main person I beam stuff to, my good friend and Palm device-wielder Mike Compeau, deleted the application in favor of memory space. Even at the time I wrote the article, Mike and I thought it would be cleaner if cross-OS communication could be achieved by having the less popular OS conform to the more popular platform. I guess that's what the folks at Conduits Technologies had in mind too when they developed Peacemaker, which does exactly that.
Common sense approach
Peacemaker is a program for Pocket PC and Windows CE devices that allows them to beam and receive contact information, tasks, appointments, and notes to and from Palm devices. Best of all, the Palm devices don't need a special program. In fact, the Palm units can receive and send data through the IR port to a Peacemaker user the same as they do with another Palm device.
To me, this makes the most sense. It's irrelevant which OS I favor; the fact remains that Palm owns approximately 75% of the PDA market (by the latest estimation I've seen). It's reasonable that only one OS should conform to the other, and the conformers should be the ones without the market majority. Besides, most non-Palm devices have plenty of memory for the application.
What's the big deal, anyway?
But why is IR communication so important? Well, it's mostly a matter of speculation since I don't see IR being used to its potential. It's pretty common for people to beam contact information, especially electronic business cards, as well as appointments, but seldom much more than that. I don't see notes and memos shared very often, but I'm sure that varies from place to place. For a while, it was possible to even beam electronic "money."
