.KEYWORD want
.FLYINGHEAD WISH LIST
.TITLE What readers want
.FEATURE
.SUMMARY Back in May we set up a forum on the PalmPower PowerBoards asking you to tell us what new features you’d like to see in the next version of the Palm OS. In this fun article, Steve Niles shares your ideas with the world.
.AUTHOR Steve Niles
Back in May we tried a little experiment. We set up a forum on our PalmPower PowerBoards and asked you to tell us about what new features you’d like to see in the next version of the Palm OS. What follows are some of the result highlights.
.H1 Finders keepers
Both Mike Holmes and Jim Hare responded saying they’d like to see a spell check built into the operating system, rather than having to download and install third-party software to provide that functionality. Mike also wanted to see font options (like bold, italic, and underline) available in Date Book, Address Book, To Do List, and Memo Pad, and he had an interesting suggestion for the Find function. He suggested the addition of a "view next occurrence" function. Currently, he explained, if you choose one of the "found" entries and it’s not the one you’re looking for, you must start over with the search to try a different "found" entry. He also suggested filters on the Find command (e.g., searching for an entry in Date Book no earlier than or later than a certain date).
Carlos Trumer, Ed Thompson, and Diego Benedetto also have an issue with the Find option. They’d like it to indicate all the matching words found in a particular document. For example, if there are two Visa numbers in the same extra-long note, the Find option will find just one of the two. As a European, Diego also says that he’d buy a Palm VII equivalent the day it’s available if it integrated with GSM cellular and GPRS and tri-band.
.H1 The ultimate handheld
Meanwhile, Chuck Bryant says he’ll upgrade from his Palm IIIxe as soon as he sees a handheld that includes all the features on his wish list. A number of these features already exist, but no single handheld has all of the following:
.BEGIN_LIST
.BULLET High-resolution color screen that’s viewable in any lighting conditions;
.END_LIST
.BEGIN_LIST
.BULLET Virtual Graffiti area that can be pulled down or hidden;
.END_LIST
.BEGIN_LIST
.BULLET True handwriting recognition;
.END_LIST
.BEGIN_LIST
.BULLET Voice recording of appointments and notes;
.END_LIST
.BEGIN_LIST
.BULLET Ability to set different alarm sounds for different types of appointments;
.END_LIST
.BEGIN_LIST
.BULLET Easier way to schedule recurring To Do items, with an easy way to mark them off so they don’t appear until a certain date before they’re due again;
.END_LIST
.BEGIN_LIST
.BULLET Ability to use expansion memory as real system memory, not just as a storage or swap area;
.END_LIST
Finally, Chuck wants it to be easier to upgrade the OS. He doesn’t have to buy a new computer every time Microsoft releases a new OS, so why, he asks, should he buy a new PDA every time Palm does?
.H1 Improving Date Book
Linda Hurst says her earliest PDA, which came from Texas Instruments, featured a rolling to do list that appeared on the calendar. This avoided the problem of having to use two applications or a third party program. She says it would be nice to have this on her Palm OS handheld as she currently ends up putting to do items in as a zero duration calendar item. However, this doesn’t roll forward if she doesn’t do the task, so the items sometimes get lost.
Gloria Murman would like to have NotePad and Clock included in all Palm handheld versions. She would also like to have the Date Book be able to schedule meetings across days (i.e., 11 pm on May 4 through 7 am on May 5) and would like to be able to have a year view. Anil Bhalla would also like a year view and thinks the Palm OS would be a lot more useful for business if it had an inbuilt financial calculator.
Edison Johnson, meanwhile, would love for the Date Book scheduling system to include a means to schedule a meeting that correlates to another meeting based on the day of the month. For example, "one day after the first Tuesday of the month" or "one week before the last Friday of the month." Says Edison, "Many meetings I need to schedule are based on these types of relationships to other meetings and using the ‘first Wednesday’ does not always correctly follow the ‘first Tuesday’ of the month, depending on which occurs first. It seems this could be simply done through adding a fixed + or – numbers of days offset to the day of the month scheduling feature."
Mike Quitter would like to see a way of marking Date Book events "business" or "personal." When he’s at work, he’d like to have the choice of viewing or printing just his business events and vice versa.
Stephen Vance and George G. Garrett believe that there’s no reason for limiting the various applications to 15 categories. George also thinks the events in the Date Book should be able to have categories assigned to them which will synchronize with those in Palm Desktop.
Jo Craig would like to see a link from Date Book to Documents To Go (at http://www.dataviz.com). He often receives emails regarding an agenda, minutes, papers, etc. for an upcoming meeting. He enters a reminder of the meeting in Date Book and also writes that the agenda, minutes, or any papers are to be read in Documents To Go. He’d like to see a link directly from Date Book to Documents To Go, so that by tapping on a simple icon, it would take him to those documents.
Meanwhile, Bill Chaney would like a cross-reference between the To Do List and the Date Book so that when an item is created in the To Do List, it can show up (with or without an alarm) in the Date Book on the due date.
.H1 General thoughts
Roy Karny would simply like to see the battery meter in the pop-up clock so he doesn’t need to go back to the Launcher screen to see how much power is left. Deborah Miller has a similar aversion to returning to the Launcher screen and would like a "Back" button to take her back to the previous application she was using. Alan Swafford suggests limited multitasking so you can have two applications open at once and switch between the two.
Alejandro Vargas, Pat Nathan, Marshall Tuck, and Tom Gillespie would like to see a digital recorder built into the Palm handheld. John Dunigan takes it a step further, saying, "How about Voice Recognition!?"
Martin Kaiser would like to see more use of color, such as highlighting text with, for example, red. He isn’t against multimedia possibilities either and wonders weather faster devices with better audio might finally be able to serve as car GPS navigation.
The main thing Kimbo Mundy wants is synchronization between multiple desktop PCs, and ideally, it should work across firewalls. Bob Irwin would like to see an accessory device for checking the IR (Infrared) functionality of a device (both send and receive).
Patrick Salvi believes there are a set of Hack utilities that should by now be standard in the Palm OS, such as X-Master (at http://linkesoft.com/english/xmaster/), SwitchHack (at http://www.deskfree.com/SwitchHack.html), and MiddleCaps and Case ToggleHack (at http://www.di.uminho.pt/~rco/pilot.html). He’d also like to see a standard Daylight Saving time change function, international clock and alarm, a small document reader like CspotRun (at http://www.32768.com/bill/palmos/cspotrun/), and added security at document level. He also thinks the Address Book would be easier to use if it was to allow for relationships/links between people, and the To Do application could be enhanced with cascading tasks.
Jackie Stepek wants to see instant chat capabilities with other Palm OS users in the same room. She’d also like the ability to assign more categories, nested categories for notes and contacts, and longer names for the categories.
Finally, to aid southpaws, Ric Donato would like to see the ability to move the slide bar to the left side of the screen.
There are some really cool ideas out there. Thank you to everyone who participated. If you’ve got your own ideas to contribute, you can visit the PowerBoards at http://powerboards.zatz.com/cgi-bin/webx?50@@.ee6ff17 to speak your mind!
.BEGIN_SIDEBAR
.H1 Product availability and resources
For the PowerBoards topic, "Features you’d like to see in the next Palm OS," visit http://powerboards.zatz.com/cgi-bin/webx?50@@.ee6ff17.
For more information on Documents To Go, visit http://www.dataviz.com.
For more information on X-Master, visit http://linkesoft.com/english/xmaster/.
For more information on SwitchHack, visit http://www.deskfree.com/SwitchHack.html.
For more information on MiddleCaps and Case ToggleHack, visit http://www.di.uminho.pt/~rco/pilot.html.
For more information on CspotRun, visit http://www.32768.com/bill/palmos/cspotrun/.
For more information on Palm handhelds, visit http://www.palm.com.
.H1 Easy, flexible article reprints
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.END_SIDEBAR
.BIO
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