.KEYWORD devcon
.FLYINGHEAD DEVELOPER CONFERENCE TRIP REPORT
.TITLE The Palm VII, DevCon, and me
.OTHER
.SUMMARY By now, unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ve heard of the forthcoming Palm VII computer. We sent our intrepid reporter into the heart of the Silicon Valley jungle to report on the 1998 Palm Computing Developer’s Conference. In this in-depth trip report, contributing editor Fredlet gives us her first impressions of the Palm VII, points out some of the high points of the developer’s conference, and introduces us to the unfortunate concept of "geek sex".
.AUTHOR S. Fred Green a.k.a. Fredlet
The 1998 Palm Developers Conference was held December 2-4 in Santa Clara, California. Ranging in topics from the basics of Palm Platform software development to international marketing, this particular conference was not for your casual Palm device user.
Speakers ranged from Jeff Hawkins and Donna Dubinski to Guy Kawasaki, and at the "Partner Pavilion" major Palm developers were able to show their latest and greatest new products. Corporations like IBM, Symbol Technologies, and TRG were also present to talk about what’s possible with the technologies they are developing.
There was a lot of activity — and a whole lot of signs, as you can see in Figure A.
.FIGPAIR A A look at the Palm Developer’s Conference — and the signs of the times.
.H1 Oh yeah, did I mention they announced the Palm VII?
Interestingly, Palm’s managers dismissed all rumors about Razor (this was the skinny Palm device we’ve been hearing rumors about, yet senior Palm personnel claim it never existed). The Palm people then proceeded to talk about the new features that will distinguish the Palm VII, shown in Figure B, from its competition. They also announced software that will take advantage of the wireless features.
.FIGPAIR B Some guy’s hand, a picture of Dilbert, and the Palm VIII.
Since the official press release announcement is available on just about every Web site I have seen (including PalmPower’s News Center), I’ll skip it and instead give you a quick rundown of the specs for the Palm VII:
.BEGIN_LIST
.BULLET Processor: Motorola Dragonball (Model 68328-same as the predecessors)
.BULLET Screen: same as the Palm III
.BULLET Communications: built-in 2-way wireless radio
.BULLET Network: provided by BellSouth covering 260 of the most populated areas of the U.S. (sorry Montana, you don’t seem to be covered.)
.BULLET Encryption: Elliptic Curve Cryptography (really strong encryption) by Certicom
.END_LIST
The wireless network, called Palm.Net, will provide information for the Palm VII such as travel information, an ATM locator, financial news, stock information, movie listings, airline listings, package tracking, news headlines, white pages as well as yellow pages searches, weather information and more.
With the wireless network, you’ll be able to send and receive short emails and lots of information over the air, although its not a substitute for your regular email account. Instead, you’ll receive small chunks of information at your palm.net account (for example, I’ve decided that I will be fredlet@palm.net).You’ll pay a monthly fee of $9.95 for 50KB of transmissions, the equivalent of 250 screens of information. There’s also a higher rate of $24.99 per month for 750 KB of information (750 screens). That’s not a lot of data transmission for the money — a typical article of PalmPower can be 35K or so of pure text.
For quick surfing of the Internet, you’ll be able to check pages by using "web clippings". Basically, you’ll have your normal web page and when a wireless Palm VII reads the page, it will read the areas that are marked for the Palm VII. This prevents downloading large amounts of data that aren’t necessary for wireless customers. The Web clipping mechanism uses a CGI (i.e., a special Web programming interface) or custom HTML tags embedded on a page that handles both standard browsers and the Palm VII’s needs. There is a style guide available for all you Web geeks at http://www.palm.com that’ll help you to optimize your pages for the 160 x 160 Palm screen.
.H1 Pros and cons
Pros and cons are numerous for the new Palm VII units. Wireless connectivity is great for the more mobile Palm user. After all, finding a phone jack can be tough to do at the mall or just roaming around at the local Bob’s Big Boy. Wireless connectivity is also be extremely handy for travelers, who’d be able to find local ATMs and even do a Yellow Pages search at any time. On the other hand, I think the Palm VII is a bit expensive at around $800 per unit. On top of that, add at least $120 per year for connection fees (if you go with the package that offers a larger download range, you’ll pay around $300 — or more). Also, given the somewhat limited coverage range, not everyone in the U.S. will be able to use this system. To choose the Palm VII over existing wireless communications options is a serious investment into a system that we certainly hope will catch on and flourish. Palm Computing is aiming for a serious upscale market with the Palm VII.
.H1 So, why did they name it the Palm VII anyway?
And just what exactly happened to the IV, V and VI versions? That’s a very good question. 3Com claims that they wanted to differentiate it substantially from its predecessors and that the missing Palm IV, Palm V and Palm VI devices weren’t ever planned. Of course, 3Com doesn’t comment on unannounced products, so even if they are in the works, we still have no idea what might or might not occur with these product numbers. Whatever the reasons may be, you can be sure that Palm Computing enjoyed the disinformation tactics of the Razor rumors (assuming Razor really doesn’t exist, which in itself might be disinformation — you can get dizzy trying to follow these things) since it quite effectively masked any hint about the Palm VII.
.H1 A big ol’ get together
All in all, the conference this year was full of interesting items. I walked around for the first hour getting oriented and staring at nametags figuring out who everyone was. I think next year they should call it the "Palm Reunion Conference" since that’s what it seemed like to me. Now I can finally connect faces with those names I’ve been sending email to for the past two years. Just as if I had a real life (That’s a joke)!
I got to actually meet Mark Walser of JP Systems. In Figure C is a picture of him doing a demo of the new BeamLink software for IR-equipped Palm devices.
.FIGPAIR C Let’s watch Mark Walser do a demo.
Figure D shows me (Fredlet) on the left with Dan Royea (of "The Gadgeteer" fame) at a talk about Palm Computing’s wireless future given by Motorola. We were simply frothing for new technology and don’t think we can wait the five years that Motorola is predicting that it will take to arrive.
.FIGPAIR D Here’s a picture of Dan Royea and me.
David Pogue and I finally met months after having collaborated together on a book via email. Michael Shawver (creator of the UniMount) and I were talking with Brian Ball of PDA University. David looked around and said "Hi" to Michael, then looked over and said "Hi" to Brian. After a minute he finally read my name tag and shouted "Fredlet!" Michael looked at me aghast and said, "You’ve never met Pogueman before today? But you guys did the Ultimate Guide together!" I thought it was all very amusing.
Of course, no matter where you looked, you could always see someone beaming a business card to someone else’s Palm III. It became a kind of treasure hunt for some people I ran into to get as many business cards as they could from the Palm Computing "stars" (i.e., Jeff Hawkins, Donna Dubinski, etc.).
See Figure E for a picture of "PalmPilot: The Ultimate Guide" author David Pogue and Brian Ball of PDA University beaming their business cards to each other. The slang term for this at the conference was "geek sex". I laughed uproariously when someone clued me into this new term!
.FIGPAIR E David and Brian are beaming their business cards to each other!
Overall, the conference was pretty good. I would have loved to have spent more time talking to all the companies about their products and about new ideas for the Palm organizer, but as the French so aptly put it "c’est la vie." I’d say it rated about four out of five okapis on Fredlet’s okapi meter.
.BEGIN_SIDEBAR
.H1 Product availability and resources
Want to know more about the conference? You can read about it at the http://www.palm.com/devzone/index.html Web site.
For David Pogue PalmPilot: The Ultimate Guide, visit http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/palmprog/.
.H2 Palm VII related links
Below are some of the sites that are reputed to have "Web clippings" or who have promised to make them available by the time the Palm VII ships.
Bank of America: http://www.bankamerica.com.
ETAK Traffic Touch: http://www.traffictouch.com.
E*TRADE: http://www.etrade.com.
Fodor’s travel information: http://www.fodors.com.
Frommers: http://wwwfrommers.com.
MapQuest: http://www.mapquest.com.
Mastercard/Cirrus: http://www.mastercard.com/atm/.
Movielink: http://www.movielink.com.
Travelocity: http://www.travelocity.com.
UPS: http://www.ups.com.
USA Today: http://www.usatoday.com.
US West Dex Internet Yellow Pages: http://www.uswestdex.com.
VISA: http://www.visa.com.
The Weather Channel: http://www.weather.com.
Yahoo: http://www.yahoo.com.
.END_SIDEBAR
.BIO
.DISCUSS http://powerboards.zatz.com/cgi-bin/webx?13@@.ee6c7e7
